Boston-based national reporter Sara Rimer is among those who will lose their jobs as a result of layoffs at the New York Times, according to New York Magazine (via Romenesko). If the Boston Globe were hiring, she’d be a great pick-up.
Category: Media
More on Taunton and Jesus
I just posted a long e-mail to Media Nation from Boston Globe reporter David Abel, whose story in today’s paper did much to debunk the claim that a Taunton second-grader had been punished for drawing a picture of Jesus on the cross.
Though I still think Taunton school superintendent Julie Hackett has a disconcerting habit of invoking confidentiality whenever it’s convenient, Abel makes a number of good points about this fiasco, and I highly recommend that you read his e-mail.
I’d also like to invite Taunton Gazette reporter Gerry Tuoti and editor Dino Ciliberti to check in.
WWJD?
There’s a lesson for journalists and a lesson for public officials in what is proving to be a fiasco.
It began on Monday, when the Taunton Gazette reported that a second-grader had been sent home from school and required to undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.
The boy’s father told the Gazette that his son drew the picture in response to a class assignment in which students were asked to draw something that made them think of Christmas. “As far as I’m concerned, they’re violating his religion,” the father, Charles Johnson, told Gazette reporter Gerry Tuoti.
The story created a brief sensation, as it seemed to be another example of political correctness run amok. But it began falling apart almost immediately. Today, David Abel writes in the Boston Globe that Taunton school officials say there was no class assignment, and that the boy’s teacher became alarmed when she found the drawing because the boy told her it was himself, not Jesus, on the cross.
For good measure, Johnson comes across in the Globe like he’s only interested in one thing: money. He is quoted as saying he wants “a small lump sum” and that his family “should be compensated for our pain and suffering.”
What strikes me about Tuoti’s original Gazette story is the pains he took to confirm it. He contacted the boy’s principal, Rebecca Couet, who referred all comment to school superintendent Julie Hackett. Hackett, in turn, declined to say anything, calling it “a confidential matter regarding a student.”
Given that, there are not too many news organizations that wouldn’t run with the story. (And, in fact, Abel’s Globe story freely bashes the Gazette in a way I find unwarranted — though Gazette editor Dino Ciliberti could have helped himself if he’d returned Abel’s calls.)
So the first lesson, for journalists, is that just because officialdom does not avail itself of an opportunity to knock down your story, that shouldn’t be taken as confirmation. (On a far more cosmic level, I recall that CBS News was very excited when someone showed those phony National Guard documents about George W. Bush to then-White House spokesman Scott McClellan, and that McClellan didn’t dispute their authenticity.)
Would I have run with the story? Yes, I would have, and I suspect most editors and news directors would have as well. And I don’t think the Gazette has anything to be embarrassed about. But if I were a television reporter who stuck a microphone in the faces of passersby to ask them what they thought of Taunton’s war on Christmas, I’d be just a little bit chagrined right now.
The second lesson is for public officials, and it’s rather simple: When you choose not to comment in response to a reporter’s inquiry, use your imagination and picture the consequences. And tell the truth.
Why am I suggesting that there was a lack of candor? Because, on Monday, superintendent Hackett told the Gazette she was forbidden from talking about an individual student. And on Tuesday, she couldn’t shut up. Abel writes:
She [Hackett] said the drawing was seen as a potential cry for help when the student identified himself, rather than Jesus, on the cross, which prompted the teacher to alert the school’s principal and staff psychologist. As a result, the boy underwent a psychological evaluation….
“In this case, as in any other case involving the well-being of a student, the administration acted in accordance with the School Department’s well-established protocol,’’ she said in a statement. “This protocol is centered upon the student’s care, well-being, and educational success. The protocol includes a review of the student’s records.”
That’s quite an outburst of non-confidential verbiage. And it strongly suggests that Hackett was either being less than candid when she told the Gazette on Monday that she couldn’t address the issue, or that she intentionally violated the boy’s privacy on Tuesday in an attempt to clean up the mess. My guess is that it was the former. (I also hope the Gazette on Monday did not let her believe that she had succeeded in killing the story.)
