Category: Media

A morally repugnant ban against a journalist

Hollman Morris

This past March, Media Nation celebrated when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reversed a Bush-era ban on South African scholar Adam Habib, who had been prevented from traveling to the United States on unproven and undocumented charges that he was somehow tied to terrorism.

Now the Obama administration — and Clinton’s State Department — are doing what appears to be exactly the same thing to Hollman Morris, a Colombian journalist. Morris, the Washington Post reports, was recently denied a visa to enter the United States so that he could spend a year at Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow.

Morris is not exactly a favorite of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, a right-wing strongman with a miserable human-rights record. The Uribe government has accused Morris of playing nice with the FARC, a left-wing guerrilla movement whose viciousness is beyond question, and which the U.S. government regards as a terrorist organization. By most accounts, though, Morris is guilty of nothing but practicing journalism — which, in Uribe’s eyes, is bad enough.

Not to get all conspiratorial, but it should be noted that the Clintons have longstanding ties to Uribe. In fact, when then-presidential candidate Clinton’s chief political strategist, Mark Penn, was thrown overboard in April 2008, it was over his own unsavory dealings with the Uribe government.

What makes the ban against Morris especially repugnant is that, according to the Spanish news agency EFE, his and his family’s safety has been threatened, and he has been living “under protection” for quite some time. Now the Obama White House has placed him in even greater peril. Fortunately, Morris is currently traveling in Europe, and it sounds like he has no plans to return home anytime soon.

The ban against Habib appeared to be based on nothing more than his outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq — hardly a novel view. The exclusion prevented Habib from speaking at an academic conference in Boston, a circumstance that led to a 2008 Boston Phoenix Muzzle Award for Condoleezza Rice and Michael Chertoff, then the secretaries of state and homeland security, respectively.

Likewise, in the absence of any evidence from the Obama administration, it appears that the ban against Morris is motivated by nothing more than a desire not to offend Uribe and the incoming president, Uribe protégé Juan Manuel Santos. Needless to say, Hillary Clinton is an early contender for a 2011 Muzzle.

More coverage: Nieman Foundation curator Robert Giles recently wrote an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times on Morris’ behalf. The Boston Globe editorialized against the ban. Joshua Benton of the Nieman Journalism Lab has a good round-up of other coverage. And we discussed the Morris case last Friday on “Beat the Press,” on WGBH-TV (Channel 2).

Patching in to AOL’s Patch (II)

Old friend Mark Leccese, blogging at Boston.com, offers further thoughts on the competition among Patch, GateHouse Media’s Wicked Local sites and Boston.com’s Your Town initiative.

Let me repeat: The most interesting local online journalism is taking place at the grassroots. And no one in Greater Boston does a better job of aggregating it than Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub. If you didn’t know that already, well, now you do.

(Disclosure: Media Nation is part of Gaffin’s Boston Blogs advertising network.)

Earlier item.

Patching in to AOL’s Patch

AOL’s local-news initiative, Patch, has been ramping up in Massachusetts in recent months. The effort deserves a full post, so consider this a placeholder. Universal Hub has been all over Patch, chronicling the departure of several GateHouse Media employees who’ve signed on as Patch editors.

My tendency is not to get too excited when a national corporation with no roots in journalism decides to take on hyperlocal news. There have simply been too many instances of the suits deciding that journalism isn’t as lucrative as they had hoped and then pulling the plug a year or two down the line.

Based on Arlington Patch, the sites seem attractive and easy to navigate, with a strong emphasis on community participation. But I don’t know that I see anything that would make me choose it over GateHouse’s Wicked Local Arlington site, or Boston.com’s Your Town page for Arlington.

Besides, I think online local news works best when it grows from the ground up. Local blogs vary wildly in quality. But I’d rather check in on Bob Sprague’s Your Arlington blog than to spend my time with the progeny of Steve Case.

That said, it’s early. Maybe Patch will represent some sort of breakthrough. We’ll see.

Howie Carr actually finds a new line to cross*

There are certain ethical rules that journalists — even rabidly opinionated columnists — try to follow. You don’t donate money to candidates. You don’t put signs on your lawn. You don’t put bumper stickers on your car.

Then there’s Howie Carr, who’s speaking at a fundraiser on July 31 for the New Hampshire Republican State Committee. Such activities, unfortunately, have long since become acceptable for radio talk-show hosts, and that is Carr’s main job. But he’s still a columnist for the Boston Herald.

The Boston Globe has a great quote from Tom Fielder, dean of Boston University’s College of Communication:

You cannot call yourself a journalist — even as a columnist — and actively support a political party. It strikes me that the Herald should now report Carr’s salary to the Federal Election Commission as a contribution to the GOP.

