Media – Page 226 – Media Nation

Dear media: Please educate us on Chapter 40B

Today’s Boston Globe editorializes against a ballot measure that would repeal Chapter 40B, the state’s so-called anti-snob-zoning law. The law allows developers to circumvent local zoning ordinances in order to build affordable housing.

Frankly, I’m inclined to vote in favor of repeal. My impression — and here’s where I hope the media, especially the Globe, will do their job — is that the law simply hasn’t worked. In return for setting aside a fairly small percentage of units for affordable housing, developers are able to ram through ugly condo developments that enhance no one’s quality of life.

I’m all for greater density, smaller lot sizes and smaller houses in the suburbs. But with 40B, it seems that what you end up with are a few monstrous developments on the periphery of town, with no real change to overall zoning patterns.

The Globe observes that 40B developments could be built along commuter-rail lines. True, and pigs could fly if they had wings. What I’ve seen is that 40B developments are built along highways, dumping more cars and SUVs onto already-congested roadways.

Finally, 40B encourages overdevelopment in communities that just can’t handle it. Here in Danvers, we are under a perpetual drought watch. This summer was very hot and dry, so the current drought is real. But year after year, the water warnings here never let up, no matter how wet the weather is. That leads to a common-sense observation: we don’t have a water shortage; we have too much development. And 40B means that town officials are limited in their ability to stop things from getting worse.

Over the next few weeks, as we move closer to Election Day, I hope news organizations will take a good, hard look at Chapter 40B and whether it really deserves to be retained. What are the success stories? What are the failures? How could it be improved?

I would just as soon not vote against affordable housing, but right now I don’t see any reason to keep this law on the books.

A celebration of non-profit journalism

Paul Bass. Yes, that's Linda McMahon in the background. Click on image for more photos.

Republican Senate candidate Linda McMahon of Connecticut was there. So was New Haven Mayor John DeStefano. So were about 150 other friends of the New Haven Independent as the non-profit news site celebrated its fifth anniversary on Wednesday evening.

“It’s a powerful idea, which is that out-of-town corporations that could care less about us no longer own our news. They no longer control our news. We the people control the news,” Independent founder and editor Paul Bass told the crowd. (Click to hear Bass address the crowd.)

The party was held in the third-floor offices of La Voz Hispana de Connecticut, a Spanish-language newspaper where the Independent has use of a spare room. Bass was introduced by Norma Rodriguez-Reyes, publisher of La Voz, who also chairs the board of the Online Journalism Project, which publishes the Independent.

“At La Voz Hispana we’re very proud to have the New Haven Independent here with us, and we want to wish cien años — 100 years more,” Rodriguez-Reyes said, standing on a chair and holding aloft a glass of wine.

One of the goals was to unveil a voluntary subscription system that Bass hopes will make the Independent less dependent on foundation grants. Readers are being asked to pay $10 or $18 a month. As it turned out, though, money barely got a mention.

“We didn’t want people feeling like we got them in there, and then we were going to hit them up,” Bass told me afterwards, adding that many of the folks who showed up were already financial backers.

Was the party what Bass had expected?

“I guess,” he said. “Sorry, what am I supposed to say? Norma loves to throw parties. I hate parties.”

The party was also covered by the Yale Daily News and, of course, by the Independent.

From NPR, clarity on the Bush tax cuts

Kudos to NPR for airing the first clear, understandable story I’ve come across in the mainstream media on why there’s actually a substantive argument for retaining the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

No doubt you have heard Republicans say that raising taxes on incomes above $200,000 a year ($250,000 for couples) would hurt small businesses, along with the Democratic retort that it would affect barely 2 percent of those businesses. Well, here’s the explanation in a nutshell:

The vast majority of small businesses might better be termed micro-businesses. NPR’s examples: “a hot dog vendor, a housecleaner, a guy selling T-shirts on eBay.” Not only do they not make $200,000 a year, but they don’t hire anyone.
Small businesses that are substantial enough to hire more than a handful of people are relatively few in number, and make up a large share of the 2 percent cited by Democrats.
Many if not most of those small businesses treat their business income as personal income for tax purposes. So, yes, raising taxes on incomes above the $200,000 threshold could very well harm their ability to invest and hire new employees.

Even so, the NPR story notes there’s a strong case to be made that small businesses would benefit far more from targeted measures than from retaining the Bush tax cut.

Bottom line: I learned something important I didn’t know about a much-debated public-policy issue. Isn’t that what journalism is for?

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Where was Jill Stein?

I don’t understand why WTKK hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan would moderate a gubernatorial debate that featured only three of the four candidates. If it was their call, they were wrong. If it was management’s call, they should have refused to have anything to do with it.

If ‘TKK’s aim was to have a debate between the two major-party candidates, Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick and Republican challenger Charlie Baker, I would have fewer objections — though still some. September is too soon to start excluding anyone.

But there was no logical reason to include independent candidate Tim Cahill, who has no chance of winning, and exclude Green-Rainbow candidate Jill Stein, who also has no chance.