In her interview with the Globe, Hackett accuses the Gazette of not giving school officials sufficient time to respond. That’s a serious charge, but it doesn’t square with her telling the Gazette that she couldn’t speak about a “confidential” matter.
Hackett also calls the Gazette’s report “totally inaccurate.” In fact, she has misdiagnosed the problem. It was entirely accurate, but it appears not to have been true. She needs to take some responsibility for that.
More coverage from the Gazette and the Boston Herald. Here is some right-wing reaction to the initial story (via Chris Bodenner). And here is a lengthy statement from the Taunton School Department, which, of course, would never violate the confidentiality of its students.
Update: The Globe’s David Abel offers some further thoughts in the comments.
Two cheers for anonymous sources
Yes, anonymous quotes should be used sparingly. But in my latest for the Guardian, I argue that they are just like anything else in the journalist’s toolbox — a help to readers when used properly, a bane when abused.
McGrory to return to column-writing
Boston Globe veteran Brian McGrory is giving up his post as metro editor and returning to writing his column, according to an e-mail sent to the staff by editor Marty Baron, a copy of which was obtained by Media Nation a little while ago.
McGrory will be replaced by Jennifer Peter, currently the city editor. The switch will take place in January.
Baron’s e-mail is full of praise for McGrory, who, he says, asked for a promise to return to his column when he agreed to take the metro editor’s job in May 2007. And, indeed, Baron should be happy with McGrory. The Globe’s local coverage has been excellent this year despite internal turmoil caused by the New York Times Co.’s wrangling with the Globe’s unions and its subsequent attempt to sell the paper — an attempt that ended in management announcing it had decided to hold on to the Globe.
When McGrory gave up his column, he was replaced by Kevin Cullen. But, based on Baron’s e-mail, it sounds like McGrory’s column will be in-addition-to rather than instead-of: “To his fellow columnists: We’ll be working out a new schedule.”
More from the Boston Phoenix’s Adam Reilly and the Globe’s MetroDesk blog.
The full text of Baron’s e-mail follows:
To all:
When Brian McGrory became Metro editor, he set a clear and ambitious course. Stories would be unique and enterprising. They would not only be important; they would be interesting and entertaining. There would be humanity and no lack of humor. The quality of writing would be top-notch.
Those were goals in May, 2007. Today, we can honestly say he has accomplished them all, brilliantly so. This is a Metro staff that day after day sets the state and local news agenda. Under Brian’s strong and skilled leadership, the staff routinely beats the competition on major stories. Investigative moxie has been built into its DNA. We’ve dramatically improved our hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute presence online.
And this is a staff with a wide-ranging repertoire. We have stuff that hits hard when called for. We also have reportorial gems that surface the personality — and the characters — of the community. These are stories of emotion and empathy, of sorrow, joy, and laughter. Whatever the story, one thing is for sure: The writing matters. And it sparkles, often because Brian himself applied the polish.
Now I have to let you in on something Brian told me when he graciously and enthusiastically took on the job of Deputy Managing Editor/Local News: He wanted advance permission to return to his column after two years. I gave it, of course. If Brian was going to lend his talents to the entire newsroom, this was a loan term I could scarcely refuse.
We’re well past two years, and we’re nearing three. Brian has reminded me of my commitment, and I’m going to honor it. He’ll be returning as a columnist in early January. (To his fellow columnists: We’ll be working out a new schedule.) I’m sad to have one of America’s best journalists step out of a position that is central to our success. I know, though, what we gain: The return of a superb columnist, also one of America’s best, and just the sort of eloquent and forceful voice for the Globe in the community that is also critical to our success.
