Media – Page 3 – Media Nation

The Boston Globe will unveil a new morning newsletter on Monday

I just signed up for Starting Point, The Boston Globe’s new morning newsletter, scheduled to debut on Monday. It sounds like it’s being positioned as a more serious alternative to The B-Side, a breezy take on the day’s events aimed at younger readers that’s part of the Globe’s free Boston.com website.

Here’s the email that I got a little while ago:

Dear Globe reader,

We’re Boston Globe journalists Diamond Naga Siu and Jazmin Aguilera, and on Sep. 9 we’re launching a morning newsletter called Starting Point.

How is it different from every other morning newsletter out there?

First, it’s focused on New England, with a selection of the most consequential stories from our region. But we’ll also survey the national and international scene, picking out the most important and interesting stories. The reporters in our Washington Bureau will provide insights into the presidential election and critical races around the US. We’ll chat with Globe journalists about the stories behind their stories. There will be special guest writers from time to time.

And because we all love a good read and honest recommendations, we’ll share our favorite books and articles, restaurants and cafes, great places to visit, and interesting things to do throughout New England.

Our goal is to inform, intrigue, and delight you. Give Starting Point a try — it’s free — and let us know what you think.

Update: As alert reader Greg Reibman notes, the sign-up pages says that Starting Point will only come out on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Not much of a daily newsletter, but maybe they’re rolling it out slowly.

The looming competition between Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy is also a test for free versus paid

Brian Stelter. Photo (cc) 2017 by Ståle Grut / NRKbeta.

This is going to be interesting. Last month, CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy announced he was leaving in order to start his own subscription-based newsletter called “Status.” CNN said it would replace Darcy as the lead writer on its “Reliable Sources” newsletter, but it wasn’t clear who that person would be or when it might happen.

On Tuesday, it was announced that Brian Stelter — Darcy’s predecessor at CNN — would be returning as the network’s chief media analyst, and that he’ll be back at the helm of the “Reliable Sources” newsletter next Monday. His old television show, also called “Reliable Sources,” will not be back, but Stelter said he expects to pop up on a number of CNN programs to talk about media topics.

This is very good news for people who care about the media, as Stelter and Darcy are both outstanding. But let’s cut to the chase, shall we? Darcy is charging $14.95 a month — triple what solo newsletter writers normally charge, but no doubt what he calculated he needs to make ends meet. Stelter’s newsletter presumably will be free, although that caveat is important given that CNN chief executive Mark Thompson is reportedly developing some paid products.

Here’s what Stelter had to say about the looming competition:

All the while I remained an avid reader of “Reliable Sources,” and especially admired Oliver Darcy’s fearless reportage, as well as his decision to launch Status last month. I’m rooting for Oliver and, as I have told him personally, I think we’re going to complement each other wonderfully.

And here’s Darcy’s take:

It goes without saying, but I am very much looking forward to Stelter’s second act at CNN. As I’ve said before, he has been a first-class mentor to me. Now, I look forward to him being a first-class competitor!

Darcy’s challenge is that though Stelter’s newsletter may be the most similar to what he does, there are also a number of other media newsletters, and most of them are free. Indeed, the author of one of them, Tom Jones of the Poynter Institute, devoted the top of his morning round-up today to Stelter’s return.

As you may recall, Stelter was one of a handful of high-profile people who were fired by Chris Licht during Licht’s brief stint as CNN’s top executive. Stelter had emerged as an important voice in speaking out against then-President Donald Trump’s war on journalists, who he called “enemies of the people,” and the new owners of CNN apparently believed Stelter was too hot for them.

The ownership hasn’t changed, but fears that CNN was going to turn into Fox Lite proved unfounded, and Stelter — who’s been busy as a freelancer — has popped up frequently on CNN’s air in recent months. Darcy, meanwhile, established a reputation for independence right from the start and wrote a number of newsletter items that must have made Licht extremely unhappy before Licht himself was finally shown the door.

I hope there’s room in the burgeoning media newsletter universe for both Darcy and Stelter. But, as I said, I have to wonder how paid can compete with free if they are both mining essentially the same ore. Best wishes to both of them.