Is there anyone at One Herald Square who can tell Howie no?

*No, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s done this before. But if he did, I didn’t know about it.

Time enters the reality-distortion zone

Back in February, we paid $20 for an 18-month subscription to the print edition of Time magazine. All right, it was a “professional” rate, available to us because I’m a journalism professor. But no one pays the full $4.95-per-issue cover price. If you sign up for a subscription online, for instance, you’ll be charged just $19.95 for six months.

So count Time Warner executives among those who have been sucked into Steve Jobs’ famed “reality-distortion zone.” Because they are groping their way toward a paid-content strategy for Time that makes little or no sense. As explained by the Nieman Journalism Lab here and here, it includes these elements:

  • The magazine is now available as an iPad app costing a flat $4.99 per issue — no discounts, thank you very much. The same folks who understand fully that you won’t pay some $250 a year for the print edition think you’ll gladly fork over the money so that you’ll have something to read on your new toy.
  • The full content of the print edition has been pulled from Time.com, the magazine’s excellent website. There is still a lot of Web-only content available, much of it more, uh, timely and relevant than what appears in print. But when you try to access most articles from the print product, you get a summary and a plea to buy the magazine or the app.
  • The paid app is available only for the iPad, even though it would not be difficult to rewrite it for computers and other devices. (There is a Kindle app for Time that costs a far more reasonable $2.99 per month. Then again, what would Time be without great photography?)
  • The Web-only content is not included in the iPad app, which means that Time’s best customers will have to fire up Safari to see what they’re missing. And, of course, if there’s any Flash content on Time.com, they won’t be able to see it unless they switch to their computer. (There is some extra content included in the app.)

The folks at Time started with the right idea. Within the past year or so some pretty smart people have concluded that print and the Web should be used for different things, with the Web being used for breaking news, community and participation. Just as an experiment, it would be interesting to see whether Time could build a successful website without relying on content from the print edition.

But app fever is clouding Time’s judgment. The print edition arrives at Media Nation without fail every Saturday, and we didn’t even have to drop $500 on an iPad to get it. Slick as the app may be, it’s not as slick as glossy paper.

At the moment, Time is not offering a subscription to its app — it’s sold strictly on an issue-by-issue basis. When subscriptions do become available, Time ought to drop the price so that it’s the same as the print edition. Only then will we be able to see if there’s any demand.

John Henning

I’m in New Haven on a reporting trip today, so I’m not going to write as much about this as I should. But I want to take note of John Henning’s death at the age of 73. What a class act. Henning was never too busy to help younger colleagues, including a certain media reporter for an alternative weekly.

Henning was a key part of the golden age of television news in Boston, and he will be greatly missed. Here is a tribute from WBZ-TV (Channel 4), where he was the longtime political reporter.

Waltham daily will be cut to twice weekly

The Daily News Tribune of Waltham will cut back from five days a week to two just before Labor Day and publish under a more locally focused name: the Waltham News Tribune. The move was announced earlier today on the paper’s website.

Starting Aug. 31, the paper will come out on Tuesdays and Fridays, although publisher Greg Reibman was quoted as saying the goal is to prove daily coverage online and through a new mobile app.

“We will be all Waltham, all the time,” Reibman said, explaining that the paper will no longer cover Newton.

The News Tribune is published by Fairport, N.Y.-based GateHouse Media, which owns about 100 papers in Eastern Massachusetts, most of them weeklies. In an internal e-mail obtained by Media Nation, Rick Daniels, president and CEO of GateHouse’s New England group, compared the move to a similar one made last October, when the Daily Transcript of Dedham was cut back from five days a week to one and renamed the Dedham Transcript.

“We’re confident this approach, coupled with our website, will make the Waltham News Tribune more valuable and useful to Waltham residents and our advertisers,” Daniels said.

GateHouse, a national chain, is under considerable financial strain, as are virtually all newspaper companies (although things may be looking up a bit). The twice-weekly move probably isn’t one that company officials wanted to make. But from a business point of view, it makes sense to cut production costs and shift advertising into just two editions rather than five if it can be done without alienating readers.

If the company follows through on its online and mobile promises, then this will look smart.

The full text of Daniels’ e-mail follows:

As you all know, we are continuously evaluating our publishing strategies in each of our communities to make sure we are the most efficient and effective local news source in the market.

Last October, for example, we changed The Daily News Transcript from a five-day daily newspaper to a weekly newspaper, Dedham Transcript, while putting a new focus on a redesigned Norwood Transcript as well. That decision turned out to be a big win, especially in Dedham where, with special thanks to the efforts of editor Andrea Salisbury and our circulation eam, we’ve steadily grown our subscription base as well as single copy sales since the launch.

