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.”
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.
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.
I’m not one to break out the smelling salts when news outlets rely on anonymous sources. Important investigative stories are often based on unnamed insiders, as was the case with The Atlantic’s recent exposé of FBI Director Kash Patel’s drinking and erratic behavior. Reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick interviewed more than two dozen sources and sought comment from both the FBI and the White House.
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But I thought some of the sourcing around Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s announcement that she would resign was just plain shoddy. Let’s start with Jonathan Landay and Erin Banco of Reuters, who wrote on Friday: “A source familiar with the matter said that Gabbard had been forced out by the White House.”
Thus on the basis of one anonymous source did Reuters assert that Gabbard was lying when she claimed she was leaving in order to take care of her husband, who, she said, has been diagnosed with bone cancer.
Interestingly, The New York Times account, by Dustin Volz and Julian E. Barnes, directly contradicts Reuters, saying: “Mr. Trump did not force Ms. Gabbard to resign on Friday, according to people familiar with the matter, but her standing and influence within the White House had continued to erode in recent months.”
Now, I don’t know how many sources are covered by “people,” but it’s more than one.
Finally, there’s this Associated Press report, by Meg Kinnard, Will Weissert and David Klepper: “There had been rumblings that Gabbard would split with Trump after the president’s decision to strike Iran, which caused some division within his administration.”
Rumblings? OK. Actually, maybe we can let that go, since we’ve all seen reports in recent months that Gabbard wasn’t on board with the Iran war. Still, the passive-tense construction doesn’t give any indication of where these “rumblings” have been coming from. The White House? The Pentagon? Who knows?
Decisions over when it’s acceptable to rely entirely on anonymous sources are always fuzzy, but the real reason that Gabbard is leaving isn’t important enough to try to report it on the basis of light sourcing in real time. A story based on multiple sources reporting on what really happened would be welcome — and there was no need to try to break that story in the immediate aftermath of her resignation.
Five months after returning as editor of The Boston Globe, Brian McGrory has announced changes that will reshape the top of the masthead.
Cristina Silva, currently the managing editor for local news, will become managing editor for operations and standards, “focused on the future of this newsroom rather than daily journalism.” She’ll be replaced by Cynthia Needham, currently deputy managing editor for innovation and strategy, who McGrory called “an uncommonly strong editor with a fresh eye for what makes a great story.”
Finally, Jason Tuohey, a longtime Globe digital editor who’s currently editor-in-chief at the Encyclopedia Britannica, will return to the paper as managing editor for digital strategy. Tuohey is also an audience engagement consultant with Boston University’s local-news program. McGrory wrote that Tuohey “is coming back to a newsroom that is brimming with digital leaders who are among the best in the industry.”
McGrory’s full memo, sent to the staff earlier this afternoon and forwarded to me by a trusted source, follows.
On the latest edition of “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney,” we examine the fallout over an explosive New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof alleging that Israeli prison guards sexually assaulted Palestinian prisoners. Was his sourcing shaky, as critics claim? Although the Times issued a statement supporting Kristof, why hasn’t the news side followed up?
We also take a look at former reality star Spencer Pratt’s gadfly campaign to become mayor of Los Angeles — fueled by an over-the-top AI-generated ad and by a distinct lack of interest by the news media about who Pratt is and whether he’s qualified.
Plus: Two Florida police officers sue the production company behind “The Rip,” a movie starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck based on a true story. In the film, the officers help themselves to part of a $21 million jackpot they discovered inside a suspected drug dealer’s home — something they were not accused of doing in real life.
And stick around for our panel’s Rants and Raves. With Emilyl our host, Scott Van Voorhis of Contrarian Boston; Jon Keller of WBZ-TV, and me. Our producer extraordinaire is Tonia Magras of Hull Bay Productions.
Portrait of Jeff Bezos (cc) 2017 by thierry ehrmann.
By honoring The Washington Post with its most prestigious award, the Pulitzer Prize Board appeared intent on sending a message to two people: Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos.
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On Monday, the Post received the Public Service Award for its reporting on the chaos unleashed by Elon Musk and his DOGE assault on the federal government. One of the lead reporters in that effort was Hannah Natanson, the target of an extraordinary raid by the FBI last January.
Every semester, I introduce my media ethics students to the World Press Freedom Index, an annual compilation by Reporters Without Borders that tracks 180 countries.
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The United States does not do well, and the just-released 2026 update is no exception. We are now 64th, coming in just behind Botswana and just ahead of Panama. As RSF (the French acronym for Reporters Without Borders) puts it, “After a century of gradual expansion of press rights in the United States, the country is experiencing a significant and prolonged decline in press freedom, with Donald Trump’s return to the presidency greatly exacerbating the situation.”
A shaken Wolf Blitzer of CNN describes what it was like to be in close proximity to the gunman at the WHCA dinner. Click on the image to watch.
On the brand-new “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney,” we examine the aftermath of the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Click here or on the image to watch.
What pressures did the press experience in covering the story under frightening, confusing conditions? Why did conspiracy theories about the shooting spread so quickly? And does The New York Times’ print deadline have to be quite so early given that other papers — including The Washington Post and The Boston Globe — managed to get the story on page one?
We also take a look at the hypocrisy at the heart of a rumored affair involving Patriots coach Mike Vrabel and Athletic reporter (make that former reporter) Dianne Russini as well as an attempt by Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey to restrict teenagers’ access to social media. Plus our Rants & Raves.
Emily is joined by Contrarian Boston editor Scott Van Voorhis, Lylah Alphone of The Boston Globe and me, with expert production by Tonia Magras.
I hear from so many people that they can’t live without their print newspaper and morning coffee that I’m often tempted to remind them it’s technically possible to drink coffee while reading the news on your iPad.
The declining relevance of print is top of mind this morning as The New York Times failed to get the White House Correspondents Dinner shooting into its dead-tree edition. Lest you think this is a Boston delivery problem, it’s also not in the replica edition. Needless to say, it’s all over the Times homepage, and it probably found its way into the late city editions as well.
The (deservedly) much-maligned Washington Post managed to go big with the shooting in its print edition. You might say that’s a function of being the hometown paper, but it’s really not. It’s a function of press times.
The Boston Globe leads its print edition with the shooting, alongside the firing of Red Sox manager Alex Cora.
No excuses for the Los Angeles Times, which is three hours behind the East Coast, meaning that the incident took place around 5 p.m. Pacific time.
Of course, even those papers whose editors managed to yell “Stop the presses!” and get the story into print have much more up-to-date news about the shooting in their digital editions today.
We get the print edition of the Sunday Times because, whenever we try to cancel in order to save money, we’re offered a special deal. Digital advertising isn’t worth much, but print ads are still fairly lucrative, especially in the Times and especially on Sunday. But when there’s a big, late-breaking story, digital is the place to be.
