Stat, a Boston-based digital publication that covers medicine and health sciences, is profitable and growing, according to a recent podcast. Launched 11 years ago, Stat is part of Boston Globe Media. The podcast was the second episode of “Commons Healthcare” and features an interview with Stat editor Rick Berke, among others.
Because Globe Media is privately held, the assertion that Stat is profitable came without any numbers. But, like The Boston Globe itself, Stat continues to expand its staff, adding a reporter to cover the declining trust in science.
I had a chance to talk about how the media performed in the run-up to the midterm elections on “The Media Project,” on WAMC Radio in Albany, New York, which reaches the Berkshires as well as the Capital Region. The program is hosted by Rex Smith, a former editor of Albany’s daily newspaper, the Times Union.
My wife is from Colonie, just outside Albany, and she’s a faithful reader of the Times Union. I’m hoping her family gets to hear it.
Other guests this week were Judy Patrick, a former editor of Schenectady’s Daily Gazette; Barbara Lombardo, a journalism professor at the University at Albany and former editor of The Saratogian. We appeared separately, so I didn’t get to hear what the other guests had to say. It’s on my podcast menu for later today.
It had been a very long time since I’d given any thought to Salon, the pioneering digital publication that announced Thursday it was shutting down. Founded in 1995, it was, along with a few others such as Slate (still with us) and Feed (long gone), one of the original webzines, as we called them back then.
I wrote a media column for Salon for about a year in the mid-1990s. I visited Salon’s offices during a conference in San Francisco and met the editor, David Talbot, and maybe Gary Kamiya, who as I recall was the number-two editor. We were going through a transition at The Boston Phoenix and I was concerned I might be cut loose, so I was hoping I could parlay a Salon gig into a staff job. It wasn’t to be, and I’m glad, since the storm clouds at the Phoenix eventually dissipated.
Only a few of my pieces are on the Salon website, but I discovered a folder of 24 columns on my hard drive. They’re not dated, there are no headlines on them, and I imagine they’re what I turned in rather than the final edited versions. I don’t know that anyone has much interest in seeing them, but maybe I’ll post them one of these days.
Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan with Sen. Lisa Murkowski. 2017 photo in the public domain.
I wasn’t planning to write yet another post about The New York Times’ coverage of Mary Peltola and the two Dan Sullivans. But the Times keeps running follow-ups, so here I am.
On Sunday, the paper published a remarkably calm page-one story headlined “Will Spoilers Actually Matter in Midterms?” The digital headline: “Third-Party Spoilers, Long Fueled by Both Parties, Could Matter This Year.” Here’s how it opens:
Sly maneuvering around third-party candidates is a time-honored, bipartisan tradition in politics.
Democrats and Republicans alike have long stealthily tried to help little-known names on the ballot who might siphon votes away from the opposing party’s nominees.
My first thought was that this would have made a good lead for last Wednesday’s story, by Kellen Browning, on how the Peltola campaign recruited a ringer in an attempt to siphon votes away from incumbent Republican senator Dan Sullivan. Instead, the Times went DEFCON 1, portraying the story as a significant scandal and burying the context. You have to read more than 30 paragarphs before you come to this:
Republicans have also taken advantage of this system. When Ms. Peltola ran for re-election to the House two years ago, the state Republican Party backed an effort to help a Democrat — an inmate who ran his campaign from a New York prison — stay on the ballot.
Peltola, a Democrat, has denied having anything to do with recruiting the other Dan Sullivan. Whether that’s true or not, the Times’ reporting shows convincingly that her campaign did. It’s kind of slimy, but it’s hardly unusual. It’s also not a crime unless money changed hands, something that absolutely no one has alleged.
In a summary of “The Elements of Journalism,” a classic work on ethics by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, we encounter this:
[Journalism] must keep the news comprehensive and proportional…. Keeping news in proportion is a cornerstone of truthfulness. Inflating events for sensation, neglecting others, stereotyping, or being disproportionately negative all make a less reliable map.
The Times failed to do that with the initial report by Browning, and it’s been softening its tone in several follow-ups since then, culminating with Epstein’s eminently rational take on the entire affair. You might surmise that the paper’s editors have been having second thoughts about how the story was played. But the damage had already been done.
