More fallout from the LA Times; plus, the Sun shines in Colorado, and news deserts spread

Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong. Photo (cc) 2014 by NHS Confederation.

News that the Los Angeles Times would not endorse a candidate for president has quickly ballooned into yet another crisis for Patrick Soon-Shiong, the paper’s feckless and irresponsible owner.

Mariel Garza, the Times’ editorials editor, quit on Wednesday, reports Sewell Chan in the Columbia Journalism Review. “I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent,” Garza told Chan. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”

Become a supporter of Media Nation for just $5 a month.

Chan, by the way, is a former editorial-page editor at the Times. He was recently named editor of the CJR after previously working as editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune.

Soon-Shiong, a billionaire surgeon, responded to the criticism with a post on Twitter suggesting that he wanted to publish a side-by-side analysis of Kamala Harris’ and Donald Trump’s strengths and weaknesses, but that the editorial board refused to comply:

In this way, with this clear and non-partisan information side-by-side, our readers could decide who would be worthy of being President for the next four years. Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision. Please #vote.

Needless to say, the purpose of a newspaper’s opinion pages is to express opinions, not to offer “non-partisan information.”

Now, let’s back up a bit and look at the role of owners at large metropolitan newspapers like the LA Times. Ethically, owners should stay clear of news coverage, but Soon-Shiong reportedly violated that edict by interfering with a story about a friend whose dog had bitten someone, of all things. Natalie Korach reported in The Wrap earlier this year that the incident played a role (along with deep cuts in the newsroom) in executive editor Kevin Merida’s decision to quit in January of this year.

On the other hand, owners are free to exert their influence on the editorial pages. Indeed, at one time the lure of exercising political influence was one of the main reasons that rich people bought newspapers. So Soon-Shiong did not act unethically in killing an editorial endorsing Harris for president. Even so, his actions were high-handed and disrespectful, and by acting as he did at the last minute — instead of, say, announcing a no-endorsement policy earlier this year — he precipitated a crisis. In fact, as Max Tani noted in Semafor on Tuesday, the Times had endorsed in state and local races just last week.

Another consideration is the effect that endorsements actually have on political campaigns. A good rule of thumb is that the smaller and more obscure the race, the more that a newspaper’s opinion might actually influence the outcome. A presidential endorsement is the opposite of that, which Garza acknowledged in her resignation letter:

I told myself that presidential endorsements don’t really matter; that California was not ever going to vote for Trump; that no one would even notice; that we had written so many “Trump is unfit” editorials that it was as if we had endorsed her.

But the reality hit me like cold water Tuesday when the news rippled out about the decision not to endorse without so much as a comment from the LAT management, and Donald Trump turned it into an anti-Harris rip.

Of course it matters that the largest newspaper in the state — and one of the largest in the nation still — declined to endorse in a race this important. And it matters that we won’t even be straight with people about it.

Garza gets at something that is at least as important as influencing voters. An endorsement is how a news organization expresses its values. And what Soon-Shiong has expressed is that his newspaper is going to remain neutral at a time when a fascist (according to two generals who served under Trump, John Kelly and Mark Milley, language that Harris herself has now adopted) is seeking to return to office.

Newspapers like The New York Times and The Boston Globe have endorsed Harris. Yet, in a potentially ominous sign, The Washington Post so far has not.

Unlike the public manner in which the LA Times’ non-endorsement has played out, there’s no indication of what’s going on at the Post. Independent media reporter Oliver Darcy writes that the Post’s silence is starting to raise eyebrows, as well as new questions about its ethically challenged publisher, Will Lewis. Darcy writes that the Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, “has repeatedly been targeted by Donald Trump over the years” and “is not alone amongst the rich and powerful who may prefer to stay as far away from politics as possible this election cycle.”

Let’s hope the Post is heard from soon.

The Sun is shining

A little over a year ago, The Colorado Sun announced it was switching from a hybrid for-profit/nonprofit ownership model to nonprofit governance. At the time, co-founder and editor Larry Ryckman (now the publisher) said that whatever misgivings he might have about the nonprofit model, it gave the Sun an easier story to tell to prospective funders.

“Whether I agree with it or not, whether I even like it or not, the reality is that many individuals, many institutions and philanthropic groups, have concluded that journalism should be nonprofit,” Ryckman told me in an interview for Nieman Lab. “I have my own thoughts on that, but that is reality.”

Well, now the switch has paid off. Ryckman announced earlier this week:

The Colorado Sun has been awarded a $1.4 million grant from the American Journalism Project. AJP is a national nonprofit whose purpose is to boost nonprofit journalism around the country, and it has thus far committed $62.7 million to 49 news organizations across 35 states.