So much of what our newsroom has achieved in recent years is a product of Brian’s ferocious work ethic, deep contacts in the community, his dedication to craft, boundless creative thinking, and a leadership style that is both inspired and inspirational. Think back on a remarkable run of coverage: revelations about corruption at the highest level on Beacon Hill; investigations into abuse of disability pensions; magnificently comprehensive, vivid, and sensitive coverage of Senator Kennedy’s illness, death and funeral; the inner workings of City Hall, and the circles of influence, revealed as never before; and scoops and works of distinctive enterprise that are truly too lengthy to list here. He has set a high standard for us all.
Another accomplishment — a huge one — is that he has constructed a remarkable team of reporters and editors. From that talented team comes his successor, Jennifer Peter, who as City Editor has been a marvelous leader in her own right: committed, driven, versatile, deeply knowledgeable. You have to wonder at her seemingly limitless capacity for work and her infinite patience. You have to admire her comfortable manner and how easily she listens, drawing out the best in others. I know for a fact that Brian leaned constantly on Jen for some of the soundest judgment in the newsroom.
Jen knows the Globe well, having led the staff on some of our biggest stories. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone with her range and experience, and her appointment is a good reminder that the Globe newsroom has a remarkably deep reservoir of talent.
Jen’s professional career in Boston began in 2002, when she was hired by the Associated Press as a general assignment reporter and then quickly moved to the State House. She became the AP’s lead reporter on the legalization of gay marriage and its local reporter assigned to John Kerry’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Jen has built an impressive career at the Globe in the last five years. She became co-editor of the Globe North section in 2004, the Globe’s state political editor in January 2007 and then city editor later that year. She has coordinated the local news report and directly overseen coverage of schools, police, transportation, and Boston’s neighborhoods.
As political editor, she directed coverage of the tumultuous early days of the Patrick administration and the final gay marriage vote, with all the drama that preceded and followed it. As city editor, she played a central role in coverage of the Tai Ho fire, which killed two firefighters, and the controversies it ignited; the so-called Craigslist killing; and Senator Kennedy’s brain cancer diagnosis and death. She has worked powerfully well with reporters on some of our most memorable enterprise.
A New England native — born and raised in rural New Hampshire (Gilsum, population 500) — Jen majored in English and Fine Arts at Amherst and then received her master’s degree in journalism from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication. South Boston is her home today.
Before coming to Boston for the Associated Press, Jen covered a lot of ground in her early reporting career. She started at a two-reporter newspaper in Sun Valley, Idaho, and then moved on to The Day in New London, Conn., where she covered state politics, the explosive expansion of gambling in southeastern Connecticut, and the region’s troubled nuclear power plants. After taking a position at The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., she covered municipal government and the state legislature. She also served on the paper’s investigative reporting team, collaborating on stories about patronage within the state sheriff’s department, routine violations of a law designed to protect the Chesapeake Bay, and Capital One’s role in directly writing a law that allowed it to charge higher interest rates.
So we’re in for a smooth transition in Metro when it takes effect with the New Year. We’re also in for another period of strong leadership.
Please congratulate Jen on her appointment as Deputy Managing Editor/Local News. And, Brian, many thanks for your enormous and enduring contributions to a great news organization.
Marty
Why Climategate doesn’t matter (V)
Maple syrup, a New England staple since Colonial times, may become an exotic import as a result of global warming. Sap production from sugar maples is dependent on warm days and freezing nights. But climate change has been accompanied by earlier and earlier springs — and a smaller window for producing maple syrup.
Back as 2004, the Associated Press reported on this trend as documented by the Clark Sugar House in Acworth, N.H., in business since 1896. According to Clark family records, sugar maples were never tapped before March until the mid-1980s. Then, as spring began arriving earlier each year, the timetable was moved back to February.
Three years later the New York Times checked in with Vermont maple-sugar farmers, including Burr Morse, who said he’d missed out on at least 300 gallons of sap because even February had proven to be too late.
