Category: Media

A heartbreaking miscarriage of justice

In a humane world, John Odgren would have been institutionalized in a long-term psychiatric facility three years ago. The focus could then have turned toward how best to help the family of James Alenson, whom Odgren killed in a bathroom at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School.

Instead, Odgren, who was 16 at the time (Alenson was 15), is headed off to prison after having been convicted of first-degree murder. By most accounts, Odgren was a bullying victim who has Asperger’s syndrome and a variety of mental illnesses. Alenson was not among Odgren’s tormenters, which only compounds the tragedy.

Earlier this month, Odgren’s father, Paul, testified about the bullying to which his son had been subjected for years. The Boston Globe published a heartbreaking account [link now fixed], with the elder Odgren claiming that John had talked about committing suicide when he was only 9 years old.

My Northeastern colleague James Alan Fox, the noted criminologist, has a must-read commentary today in his Crime & Punishment blog for Boston.com. Fox writes:

Frankly, the thought of John Odgren, a boy who was bullied and ostracized repeatedly in high school, spending the remainder of his years in a prison setting is absolutely chilling. His well-documented fears and paranoid view of his world will undoubtedly become acute once he lives amongst a population of hardened criminals….

Life without parole makes sense for 25-year-old cold-blooded killers, but not for someone as immature and emotionally disturbed as John Odgren.

Finally, if folks at the Boston Herald have one shred of decency, they will delete the comments on their Odgren story as soon as someone inside the building reads this post. You can find the link on your own.

The Globe’s all-out effort in Haiti

American rescue workers pull woman from debris following Haitian earthquake.

In an era of downsized newsrooms and an increased emphasis on local coverage, newspapers like the Boston Globe must pick their spots in covering stories beyond their home base. Thus the Globe’s extensive, ongoing coverage of the Haitian earthquake and its aftermath makes eminent good sense.

As health and science editor Gideon Gil said last night at a presentation by Globe journalists at Northeastern University, the Haiti story is rooted in Boston in two ways: more than 55,000 Haitian-Americans live in the Boston area, making this one of the largest Haitian communities in the country; and Boston’s world-renowned hospitals were (and are) major players in the relief effort.

Speaking and presenting their work were reporter Maria Sacchetti and photographer Bill Greene, who were among the first wave of journalists to arrive in Haiti, and who have focused on the victims; and reporter Stephen Smith and photographer Dina Rudick, who have covered the response by Boston’s medical community.

Both Rudick and Greene shot video as well as still photos. As part of last night’s presentation, they showed two “Haiti Journal” videos (here and here), which serve as a good overview of the Globe’s coverage.

“A story like this in many ways is why you become a journalist,” said Sacchetti.

Greene spoke of the disorientation he experienced after coming back from Haiti and being assigned to cover the pending sale of a $12 million townhouse on Beacon Hill. When one of the people involved in the renovation asked Greene what he thought, he replied, “You don’t want to know what I think. I just came back from Haiti.”

Both Rudick and Smith spoke of the frustration that medical workers experienced when they first arrived in Haiti, as they were forced to camp out on the lawn of the U.S. embassy in Port au Prince, doing nothing, while they waited for supplies and security to be moved into place.

Their reporting, Smith said, reached “the highest levels” of the State and Defense departments, and helped move the relief effort forward.

Rudick called it “one of the most impactful stories I’ve been able to participate in as a journalist.”

Photo by U.S. Navy Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Justin Stumberg via Wikimedia Commons.

