Media – Media Nation

A bookstore starts publishing reviews — but that’s not the only way book journalism is being kept alive

As Sophie Culpepper correctly observes at Nieman Lab, book reviews in the mainstream press are fading away, with The Washington Post folding its standalone books section and The Associated Press getting rid of reviews.

Now Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has taken matters into its own hands. Culpepper reports that co-owner Josh Cook has launched something called the Porter Square Review of Books, which is publishing one review every week or so. Cook tells Culpepper:

A lot of bookselling is the first couple steps of writing a book review anyway. You assess it to see if you like it, you figure out how you’re going to describe it to other people, you decide whether you’re going to finish it … We already are part of the way there. Why not just see if we could do it?

It’s a positive step, but it’s hardly the only innovative attempt at keeping book reviews alive. So let me remind you of a couple that I’ve mentioned during the past several years.

📚 Midbrow, originally the Independent Review Crew, is a nonprofit project launched by New Haven Independent founder Paul Bass in 2023. Midbrow’s mission is to revive arts and culture reviewing across all genres — including books — in the spirit of the old alternative press. (Bass himself wrote about politics for the now-defunct New Haven Advocate for many years.)

Midbrow’s content is published on its own website and in eight cities that have correspondents. Boston is not among them at the moment, although in the past there was a local writer whose work was republished by Universal Hub. Bass talked about Midrow with Ellen Clegg and me on our podcast, “What Works: The Future of Local News,” around the time of its launch.

📚 The Arts Fuse, begun in 2007, offers high-brow arts criticism — again, including books — in the spirit of the late, great Boston Phoenix, where founder Bill Marx was a longtime critic and where I worked for many years as the media columnist. I’m an occasional contributor to The Arts Fuse, and in fact I’m working on a book review for Marx right now. The nonprofit, according to its website, is “a curated, independent online arts magazine dedicated to publishing in-depth criticism, along with high quality previews, interviews, and commentaries.”

📚 Marx is also a co-founder of Viva la Book Review, a nonprofit project aimed at fostering “thoughtful, well-crafted book criticism in community news media across the country,” as Ellen and I put it in our introduction to Marx’s appearance on “What Works” in 2025. We had a great conversation about how book reviewing intersects with local news.

📚 Finally, another former Phoenix colleague of mine, acclaimed author Nina MacLaughlin, started an email newsletter after The Boston Globe short-sightedly dropped her Sunday column about local book news. MacLaughlin now writes essentially the same column on her own. She doesn’t write reviews; rather, she rounds up news about literary happenings in Boston and across the region. It’s called New England Literary News, and yes, you should subscribe.

Raises for everyone, Susan Goldberg tells GBH employees in an upbeat end-of-the-fiscal-year message

A trusted source just sent along an unexpectedly upbeat message to the staff from Susan Goldberg, CEO of GBH, one of Boston’s two major news-focused public media outlets.

GBH has been cutting local programming since before Donald Trump and the Republican Congress zeroed out funding for public media. It’s also added some back, and it recently completed a merger with New England Public Media in Western Massachusetts. But it was only in March that Goldberg told Boston Globe media reporter Aidan Ryan that she was interested in merging (sub. req.) with GBH’s main rival, WBUR — something that the latter’s general manager, Margaret Low, sounded distinctly uninterested in.

Anyway, Goldberg emphasizes the positive in her missive to employees, writing that GBH has broken fundraising records, added 50,000 members and supporters, and created news business models, especially on YouTube. And she puts the operation’s money where her mouth is, annoucing 3% across-the-board raises. Her full message follows.

Folks,

It was just over 11 months ago that Congress clawed back $1.1 billion from public media — a vote that ultimately cost GBH alone some $20 million a year. And that doesn’t count the millions of dollars we also lost when a different federal program that paid for children’s programming was suspended.

Without a doubt, it was a big hit.

Today, a week away from the close of FY26, we officially can celebrate what has turned out to be a remarkable and enormously successful year. Despite that rocky start — and because of your hard work, ingenuity, and determination — we:

— Broke fundraising records across the board, at every giving level, age range, geography, and platform.