The grant will be spread over three years, and the funds will be used to strengthen the long-term sustainability and future expansion of The Sun. This will include growing our fund development efforts and bolstering our business operations to allow us to deepen our impact in Colorado, while laying the foundation for the next era of high-quality, nonprofit journalism in our state — ensuring that Coloradans have the news they deserve for generations to come.

Before becoming a nonprofit, the Sun was a public benefit corporation, a for-profit that operates under certain restrictions and requirements. It also had a relationship with a nonprofit organization, which allowed donors to support the Sun’s journalism with tax-deductible contributions.

The Sun, by the way, is one of the projects that Ellen Clegg and I feature in our book, “What Works in Community News.” Ryckman has been a guest on our podcast as well.

The crisis continues

The Colorado Sun’s good news notwithstanding, the local news crisis continues unabated and may be getting worse. That was the message at a webinar Wednesday to mark the release of the third annual State of Local News report from the Medill School at Northwestern University.

“The crisis in local news is snowballing,” said Tim Franklin, the John M. Mutz Chair in Local News at Medill. Franklin said that more than 3,000 newspapers have closed since 2005, about a third of the total, with a concomitant decline in newspaper jobs, which he called “a staggering loss.”

Zach Metzger, who runs the project now that founder Penelope Abernathy has retired, added: “News deserts are continuing to expand.”

I plan to look more closely at the data and write a follow-up at some point in the near future. Meanwhile, Sophie Culpepper of Nieman Lab has a thorough overview of the new report.

What does it mean to ‘publish’ in the age of Section 230? Plus, Olivia Nuzzi update, and media notes

Royalty-free photo via PickPik

What does it mean to “publish” something? In the pre-social media era, that question was easy enough to answer. It became a little more complicated in 1996, when Congress passed a law called Section 230, which protects internet providers from liability for any third-party content that might be posted on their sites.

But those early online publishers were newspapers and other news organizations as well as early online services such as CompuServe, AOL and Prodigy. None of them was trying to promote certain types of third-party content in order to drive up engagement and, thus, ad revenues.

Today, of course, that’s the whole point. Algorithms employed by social media companies such as Meta (Facebook, Instagram and Threads), Twitter and TikTok use sophisticated software that figures out what kind of content you are more likely to engage with with so they can show you more of it. Such practices have been linked to, among other things, genocide in Myanmar as well as depression and other mental health issues.

Become a supporter of Media Nation for just $5 a month. You’ll receive a weekly newsletter with exclusive content, a wrap-up of the week’s posts and more.

So again, what does it mean to “publish”? I’ve argued since as far back as 2017 that elevating some third-party content over others could be considered publication rather than simply acting as a passive receptacle of whatever stuff comes in over the digital transom.

A print publication, after all, is legally responsible for everything it encompasses, including ads (the landmark Times v. Sullivan libel decision involved an advertisement) and letters to the editor. It would be neither practical nor desirable to hold social media companies responsible for all third-party content. But again, if they are boosting some content to make it more visible because they (or, rather, their unblinking algorithms) think it will get them more engagement and make them more money, how is that not an act of publishing? Why should it be protected by federal law?

Earlier this week, investigative journalist Julia Angwin wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times (gift link) arguing that the tide may be turning against the social media giants, in part because of TikTok’s aggressive use of its algorithmic “For You” feed, which has been emulated by the other platforms. A showdown over Section 230 may be headed for the Supreme Court. She writes:

If tech platforms are actively shaping our experiences, after all, maybe they should be held liable for creating experiences that damage our bodies, our children, our communities and our democracy….

My hope is that the erection of new legal guardrails would create incentives to build platforms that give control back to users. It could be a win-win: We get to decide what we see, and they get to limit their liability.

I don’t think there’s a good-faith argument to be made that reforming Section 230 would harm the First Amendment. We would still have the right to publish freely, subject to long-existing prohibitions against libel, incitement, serious breaches of national security and obscenity. And internet providers would still be held harmless for any content posted by their users. But it would end the legal absurdity that a tech platform can boost harmful content and then claim immunity because that content originated with someone else. (Ironically, those third-party posters are fully liable for their content if they can be identified and tracked down.)

As Angwin notes, Ethan Zuckerman of UMass Amherst, a respected thinker about all things digital, is suing Meta for the right to develop software that would allow users to control their own experience on Facebook. Angwin also touts Bluesky, a Twitter alternative that allows its users to design their own feeds (you can find me at @dankennedy-nu.bsky.social).

We should all have the right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. But the platforms that control so much of our lives should should have the same freedoms that the rest of us have — and that should not include the freedom to boost harmful content without any legal consequences because of the fiction that they are not engaged in an act of publishing. It’s long past time to make some changes to Section 230.