Haitian copyright case turns on Twitter’s TOS

In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in New York, Agence France Presse (AFP) claims that it did not violate photojournalist Daniel Morel’s copyright by distributing his images from the scene of the Haitian earthquake because Morel had posted his photos to Twitter, via TwitPic. AFP argues that by posting to Twitter, Morel was bound by Twitter’s terms of service (TOS), and that he therefore granted “a nonexclusive license to use his photographs.” The relevant section in the TOS would appear to be this:

You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

As I reported on Saturday, AFP has sued Morel, charging him with “antagonistic assertion of rights.” I have since received copies of AFP’s complaint (pdf) and Morel’s answer (pdf). It’s a fascinating case, involving the question of how a journalist can transmit his work under difficult conditions without giving up his rights. (Last month I took down one of Morel’s photos from Media Nation after hearing from his lawyer, Barbara Hoffman of New York.)

The AFP suit, filed by attorneys Joshua Kaufman of Washington and Brendan LeMoult of New York, also charges Morel with “commercial defamation.” According to their complaint, Morel, through Hoffman, undermined AFP’s reputation even though the agency took steps to cease distribution of Morel’s work once Hoffman informed it that Morel’s copyright had been infringed. According to AFP’s suit:

Even though it believes it acted under an appropriate license, when AFP was contacted by Mr. Morel’s attorney indicating that he believed the publication of the photographs was a copyright infringement, AFP again acted in good faith to cease publication and distribution of the photographs and notified its subscribers that the photographs should not be published or distributed.

In response to AFP’s eight-page complaint, Hoffman submitted a 66-page rebuttal. I have not had an opportunity to read it in detail. But clearly the heart of AFP’s complaint revolves around Twitter’s TOS. Hoffman writes that Morel found himself working under difficult conditions after the earthquake and trying to find a way to transmit his photos. The manager of the hotel where he was staying helped him set up a Twitter account. She continues: “Mr. Morel had no prior experience
with Twitter, the social networking site and did not read the Terms of Service.”

Nor has any of us, I suspect. So I’m sympathetic to Morel on those grounds. On the other hand, if AFP really did act “in good faith” to halt distribution of Morel’s photos once it had been notified, it is difficult to understand why Morel kept pushing his claim.

Thus Hoffman also includes a long section aimed at proving AFP did not, in fact, act in good faith, taking 13 images from the TwitPic page of a Dominican named Lisandro Suero. Suero, she writes, had “pirated” the pictures, and AFP acted “willfully or with reckless disregard of Mr. Morel’s rights, in its rush to receive credit for the news-breaking photographs to the world” by failing to verify Suero’s bona fides.

Ironically, Morel’s photos are included in Hoffman’s filing, which is a public court document. So if you want to have a look at them, all you have to do is follow the link to her rebuttal, above.

All in all, a pretty interesting case.

At the Globe, higher prices, lower circulation

If you take a look at the new list of the top 25 daily newspapers in the United States, you might notice something odd: the Boston Globe, a longtime fixture, has disappeared. In fact, the Globe’s weekday circulation has plunged so much that it now sells fewer papers than the Oregonian, the San Diego Union-Tribune and Newark’s Star-Ledger.

In a memo to Globe staff members that was obtained by Media Nation, publisher Chris Mayer says the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations show the Globe’s weekday paid print circulation is now 232,432, down 23 percent from a year ago. On Sundays, a category in which the Globe is still a top-25 paper, circulation is 378,949, a decline of 19 percent.

Circulation continues to drop almost everywhere. But the Globe’s particularly steep decline was the calculated result of a 30 percent to 50 percent (depending on the geographic area) hike in home-delivery rates, Mayer writes. The move is credited with helping to stabilize the Globe’s shaky finances. And it drove even longtime print subscribers like the Media Nation household to switch to home delivery on Sundays only; the other six days we subscribe to GlobeReader, a paid electronic edition of the paper.

Mayer also reports that the local audience for Boston.com, the Globe’s website, is up 16 percent over the past year.

I don’t have any hard figures for the Boston Herald, but Jon Chesto of the Patriot Ledger reports that the Herald’s weekday circulation fell by 12 percent over the past year. That would put the Herald’s Monday-to-Friday current circulation at about 140,000. Sunday circulation at the Herald was about 95,000 a year ago.

The full text of Mayer’s memo follows.