— Added more than 50,000 new members and supporters (with half signing up as sustainers), bringing total membership among GBH, NEPM, and CAI to more than 250,000.

— Gained efficiencies and synergies by breaking down silos, including the new documentary unit (especially with digital strategies), and the merger with NEPM, which will allow true collaborations statewide on everything from news to development to marketing.

— Began in earnest to create new business models, including an advertising strategy on YouTube, a broader footprint for sponsorship across platforms, and the formation of a brand studio.

— Kept a tight rein on expenses and hiring, operating nimbly across the organization. Keep it up!

— Expanded our excellent, relevant, and, at times, revelatory storytelling, with new programs and dramas designed to make a difference — and attract audiences and attention.

We are delighted to be able to acknowledge these financial and creative successes with across-the-board raises of 3% — approved by our Board of Trustees at their June meeting — and, additionally, bonuses tied to individual performance.

We are proud of what we have accomplished, and thrilled a year that started in a trough ended in a triumph. None of it would have happened without you.

As we turn our attention to FY27, we have the opportunity to be proactive — rather than just reactive — about our goals. The last year gives us an incredible foundation on which to build, and there is much exciting work ahead to cement and multiply these gains.

This year should remind us that people of all ages and stages believe in our mission, and that they’ll take direct action to keep it, helping us expand our work on every platform — for kids, communities, news junkies, music buffs, documentary watchers, social media followers, and more.

As I think about the last 12 months, I feel inspired by where we’ve been — and energized about where we’re going. I hope you feel the same way.

Thank you again for all you did to make it possible, and congratulations.

Susan

A perfect summation of the challenge to journalism in the Age of Trump

Fintan O’Toole’s review in The New York Times of Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s book “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump” includes a perfect summation of the fundamental challenge to journalism in the Age of Trump:

The profession is shaped by an assumption that has been around at least since the Greek tragedians: Revelation is followed by reversal. When Oedipus’ (or Richard Nixon’s) crimes are exposed, he must fall from power. But not so Trump. With a few notable exceptions, he relies on a collective shrug of indifference from those in his support system, and defies exposure. What can journalists do in a world where there is no shame and, apparently, no consequence?

It calls to mind then-Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron’s well-known response to a question about whether the Post was at war with Trump. “We’re not at war with the administration, we’re at work,” he replied — a succinct statement of how journalists should approach their coverage.

And yet none of it has mattered.

Looking back at how John Yemma reinvented The Christian Science Monitor

*John Yemma, at the far end of the conference table, presides over a news meeting at The Christian Science Monitor. Photo (cc) 2011 by Dan Kennedy.*

John Yemma, the retired top editor of The Christian Science Monitor, whose journalism career was long and distinguished, died June 10 at 74. If you’re a Boston Globe subscriber, I recommend this obituary, written by Bryan Marquard wrote. If not, you should read this.

Yemma filled a number of top positions at the Globe, but it was at the Monitor that I got to spend some time with him in reporting a 2009 story for CommonWealth Magazine (now CommonWealth Beacon) about his plans to reinvent the venerable newspaper for the digital age. He struck me as someone who is fundamentally serene and kind, confirmed by the tributes I’ve seen pouring in for him the past few days.

The basics of Yemma’s plan for the Monitor are still in place: a daily email newsletter; a digital-first approach to covering the news; and a weekly print magazine gathering the best of the Monitor’s journalism. The Monitor’s journalistic approach might be described as calm and solutions-oriented, and it remains a first-rate news organization. Here’s what I wrote in 2009.

Second life

The Christian Science Monitor reinvents itself for the digital age

CommonWealth Magazine | Jan. 20, 2009

Sometime this April, one of New England’s most venerable daily newspapers will cease to be a daily newspaper.

The Christian Science Monitor, which marked its 100th anniversary this past November, is beginning its second century as a multi-platform, multimedia news organization. Central to this new identity will be its free website, CSMonitor.com, begun a dozen years ago and now freed from the constraints of the daily print cycle. The website, in turn, will be supplemented by a daily email edition and a weekly, subscriber-supported magazine.