“You might be tempted to say, well that’s a bunch of baloney — global warming,” Morse told the Times. “But the way I feel, we get too much warm. How many winters are we going to go with Decembers turning into short-sleeve weather, before the maple trees say, ‘I don’t like it here any more?’ ”
Indeed, according to the Times, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that winter temperatures in the Northeast had risen by 2.8 degrees between 1971 and 2007. The Times story also finds that though the main effect of global warming now is that maple-sugar season takes place earlier in season, eventually sugar maples will be crowded out by trees more suited to a warmer climate.* The New England Climate Coalition has posted state-by-state data here.
Quebec already dominates the maple-syrup industry. If present trends continue — and there’s no reason to think they won’t — then New England’s maple-sugar farms could soon be reduced to museums. Or Wal-Marts.
*Sentence added for clarity.
Photo (cc) by Melissa and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
Tom Oliphant reviews Kennedy memoir
Retired Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant’s closeness to the late senator Ted Kennedy may have deprived him of the ability to consider Kennedy dispassionately or skeptically. But he did have insights into Kennedy’s character and thinking that were rare for a journalist to attain.
So I highly recommend Oliphant’s review of Kennedy’s posthumous memoir, “True Compass,” which appears in a new quarterly journal called Democracy. According to Oliphant, Kennedy’s personal tone, his serious consideration of Catholic social-justice ideas and his remorse over his personal failings come through in ways that were rarely heard outside the circle of his family and close friends. Oliphant writes:
Introspection was never a Kennedy strength or habit, but “True Compass” has surprised and astonished those who knew him well. That includes me, a baby reporter in the late 1960s gleefully sucked into the vortex of Kennedy’s involvement in all the burning issues of his time. I dealt with him for 40 years in a happy evolution from quasi-student to willing accomplice on scores of causes (some hopeless, many successful) to something more personal; my real bias is that I never stopped being stunned by his work ethic, his relentlessness and diligence, not to mention his kindness.
Above all, Oliphant invokes a time when Kennedy was part of a better Senate — less ideological, less money-driven than today’s circus. Sadly, it makes you realize that if it seems Kennedy’s likely successor, Martha Coakley, may be unable to fill his shoes, neither could a young Ted Kennedy himself, given how the institution has diminished in stature and seriousness.
Photo (cc) by the BBC World Service and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
What to do about the other Joe Kennedy
With the primaries for the U.S. Senate now behind us, I’m starting to hear rumblings about a third candidate in the race — Joe Kennedy. No, he’s not the former congressman. Rather, he’s an independent who says his views “are closely aligned with the Libertarian Party.”
Thus the media’s perpetual dilemma. Do they cover someone who poses absolutely no threat either to Democratic candidate Martha Coakley or Republican Scott Brown? Or do they ignore him and face accusations of bias in favor of the two major parties?
Such matters should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Kennedy did have to get 10,000 signatures, just like Coakley and Brown. But the majors had to test themselves in contested primaries. Kennedy, by contrast, automatically won a spot on the ballot. It hardly seems right to put him on an equal footing.
I’d also draw a contrast between Kennedy’s candidacy and those of past longshot candidates who represented actual political parties. In recent years, the Green and Libertarian parties have briefly enjoyed major-party status thanks to the appeal of strong candidates like Jill Stein and Carla Howell, respectively. In situations like those, attention must be paid. But Kennedy is not a third-party candidate; he’s a no-party candidate.
Kennedy deserves some coverage, but certainly not equal coverage. And I’d invite him to the first televised debate. If he registers in subsequent poll results and can raise some money, then he’ll deserve to be taken seriously. If not, then the media shouldn’t be blamed for focusing on candidates who actually have some chance of winning.
Why Climategate doesn’t matter (IV)
Carbon dioxide is killing the world’s coral reefs in two distinctly different ways. Indirectly, the human-caused build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere has led to global warming, which pushes these fragile ecosystems outside the narrow range of temperatures in which they can thrive.
In 2006, National Geographic put it this way: “Small but prolonged rises in sea temperature force coral colonies to expel their symbiotic, food-producing algae, a process known as bleaching.”