The polls this morning show Peltola clinging to a narrow lead, with both her and Sullivan (that is, the Republican incumbent, not the ringer) ticking down in the last couple of days. If she loses, it might well be because of the Times.
It’s not journalism’s role to cover up for a candidate just because we’re in the final days of a campaign. But neither is it to take a routine instance of political gamesmanship and play it up like a major scandal, either.
Anchorage, Alaska. Photo (cc) 2026 by Quintin Soloviev
Josh Marshall has weighed in with some smart commentary on Mary Peltola and the Dan Sullivans. You should read the whole thing, but here’s the heart of it:
I’ve heard a number of people say they’re “troubled” or “disturbed” or unhappy that this happened. All I can say is that I would really recommend that you toughen up because you simply won’t make it through the next few years, even under the best circumstances. There is no crime here and no possibility of a crime here. This is trolling….
Republicans have pulled this same name stunt countless times. No one has ever claimed that it’s a crime because it’s not.
I took some grim satisfaction in Google’s very bad Thursday, a consequence of the same forces that the company is using to deprive news organizations of click-throughs to their websites. (And no, I will not refer to the company as Alphabet, although it is in the soup.)
Google’s stock price declined by nearly 13%, costing it $500 billion in market value. A major part of the reason is that those AI summaries Google is posting at the top of search queries are doing exactly the same to the tech giant as they are to media companies: keeping users on site rather than clicking through to a page that would serve up some ads.
I want to make three points about The New York Times’ report that the campaign of Alaska Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola recruited a ringer named Dan Sullivan to take votes away from her rival, the incumbent Republican, who is also named Dan Sullivan.
First, why did Elisa Rios, the Times’ main source, retract what she told them? “As discussed on our call earlier today, I am confirming that I have retracted all statements made regarding the 2026 Alaska Senate Race in connection with any article you may or may not be writing,” Rios wrote. “I am not willing to be a source for any story in any capacity.” I know the Times says they verified the story independently, but what was that all about?
Jim Boyd harked back to the golden age of local television news, when it seemed like everyone gathered around the TV at 6 or (sometimes and) 11 p.m. to catch up on the day’s events. The leader was WCVB-TV (Channel 5), and Boyd, who died Tuesday at 84, was one of the most visible journalists at that station.
I was shocked to learn that he was in his 80s. We didn’t really know each other, but we were Facebook friends, and I had followed his long, active retirement. I’d also worked with his wife, Linda Polach, at GBH News.
My friend Emily Rooney, host of “Beat the Press,” who was the assistant news director and news director at WCVB during the glory days, tells Bryan Marquard of The Boston Globe that Boyd was someone “every manager would like to clone — loyal, dedicated, didn’t call in sick, and never complained about an assignment,” as well as “movie-star handsome [with] that elusive journalistic credibility.”
Bob Woodward. Photo (cc) 2016 by Hillel Steinberg.
Does a reporter’s promise of anonymity follow a source to the grave? That’s what a lot of people are wondering given that investigative journalist Bob Woodward is naming names in his new memoir, “Secrets,” which will be published on Nov. 24.
In an excerpt in The New Yorker, the legendary Washington Post reporter goes into great detail about his friendship with one source, Richard Darman, a powerful official in several Republican administrations. But there are more, including several Supreme Court justices, top aides to Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon’s lawyers. And, of course, there’s Mark Felt, who identified himself years ago as “Deep Throat,” Woodward’s celebrated source during the Watergate scandal.
Boston.com has been a free news site from the time that The Boston Globe launched it in 1995. Today, after experimenting with a soft paywall for the past year, the site will be converting to a mostly paid outlet. The change is indicative of how digital advertising has lost much of its value and of how the rise of AI search has deprived news organizations of click-throughs.
“It’s going to be a lower-price option,” Boston Globe Media chief executive Linda Henry told me in an interview. “It [Boston.com] is a much smaller newsroom than the Globe, but we still think it provides an important service to our community, and we want to continue providing it. And without consumer revenue, the numbers don’t work.”
Current Globe subscribers will be charged $32 a month if they opt for digital access to the Globe, Boston.com and Boston magazine, which Globe Media acquired in January 2025. Boston.com will cost $10 a month as a standalone product. And if readers are looking only for digital access to BoMag, the price will be $24 a year, although that’s in the process of being raised to $30.
I had a chance to talk about 