Olivia Nuzzi departs

Olivia Nuzzi’s separation agreement with New York magazine was heavily lawyered, according to reports, and that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. But the magazine’s statement that its law firm found “no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias” in her work needs to be placed in context. Liam Reilly and Hadas Gold of CNN report on Nuzzi’s departure.

Nuzzi, you may recall, was involved in some sort of sexual (but not physical) relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that may have encompassed sexting and nude selfies — we still don’t know.

But as I wrote last month, after Nuzzi’s relationship with Kennedy became public, she wrote a very tough piece about President Biden’s alleged age-related infirmities while Kennedy was still a presidential candidate and an oddly sympathetic profile of Donald Trump after Kennedy had left the race, endorsed Trump and made it clear that he was hoping for a high-level job in a Trump White House.

Maybe Nuzzi would have written those two stories exactly the same way even if she had never met Kennedy. But we’ll never know.

Media notes

• Billionaire ambitions. Benjamin Mullin of The New York Times reports (gift link) that a Florida billionaire named David Hoffmann has bought 5% of the cost-cutting Lee Enterprises newspaper chain, and that he hopes to help revive the local news business. “These local newspapers are really important to these communities,” Hoffman told Mullin. “With the digital age and technology, it’s changing rapidly. But I think there’s room for both, and we’d like to be a part of that.” Lee owns media properties in 73 U.S. markets, including well-known titles such as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The Buffalo News.

• Silent treatment. Patrick Soon-Shiong, whose ownership of the Los Angeles Times has been defined by vaulting ambitions and devastating cuts, has stumbled once again. Max Tani of Semafor reports that the Times will not endorse in this year’s presidential content, even though it published endorsements in state and local races just last week. The decision to abstain from choosing between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, Tani writes, came straight from Soon-Shiong, who made his wealth in the health-care sector. Closer to home, The Boston Globe endorsed Harris earlier this week.

• Reaching young voters. Santa Cruz Local, a digital nonprofit, has announced an ambitious idea to engage with young people: news delivered by text messages and Instagram. “We want to reach thousands of students with civic news and help first time voters get to the ballot box,” writes Kara Meyberg Guzman, the Local’s co-founder and CEO. The Local’s Instagram-first election guide will be aimed at 18- to 29-year-olds in Santa Cruz County, with an emphasis on reaching local college students; Guzman is attempting to raise $10,000 in order to fund it. Santa Cruz Local was one of 205 local news organizations to receive a $100,000 grant from Press Forward last week. Guzman was also interviewed in the book that Ellen Clegg and I wrote, “What Works in Community News,” and on our podcast.

Nicholas Daniloff, 1934-2024

Nick Daniloff, right, and his family meet with President Ronald Reagan at the White House after his release from Soviet captivity. Official White House photo.

I met Nick Daniloff for the first time in either the late 1980s or ’90s. I can’t remember the circumstances exactly, but it was a Northeastern University event, and I recall that it was at the Boston Public Library. We had an active Northeastern journalism alumni group back then, so it may have been related to that.

Nick had joined the faculty after a long and distinguished career in journalism, capped off by his being imprisoned by the Soviet Union in 1986 on false espionage charges while working for U.S. News & World Report. I was sitting next to the then-director of our School of Journalism, the late LaRue Gilleland. Nick delivered a lecture that was informed by his deep learning and his calm but focused delivery. LaRue and I looked at each other. “He’s good, isn’t he?” LaRue said. Nick ended up succeeding LaRue as director.

Later I became a colleague of Nick, who died last Thursday at 89. He was someone we all looked up to as a role model. The students revered him, and so did we. He used to show up to our spring reception for graduating seniors every year in full academic regalia, partly as a joke — Nick had an exceedingly dry sense of humor — but partly to inject a note of seriousness into what was otherwise an informal and celebratory occasion.

In 2013, Nick earned the Journalism Educator of the Year Award from the New England Newspaper and Press Association, a well-deserved honor that was reported at the time by Debora Almeida in The Huntington News, our independent student newspaper. “I try to bring the real world of journalism into the classroom,” Nick told Debora. “A good journalism professor has real journalistic experience and didn’t just read about it.” He had some plans for his impending retirement, too: “I want to keep learning, read more Shakespeare, specifically his sonnets.”

Nick played a role in my being hired at Northeastern in 2005. He actually called my editor at The Boston Phoenix, Peter Kadzis, to inquire about me, which left me speechless when Peter told me about it because I hadn’t let him know that I might be leaving. Uh, oh. It all worked out, though.