Speaking of free versus paid, Media Nation is a free source of news and commentary — but you can become a paid supporter, and receive a weekly supporters-only newsletter, for $5 a month. Just click here.

Margaret Sullivan calls out a looney example of false equivalence in The New York Times

One of our most prominent media critics has dissected a particularly looney example of the so-called liberal media twisting itself into knots in order to appear fair. Writing in her newsletter, Margaret Sullivan has identified what she calls “an ugly case of ‘false balance’ in The New York Times.” Her example: a recent story headlined “Harris and Trump Have Housing Ideas. Economists Have Doubts.”

Now, on many occasions the Times will publish a headline or social media tease that makes you think they’re engaging in both-sides-ism — then, when you read the story, you see that it’s actually not that bad. In this case, though, reporters Jeanna Smialek and Linda Qiu literally compare Vice President Kamala Harris’ proposal to provide government assistance in order to boost housing with Donald Trump’s threat to deport undocumented immigrants, thus opening up their homes to native-born Americans. Both ideas have problems! Or as Smialek and Qiu write:

Their two visions of how to solve America’s affordable housing shortage have little in common, and Ms. Harris’s plan is far more detailed. But they do share one quality: Both have drawn skepticism from outside economists.

Good Lord. Here’s how Sullivan puts it:

Stories like this run rampant in the Times, and far beyond. It matters more in the Times because — even in this supposed “post-media era” — the country’s biggest newspaper still sets the tone and wields tremendous influence. And, of course, the Times has tremendous resources, a huge newsroom and the ability to hire the best in the business. Undeniably, it does a lot of excellent work.

But its politics coverage often seems broken and clueless — or even blatantly pro-Trump. There’s so much of this false-balance nonsense in the Times that there’s a Twitter (X) account devoted to mocking it, called New York Times Pitchbot.

Sullivan, as you may know, is a former public editor for the Times and a former media columnist for The Washington Post. She currently writes a media column for The Guardian as well as her newsletter, “American Crisis.” (Disclosure: She also provided a kind blurb for our book, “What Works in Community News,” which graces the front cover.)

Sullivan’s lament about the Times’ very strange comparison of Harris and Trump on housing comes at a moment of rising anger on social media from the left about the paper’s coverage of politics, with a number of people either angrily threatening to cancel their subscriptions or claiming they’ve already done so.

Like Sullivan, I value the Times’ coverage in many areas. Its investigative reporting, including deep dives into Trump’s corruption and worse, has been invaluable. But, too often, its day-to-day political coverage does indeed lapse into both-sides-ism and false equivalence, as I often complained about when I was at The Boston Phoenix in the 1990s and early ’2000s. In 2009, when I was writing a media column for The Guardian, I concluded that the Times and other mainstream media were so cowed by the extreme right that they often pulled their punches:

Major elements of the media, terrified of accusations that they’re in the tank with Democrats and liberals, would rather deny reality than tell the simple truth. This abject spinelessness is a significant factor in how the lies of the right infect public discourse.

I later took my column to GBH News and wrote a piece in 2018 about “the timid Times.” You get the idea. I’m citing all this to assert that my Times-bashing credentials are in order, because all too often I see way too much silly criticism along the lines of Let’s start a boycott because the Times published an op-ed I don’t like. These days I often find myself actually defending the Times. We should reserve our outrage for the truly outrageous.

Still, as Sullivan astutely observes, there’s enough to that criticism that we need to take notice. The Times is our largest and most influential daily newspaper, and much of the press continues to take its cues from them. That includes the Big Three evening newscasts, still the closest thing we have to a mass medium.

No, I’m not going to cancel my subscription, and you shouldn’t, either. But foolishness like pretending to take Trump’s “housing” “plan” seriously serves no one — least of all democracy.

A predictably uneventful interview; plus, media links and observations for your weekend

Dana Bash interviews Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz

Labor Day weekend is upon us, and we’re getting away for a few days. Before we do, though, here are a few links and observations.

• In Thursday night’s CNN interview, Dana Bash’s questions were predictable, Vice President Kamala Harris’ and Gov. Tim Walz’s answers were fine, and that was that. I don’t know why anyone thought two experienced politicians were going to have any trouble in such a setting. Here’s a theory I haven’t heard from anyone else: Donald Trump invariably runs off the rails, and President Biden has an increasingly difficult time expressing himself. We’d forgotten what these things normally look like.

