Marianne Williamson. Photo (cc) 2019 by Gage Skidmore.
The whataboutism burns brightly in an otherwise fine New York Times story on how Republican candidates for president are undermining confidence in institutions such as the courts, the military and schools. About two-thirds of the way into the article, Jennifer Medina writes:
Casting doubt on the integrity of government is hardly limited to Republican candidates. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-shot candidate for the Democratic nomination, has made questioning public health officials on long-established science a focus of his campaign. In her quixotic bid for the nomination, Marianne Williamson has declared that she is “running to challenge the system.”
And President Biden, whose resistance to institutional change has often frustrated the left wing of his party, has mused about his skepticism of the Supreme Court — “this is not a normal court,” he said after the court’s ruling striking down affirmative action in college admissions.
Well, now. Are we to believe that fringe Democratic figures like Kennedy (essentially a Steve Bannon-promoted Trumper plant) and Williamson are the equivalent of major Republicans like Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis or even Nikki Haley?
As for Biden’s comment that the Supreme Court isn’t “normal,” consider: one of the justices, Neil Gorsuch, occupies the stolen seat that Mitch McConnell refused to let President Obama fill following the death of Antonin Scalia; another, Amy Coney Barrett, was rushed through in the closing days of Trump’s presidency; and all three of Trump’s appointments were made by a president who had lost the popular vote and were confirmed by Republican senators who represented far fewer people than the Democratic senators.
The Times is hardly alone in reaching reflexively for that “to be sure” section, even when the facts cut entirely one way. But given that it’s our leading news organization, it really ought to concentrate on telling the truth rather than pandering to both sides.
Boston Globe Media Partners has fired back against its former president Vinay Mehra, who sued the company in June over what he claimed was $12 million in compensation that he is owed in lost commissions, wages and other compensation. The Globe’s answer, filed Wednesday in Suffolk Superior Court, goes beyond the usual dry denial of Mehra’s charges to offer a rather vivid account of its own allegations against Mehra. It begins by claiming that the Globe …
… terminated Vinay Mehra’s employment [in June 2020] for cause for repeated instances of poor judgment (or worse) with excessive, unauthorized, and inappropriate spending of the Globe’s money. Unable to resist the temptation to spend corporate money for his own benefit, Mehra repeatedly used his corporate credit card or else spent company money to run up extraordinary expenses that offered no benefit to the Globe. At first, Mehra acknowleged the Globe’s objections to these abuses, and promised they would not recur. But they did recur, and Mehra eventually simply stopped even attempting to justify them.
According to the answer, filed by the Globe’s lawyer, Mark W. Batten of Proskauer Rose, Mehra:
Leased a car for $23,000 without authorization shortly after he was hired in 2017.
Spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” on consultants without seeking approval from ownership.
Spent $45,000 on a two-year subscription to Bloomberg Financial, accessible only to him and “with zero discernible benefit to the company.”
Racked up some $400,000 on his corporate credit card without approval, spent Globe funds to attend the 2019 Super Bowl with no benefit to the Globe, and mischaracterized a charitable endeavor related to COVID-19 that primarily benefited a hospital connected to his wife.
The narrative section of the Globe’s answer concludes by alleging that, after repeated offenses, “it became clear that his behavior could not, and would not, stop” and that “the breach had at last become irreparable.”
On Thursday, the Globe’s Larry Edelman reported on the Globe’s answer and quoted Mehra’s lawyer, David W. Sanford, as saying: “The Boston Globe’s accusations are false and a jury that will hear this case eventually will understand them to be false…. The hard work of the litigation begins now with discovery, and discovery will show Vinay is right.”
Before coming to the Globe, Mehra held high-level corporate positions at Politico and, before that, GBH in Boston.
Jeffrey Goldberg, left, interviews then-Secretary of State John Kerry. Photo (cc) 2016 by the Brookings Institution.
I can’t say that I’m a fan of PBS’s “Washington Week,” even though its recently departed moderator, Yamiche Alcindor, is someone for whom I have a lot of respect.
When I’ve watched, which has not been often, it has struck me as being obsessed with political gamesmanship to its core. An elected official could call for executing anyone caught wearing green pants, and the panel would chew over the political implications rather than the outrageousness of the proposal itself. The questions and answers come across as rehearsed.
So I don’t care all that much that Alcindor’s successor will be Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. Is it a mistake to follow Alcindor with a late-middle-aged white guy of moderately liberal views? Yes, it is a mistake. But I don’t imagine things will change all that much.
The show will be renamed “Washington Week with The Atlantic.” The PBS press release says that The Atlantic will become an “editorial partner” along with the “PBS NewsHour” and WETA, but it sounds like The Atlantic will not be involved in the actual production. Goldberg’s announcement makes no mention of the possibility that The Atlantic will have a greater presence on the program.
The one positive I can think of is that, at a time when the thrice-indicted Donald Trump is threatening the very future of our democracy by running for president on an explicitly authoritarian platform, it’s notable that The Atlantic has been fierce and unstinting in its commentary on Trump and Trumpism. So I guess we’ll see how that plays out on Friday nights.