Today I teach the journalism ethics course that Nick taught for many years. It’s an honor, and yet at the same time I know it’s impossible to live up to his high standards.

If a paywall prevents you from reading Bryan Marquard’s fine obituary of Nick in The Boston Globe, here is a gift link to Robert D. McFadden’s obit in The New York Times, which is also very good. I also recommend Nick’s 2008 memoir, “Of Spies and Spokesmen: My Life as a Cold War Correspondent.”

We will all miss Nick.

Big changes at GBH: ‘Morning Edition’ co-hosts move to new roles, and ‘Basic Black’ will return

Paris Alston and Jeremy Siegel, the co-hosts of “Morning Edition” on GBH Radio (89.7 FM), are transitioning to new roles, with Alston taking over a revived “Basic Black” and Siegel becoming transportation reporter for GBH News and a correspondent for “The World.” Both Alston and Siegel will be taking on other projects as well. Reporter Mark Herz will serve as interim anchor.

The return of “Basic Black” in early 2025 means that GBH is moving back into local public-affairs video programming after canceling that show as well as “Greater Boston” and “Talking Politics” earlier this year.

The changes also represent the biggest moves so far from Dan Lothian, who became editor-in-chief of GBH News and “The World” after GBH News general manager Pam Johnston left earlier this year. Johnston is now president and CEO of Rhode Island’s merged public television and radio operations.

The full announcement from GBH is below:

GBH News today announced a slate of new and expanded programs that reinforce its commitment to covering stories that matter across Massachusetts, from hyperlocal conversations informed by community stakeholders to regional reporting across the Commonwealth.

Paris Alston will transition from co-hosting “Morning Edition” to hosting a reimagined “Basic Black,” GBH’s longstanding television program that centers topical issues that matter to communities of color. The program will premiere under a new name in early 2025.

Alston also will expand her focus statewide on a program that she hosts called “A Walk Down the Block,” an original, multiplatform series that won the Regional Edward R. Murrow Award this year in the Excellence in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion category. The series has covered topics ranging from how big events for Boston’s Black communities resonated in Roxbury’s Nubian Square; LGBTQ+ Pride past and present in the Sound End; reimagining the Charles River Esplanade for better accessibility; and Boston’s busing crisis history through a citywide tour. Through collaborations with community organizations and leaders, Alston aims to get to the heart of underreported issues and use “A Walk Down the Block” as a connector for citizens to the changemakers in their neighborhoods. New episodes of “A Walk Down the Block” will air across GBH News platforms, including GBH 89.7, gbhnews.org, the GBH News YouTube channel, and social media.

“Morning Edition” co-host Jeremy Siegel is taking on several new roles, including hosting a new one-hour radio program and podcast that will take listeners all across Massachusetts to hear stories about what makes the Bay State unique. He will seek out perspectives that reflect both the challenges that face residents in rural and urban centers, and shine a spotlight on the dynamic growth, creativity, and entrepreneurship that often flies under the radar in a fast-paced news cycle. The show, which begins production in 2025, will air across all “Connecting the Commonwealth” partner stations: New England Public Media (NEPM) in Springfield; GBH, and CAI, the Cape and Islands NPR.

He also will be the transportation correspondent for both GBH News and “The World,” public radio’s longest-running daily global news program produced by GBH and PRX. Siegel will report on transit issues in Greater Boston, and travel abroad with The World to explore what drives the biggest, most efficient, and unique transportation systems globally, from railways, to shipping, cars, bicycles, and beyond. Listeners will hear Siegel’s local transportation reporting regularly on GBH News’ “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.” His first international reporting for “The World” will start with a trip to Tokyo later this year.

“Paris and Jeremy are both accomplished storytellers, and we hope listeners will join us as we explore new topics and geographies together,” said Dan Lothian, Editor in Chief of GBH News and The World.

On Oct. 28, GBH News reporter Mark Herz will step in as interim host for GBH News’ Morning Edition. The show will air weekdays at a new time, 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. ET, on GBH 89.7 and stream at gbhnews.org.

These program additions continue a year of dynamic growth for GBH News, including the launch of its Equity and Justice unit; the Connecting the Commonwealth partnership with NEPM and CAI; and a US Senate debate co-hosted with NEPM. GBH News also welcomed Lothian as Editor in Chief earlier in the year. In 2024, GBH News earned three New England Emmy Awards, three Regional Edward R. Murrow Awards, five National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence Awards, and a George Foster Peabody Award. This fall, GBH News has seen radio audience growth throughout the day.

The Herald’s print numbers keep dropping while digital holds steady; plus, media notes

The Boston Herald Traveler plant sometime in the 1950s. Photo (cc) 2013 by City of Boston Archives.