Later this summer, we will be making a similar move in Waltham, only with one significant variation. On Friday, Aug. 27 we will deliver the last issue of The Daily News Tribune and, instead, focus on producing a high-quality twice-weekly paper, to be called the Waltham News Tribune.

The newly designed Waltham News Tribune will arrive at doorsteps and on newsstands every Tuesday and Friday. In contrast to the Daily News Tribune, which currently includes coverage of Newton and Watertown, along with non-local content such as Associated Press stories, comics and other syndicated features, the new twice-weekly paper will focus exclusively on Waltham.

We’re confident this approach, coupled with our website, will make the Waltham News Tribune more valuable and useful to Waltham residents and our advertisers. We chose Tuesday and Friday as our two publishing days based on the news and advertising needs of our readers and customers. We anticipate the Tuesday edition will include city council coverage, weekend sports and breaking news, while the Friday edition is likely to include additional areas of coverage such as upcoming weekend entertainment and features. In addition, the Tuesday edition will carry our “WickedLocalJobs” section and the Friday edition will carry our “WickedLocalWheels” section.

By working closely with the production and circulation groups, we’ve been able to develop a plan that will allow us to handle pre-printed inserts in both the Tuesday and Friday editions while getting the newspaper to newsstands by lunch time each day. This will help in driving single copy sales. Please know that we are not trimming our editorial or sports staff as part of this change. Andy Merritt, the Tribune’s current night editor, will be the new paper’s editor. Scott Souza will remain the sports editor and will also continue in his role as GateHouse’s beat reporter covering the Boston Celtics. Editorial oversight for Waltham will be transferred to the Metro Unit, with Greg Reibman as publisher, and Kat Powers as managing editor.

In the next few weeks we will contact all Daily News Tribune newsdealers of this change and will inform subscribers that their account balance will be transferred in full to a new twice-weekly subscription. Our call center will be fully prepared to help resolve all concerns to our customer’s satisfaction. If you receive any home delivery questions before that, please refer them our customer service department at 1-888-MYPAPER. Local news continues to be the mission of GateHouse Media New England, and we’ll continue to evaluate and improve all facets of our business to strengthen our position as the premier provider of local news and information, both in print and online in Eastern Massachusetts.

At one point in time, some might have wondered whether our local mission might have been too limited to enable us to be highly relevant to our readers, advertisers and the communities we serve as well as be consequential and successful as a business enterprise. In the last several months, several competitors have emerged that are entirely focused on the hyper-local news, information and advertising markets – not because these markets are somehow “small” or “insignificant”, but because they are hugely consequential in being able to support a viable publishing company – whether print, the digital media or (as we do) both. These competitors actually affirm that we ARE in the best part of the media world. They also have to realize that this company has been at this business for a long time, and enjoys a market position that will be extraordinarily difficult to crack.

Here are four compelling numbers that help to tell the GateHouse New England story, circa 2010: 1.7 million, 3 million, well over $100 million and 400. These numbers represent, respectively: The size of our Massachusetts print audience, the number of unique visitors per month to our websites, the size of our revenue base and the number of full-time professional journalists we employ. The levels of attainment these numbers signify places us at or near the top of the rankings of Massachusetts media companies. The economy has been a huge challenge for all businesses, and most especially media businesses, but we not only “survived” the Great Recession, but have seen our advertising revenues actually start to GROW again (albeit slowly with the continued economic cloudiness) in five out of the first six months of 2010. Thank you all very much for what you have done and continue to do to allow us to do what all companies MUST do in order to be successful: serve an identifiable and attractive niche with quality products and services, grow our revenues and customer base, become ever more efficient and generate sufficient cash flow. We know that staying on top of a fast-evolving industry is incredibly challenging and requires business model changes that can be a bit jarring. We have not averred from these changes, and this latest one with the Waltham News Tribune is one more example that will allow us to be both more focused on providing hyper-local news to the Waltham community AND be more efficient as well.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Jim Smith leaves Globe for Harvard

Jim Smith

Boston Globe reporter and editor Jim Smith is leaving the paper in order to become director of communications at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, part of Harvard’s Kennedy School.

Last August, Smith won the 2009 International Perspective Award from the Associated Press Managing Editors Association.

What follows is an internal e-mail from deputy managing editor Mark Morrow, sent on behalf of himself and editor Marty Baron. Media Nation obtained a copy a little while ago.

All: Hard news today — Jim Smith, who brought his remarkable talent and humane presence to the Globe eight years ago, will be leaving us this month for a new foreign posting — in Cambridge. Jim has just been named the director of communications at the JFK School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, the school’s global policy issues hub, joining the growing Globe ex-pat community at Harvard.