• A New Hampshire man named Taylor Cockerline has been sentenced to 27 months in prison and three years of supervised probation for his role in harassing and intimidating New Hampshire Public Radio journalist Lauren Chooljian, her parents and her editor, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston. Co-defendants Eric Labarage and Michael Waselchuck have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing, while a fourth defendant, Keenan Saniatan (identified only as “Saniatan” in the news release), will reportedly plead guilty on Sept. 5. Earlier, more in-depth coverage of this bizarre case is here.

• In other New Hampshire media news, The News and Sentinel, a weekly paper in Colebrook, is shutting down after the Harrigan family, which owns the 154-year-old paper, was unable to find a buyer. The InDepthNH story on the closure contains a lot of fascinating details about the paper, especially a 1997 incident when a gunman killed four people, including the editor. The late publisher, John Harrigan, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the shooting. The News and Sentinel’s slogan, by the way, should be a model for other news outlets: “Independent but Not Neutral.”

• Barnes & Noble is opening 58 new stores in 2024, and media newsletter writer Bo Sacks says that’s good news for the ailing magazine business: “B&N has a terrific well curated newsstand for magazines. 54 [sic] new newsstands may not sound like much, but it will be a big national help in magazine sales.” By the way, Barnes & Noble founder Leonard Riggio died earlier this week at 83.

• Veteran tech writer Mathew Ingram is leaving the staff of the Columbia Journalism Review, where he’s been working since 2017 after earlier stints at the late, lamented Gigaom and, before that, The Globe and Mail of Toronto. Ingram is a calm, sometimes contrarian voice at moments when everyone else’s hair is on fire, and he is well worth paying attention to. No word on what’s next, though he says he’ll continue to write for CJR from time to time. Best wishes to him.

Report: Former Globe reporter Andrea Estes wins her arbitration case

Former Boston Globe investigative reporter Andrea Estes, who was fired in the spring of 2023 after the paper published a botched report about top MBTA managers who were working from remote locations, has won a grievance that she filed through the Globe’s union, according to Scott Van Voorhis of Contrarian Boston.

Estes, who is now a reporter with the Plymouth Independent, is eligible to receive back pay and could return to the Globe, Van Voorhis writes, although he observes, “We wouldn’t bank on it.” The Independent is one of the larger, better-funded nonprofits, and its editor-founder, Mark Pothier, is himself a Globe alumnus.

There’s no question that the story Estes helped report had significant problems. But the breakdown had all the appearances of a group effort, and it’s never been clear exactly why Estes, who had compiled an admirable record during her years at the Globe, was singled out.

Van Voorhis also published a statement from the Globe he received that reads:

The trust of our readers and our community is our greatest asset, and we will always strive to ensure that our journalism is worthy of them. If it falls short, we will continue to take necessary action to maintain this trust.

We are disappointed by the arbitrator’s decision which deprived the company of our rights under our collective bargaining agreement with the Guild. We of course will nonetheless respect the decision.

Among other things, Estes and her colleagues reported that nine MBTA managers were living in remote locations across the country and working virtually. The actual number turned out to be six.

In November 2023, Bruce Mohl reported in CommonWealth Beacon that Estes may have been the victim of stonewalling state bureaucrats who did not give her the information she needed to get the story right.

Earlier coverage.

A thoughtful, nuanced take on how the press is (and isn’t) performing in covering the campaign

Donald Trump and President Biden at the June 27 debate

In Nieman Reports, John Harwood offers a nuanced assessment of how the media are performing in covering the presidential campaign. If I may summarize, Harwood’s take is that the press has neither been as awful as Democratic partisans would have you believe nor as good as it ought to be in holding Donald Trump to account. He writes:

Elevating democracy raises the question: Should a reporter actively promote the candidate committed to preserving it? But elevating neutrality, and passively watching an authoritarian gain power, could unravel the press freedoms woven into the fabric of the U.S. since its founding. Different journalists, sometimes gingerly, walk different paths….