Paid print circulation continues to fall at the city’s second daily newspaper, the Boston Herald, while paid digital subscriptions are essentially unchanged over the past year. That information was gleaned from published statements that the Herald filed with the U.S. Postal Service this past September as well as the previous September.

Last week I reported that the dominant daily, The Boston Globe, is losing print customers more quickly than it’s adding digital subscribers — a departure from previous years, when digital was growing rapidly. The paper is predicting a return to faster growth in 2025.

I’m reporting on the Herald’s numbers with less information than I would like, but I believe I have enough to make some accurate apples-to-apples comparisons.

Unlike the Globe, and unlike virtually every daily newspaper I’ve ever looked at, the Herald’s postal statements include Sunday numbers in its average circulation totals. If I had access to the Alliance for Audited Media’s reports, I could find separate totals for Sundays and weekdays. Last October, for instance, Mark Pickering, writing for Contrarian Boston, found that the Herald’s average paid weekday print circulation was 16,043, a decline of more than 20% over 2022. Sunday circulation, he reported, was 19,799 last year, a drop of more than 16%.

Become a supporter of Media Nation for just $5 a month. You’ll receive a weekly newsletter with exclusive content and help to support this free source of news and commentary.

Pickering was relying on numbers that the Herald had reported to AAN. Unfortunately, AAN ended free log-ins for journalists and researchers a couple of years ago. And when I asked for four reports last week regarding the Herald and the Globe, I was told that it would cost me $200. No thank you.

So that brings us to the seven-day print numbers that the Herald reported to the Postal Service. According to reports filed on Sept. 20, 2024, the Herald’s average print circulation during the preceding 12 months was 13,092 — a substantial drop of 2,566, or more than 16% over the previous year.

Now for digital circulation. As I wrote last week, the digital numbers that newspapers report to AAN and the Postal Service involve some double-counting and are actually higher than the internal numbers. Globe spokeswoman Carla Kath told me that the paper’s paid digital circulation is currently 261,000, an increase of 6.5% over the previous year but substantially below what’s on the postal (and AAN) statements.

Given that, I’d like to know what the Herald’s internal count of digital circulation shows. But publisher Kevin Corrado did not respond to an email seeking clarification, so I’m going to go with the postal statement. And according to that statement, the Herald’s average seven-day digital paid circulation is now 27,894, just 655 more than it was a year ago.

For some reason, the 2023 number is slightly lower than what Pickering reported at Contrarian Boston a year ago for both weekdays and Sundays, which suggests an unexplained discrepancy between what the Herald reported to the postal service and to AAN.

All told, the Herald’s average paid circulation as reported to the postal service, print plus digital, is now 40,978, a decline of 1,919, or about 4.5%.

Media notes

• Media critic Margaret Sullivan, whose lengthy résumé includes a stint as The New York Times’ public edtior, weighs in with some thoughts on a bizarro juxtaposition of Times headlines about presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. The headlines: “In interviews, Kamala Harris continues to bob and weave” and “In remarks about migrants, Donald Trump invoked his long-held fascination with genes and genetics,” which is another way of saying that the Orange Authoritarian is a fan of eugenics.

As Sullivan writes, the Harris head is “unnecessarily negative, over a story that probably doesn’t need to exist,” while the Trump head “takes a hate-filled trope and treats it like some sort of lofty intellectual interest.” Liberals and progressives on social media, especially on Threads, have been up in arms at what they see as the Times’ soft treatment of Trump. Though I think much (OK, some) of that criticism is overwrought, there’s no disputing that the paper blew it with the two headlines Sullivan cites.

• Speaking of the Times, executive editor Joseph Kahn was interviewed on NPR in recent days by “Morning Edition” co-host Steve Inskeep. Kahn was asked to address criticism from the left, including the Times’ obsessive coverage of President Biden’s age and its weird both-sidesy treatment of the candidates’ housing plans. (Harris: Build more; Trump: Deport the occupants.)

“In people’s minds, there’s very little neutral middle ground. In our mind, it is the ground that we are determined to occupy,” Kahn said. He added: “It’s not about implying that both sides have absolutely equal policies on all the issues. It’s about providing well-rounded coverage of each of the two political parties and their leading candidates.” Read or listen what Kahn has to say and see if you agree.

• This blog is built on WordPress, open-source software that powers many news websites. Unlike Twitter, Meta or Substack, WordPress has always seemed like a non-evil alternative. You can set up your blog at WordPress.com, a commercial hosting service, or do it yourself using the free WordPress.org software. I’ve done both, and currently Media Nation uses dot-org.