Jim came to the Globe, from the LA Times Mexico City bureau, in March 2002, which meant that he started as foreign editor at a time of maximum tumult, complexity, danger and opportunity. It was one of the finest hours for our small but astonishingly gifted team of foreign correspondents, and a time when the Globe, under Jim’s leadership, extended itself to the limit to bring thoughtful, nuanced, enterprising and brave coverage of the Afghan and Iraq wars to our readers. By early 2003, 14 reporters and photographers were covering the conflict, not to mention terrorist attacks in London, Madrid and 2006 war in Lebanon.

Near disaster, and unthinkable loss also marked his tenure. Within weeks of Jim’s start as foreign editor, Anthony Shadid was shot in the shoulder in Ramallah. Two months later came one of the greatest tragedies ever suffered by the Globe staff, when Elizabeth Neuffer, one of the most brilliant, resourceful and courageous reporters ever to work here, died in Samarra, north of Baghdad. Jim’s gift of humanity and personal connection helped his staff, and helped us all, to make it through and eventually out of the darkness.

With the closure of our foreign bureaus in 2007, Jim took on another extraordinarily demanding challenge, working side-by-side with Peter Canellos in managing our standout coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign, right up through an Extra Edition on the morning of Obama’s inauguration. And then it was on to his latest endeavor, creating out of whole-cloth a new beat mining Boston’s many remarkable connections to the world, and the world to it. This meant not only penning a stream of enterprising pieces, but also mastering a newer art form, the blog.

To say Jim made a swift success in his new beat would be to understate the case. Within six months, he won the Associated Press Managing Editors award for international perspective. It was, in fact, the second time the Globe won that prize for work in which Jim played a central role. The first was for the Lives Lost project, a 16-page special section focused on the 24,000 people around the world who die every day for want of basic medical care. Searching, smart, compassionate and richly readable work — that, start to finish, was Jim’s gift to us.

We’ll find just the right way to say good-bye and make Jim blush one day — and evening — soon. But in the meantime, wish him well and book your place on his lunch schedule soon. It gets lonely on the other side of the Charles.

Mark and Marty

Differing perspectives on a cancer study

Why does it matter for a community to have a variety of journalistic voices? We could all point to any number of examples. But the example I want to discuss here is a story about brain cancer among Pratt & Whitney employees in Greater New Haven.

On June 3, researchers who conducted a $12 million study paid for by Pratt & Whitney reported they had found no conclusive evidence that employees had been diagnosed with brain cancer at rates high enough to be statistically significant in comparison to the general population.

The next day, the New Haven Register published an article by Ann DeMatteo under the headline “No cancer link found at P&W, but slight ‘excess’ seen at North Haven plant.” DeMatteo’s lede:

Researchers say that except for a few cases in the former Pratt & Whitney Aircraft plant in North Haven, the amount of brain cancer among Pratt employees is no different from or lower than the general population.

Later that day, the New Haven Independent, a non-profit news site, posted a story by Carole Bass that took an entirely different angle, as you can tell from the headline: “Despite Hype, Pratt Study Shows Cancer Increase.” Her lede:

Pratt & Whitney Aircraft got its message out today, burying evidence of higher cancer rates at a local factory.

Bass criticizes the Register and the Hartford Courant for essentially adopting P&W’s spin, and lays out an argument that though there is still much to be learned, there may well indeed be a link between workplace exposure — especially at a former jet-engine plant in North Haven — and higher-than-normal rates of brain cancer.

Among other things, we learn from Bass’ story that a “blue haze” of coolant mist hung over the workplace in North Haven. As someone who covered the Woburn leukemia story in the 1980s, I can tell you that links between coolants and cancer have long been suspected, even if there is no definitive proof. (Odd fact: Paul Bass and Jonathan Harr, the author of “A Civil Action,” an award-winning book about the Woburn case, worked together at one time. Harr and I covered the Woburn case together.)

At this point I should tell you that I was Carole and Paul Bass’ dinner guest on June 3, as I was in New Haven for my ongoing research on the Independent and other community news sites. Paul is the Independent’s founder and editor. Carole told me that evening that she’d been covering the P&W story for some years, and was planning to write about the new report.

Both the Register and the Independent published accurate stories. The Register’s story hews strictly to the traditional rules of objectivity. The Independent’s adds analysis, perspective (I was interested to learn of the possible role of something called the “healthy-worker effect,”) and some opinion, along with solid reporting.

(Bass’ story was later published in the New Haven Advocate, an alternative weekly where both Basses have worked in the past.)

Which is more useful? Personally, I’d opt for analysis and perspective over coverage of a meeting. But I think the community was well-served by having both kinds of stories.