But CO2 kills the reefs directly, too. Because much of what doesn’t end up in the atmosphere is sequestered in the ocean, where it turns the water more acidic. As the Christian Science Monitor reported yesterday, Jeffrey Short, a scientist and environmentalist, told delegates at the Copenhagen conference on global warming that carbon-dioxide emissions should be drastically cut even in the unlikely event that they are not contributing to global warming.
Damage to the coral reefs, the nearest of which are off the coast of Florida, is not theoretical. They are already dead and dying, and some experts believe there’s little chance of their bouncing back. (The Miami Herald reported in 2006 that 90 percent of the reefs in that area had already died.) The reefs are important breeding grounds for fish. According to a study conducted several years ago, National Geographic reports, “fish diversity has tumbled by half in some areas.”
A particularly catastophic event took place in 1998, when a strong El Niño season led to devastating ocean warming. Yes, such natural occurrences show that there are limits to what humans can accomplish. But it also dramatized the effects of long-term, human-caused warming.
As David Adam wrote in the Guardian three months ago:
Within just a few decades, experts are warning, the tropical reefs strung around the middle of our planet like a jewelled corset will reduce to rubble. Giant piles of slime-covered rubbish will litter the sea bed and spell in large distressing letters for the rest of foreseeable time: Humans Were Here.
All this during a week when the World Meteorological Organization reported that the current decade appears to be the warmest on record — warmer than the 1990s, which in turn was warmer than the 1980s. The New York Times reports that the study “largely meshes with an interim analysis by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States.”
Which brings me back to 1998. Global-warming skeptics such as syndicated columnist George Will are fond of saying that the earth has been cooling since 1998. Essentially what Will and others are doing is pointing to an unusual El Niño year and using it as their baseline. They’re playing a dishonest game, and the new studies make that clear.
Photo by Sarah Olmstead (a.k.a. Queen Esoterica) and published here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
After tumult, status quo for the Times Co.
With 2009 drawing to a close, it’s now possible to say something that would have been inconceivable six months ago: the New York Times Co. is still the owner of the Boston Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.
Was it all a dream? Starting last spring, and stretching well into the summer, there was nothing but tumult. First the Times Co. demanded — and ultimately got — $20 million in concessions from the Globe’s unions. The drama was high, as management threatened to shut down the paper if the unions refused to meet its demands, while the Boston Newspaper Guild — by far the largest union at the Globe — rejected one set of concessions before finally bowing to the inevitable.
Then the Times Co. put both papers on the market. And, for a while, it looked like a significant restoration was in the works. A group headed by former Globe executive Steve Taylor emerged as a leading would-be possible buyer for the Globe, and former T&G editor Harry Whitin looked like he might be moving into the publisher’s office at his old paper.
But Times Co. executives decided to hold on to the Globe. Then, yesterday, they announced that the T&G was no longer for sale, either.
No doubt the papers were pulled off the market for a variety of reasons, both good and bad. Costs are down, circulation revenue is up thanks to a hefty price increase and, overall, the financial picture at both papers appears to be brighter than it was a year ago. On the other hand, is there any doubt that both papers would have been sold if Arthur Sulzberger and company had been able to get what they considered to be a fair price?
With things more or less the same as they ever were, members of the community have a right to feel as though they’ve been jerked around. It would be a good idea if the Times Co. devoted 2010 to rebuilding the Globe’s and the T&G’s ties to the community.
Naming Chris Mayer to be the Globe’s next publisher (he’ll have responsibilities for the Telegram & Gazette as well) was a smart first step. He’s energetic, he’s rooted in Greater Boston and he seems far more likely to be a presence on the local scene than his recent predecessors have been.
But both papers have a long way to go if they are to recover from the wounds they’ve suffered — wounds that are largely characteristic of what the entire industry is going through, but some of which were self-inflicted. The best thing the Times Co. can do next year in these parts is to make itself invisible.
Photo (cc) by Bree Bailey and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.