Dear Colleagues,

As you may know the ABC March Fas-Fax six-month circulation numbers were released today, and as we anticipated, the Globe has shown significant year-over-year declines, as a result of our pricing strategy instituted last summer.

The Globe’s circulation, now at 378,949 on Sunday and 232,432 daily, still leaves us the most dominant newspaper in New England. The year-to-year decreases of about 19% on Sunday and 23% daily were just about what we budgeted. We raised prices last summer in most areas by 30% to 50% to grow circulation revenue and stabilize the business.

To stress the point, these decreases were forecast and taken into account before launching our strategy. We set out in this direction not only to cope with the effects of the recession on advertising, but to compensate for the structural shift of advertising to the Web.

In terms of readership, also included in the ABC Fas-Fax report, we reach 32% of all adults in the metro market on Sunday and 20% each weekday. In contrast to our print circulation declines, Boston.com’s local audience grew by 16%. When you factor in Boston.com, our readership is even more impressive. Currently, during an average week, the Sunday Globe, the daily Globe and Boston.com together will reach more than half of all adults in the metro Boston area.

We are also developing additional news platforms to attract audiences. For instance, our mobile product usage is growing considerably, as is our recently launched app for the iPhone. We launched GlobeReader, and are working full-speed on other initiatives. Our goal is to be available wherever and whenever the consumer wants – on whatever device they prefer.

No local media can point to such a large audience or dynamic media portfolio. It’s heartening to know that hundreds of thousands of adults choose to rely on the Globe’s quality news each and every day, and that the newspaper has a core loyal audience who is willing to pay a premium for our product.

Thank you for your continued commitment to our mission.

— Chris

Worcester Guild slams Times Co. executives

One month after Newspaper Guild members at the Boston Globe circulated a letter criticizing New York Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger and president Janet Robinson for richly rewarding themselves while threatening to shut the Globe, their counterparts at Worcester’s Telegram & Gazette have followed suit.

Beset by what they describe as a four-year pay freeze, substantial newsroom downsizing and proposed cuts in benefits, union officials say management has repeatedly called for “sacrifice” while Sulzberger and Robinson paid themselves more than $12 million in 2009.

As you no doubt know, the Times Co. operates the Globe, the T&G and Boston.com as a unit known as the New England Media Group. But though the Guild has a presence at both papers, the largest union at the Globe is the Boston Newspaper Guild, whereas T&G employees are represented by the Providence Newspaper Guild.

The Worcester protest coincides with an announcement by the T&G that it will start charging for some online content starting this summer. (So, too, will the Concord Monitor, as the paid-content trend continues to ramp up. Here is Tony Schinella’s take.)

The full text of the Worcester Guild’s press release and letter to Sulzberger and Robinson follows.

NYTimes Execs Big Raises Gall Guild in Worcester

Contact:

Bob Datz  508 xxx-xxxx
Lee Hammel 508 xxx-xxxx
Worcester Unit Council members
Local 31041 The Newspaper Guild

The letter below was sent April 23 to NY Times Co. chairman  Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and CEO Janet Robinson by the Worcester (Mass.) unit of The Newspaper Guild, expressing frustration with the enormous pay raises they recived.

During the three years that contract negotiations with the Guild in Worcester have stretched out, the company has offered its employees no pay raise. (The day before union members were scheduled to ratify the letter,  the company finally offered a one-time $750 signing bonus, which amounts to about  0.4 percent of pay over 3 years without raising base pay, in exchange for stripping away hard-won rights and benefits).

We would appreciate if you would consider a story alerting your readers to the dichotomy between the NYTimes editorial insistence that others behave justly and its attitude toward its own employees.