In fact, neither the [New York] Times nor other major outlets have ignored the threat to democracy. Trump’s vow to be a “dictator for a day,” the criminal prosecutions of his allies in the scheme to count “fake electors,” and his plan to seize greater personal control of the government bureaucracy have all drawn significant attention. In the case of Project 2025, the radical right-wing agenda prepared in part by some of his close advisors, news stories later amplified by Democrats produced a storm intense enough that Trump disavowed the blueprint.

Harwood devotes some attention to the media’s obsession with President Biden’s age, observing that Trump received nowhere near the same level of scrutiny despite being nearly as old as Biden and showing clear signs of mental decline.

Yet it has seemed clear to me from the start, especially since the June 27 debate, that the press — led by the Times — became obsessed with driving Biden out of the race because they were so terrified by the prospect of a second Trump presidency. And, sure enough, once Biden was replaced by Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket, the Democrats moved into a small but consistent lead in the polls.

Harwood, by the way, was one of several journalists who were let go by CNN during the brief reign of Chris Licht, allegedly for his staunch anti-Trumpism. Given Harwood’s measured, thoughtful tone in his Nieman piece, that says more about Licht than it does about Harwood.

The nuances of Biden’s 8% statement show why he was right — and why PolitiFact was wrong

Earlier this week I wrote that PolitiFact got it wrong on a claim by President Biden that billionaires pay just 8% of their income on federal taxes. PolitiFact said Biden’s assertion was “false,” and I disagreed. I got some pushback from several readers. On second thought, I decided I was incorrect. But on third thought, I’ve concluded that I was right.

Here is what Biden said Monday night:

And folks, you know we have 1,000 billionaires in America. You know what their average tax rate is? 8.2%. If we just increase their taxes, as we proposed, to 25%, which isn’t even the highest tax rate, it would raise $500 billion new dollars over 10 years.

The issue is complicated. Biden was basing his claim on the fact that unrealized stock market gains are not taxed. It’s only after you sell that you’re subject to the capital gains tax, which is 20% if your income is higher than about $500,000 (the actual income levels vary depending on marital status and how long you held the stock).

Since you can’t spend money that isn’t in your possession, and since you do actually pay taxes once you sell, then it might seem that PolitiFact was right and Biden was wrong. But not so fast.

First, the wealthy, and billionaires in particular, have multiple ways of lowering or even avoiding taxes on capital gains. Whizy Kim, writing for Vox in March of this year, put it this way:

How much tax a wealthy person owes in a given year is a complex tapestry threaded with exemptions, deductions, credits, and obscure loopholes you’ve never heard of. The ideal is to owe zilch. If that sounds impossible to achieve, just look at the leaked tax returns of the wealthiest Americans that nonprofit news site ProPublica analyzed in 2021: Over several years, billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Michael Bloomberg, among others, paid no federal income taxes at all.

Her story, headlined “The billionaire’s guide to doing taxes,” outlines a number of tax-avoidance schemes, and obviously those options are not available to middle-class Americans. As James Royal writes for Bankrate: “While it can be easy to overlook, the IRS has clearly laid out how you can qualify for a 0 percent capital gains tax rate, and it’s not that difficult for most Americans to achieve.”

Second, Biden has actually proposed taxing unrealized capital gains, and Kamala Harris has endorsed that idea as well. So when Biden talks about billionaires paying 8%, he has something very specific in mind, and something that he would change if he had the opportunity. PolitiFact argues that the very fact that this is a proposal rather than the current reality makes Biden’s assertion false, but I think it’s just the opposite. In effect, he’s saying: Billionaires are paying a tax rate of just 8% on their income. Vice President Harris and I want to change that.

The second sentence doesn’t negate the first, entirely true sentence. In reporting on Biden’s proposal for MarketWatch, Victor Reklaitis writes:

Treasury officials offered their rationale for the proposed change, saying the country’s current approach with unrealized capital gains “disproportionately benefits high-wealth taxpayers and provides many high-wealth taxpayers with a lower effective tax rate than many low- and middle-income taxpayers.” They also said the current approach “exacerbates income and wealth disparities” and “produces an incentive for taxpayers to inefficiently lock in portfolios of assets and hold them primarily for the purpose of avoiding capital gains tax on the appreciation, rather than reinvesting the capital in more economically productive investments.”