Fifty years ago Monday, a Delta airliner crashed at Logan Airport, killing 88 of the 89 people on board; the only survivor died several months later. The Boston Globe reports on how the families of the victims are getting by those years later. Below is an email I received from former Globe editor Matt Storin on what it was like to cover those tragic events — and how the accident and its aftermath changed the rules of media access.
I was city editor at the time and when we learned of the crash, we of course scrambled everyone available. Some reporters were dispatched to hospitals (to no avail, since there was only one survivor that day), and others were sent to Logan. We even looked into chartering a boat to have [photographer] Bill Brett arrive by crossing the bay. But this wasn’t necessary. Unlike any other airline tragedy I’ve seen covered, there was no attempt by Logan officials to secure the crash site from the press. Our photographers got ON THE RUNWAY even as first responders were working. You wouldn’t believe some of the photos, bodies shown still in their seats (as I recall there were no signs of injuries from fire). Of course we didn’t publish those, but the ones we did publish were shot from short distances. I noted that today’s Globe story did not include a photo of the Aug. 1 morning paper. I wondered if there was a feeling that the photos would be too painful even at this late date.
I thought we did a good job of coverage. John Burke came in from the North Shore and assembled his team of suburban correspondents. They worked diligently through the late afternoon and early evening to get the list of victims with, where possible, bio information. To this day I’ve never forgotten what they accomplished on deadline. But to give you an example of how close our reporters got, I received a call on the city desk that evening from someone at the Pentagon. One of the deceased had been a Navy intelligence officer traveling with classified documents. They somehow knew that one of these documents had been picked up by Frank Mahoney, one of our reporters on the scene. Frank had not mentioned anything to us about this. When I called him at home, he confirmed that he had the document. I believe we got it into the right hands the next morning. I never inquired about what was on it. Under the circumstances, especially since we should have reported the find to the authorities, I decided not to draw any further attention to what happened.
As memory serves from half a century ago, I believe that within weeks Logan Airport advised news media of new guidelines for covering any incidents at the airport. Reporters and photographers were advised they should report to a media center in one of the terminals.
This is probably of little interest today, but today’s story brought back memories…. I’m not sure what happened to those shocking photos but I have a vague recollection of ordering that they be destroyed. In light of the lawsuit in the Kobe Bryant case, that would have been prudent.
The Boston Globe is hiring a media reporter, a position that has gone vacant for many years. It sounds like a great job, though so broad you have to wonder who could possibly keep up with so much:
Part tech beat, part culture writing, part buzzy local scoops, this job calls for a journalist who’s eager and able to explore the many ways that media shapes modern life, in Boston and beyond. They will cover our region’s advertising and publishing industries and keep an eye on the bold-faced names of local TV, yes. But they’ll also dive into the endless evolution of social media, debates over digital privacy, and the roiling challenges of misinformation in all its forms, from Twitter and Threads to TikTok and new platforms using artificial intelligence.
The Globe has not had a full-time media reporter since Mark Jurkowitz, who left in 2005 and took over the media column at The Boston Phoenix after I left for Northeastern. Mark, who had also been my predecessor at the Phoenix, is now at the Pew Research Center.
This is good news, as we really have a dearth of media reporting in Boston. That dearth has been especially acute since GBH-TV canceled “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney” in the summer of 2021, but there really hasn’t been much in terms of in-depth reporting since the Phoenix closed in 2013. The Globe has taken a couple of stabs at it but did not make a full commitment until now.
Mark Zuckerberg may soon have reason to regret pushing Threads out the door before it was ready. Lindsey Choo reports for The Wall Street Journal (free link, I think; apologies if it doesn’t work) that user engagement has fallen by 70% since its July 7 peak.
No doubt Zuckerberg wanted to take advantage of Elon Musk’s Fourth of July weekend freakout, when he limited the number of posts you could read on Twitter (especially if you weren’t a paid subscriber), cut off access to individual tweets for non-members (thus blowing up our news feed at What Works), and killed off classic TweetDeck in favor of a new, lesser update.
But Threads is frustrating to use. The biggest problem is that you can only access it on a mobile device. Also missing: a reverse-chrono tab of accounts you follow, thus clogging up your feed with brands and celebrities you don’t care about, as well as no lists and no hashtags.
Mastodon has been my first stop since Musk took over Twitter last fall, but its decentralized nature presents problems of its own. It’s difficult to find what you’re looking for, there are parts of the unfortunately named Fediverse that are invisible to you, and most of the people and accounts I need to follow just aren’t there. Bluesky is still invitation-only and has had problems of its own.
I realize this is of little interest to most people, but for those of us whose work depends on social media to some degree, it’s been an interesting — and frustrating — nine months.
