Forty people will lose their jobs when the Nashua Telegraph’s printing presses stop rolling on Jan. 2. The 20,000-circulation daily (27,000 on Sunday) will be printed at the Portsmouth Herald, according to publisher Terry Williams, who described the move as “a very difficult call.”
Category: Media
Nick Daniloff on WikiLeaks
My Northeastern colleague Nicholas Daniloff, a former foreign correspondent for U.S. News & World Report and UPI, was interviewed by the university press office earlier this week about the WikiLeaks story.
Daniloff offers some sharp insights, arguing that the document dump was more good than bad, and that the New York Times acted responsibly by giving the White House an opportunity to request redactions — some of which the Times went along with, some of which it didn’t. Daniloff adds:
[O]ver the long run, a great deal of this will be forgotten or swept under the rug, although older diplomats may well tell young diplomats, “Be careful with the Americans. They are so leaky that what you say may eventually come out. Be discreet; after all, you wouldn’t make copies of your love letters would you?”
Also worth reading: retired Times executive editor Max Frankel (via Jack Shafer), who, writing in the Guardian, offers this no-kidding observation:
Governments must finally acknowledge that secrets shared with millions of “cleared” officials, including lowly army clerks, are not secret. They must decide that the random rubber-stamping of millions of papers and computer files each year does not a security system make.
Meanwhile, Interpol has heightened its efforts to arrest WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on sexual-assault charges. This Times story makes it sound like the agency isn’t trying very hard. It makes you wonder whether Western governments truly want to bring Assange to justice — or are just trying to discredit him.
Northeastern University photo by Lauren McFalls.
On the road again
I’ll be heading to New Haven later this morning for my first reporting trip since my accident. I’m covering an event on education reform organized by the New Haven Independent and starring No Child Left Behind skeptic Diane Ravitch, and I’ve got two interviews lined up this afternoon. Normality is creeping back.
WikiLeaks and the media’s responsibility
The latest WikiLeaks document dump gives us all much to think about. Unlike the earlier materials, about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the latest revelations might actually make it more difficult for the United States to conduct foreign policy.
Is the world safer or less safe today now that we know King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has urged the U.S. to take out Iran’s nuclear-weapons-in-the-making? Or doesn’t it matter? And would the documents be seen in a different light if the New York Times, the Guardian et al. had done nothing and let WikiLeaks release them on its own accord?
Like most journalists, I want to see as much information out there as possible. When government officials talk about the need for secrecy, I’m naturally suspicious. Yet as Timothy Garton Ash observes in the Guardian, secrecy is surely a tool that the State Department needs to use on occasion. He writes:
How can diplomacy be conducted under these conditions? A State Department spokesman is surely right to say that the revelations are “going to create tension in relationships between our diplomats and our friends around the world.” The conduct of government is already hampered by fear of leaks. An academic friend of mine who worked in the State Department under Condoleezza Rice told me that he had once suggested writing a memo posing fundamental questions about U.S. policy in Iraq. “Don’t even think of it,” he was warned — because it would be sure to appear in the next day’s New York Times.
U.S. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., sounds as though he wants WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to be tried and executed. I think we can safely dismiss rants like that while still wondering whether there was a legitimate need to keep these matters secret.
I have not yet come up with an answer to that question. What I do know is that information technology now makes it possible for a group like WikiLeaks to dump far more dangerous documents than these into the public realm. Say what you will about traditional news organizations like the Times, but at least they give the government an opportunity to make a case as to why such documents shouldn’t be released.
One thing’s for sure: if the government is serious about keeping its secrets, it needs to do a much better job of protecting them.
Keeping the “public” in public radio
In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that NPR and public radio stations shouldn’t walk away from government funding, even if they don’t need it. For one thing, it would hand the right a victory in the culture wars. For another, it would set a dangerous precedent for public television, which is far more dependent on public money.
The importance of being Paul La Camera
Congratulations to Paul La Camera, who last week announced that he’ll retire as general manager of WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) at the end of the year.
“I’m going to be 68 next month, and I think that’s an appropriate expiration date for someone to be running a dynamic contemporary media entity that increasingly has to surge into the digital world,” La Camera was quoted as saying in a story by WBUR’s Steve Brown. La Camera added that he plans to continue in an “ambassadorial role” for the station.