You can agree with the Biden-Harris tax proposal or disagree with it, but it doesn’t change the reality that billionaires are paying about 8% of their income on federal taxes. (A White House report cited by PolitiFact says that 8% — to be more precise, 8.2% — is an estimate, and that the actual rate could be somewhere between 6% and 12%. The report also says the data pertain to the 400 wealthiest families. Biden cited 1,000 individuals, so maybe that amounts to the same thing.)

For Biden, it was a talking point — he didn’t take the time to define what he meant by income, and we shouldn’t expect that in political speeches. But by any measure of truth and accuracy, he was right and PolitiFact was wrong.

Bonfire of the fact-checkers; plus, Dems embrace the night, and Walz’s heartland appeal

The media fact-checkers have not distinguished themselves this week, torturing the language to find fault with statements by Democrats that, in some cases, are actually true.

Now, I’m going to confess that I was not following the fact-checkers during the Republican National Convention. But what I have found going back a number of years — as I wrote for HuffPost way back in 2011 — is that organizations like PolitiFact often twist themselves into knots to find negative observations to make about Democrats so they can achieve some sort of balance with Republicans, who were often untethered from the truth even before the rise of Donald Trump.

Fact-checkers for The New York Times and The Washington Post have both come under fire during this week’s Democratic National Convention. But I want to focus on PolitiFact, a Pulitzer Prize-winning project, which has produced some fact-checks that make you scratch your head. I’ve been following PolitiFact on Threads. Here are a few examples:

• On Tuesday, PolitiFact gave President Biden a “false” on its Truth-O-Meter for claiming that billionaires pay an average tax rate of 8.2%. The post linked back to a PolitFact story from last January that said:

The White House report found that if you include unrealized gains in the income calculations of the 400 richest U.S. families, then their taxes paid would account for just 8.2% of their income.

Economists and policymakers have long debated whether the government should tax unrealized gains. But Biden made it sound as if 8% was the standard rate today, not what would happen under a potential future proposal.

In other words, Biden was correct under PolitiFact’s own analysis.

• On Wednesday, PolitiFact slapped J.B. Pritzker on the wrist: “Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Trump told ‘us to inject bleach’ during the pandemic. That’s Mostly False. Trump’s 2020 comments about treatments were criticized, but he didn’t tell people to inject or ‘take a shot’ of anything.”

Pritzker’s statement was labeled as “mostly false.” Yet here’s a BBC report from 2020 that quotes Trump’s exact words: “And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?”

Pritzker was right on the facts, the nuance and the context. Full stop.

• Two more from Biden: PolitiFact said the president’s assertions that Trump wants to cut Medicare and Social Security were “mostly false” because — God help us — “When he was president, Trump released annual budgets that proposed cutting Medicare but he has repeatedly pledged throughout the 2024 presidential campaign that he will not cut the program” and “Trump has said in the past that he’s open to cutting Social Security, but this isn’t his current position.”

I’m sorry, but that’s just embarrassing.

The late show

A number of observers, me included, have been puzzled by the DNC’s schedule, which has resulted in the main speaker of the night taking the podium after 11 p.m. The swing states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and most of Michigan are all in the Eastern time zone, and presumably you don’t want soft supporters and undecided voters to go to bed before hearing from the Obamas, Tim Walz and, tonight, Kamala Harris.

But it may not have made much difference. According to Craig Harrington of the liberal organization Media Matters for America, the audience for President Biden fell off only 2%. “Not ideal, but not disastrous either,” he wrote on Twitter/X.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that no one is going to invest a couple of hours tonight and then tune out just before Harris comes on. Still, it strikes me that it would have been a good idea to wrap up each night’s proceedings before viewers decide they’ve had enough.

Walz from the heart

Tim Walz’s short, punchy address and Oprah Winfrey’s speech were pitch-perfect.

Those who thought that Harris should have picked Josh Shapiro as her running mate may have changed their minds Wednesday night, as Shapiro delivered a perfectly serviceable but rather generic address. Walz, by contrast, was folksy and empathetic, speaking to the heartland in a way that the Democrats haven’t done in many years. You had to love his former football players taking the stage, too.