Now all that is being threatened. Longtime digital journalist Mathew Ingram, who’s gone independent, has a terrific post up about the battle between Matt Mullenweg, a wealthy entrepreneur who controls both dot-com and dot-org, and WP Engine, a major third-party hosting service that I don’t use. “In a word, it’s a godawful mess,” Ingram writes. “And every user of WordPress has effectively been dragged into it, whether they wanted to be part of it or not.”

Beehiiv, anyone?

The PRESS Act, which would create a federal shield law to protect journalists from being forced to identify their anonymous sources except in rare cases, has been endorsed by The New York Times. I’ve written more about it here.

The Globe’s circulation levels off; plus, the Tampa Bay Times, angst at CNN and remembering Donald Barlett

Paid circulation growth at The Boston Globe has leveled off, as a modest increase in digital subscriptions has barely been enough to offset the continued deterioration of its print business. That’s according to publisher’s statements filed with the U.S. Postal Service that were printed in the Globe earlier this week as well as numbers provided by the Globe.

On weekdays, the average paid print circulation between Sept. 1, 2023, and Aug. 31, 2024, was 57,450. A year earlier it had been 64,977. That’s a decline of 7,527, or 11.6%.

On Sundays, the average paid print circulation was 102,703, down from 116,456 a year earlier. That represents a drop of 13,753, or 11.8%.

The Globe also reported paid digital circulation to the Postal Service, but those numbers — the same that it provides to the Alliance for Audited Media — are not a good reflection of the paper’s actual digital subscription base. According to Carla Kath, the Globe’s director of communications, paid digital circulation is now 261,000, an increase of about 6.5% compared to last October, when it was around 245,000.

When you combine paid print and digital, the Globe’s average weekday circulation is about 318,000, up by 8,000 over a year ago, for an increase of 2.5%.

On Sundays, average combined circulation now stands at 364,000, a rise of 3,000, or a little more than 0.8%.

Oddly enough, the paid digital numbers that the Globe reports to the Postal Service and AAN are higher than its internal figures because AAN uses a different methodology that allows for some double-counting.

Earlier this year, Boston Globe Media CEO Linda Henry told employees that her “North Star” goal for paid digital circulation is 400,000, plus another 100,000 for Stat, the company’s health-and-science news site. She did not put a timetable on that, but in May she told Don Seiffert of the Boston Business Journal that she expected 2024 to be a “building year,” with accelerated growth coming in 2025 and beyond.

“Our subscribers can see this investment with our expanded daily news videos, our new weather center, better games, new podcasts, deeper geographic expansion, and more,” Henry told Seiffert. “We do not expect growth to follow a linear pattern — we have a long-term strategy for continuing to serve our community as a strong and sustainable organization.”

Kath’s email message to me struck a similar tone. “Like most publishers in 2024, we have seen moderation in non-subscriber traffic. However, we’ve adjusted our strategy and continue to grow digital subscriptions while focusing on long-term growth and sustainability,” she said.

“Total paid subscriptions are up more than 30% over the last five years, and 2024 is performing as we expected. We continue to innovate and plan for growth in 2025 as we aim for our ongoing goal of 400,000 paid digital subscribers.”

Media notes

• The Tampa Bay Times has dropped its paywall for coverage of Hurricane Milton and its aftermath — just in time for a story on the Times’ own building being damaged by a collapsing crane. Zachary T. Sampson and Chris Urso report:

A crane collapsed in downtown St. Petersburg during Hurricane Milton’s thrashing winds Wednesday night — leaving a gaping hole in an office building that houses several business, including the Tampa Bay Times.

The crane fell from the Residences at 400 Central, the 46-story skyscraper being built across from the Times’ office, as the storm pummeled the region.

The crane remained crumpled across 1st Avenue South early Thursday, completely blocking the street.

The city said in a news release that no injuries have been reported at the site. The building damaged by the crane had closed ahead of Milton’s arrival Wednesday. No one from the Times’ newsroom was working inside when the crane collapsed.

• Independent media reporter Oliver Darcy has a tough item on CNN chair and chief executive Mark Thompson on the first anniversary of his tenure. Darcy, who left CNN a few months ago to start his newsletter, Status, writes:

In conversations that I have had over the last few weeks with employees at all different levels inside the company, it has become clear that morale has fallen considerably since Thompson took the helm. Staffers, who were once wide-eyed and filled with hope that Thompson would stroll into Hudson Yards with a toolbox full of foolproof, executable ideas, are now questioning whether he will ultimately prove to be successful in reversing the outlet’s dimming fortunes.