Though the transformation has long been anticipated, it nevertheless represents a signal moment for the five-days-a-week paper, whose circulation exceeded 230,000 at its peak in the early 1970s. (It’s currently around 55,000.) A few small, local papers have abandoned their daily print editions, but the Monitor is the first national paper to do so.

Read the rest at CommonWealth Beacon.

Sports pioneer Eddie Andelman dies at 89. In 1997, I profiled him for Northeastern Magazine.

Eddie Andelman. Boston Herald Radio photo via YouTube.

Sports radio pioneer Eddie Andelman has died at 89. I grew up listening to Andelman, and in 1997 I had a chance to write a profile of him for Northeastern Magazine, which was Northeastern University’s alumni publication at the time; Andelman earned his MBA in 1962.

An anecdote that didn’t make it into the story: In the summer of 1975, Andelman, who was then a contributor to one of the local TV stations, was standing outside Park Station, offering $5 to anyone who could spell “Yastrzemski.” I nailed it, and appeared on the news that evening.

Like all of us, Andelman had his good and bad sides. I was glad that the magazine didn’t insist on hagiography, although in retrospect I wish we had described a racist joke Andelman told on the air as, you know, racist. As you’ll see, we settled on “outrageous.” It was worse than that, and that’s not just on him but on me and my editor, too.

Getting a handle on Eddie Andelman

Northeastern Magazine | May 1997

It’s a few minutes before airtime, and Eddie Andelman, MBA’62, is going over some final instructions with one of his producers.

“You got any of that holy music?” Andelman asks. The producer replies in the affirmative. Andelman runs down the list. A burst of “The Hallelujah Chorus”? Check. Hank Williams singing “Jambalaya”? Check.

Continue reading “Sports pioneer Eddie Andelman dies at 89. In 1997, I profiled him for Northeastern Magazine.”

Talking about media and democracy with the League of Women Voters

I recently had a chance to talk about media and democracy with three super-smart fellow panelists: Steph Solis, co-author of the Axios Boston morning newsletter; Sarah Stone, national field director for the media-reform group Free Press; and Marlene O’Brien of the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, who moderated our discussion.

The hour-long program, offered through NewTV of Newton, is part of the League’s “What Democracy Means in Everyday Life” series. I hope you’ll take the time to watch. Here is the press release. And here is a study guide that the League put together.

On the brand-new ‘Beat the Press,’ we try to make sense of the implosion of ‘60 Minutes’

*Click here or on image to watch on Contrarian Boston.*

On the latest episode of “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney,” we take a long look at the implosion of “60 Minutes,” the 58-year-old CBS News staple that has been torn apart by Bari Weiss and her choice to run the program, Nick Bilton.

Why did CBS executives fire Scott Pelley? What are we to make of Pelley’s claim in a New York Times interview that Weiss tried to inject bias and at least one falsehood into his report on the killings of Minneapolis protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal agents? What’s next for “60 Minutes,” which not only continues to be a ratings leader but actually grew over the past year? Does the new Trump-friendly owner, David Ellison, care about any of this?

Also: World Cup watch parties and our panel’s Rants and Raves. With Emily in the moderator’s chair; our host, Scott Van Voorhis of Contrarian Boston; Lylah Alphonse of The Boston Globe, and me. Our producer extraordinaire is Tonia Magras of Hull Bay Productions.

Extra! Extra! What would Andy think? Check out this special edition of “Beat the Press” in which Emily and her brother, Brian Rooney, talk about how their legendary father would be reacting to the meltdown of “60 Minutes.”

The evisceration of ‘60 Minutes’ greases the skids for David Ellison’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery

Nicholas von Hoffman and James Kilpatrick debate the fate of Richard Nixon at the height of the Watergate scandal in 1973.