What can I say about Bill Clinton? It was interesting to see that some women I follow on Threads were tuning out. Given his history, I couldn’t believe that he glommed onto the dick joke President Obama indulged in — funny coming from Obama, creepy from Clinton.

Clinton also spoke way too long and just sort of rambled. I know that some viewers loved it, and I’ve heard from a few. I also understand that a former president can’t be denied his place at the podium. But I was glad when it was over.

Biden coverage underscores the decline of print; plus, a couple of DNC media tidbits

Early print deadlines meant that three of our national newspapers, The New York Times, The Washington Post and USA Today, have no coverage of President Biden’s keynote address. All of them, needless to say, go big with Biden’s speech online. It makes you wonder who’s still bothering with the legacy press’ shrinking print editions.

A fourth national paper, the business-focused Wall Street Journal, did manage to get Biden’s speech on page one, though it’s not the lead. Locally, The Boston Globe leads with the president as well. I have to assume that’s a late edition.

Biden was supposed to go on at about 10:30 p.m., but the Democrats veered off schedule and he didn’t start for another hour. They’d better fix that — the last thing the party wants is for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s acceptance speech on Wednesday and Vice President Kamala Harris’ on Thursday to get pushed out of prime time.

Stop talking at me

God bless C-SPAN. We tuned in around 9 p.m. and chose PBS, figuring the “NewsHour” crew would strike a good balance between carrying the speeches and offering a little bit of commentary and analysis. We were wrong. We missed Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s speech entirely. And when we finally switched over, we discovered that PBS had cut away from Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, a major figure in the party.

At least PBS carried New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose fiery populism was probably the highlight of the evening, though Hillary Clinton’s address conjured up all sorts of emotions. Yes, it should have been her.

I’m not going to try to assess Biden’s speech except to agree with other observers that I respect his successful presidency and am grateful that his deep sense of patriotism led him to step aside, even though it was evident that he’s still angry he was forced to make that move.

New Haven crew hits Chicago

Normally I like to see local news organizations stay mission-focused when big national events occur. But I’ll cut the New Haven Independent some slack. After all, founder Paul Bass is no longer the editor, and he’s as knowledgeable about politics as anyone I know.

Bass and staff reporter Nora Grace-Flood are in Chicago while Babz Rawls Ivy, the morning host at the Independent-affiliated radio station, WNHH-LP, is back in New Haven offering some commentary. Oakland-based cartoonist Fred Noland of the Independent Review Crew is in Chicago as well, though he hasn’t started drawing yet.

And it’s not all national. Here’s a funny story, with video and photos, about Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar squaring off with New Haven Democrats about the virtues of New Haven apizza versus Chicago-style deep-dish pizza.

The Washington Post: The early print bird misses the keynote

USA Today: Protests but no convention coverage above the fold

The Wall Street Journal: Biden’s speech, yes, but wow, Edgar Bronfman!

The Boston Globe: The president makes page one

What’s a page-one story? In The New York Times, it depends on where you look.

The New York Times, unlike The Boston Globe or The Washington Post, does not have a real replica edition that lets you read the paper online the way it was laid out in print. The Times does offer a kludgy version through Press Reader, but it’s hard to access and harder to use.

Instead, the Times’ website and apps provide a digital listing of that day’s print stories called Today’s Paper. During the week, I generally start with the homepage instead of page one, but on Sundays I like to read that day’s paper.

This morning I noticed a story on an image of today’s front page that I wanted to read, headlined “Inside the Ascent of a V.P. Quietly Making Her Mark,” by Peter Baker and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, one of our fine Northeastern alumni. I quick went to the Today’s Paper list of stories — and it wasn’t there.

Now, I didn’t have to search too hard. When I switched to the homepage, it was the lead story. By the way, it’s smart and insightful. You should read it. Here’s a free link.

My point, though, is that the Times should pay more attention to how its customers experience its digital products. This is the second time this has happened recently. If I were only relying on the Today’s Paper listing, and if I hadn’t bothered to look at an image of the print front page, I would have had no idea the story even existed.