• Donald L. Barlett, one of the great investigative reporters of the 20th century has died. I remember reading his and James Steele’s “America: What Went Wrong” in the early 1990s, when it was first released. You might call it an early warning signal about the damage that Ronald Reagan’s economic and tax policies favoring the rich were doing to the country — damage that has contributed to the anger and polarization of politics today. The book was a compilation of reporting that Barlett and Steele had previously produced for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

In an obituary for The New York Times, Glenn Rifkin writes (gift link):

Over four decades, Mr. Barlett and Mr. Steele’s investigative prowess, rooted in deep, systematic research and complex analysis of issues and institutions that profoundly affected Americans, resulted in two Pulitzer Prizes for national reporting (they were finalists for the award six times), six George Polk awards and various other honors.

Mr. Barlett was 88.

Less news, more happy talk: Why CBS News’ reprimand of Tony Dokoupil is so ridiculous

Count me among those who are perplexed as to why CBS News morning anchor Tony Dokoupil has been reprimanded by his bosses for the way he conducted himself in an interview with the journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Coates has written a new book called “The Message,” part of which comprises a harsh critique of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. In a recent interview with Terry Gross of the public radio program “Fresh Air,” and again on “CBS Mornings,” Coates called Israel an “apartheid” state. He also questioned Israel’s existence on the grounds that he opposes the notion of any state based on ethnicity.

Become a Media Nation supporter and receive a weekly email with exclusive content for just $5 a month.

Now, I’m not writing this item to take sides. I’ve long been an admirer of Coates, although I disagree with him strongly on Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state within secure borders — and agree with him about the Netanyahu government’s brutal prosecution of the war in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.

My point is that there was nothing wrong with Dokoupil’s interview. It was tough but polite. Probably Dokoupil’s one statement that I’d regard as out of line was this:

I have to say that when I read the book I imagine that if I took your name out of it, took away the awards, the acclaim, took the cover off the book, the publishing house goes away, the content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.

But what of it? Coates parried Dokoupil deftly, and the conversation ended a few minutes later on an almost friendly note. Yet CNN media reporters Brian Stelter and Hadas Gold write that CBS News staff members were told at a meeting that Dokoupil’s manner did not meet the network’s editorial standards, adding:

In wake of the criticism, CBS News and Stations president and CEO Wendy McMahon and her top deputy Adrienne Roark enlisted the network’s standards and practices unit to conduct a review of the discussion, according to sources familiar with the matter. The news division’s race and culture unit was involved as well.

Management concluded that “the problem was Tony’s tone” in the interview, one of the sources said. McMahon and Roark didn’t say so on the Monday morning call, but they emphasized the importance of network standards and the need to have “courageous conversations.”

This is absurd. At the most, maybe Dokoupil should have been taken aside and privately told that the “backpack of an extremist” comment was inappropriate. But why do we expect television audiences to be treated like children, with everyone making nice rather than engaging in some tough talk?

As a sign of how clueless CBS managers are, Michael M. Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullins of The New York Times report, “Executives who discussed the interview on Monday’s call had asked staff members to keep their remarks confidential.” Uh, huh.

Neither Dokoupil nor Coates acted like anything untoward had happened, and that’s because it hadn’t. They had an enlightening though brief exchange. I’d like to see more interviews like it and less happy talk — but that’s not going to happen if journalists fear they’ll get in trouble just for doing their jobs.

The October Surprise, 44 years on; plus, extremism at home, and more on sponsored content

American hostage Ann Swift shortly after her release in January 1981. Public domain photo by the Department of Defense.

The October Surprise. These days the phrase is often used to describe fears that a political campaign will drop some sort of bombshell in the final weeks before Election Day.

Then-FBI Director James Comey’s reopening of the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016 would certainly qualify, though there was no evidence that the Trump campaign was behind it — nor, for that matter, any evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton.

So, too, would the Hunter Biden laptop story of 2020, though the Trumpers who were behind it were hampered by the inconvenient fact that they’d targeted the wrong Biden.

But I don’t think anyone used the phrase October Surprise until 1980, when it was used to describe something that Ronald Reagan and his associates feared would happen but ultimately did not: the release of more than 50 American hostages who had been held by Iran for many months. If President Jimmy Carter brought them home just before the election, it could have given him the boost he needed to win a second term. Continue reading “The October Surprise, 44 years on; plus, extremism at home, and more on sponsored content”

The Committee to Protect Journalists warns that violence against the press is an ongoing crisis

Photo (cc) 2021 by TapTheForwardAssist

A special report by the Committee to Protect Journalists warns that the anti-media animus that characterized the Trump presidency has continued unabated, and that it will continue to pose an ongoing threat to the safety of journalists regardless of who wins the presidential election.

