In case you missed it, The Boston Globe published two tremendous pieces of accountability journalism on Sunday:
Jenna Russell and Jessica Rinaldi reported on the Hingham Police Department’s massive — and questionable — response to the home of a suicidal young man whose distraught parents had said was suicidal. Despite the parents’ pleas to back off, the police went all-in. And Austin Reeves, 26, ended up dead, most likely by his own hand.
The Spotlight Team found that the Veterans Administration hospital in Manchester, New Hampshire, was providing terrible care, with flies in an operating room, blood or rust on surgical instruments, and such poor treatment of veterans with spinal injuries that they ended up permanently disabled even though their conditions could have been corrected by surgery. Two officials have already been removed because of the Globe’s reporting.
I point these out because this is important work that simply wouldn’t otherwise be done at the regional level. The national media — especially The Washington Post and The New York Times — are doing an outstanding job of holding President Trump to account and digging into the Republicans’ various proposal to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. In such an environment, it’s vital that we not overlook what’s happening in our backyard.
Advertising will never pay the bills for journalism to the same extent that it did before rise of the internet. If we’re not willing to pay, we’re going to lose the watchdog function that journalism plays in a democracy. We pay for a number of local and national news sources, including the Globe and the Boston Herald, and I hope that you do, too.
It’s no secret that the press does a lousy job of reporting on presidential campaigns. Not all media outlets, of course, and not all the time. For the most part, though, political coverage is dominated by horse-race analysis, polls, negative gotcha stories, and a paucity of attention to issues that voters might actually care about.
The film will be shown at the Regent Theater in Arlington, Mass. on Wednesday evening. I’ll be taking part in a post-screening panel discussion, and I appear briefly in the documentary. Details here.
Bowe, who narrates the film, explains that he wants to explore “the dance between the campaigns and the media,” adding: “What really brought me to New Hampshire was to have a front-row seat and to see if our hopelessly divided country could find some common ground to deal with the challenges facing us. Well, we know that didn’t happen. And now our country is more polarized than ever.”
During his nine months on the ground, Bowe detected four major flaws in the media’s coverage: they completely missed the populist uprising that had taken hold of both major parties in the persons of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders; they focused on the ups and downs of the candidates to the exclusion of people and their problems; they treated actual issues like “show-biz props”; and they ignored real stories in favor of “shiny objects,” like a tattoo artist who was giving away Trump tattoos.
Particularly devastating is a sequence in which we see reporters asking the candidates questions about polls and strategy alternating with voters at town hall events who want to know about substantive matters such as health care and opiod abuse. It’s an indictment of the gulf between the elite press and the public, and it ought to be required viewing for every political reporter.
And yet a certain degree of cynicism regarding how politicians engage with issues is warranted, and Bowe himself is not immune to it. For instance, perhaps his most memorable subject is a New Hampshire resident named Brenda Bouchard, whose husband and elderly mother are both suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. We see Bouchard as she asks candidate after candidate what they plan to do about Alzheimer’s research, especially as the disease becomes more prevalent in an aging society. As Bowe notes, the exchanges humanize the candidates, with even frosty specimens like Ted Cruz talking about how Alzheimer’s has affected their families.
Thanks to a connection through New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, Bouchard was put in touch with Hillary Clinton, who goes quite a bit further than the rest — putting together a plan to defeat Alzheimer’s and enlisting Bouchard to introduce Clinton at a rally. So what do we hear from Bowe? “Of course, like any politician, Clinton will say or do anything for votes,” he says. He refers to “her many faults.” Finally, he concedes, “Clinton didn’t have to do this.” No, she didn’t. But she did. And Bowe reacts with the same sort of snark that we might have expected from the journalists he criticizes.
Interspersed with Bowe’s campaign-trail reportage are numerous interviews with journalists such as Bob Schieffer of CBS News, Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory, and GroundTruth Project founder Charles Sennott, as well as academics like my Northeastern colleague Carole Bell, Boston University political scientist Virginia Sapiro, and Melissa Zimdars, a media scholar at Merrimack College.
So what are we going to do about the problems that Bowe identifies? The consensus offered in Democracy Through the Looking Glass is that we need to repair our media and political institutions at the community level. As someone who has written extensively about the importance of journalism in rebuilding civic life, I agree wholeheartedly. But there will be no easy solutions for the larger problems afflicting our democracy, such as income inequality, the rise of “fake news,” and media organizations that, as Sennott tells Bowe, can’t provide in-depth coverage because they are struggling merely to survive.