Not only was it unfair to Stein, it was unfair to Baker. Every time Cahill is given oxygen, he hurts Baker with the conservative base Baker needs to secure if he is to defeat Patrick this November. At the same time, nearly all of Stein’s support comes from people who might otherwise be persuaded to vote for Patrick.

She also happens to be as thoughtful and substantive as any of them, but I suppose that’s beside the point.

A repulsive apology to hate-mongers in Maine

You absolutely cannot make this up: the Portland (Maine) Press Herald has published an apology for running a photo on Sept. 11 of Muslims praying. The photo, taken on Sept. 10, portrays Portland-area residents marking the end of Ramadan. Writes editor and publisher Richard Connor:

Many saw Saturday’s front-page story and photo regarding the local observance of the end of Ramadan as offensive, particularly on the day, September 11, when our nation and the world were paying tribute to those who died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks nine years ago.

This should be as controversial as publishing a recipe for apple pie. Don’t take my word for it. See the photo and accompanying story for yourself. (The audio slideshow above is part of the Web version of the story.)

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more shameful and repulsive message from a publisher than Connor’s. As Henry Blodget writes at Business Insider, “it really sounds like [what] is going on here is that the Portland Press Herald is agreeing with some readers that Muslim Americans should not be considered Americans. And if that’s what the paper believes, it should probably just come out and say so.”

The fear and hatred being directed toward American Muslims these days is truly terrifying. The folks who’ve whipped up hysteria over the Islamic center that has been proposed for a site near Ground Zero have much to answer for, whether they did it for ratings or political gain.

My concern is that we haven’t seen the worst of it yet. And if a newspaper publisher won’t stand up and be counted, then we have reached a new low.

Hyperlocal versus regional news in New Haven

Education reform and how it’s playing out in city schools. A long-awaited project to build sidewalks in a high-traffic area, delayed because of the cost. The latest on a controversial plan to sell off 25 years’ worth of parking-meter revenue for a quick infusion of $50 million.

These are a few of the stories posted in late August by the New Haven Independent, a non-profit, online-only news organization.

As part of my research, I recently decided to take a look at every story that appeared in the Independent between Sunday, Aug. 22, and Saturday, Aug. 28, and compare them to what appeared in the New Haven Register.

Click here for a detailed breakdown of New Haven
coverage in the Independent and the Register

Not that the Independent and the Register should necessarily be thought of as competitors. The Register, a for-profit paper owned by the Journal Register Co., based in Yardley, Penn., covers not just New Haven but the surrounding area as well. On any given day, the Register publishes more stories from the suburbs than from the city. Much of the Independent’s intensely local neighborhood coverage is of the sort that the Register would not likely publish.

The Register is also a much larger enterprise, even online: its website received more than 158,000 unique visitors in July, according to Compete.com, whereas the Independent, with its city-focused readership, attracted somewhat less than 49,000. (Such numbers are inherently suspect. But they provide a decent basis for comparison, if not for overall readership.) And, of course, the Register’s website isn’t its primary distribution platform. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, paid circulation of the Register’s print edition is about 71,000 on weekdays and 81,000 on Sundays.

My goal was to list every story that appeared in the Independent for a week, and to compare them to the New Haven-only stories that appeared in the Register. Compiling a list of stories from the Independent was not difficult. Finding all the New Haven stories in the Register was somewhat more of a challenge, since I did not have access to the print edition. Continue reading “Hyperlocal versus regional news in New Haven”

Free the candidates from the media consortium

The media consortium that is sponsoring two gubernatorial debates may exclude Green-Rainbow candidate Jill Stein because she hasn’t raised enough money, according to the Boston Globe, which is a member of the consortium, and the Boston Herald, which isn’t.

That raises a question: What are debates for?

Let’s start with the obvious. Only one of two things can plausibly occur on Election Day this November. Either Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick will be re-elected or his Republican opponent, Charlie Baker, will beat him. Neither Stein nor independent candidate Tim Cahill is going to win.

Given that, it’s ludicrous to believe that Cahill should be invited because he’s met the fundraising threshold while Stein should stay home. We should hear from both of them — or neither.

My own preference is that everyone be invited, at least when it’s early in the campaign. Give the longshots a chance to make their pitch and force the major-party candidates to react to their ideas. As we get closer to the wire, I think it’s legitimate to use polling in order to exclude candidates with no chance. I’d like to see Baker and Patrick debate one on one, but not yet.

Last Tuesday’s non-consortium debate, expertly moderated by WBZ-TV (Channel 4) political analyst and friend of Media Nation Jon Keller, showed it’s possible to let Baker and Patrick go at it while still giving Stein and Cahill a chance to have their say.

The biggest problem, I think, is the very existence of the consortium, which comprises the Globe, WCVB-TV (Channel 5), WHDH-TV (Channel 7), NECN, WGBH (Channel 2 and 89.7 FM) and WBUR Radio (90.9 FM).

The consortium was formed in 1994 to pressure U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy to debate his Republican rival, Mitt Romney. The gambit worked — and the fumble-mouthed Kennedy’s unexpectedly strong performances were a key to his re-election that year.

These days, though, there is never a shortage of debates. So, rather than a consortium, why not have media and civic organizations put together debates as they please, as Keller and WBZ did? You could have some debates featuring all four and others with just the two major-party candidates. You could even have a Cahill-Stein debate, which would be pretty interesting.