I’m nearly 70, and I’ve never been a regular viewer of “60 Minutes.” I think of it as a show that my parents watched. Still, the dismantling of the highly rated program at the hands of David Ellison’s designated flunky, Bari Weiss, and her designated flunky, Nick Bilton, has been alarming for anyone who cares about investigative journalism — or, for that matter, democracy.

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I had to laugh at the clueless outrage of conservative commentators over Scott Pelley’s wonderfully hostile confrontation with Bilton. “When a child throws a tantrum, they’re punished,” clucked Isaac Schorr at Mediaite. “When a journalist throws a tantrum, they wait to be called stunning and brave.”

Continue reading “The evisceration of ‘60 Minutes’ greases the skids for David Ellison’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery”

Jon Keller and I talk about billionaire newspaper owners, news deserts and other media topics

Eight years after my book “The Return of the Moguls” was published, what is the state of newspaper ownership by civic-minded billionaires? Jon Keller of WBZ-TV (Channel 4) put that question to me on his “Keller at Large” program, which was broadcast Sunday morning.

My answer: not what I had hoped. John and Linda Henry have proved to be good stewards of The Boston Globe, and another billionaire sports owner, Glen Taylor, has similarly revived The Minnesota Star Tribune. But Jeff Bezos’ ownership of The Washington Post has taken a disastrous turn after 10 good years, and other masters of the universe have failed to step up.

Jon and I talked about some other media-related topics as well, including:

◘ The rise of independent local-news projects, especially in affluent suburbs. News deserts, unfortunately, persist in rural areas and urban communities of color.

◘ A New England Muzzle Award I recently gave Gov. Maura Healey for proposing to prevent public access to birth, death and marriage records for many decades — overturning a tradition of openness that dates back Puritan times.

◘ A crisis at the Internet Archive, as more than 300 local newspapers have blocked access in order to prevent AI companies from scraping their content without compensation.

Starry-eyed in DC: Two entrepreneurs will compete against the diminished Washington Post

*The Washington Star building. Photo (cc) 2008 by dbking.*

A complication has arisen in Robert Allbritton’s plans to rebrand his NOTUS project as The Star. The move, scheduled to take place next week, is aimed at giving Washington a robust second (albeit digital-only) daily newspaper to compete with Jeff Bezos’ diminished Washington Post.

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Why The Star instead of The Washington Star, the long-shuttered paper that his father had once owned? Adam Piore reported for the Columbia Journalism Review on Tuesday that Allbritton doesn’t own “The Washington Star” trademark:

The name of this latest Allbritton venture is a slight misdirection, however: the trademark is owned by Dovid Efune, the owner of the New York Sun. Besides, Allbritton said, replicating the original would be too “backward looking.”

But now it appears that Efune has his own plans. Emma Uber, writing in City Cast DC, tells us that Allbritton was more interested in naming his project The Washington Star than he’d let on, even negotiating unsuccessfully with Efune for the rights. Efune, in turn, plans to launch his own Washington Star later this year — and that he’s suing to stop Allbritton from calling NOTUS “The Star.” In a statement to City Cast DC, Allbritton responded:

Six weeks after NOTUS announced that it was rebranding to The Star, a newly formed entity associated with Dovid Efune has sued NOTUS for trademark infringement. The entity does not and cannot own the word “Star,” which has been used by and associated with dozens of media publications for over 100 years. The entity itself only even claims to have recently adopted “The Washington Star,” decades after numerous other “Star” publications have been using “Star” marks.

Efune is the publisher of The New York Sun, a conservative outlet that has quite a bit of national news on its site. In other words, it wouldn’t take that much for him to run a couple of DC stories and slap a “Washington Star” logo on a second site. He’s already publishing a version of The Washington Star on Substack. Efune told Katie Robertson of The New York Times:

We’re reviving one of the great and epic rivalries of American journalism. For decades, The Star was The Washington Post’s fiercest competitor and an important editorial and ideological counterweight in the press in our nation’s capital.

Efune added that he’s aiming for a newsroom of about 50 journalists — about half of what Allbritton is planning for The Star, or whatever it ends up being called.