La Camera, the longtime head of WCVB-TV (Channel 5), took the helm of WBUR in 2005, as the Boston University-licensed public radio station was just beginning to recover from the financial problems that had ended the reign of his predecessor, Jane Christo.
The imperious Christo was a much-admired, much-detested executive who transformed ‘BUR into one of the best public radio stations in the country. But what La Camera did was at least as important: he calmed the waters, restored financial stability and expanded the station’s local presence.
“He was really the guy who brought stability back to the place,” Scott Fybush, editor of Northeast Radio Watch, told the Boston Globe’s Johnny Diaz.
In 2006 I profiled La Camera for CommonWealth Magazine. Noting that he had already retired once (from WCVB), he told me: “You can probably count on the fact that I won’t be here for 33 1/2 years. I haven’t given much thought to when I’m next going to retire. But whenever that time comes, I hope I’m going to be more successful at it than I was the last time.”
(Note: I’m a paid contributor to WGBH-TV/Channel 2 and an occasional unpaid contributor to WGBH Radio/89.7 FM, which earlier this year was retooled into a news and public-affairs outlet that competes with WBUR.)
La Camera is a great broadcasting executive as well as a good guy, and though he’s not going away, his day-to-day presence will be missed.
Globe publishes spiked Wasserman cartoon
Though it doesn’t seem to have made its way onto Boston.com yet, Boston Globe cartoonist Dan Wasserman’s poke at Bank of America and the Museum of Fine Arts — spiked last Sunday — is in today’s Globe, as he said it would be. It never should have been held in the first place, but there you have it.
False equivalence at MSNBC
When Politico confronted MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann with campaign donations he’d made, he came clean immediately. Joe Scarborough? Not so much. So why did Scarborough get the same two-day suspension as Olbermann? Shouldn’t he have received — oh, three or four days?
Please join us for a panel on WikiLeaks and the law
This Wednesday I’ll be moderating a conversation on “Legal Liability in the Age of Wikileaks,” starring two terrific First Amendment lawyers — Rob Bertsche of Prince Lobel and Jon Albano of Bingham McCutcheon.
The program is being sponsored by Hacks/Hackers of Boston, which brings together journalists and technology folks. We’ll schmooze from 6 to 7 p.m. and get down to business from 7 to 8. I hope you’ll join us.
The session will be held in the student lounge at Boston University’s College of Communication, 640 Commonwealth Ave. For more information, just click here.
What was missing from today’s Boston Globe
How many trees had to die so that the Boston Globe could stop cartoonist Dan Wasserman from raining on the Museum of Fine Arts’ parade?
Earlier this weekend, Media Nation heard that the Globe had killed a cartoon by Wasserman that was scheduled to run on today’s editorial page. Sure enough, you will find a guest op-ed headlined “The tech-politics divide” where Wasserman’s cartoon ought to be.
Then, this morning, I received a PDF of the page — already printed — from an anonymous source. The cartoon is vintage Wasserman, poking vicious good fun at the MFA and at Bank of America. I asked Wasserman to tell me what happened, and here is the full text of his e-mailed response:
The cartoon was held but is scheduled to run next Sunday. The publisher [Christopher Mayer] was concerned that the MFA, on the day it was celebrating the opening of its new wing, was being nicked in a cartoon that was aimed at Bank of America. I was out of the office on Friday, and because of early weekend deadlines, the cartoon was coming off the presses before he could reach me to talk it through. I’m disappointed it was held. It’s a strong, timely cartoon.
Because Wasserman says the cartoon will run next Sunday, I’ve decided to hold off from posting the PDF.
The PDF is clearly a scan of a printed page. How many Ideas sections were printed and discarded after management decided to spike the cartoon? I understand it may have been quite a few, but I don’t have a confirmed number.
I also asked the Globe’s spokesman, vice president Robert Powers, for comment. He sent along the following statement a few minutes ago:
We do not comment on editorial decisions. Unfortunately, due to early printing deadlines, the section had already started to print. No one outside of the news and editorial process for The Boston Globe is ever consulted about news and editorial decisions.
No question the Globe has invested a lot in its coverage of the MFA’s $500 million expansion. The paper published a 56-page color glossy magazine commemorating the event (we got two, since it was also included in the New York Times), featuring, among other things, a full-page ad from — yes — Bank of America. There’s an interactive special at Boston.com as well.
All good stuff. But there was nothing out of bounds or offensive in Wasserman’s cartoon. It should have run.
Photo (cc) by Tony the Misfit and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.