Produced by CPJ journalist Katherine Jacobsen, the report, titled “On Edge: What the U.S. election could mean for journalists and global press freedom,” is chilling in its details and frightening in its broader implications. She writes:

Trump’s presidency has been widely seen as bad for press freedom. A 2020 CPJ report found that his administration escalated prosecution of news sources, interfered in the business of media owners, harassed journalists crossing U.S. borders, and used the Espionage Act — a law that has raised grave concerns about its potential to restrict reporting on national security issues — to indict WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. At the same time, Trump undermined the credibility of news outlets by lashing out at reporters, often on the president’s social media feeds, as “corrupt,” “dishonest,” and “enemies of the people.”

On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump has threatened to further his anti-press agenda by strengthening libel laws; weakening First Amendment protections; prosecuting reporters for  critical coverage; and investigating the parent company of NBC and MSNBC for the channels’ “vicious” news coverage. He has also called for National Public Radio (NPR) to be defunded. “They are a liberal disinformation machine,” he wrote of the public broadcasting organization on his Truth Social platform in an all-cap post. “Not one dollar!!!”

The denigration of U.S. media, coming at a time when shrinking newsroom budgets, the shuttering of local news publications, and record public mistrust of mainstream outlets have hampered their ability to counter the anti-press narrative, has continued to resonate in the years since Trump lost the 2020 election, helping to fuel extremist and fringe ideas on both the left and the right. The result is an increasingly precarious safety environment for reporters.

Much of the report comprises an overview of threats and violence directed against journalists starting with the attempted insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, and continuing to the present. At least 18 journalists were assaulted during the rioting at the Capitol, and nine people have been charged.

Become a supporter of Media Nation for just $5 a month and receive a weekly newsletter with exclusive, additional content.

Amanda Andrade-Rhoades, a freelance photographer who was on assignment for The Washington Post that day, was injured in the melee and rioters threatened to shoot her.

“Generally speaking, I’m pretty good at compartmentalizing,” she told CPJ. “But hearing the audio of January 6th while covering the committee meetings, that’s still frankly very difficult for me. There was a moment during the hearings where they played a piece of footage where you can see a very close friend of mine running down the hallway … having to hide for her life.”

Other incidents covered by the report include:

  • The murder of Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German by a public official who was angered by his reporting and the frightening online abuse directed at another Review-Journal reporter, Sabrina Schnur, after Twitter’s sociopath-in-chief, Elon Musk, unleashed his mob against her.
  • The harassment and vandalism experienced by New Hampshire Public Radio reporter Lauren Chooljian, her parents and her editor following her reporting on allegations of sexual misconduct against a local business owner. Four men have been charged under federal law and one has been sentenced to prison.
  • A dramatic increase in lawsuits against journalists and news organizations, including Anna Wolfe of Mississippi Today, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting is the subject of a libel suit by the state’s former governor, Phil Bryant. The news organization is fighting an effort by Bryant to force it to turn over internal notes and other records.
  • Unprovoked attacks by police officers against journalists, including three photographers in Detroit who were injured by rubber bullets shot by an officer at a Black Lives Matter protest.

What happens in the U.S. affects press freedom globally, the CPJ report argues: “Over the past three decades, CPJ has documented how major policy shifts and the curtailment of civil liberties in the U.S. have been used to justify similar measures curbing press freedoms for journalists in other countries.” Examples cited include Morocco, Russia, Haiti, Palestinian journalists caught up in the Israel-Gaza war, and Brazil under former president (and Donald Trump ally) Jair Bolsonaro.

The report concludes with a letter sent to the two presidential candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, asking that they sign a pledge to adopt a “respectful” tone with journalists, to take action when journalists are threatened with or subjected to violence, to support a federal shield law known as the PRESS Act that would protect reporters from the prying eyes of the government, and to promote press freedom around the world.

“The Harris campaign acknowledged receipt of CPJ’s letter,” CPJ says, “but neither candidate had signed the pledge by CPJ’s requested deadline of September 16.”

Vance was styling and lying while Walz stumbled. But it all came apart for JD in the closing moments.

There was a key moment in last night’s vice presidential debate between Democratic candidate Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance, and I’ll get to it. But first I want to deal with the fact-checking, since that was the biggest issue going in.

Before the debate, word was that the CBS News moderators, Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan, would not attempt to fact-check the candidates in real time, as David Muir and Linsey Davis did in last month’s encounter between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump — much to Trump’s detriment. Instead, television viewers who watched the debate on CBS would see a QR code on the screen that would take them to a fact-checking site where some 20 journalists were beavering away. Continue reading “Vance was styling and lying while Walz stumbled. But it all came apart for JD in the closing moments.”