Near the end of the film, Bowe asks Nicco Mele, director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School, to read an excerpt from Mele’s 2013 book “The End of Big,” in which he essentially predicts the rise of a Trump-like leader.
“You know, when I was writing this book, some of my friends who read it said it was too dark, too grim, things weren’t really that bad, our institutions couldn’t possibly be that fragile,” Mele tells Bowe. “And yet here we are.”
Earlier today I did some tweeting on the bad choices that then-president Barack Obama faced over Russian meddling in the election — the major theme of The Washington Post’s astonishing exclusive. I’ve pulled my tweets into what Twitter calls a Moment. Please have a look.
The first results were coming in from Georgia’s special congressional election. And Tucker Carlson of the Fox News Channel had a theory to explain why Jon Ossoff, the Democrat, wasn’t heading toward a huge victory over his Republican opponent, Karen Handel: Ossoff was (gasp) a liberal elitist.
“Ossoff ought to be running away with it, but he’s not,” Carlson said. He sneered at Ossoff’s prodigious fundraising, saying that “all that money has come from angry liberals who live out of state.” As for whether Ossoff was capable of relating to voters in Georgia’s Sixth District, Carlson smirked, “He’s super-fit and way smarter than you are.”
Kathleen Kingsbury, The Boston Globe’s managing editor for digital, is leaving the paper to accept a position as deputy editorial-page editor of The New York Times. This is a big one. Kingsbury is a Pulitzer-winning editorial writer, and she stepped into her current role last fall just as the Globe’s reinvention effort was heating up. She replaced David Skok, who was returning to his native Canada.
Job news: I'm thrilled to announce I'll be joining the New York Times as Deputy Editorial Page Editor. https://t.co/eNpzDyH2hq (1/6)
I interviewed Kingsbury for my forthcoming book last fall, and I found her to be smart in all the right ways. When we talked, she told me she was testing out various smartphone apps for possible adoption by the Globe — an effort that we long-suffering mobile readers certainly hope pays off soon.
Kingsbury announced her departure just as the Globe is settling in at its new headquarters at 53 State St. On Saturday, the Globe’s entire print run took place at its new Taunton facility for the first time, according to a message to employees from Rich Masotta, the Globe’s vice president for operations.
Kingsbury proved to be a good internal candidate for the top digital position. It will be interesting to see if the Globe goes outside or inside for her successor. Globe owner John Henry has bet the farm on paid digital. If anything, the Globe needs to accelerate its efforts on improving its digital products.
Click on image for Stat article and playable video.
Is President Trump quite literally losing his mind?
That’s the explosive question that reporter Sharon Begley asked in a recent article published by Stat, a Boston Globe Media-owned website covering health and life sciences. In comparing Trump’s speech patterns today with how he spoke 25 to 30 years ago, Begley and the experts she consulted found a notable slide in his linguistic abilities.
As the staff prepares to move to its new headquarters on State Street, The Boston Globe is rolling out its new beat structure. Here’s a list of what many of the reporters, editors and columnists are up to.
It doesn’t strike me as hugely different from what the Globe was doing before (and that’s a good thing), but it is built more around the idea of clusters that cover different topics, such as “Business, Technology, and Consumers.” Others: “Education,” “Healthcare, Science, and Medicine,” “Living and Working in Greater Boston,” “Arts and Books,” and “Politics, Government, and Accountability.”
In keeping with editor Brian McGrory’s reinvention memos, the beats comprise areas of interest rather than institutions that need to be covered, whether anyone wants to read about them or not. There’s also a greater emphasis on publishing stories online when they’re ready rather than waiting for the print edition. According to a memo from McGrory, last week — the first for the restructured beats — was a good one for digital subscriptions.
Some kind soul sent me a copy of McGrory’s memo, sent out late Friday afternoon. (The “Super Department,” by the way, combines much of the paper’s metro, business and lifestyle coverage.) Here’s the full text:
So to be clear, nobody should be ready to declare victory after our first full week of reinvention. We all know there are many wrinkles to iron out, and we’re already identifying changes that need to be changed.
But, damn, I’m having a tough time containing my enthusiasm over how well it’s gone and the massive potential that it holds. The truth is, I’m more excited about it now than at any time before.
It’s worth noting that we started from a dead stop. There was no lineup of clever stories ready to roll out. Spotlight didn’t have anything on the runway. Reporters hadn’t been quietly prepping on their new beats. No, 10 days ago, just after a long holiday weekend, we launched from scratch — with, by my count, at least 87 people in substantially different positions than they held the week before.