April 23, 2010

Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr.
Chairman
Janet Robinson
President and Chief Executive Officer
The New York Times Company
620 8th Avenue
New York, NY10018

Dear Arthur and Janet,

Many of us at the Telegram & Gazette in Worcester don’t pay a lot of attention to high finance in New York. We have terrific jobs in the world’s best industry, and we are only too happy to concentrate on the business and politics and human drama that enliven Central Massachusettsday in and day out that we are privileged to gather and write and distribute.

But even the most focused of us could not help but notice the pay raises that both of you received for 2009. You have told us that our business is changing and times are difficult, and we have heard the same in contract negotiations over the past three years. We understand that we must change with the times in an environment where paid circulation and advertising revenue are falling. And management has told us that sacrifice is necessary.

So imagine our surprise upon learning the kind of “sacrifice” that you are enduring. As President and Chief Executive Officer, you Janet, have been given a 31.8 percent increase in salary, bonus, and other compensation in a single year, bringing your total compensation to $6.3 million.

Arthur, as Board Chairman and Publisher of the New York Times, your total compensation more than doubled in 2009, to $6 million. The $3.7 million that your compensation increased could pay the salary of some 75 of the people that have been laid off by the company, some of whom we have been saddened to see walk out our own doors.

Meanwhile, The Newspaper Guild has been in negotiation with the management in Worcester, as our contract expired nearly three years ago. Fortunately, we are told, the Telegram & Gazette is not only not losing money, but continues to make money through this period, albeit at lower than customary levels.

Nevertheless we have been offered neither a pay raise nor bonus over a four-year period. In fact, the company proposes to slash real compensation when benefits are considered. Management also wants to stop offering a pension to any new hires and to freeze the guaranteed pension of those of us who have one, in a “tradeoff” that the company should be well aware calculates to significant losses in projected retirement income.

While offering little or no financial incentive, the company wants to change contract language to remove the substantial equivalency of our medical coverage with no guarantees on the proportionate sharing of the premium costs. Finally, the company wishes to be allowed to lay off employees regardless of seniority.

This takes place in a backdrop of existing layoffs, buyouts and hiring freezes that have brought an 18 percent reduction of the company’s work force in 2009 alone. The employees remaining are asked, or forced, to reduce their benefits in the wake of a management decision to build a new skyscraper for the company headquarters. Our productivity subsidizes not only distant and ill-fated real estate transactions (click here) but deficits in units where employees are paid significantly better than we are, even with recent concessionary contracts.

We are thrilled to see the New York Times editorial pages seek fair treatment for people. Arthur and Janet, we ask that we, like you, receive some financial consideration for our efforts and that you recognize the increased work load we have taken on, because we, like you, have families who depend on us.

Sincerely,

Members of The Newspaper Guild
Worcester Unit, Local 31041

The superficial world of Politico

Maybe my old friend Mark Leibovich is too subtle. Maybe it’s true that any press is good press. But I experienced some severe cognitive dissonance last night as I watched Charlie Rose and Ken Auletta congratulate Mike Allen of Politico over Leibovich’s cover profile of him in the forthcoming New York Times Magazine.

Earlier in the evening I had read Leibovich’s story, and was both repulsed and fascinated. Leibovich, with whom I worked at the Boston Phoenix in the early ’90s, operates with a scalpel. But in his precise, dauntingly well-reported way, he drew gushers of blood, portraying Allen — whose duties include writing “Playbook,” an influential daily e-mail — as the leading exemplar of the Politico sensibility: superficial, insidery and deeply biased in favor of power.

Politico produces good work. Allen produces good work — it was he who broke the story last summer about Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham’s Weymouth’s plan to hold paid salons in her home with lobbyists, Post journalists and government officials. There is a lot of talent and smarts at Politico, and I’m not suggesting that we ignore it.

But the overall sensibility of Politico is perhaps best described by Allen himself, who told Rose and Auletta last night (I’m paraphrasing) that his readers aren’t satisfied merely to know the score; they want to keep track of the entire game, inning by inning. You wonder if it has ever occurred to Allen that politics might not be a sporting event.