Let each group that wants to sponsor a debate set its own rules. The candidates can decide whether they want to participate, and the public can decide whether it wants to pay attention. But by all means, lets put an end to the media consortium and its attempts to control the political conversation.

Photo from JillStein.org.

An undercovered gubernatorial debate

Old friend Mark Leccese has an interesting blog post at Boston.com about the first televised gubernatorial debate, hosted Tuesday evening by another old friend, WBZ-TV (Channel 4) political analyst Jon Keller.

Leccese — God bless him — took in all of the local television coverage to determine how much attention the debate got. And he concludes that the debate was all but ignored, with the exception of NECN and, of course, WBZ.

The city’s two dailies, Leccese adds, gave it plenty of coverage.

Leccese wonders whether the lack of coverage was due to television executives’ wanting “to play down the story of the debate because it was on a rival station” — or if, instead, “local TV newscasts don’t find debates among the four people from whom the voters will choose the most powerful person in state government particularly newsworthy.”

My suspicion is that it’s a little bit of both.

If you missed the debate, you can still watch it online here. It’s also being broadcast in Spanish.

I caught about two-thirds of it in my car, and then watched the last 20 minutes. With the exception of a weird question about President Obama’s aunt, dropped in toward the end, I thought Keller turned in his usual fine job. He got out of the way and let Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick and Republican challenger Charlie Baker really mix it up, while still giving Green-Rainbow Party candidate Jill Stein and independent Tim Cahill a chance to make their case.

The debate was a ratings hit, too, writes the Herald’s Jessica Heslam — it came in third during the 7 p.m. time slot, not far behind the Red Sox and “Chronicle.”

Who won? I thought Patrick came off as by far the most personable of the four, and Baker scored some points on substance. As Michael Levenson reported in the Globe on Thursday, Patrick was wrong in claiming that Harvard Pilgrim Health Care was bailed out with “state aid” when Baker was its chief executive, an overreach that could come back to haunt the governor.

Perhaps the key was that Cahill, the state treasurer, proved to be a more effective debater than the substantive but sound-bite-challenged Stein. Since the conventional wisdom is that Cahill takes away votes from Baker and Stein from Patrick, perhaps Patrick (who really overdid it in sucking up to Cahill) was the winner by default.

Photo from wbztv.com.

Paul Conrad’s grin of affirmation

The director of our School of Journalism, Steve Burgard, was an editorial writer at the Los Angeles Times before coming to Northeastern. He passes along an anecdote about Paul Conrad, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist who died on Saturday at the age of 86:

I was a newly minted editorial writer at the Los Angeles Times in the early 1990s, camped at a pod in the secluded second-floor editorlal page spaces at the desk of somebody who was out on vacation. While I had high hopes for the work I might later do at the page in the coming years, I was certainly a new kid on the block in every respect at that time.

One afternoon while laboring over a draft editorial, I felt a woosh of air behind my head as a drawing plopped down in the desk in front of me. The great cartoonist was looming up behind over my shoulder. He didn’t give a hoot about my stature, and I’m not sure he yet knew my name. He was looking for reaction to something he’d just drawn, and for that important purpose anybody would do. A nod and a grin of affirmation later, he picked it up and moved on.

Like Daniel Schorr, who died earlier this summer, Conrad was a member of Richard Nixon’s “enemies list,” which, according to his obituary, he considered one of his greatest honors.

The newspaper business is greatly diminished from what it was when Conrad was at his peak. His passing diminishes it a little more.

In New Haven, seeking non-profit sustainability

The challenge for non-profit news sites is that national and local foundations may be willing to help them get off the ground, but at some point they want them to be self-sustaining. Will readers of a site like the New Haven Independent give money on a continuing basis — a model well-established in the world of public television and radio stations?

Independent founder and editor Paul Bass intends to find out. Late this afternoon he posted a fifth-anniversary message, asking readers to choose a voluntary subscription of $10 or $18 a month (or more) in order to support an operation that has grown to a nearly $500,000 annual budget with six full-time reporters, several part-timers, affiliated sites covering Branford and the Naugatuck Valley and a State House reporter. Bass writes:

Five years ago today, the New Haven Independent hit the net with a new idea: completely local multimedia online-only professional news reporting focused on city news and issues, with reporting used as a springboard for wide-ranging community discussion. Not a “newspaper.” Not a radio or TV news program. A journalism-driven online urban community….

Cities like New Haven are returning to the “good old days” of multiple local media outlets where readers can find news, weigh in, and obtain different takes on what’s happening at home. No longer can a corporate monopoly control and choke off the flow of news and debate in one community.

Unlike, say, WGBH or WBUR in Boston, the Independent serves a poor, largely minority urban community. Bass’ challenge is very different from that of a public broadcasting executive appealing to affluent, well-educated viewers and listeners.

The Independent will celebrate its fifth birthday at a party on Sept. 15. I plan to be there. It will be interesting to see how many people turn out (57 have already said via Facebook that they’re coming) — and what level of support Bass is able to attract as he begins his sixth year.