What’s happened? The metabolism has quickened considerably. People are here earlier in the day. Our higher profile enterprise stories are receiving a final edit through the day, and introduced online at peak readership times. There are fewer logjams in the evening — reporters waiting for that last read on a story. Copy-edits are happening far more frequently across the day.
Because we’re factoring in the needs of digital more effectively, the print front is holding fewer stories back, which means we’re popping more enterprise on the site, much of which is rippling back to the Business and Metro fronts in print. The paper, as we hoped, has been the stronger for it. Calls for A1 and the Metro and Business print fronts are getting made sooner, allowing us to better plan for the next day’s site.
All of which is to say that things, in general, are going as planned — not always, but often enough. And Pete Doucette [the Globe’s chief consumer revenue officer] says it’s the best week we’ve had for digital subscriptions in a while.
In many ways, there’s something of a symphonic quality to it all. It starts early in the morning when the Express Desk arrives and begins posting newsy and clever stories. They hold a stand-up meeting in the middle of the newsroom at 8:30, swapping ideas and mapping out the rest of the day. Then we bring in the enterprise work, pitched and scheduled at the 9:15 news meeting, which already has a newly creative tone. Beyond that, the strike team, narrative, and Spotlight will soon be adding to the mix. Beat reporters across the Super Department will be quickly gaining authority in what, for many, are new areas. Of course, sports, DC, arts, travel, and the magazine are as vital as ever. It’s a matter of time — and not a lot of it — until the full band, every aspect, is playing to its potential.
There’s much credit to go around for great stories, smart edits, beautiful photography, brilliant designs, inviting graphics, expert planning — really, too much to include here. Please know that I’m grateful beyond words. I’d like to say take the summer off, given how utterly draining this has all been, but, well, you wouldn’t want that anyway. Right?
My sincere thanks to everyone for so much hard and excellent work.
Last week Zack Beauchamp of Vox explained on the public radio program “On the Media” why liberals want to believe in outlandish conspiracies about President Trump. “One expert I spoke to on political misinformation said that conspiracy theories were a weapon of the weak,” he said. “They were a way to understand and make sense out of the world when it doesn’t seem to make sense to you or seems hostile to you.”
Beauchamp was referring specifically to the ridiculous drivel promoted by Louise Mensch, a former British parliamentarian whose disinformation campaign has taken in a few Trump critics who should have known better. (A sample: Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and House Speaker Paul Ryan were all about to be arrested because of their ties to Russia).
But I think Beauchamp’s insight is also useful in thinking about a couple of other theories making the rounds among liberals who are trying to explain why a boorish lout like Trump won: his campaign’s use of big data, funded by the shadowy Mercer family, and the proliferation of dubious pro-Trump websites and bot-controlled Twitter accounts.
Earlier this month The New York Times published a profile of Evan Williams, an internet entrepreneur who has done as much as anyone to promote the notion that each of us can and should have a digital voice. He founded Blogger, the first widespread blogging platform. He co-founded Twitter. And, in 2012, he launched Medium, a platform for writing that he hoped would become an alternative to the sociopathy that defines too much of the online world.
It hasn’t worked — not because the quality of Medium isn’t good; much of it is. Rather, he hasn’t been able to find a workable business model that attracts readers, rewards writers, and generates profits for his investors. In other words, Williams is dealing with the same problems as publishers everywhere, and his bona fides have proven to be of little help.
“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Williams told the Times’ David Streitfeld. “I was wrong about that.”
I don’t often watch the network evening newscasts. But when I do, I watch the “CBS Evening News” with Scott Pelley, which strikes me as a little more intelligent than the competition — not to mention more willing to call out President Trump’s falsehoods, as Margaret Sullivan recently observed in The Washington Post.
So I was disappointed to learn that Pelley has been booted from the anchor chair and will return full-time to “60 Minutes.” The early breathless reporting by the New York Post turned out to be overblown. As Dylan Byers reports at CNN.com, Pelley’s office was cleared out at his request, and he’ll continue to anchor until a replacement is found, which suggests that he’s being treated with some level of respect.
But ratings are ratings. And with CBS in third place and sliding, Pelley’s departure was perhaps inevitable — although unless CBS has an animatronic Walter Cronkite waiting in the wings, it’s hard to imagine the network will come up with someone better.