Leibovich reveals that Allen, like retired Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr., does not vote, lest it compromise his neutrality. This is house-of-mirrors stuff. Politico’s ongoing celebration of the status quo, of Washington as it is, of a worldview in which Democrats and Republicans are players who should be covered ESPN-style, makes it every bit as biased as Talking Points Memo or National Review Online, only less substantive.

I was particularly taken with this Leibovich tidbit:

“I’ve been in Washington about 30 years,” Mark Salter, a former chief of staff and top campaign aide to John McCain, says. “And here’s the surprising reality: On any given day, not much happens. It’s just the way it is.” Not so in the world of Politico, he says, where meetings in which senators act like themselves (maybe sarcastic or short) become “tension filled” affairs. “They have taken every worst trend in reporting, every single one of them, and put them on rocket fuel,” Salter says. “It’s the shortening of the news cycle. It’s the trivialization of news. It’s the gossipy nature of news. It’s the self-promotion.”

The shame of it is that a pioneering online-mostly news organization like Politico turns out to represent the perfect distillation of every bad trend in political journalism.

Politico’s goal, Leibovich tells us, is to “drive the conversation,” and it has succeeded at that to a considerable degree. Too bad Allen and company neither know nor care where they’re headed.

A copyright case in which man bites dog

Well, this is certainly interesting. On March 17 I posted an item explaining that, back in January, I had mistakenly used a copyrighted photo of a Haitian earthquake victim taken by photojournalist Daniel Morel. The photo had been presented as an example of citizen journalism, so I grabbed it for a round-up I was writing on that subject.

Now I have learned that Agence France Presse, one of a number of news organizations and websites that used Morel’s work, has sued Morel in U.S. District Court in Manhattan under a tort I have never heard of before — the “antagonistic assertion of rights.”

All I’ve got at the moment is a press release from Morel’s lawyers, Barbara Hoffman and Hilary Gish, and I’ll be running around for the next few days. I’d love to learn more.

How the media covered Scott Brown’s rise

Meet the press: Scott Brown speaks with reporter following Senate debate in December at WBZ-TV.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism and Boston University have published a study on how the media covered the race to succeed the late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, a race that culminated in Republican Scott Brown’s surprising victory over Democrat Martha Coakley.

Among the authors of the report, “Hiding in Plain Sight, From Kennedy to Brown,” was my old friend Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of the project, with whom I worked at both the Boston Phoenix and “Beat the Press.”

The findings of the study — which mainly focuses on the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald, and to a lesser extent on the Associated Press and the New York Times — are not surprising. Essentially we learn that the media devoted precious little attention to Brown during the primary and general-election campaigns until Jan. 5, when Rasmussen released a poll showing that Brown was within striking distance.

From that point on, according to the report (verified by anyone who was paying attention at the time), the media went into overdrive, covering the campaign relentlessly but devoting far more resources to the horse race and strategy stories than to the issues. You will also not be surprised to learn that the Globe was more favorable to Coakley and the Herald to Brown.

“In the end, a campaign that first seemed to lack drama and star power was the most important and intensely covered political story in the country,” the report says. “And while they were certainly not alone, the press never saw it coming.”

I have a few quibbles with what was looked at. The authors, for example, criticize the Globe and the Herald for rarely getting outside of the Boston area, arguing that they might have picked up the Brown surge earlier if they had pushed themselves outside their geographic comfort zone. A fair point, but it’s too bad the folks who did the study couldn’t find a way to incorporate coverage from other news outlets around the state.

Then, too, talk radio, which formed a near-monolithic cheering section for Brown (and jeering section for Coakley), doesn’t even get a mention. Granted, newspaper stories can be closely analyzed in ways that talk radio can’t. But right-wing talk may have been the single most important factor in Brown’s rise.

Still, “Hidden in Plain Sight” is a revealing and valuable look at how Boston’s two daily newspapers covered the state’s biggest political story in many years, and is well worth reading in full.