The first review of Marty Baron’s forthcoming book is out, and I’m relieved. According to Kirkus Reviews, The Washington Post that Baron describes in “Collision of Power” is the same one I saw on display when I was visiting the Post and conducting interviews — including with Baron — in 2015 and ’16.
In “The Return of the Moguls,” I wrote about a news organization that had been reinvigorated by new owner Jeff Bezos (by his money, of course, but also by his energetic work on the consumer and technology side) and executive editor Baron, whose staff was relentless in exposing the truth about then-candidate Donald Trump’s fraudulent charity and, later, the existence of a tape on which he’s heard boasting about sexual assault. Most important, Bezos was described by everyone, including Baron, as respecting the independence of the newsroom and not interfering with editorial decisions.
So why am I relieved? Although it seemed unlikely, I harbored some worry that Baron was being overly diplomatic with me, and that now, after he’s retired from the Post, he was going to tell the world what it was really like to work for Bezos. The Kirkus review, though, makes it clear that there’s little distance between what Baron told me and what he’s written in “Collision of Power,” subtitled “Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post.” According to Kirkus:
Although focused on metrics and finances, Bezos staunchly supported editorial independence and journalistic integrity, a stance that put him on a collision course with Donald Trump, who expected Bezos to rein in the Post’s coverage of him and his administration. When that did not happen, he unleashed the “raw abuse of power” for which he was notorious.
The review concludes that Baron has written “an impassioned argument for objective journalism.” This is going to prove controversial at a time when objectivity is under attack. But in an address at Brandeis University earlier this year, Baron defined objectivity in its truest, most Lippmann-esque form. It is, at its best, fair-minded, independent truth-seeking. It’s not quoting “both sides” and letting the poor reader try to figure it out.
“The idea is to be open-minded when we begin our research and to do that work as conscientiously as possible,” Baron said at Brandeis. “It demands a willingness to listen, an eagerness to learn — and an awareness that there is much for us to know.”
I’m not sure whether Baron would agree, but I’m going to take it a step further and argue that even opinion journalism can be objective if it’s undertaken in the right spirit. I tell my students that if they’re producing an opinion piece, they need to acknowledge differing views and inconvenient facts and address them. If they do that, then they’re being objective. After all, Walter Lippmann himself worked the opinion side of the street for most of his career.
On Monday evening I received some sad news: Al Giordano, who was the political columnist at The Boston Phoenix in the mid-1990s, had died in Mexico, where he’d made his home for many years. The cause was lung cancer, according to retired Boston Globe editor Matt Storin, who was Al’s uncle.
For a time, I was Al’s editor at the Phoenix, so I had the honor of working with him directly. He was difficult and brilliant, a unique voice that we needed then and need even more now. Later I followed his journalism at NarcoNews.com, which covered the misguided U.S. war on drugs from the Mexican point of view. He kept up his political punditry as well, and trust me when I tell you that it was good stuff. He and I stayed in touch sporadically, and he had a standing invitation to speak to my students on one of his periodic forays to the States; sadly, we were never able to make that happen. Al was 64 at the time of his death.
Al wrote a vibrant 4,000-word essay about the importance of the Phoenix shortly after it folded in 2013. You can (and should) read it here. Below is a tribute to Al written by his friends at the Fund for Authentic Journalism, another one of Al’s projects. I don’t believe it’s still in existence, but if I find out otherwise, I’ll let you know. The tribute, by the way, was published in a friends-only post on Facebook, but his board has given people permission to share it publicly.
***
Al Giordano, 1959-2023
(En español abajo)
Al Giordano passed away Monday evening, July 10, in Mexico. He was at home, in his own bed, with friends at his side, as a hard rain came down on the land.
Al was a gifted journalist and organizer with a keen mind and the courage of his convictions. Those talents, and a lot of hard work and lived experience, allowed Al to seemingly see around the corners of history to place himself at the headwaters of seismic world change.
Al did this repeatedly over the decades, in the U.S., Latin America and beyond, often at great personal risk, but never without a sharp sense of strategy aimed at the goal. He was the John Reed of our era. He was there when the world shook to tell us why it was shaking.
Al was an active participant in some of the most consequential moments of political and social change of the last 50 years as an organizer, a journalist or an advisor. As a young organizer in the 1970s, he helped freeze the expansion of the nuclear power industry as part of the “Clamshell Alliance,” which staged successful anti-nuclear demonstrations at the then-proposed Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire. The campaign overcame great odds and ignited a “No Nukes” movement that inspired similar alliances and actions against proposed and existing nuclear power plants nationwide.
Al went on to work on John Kerry’s first Senate campaign, before becoming legendary organizer Abbie Hoffman’s apprentice in the trenches — working on organizing campaigns in Pennsylvania, Nicaragua and elsewhere. He was among the first U.S.-born journalists to document the Zapatista Army for National Liberation’s 1994 indigenous uprising.
To support that effort and to document the failed U.S. War on Drugs in Mexico and throughout Latin America, Al created the online newspaper Narco News. The trailblazing news service scored a historic victory for online press freedom in the United States when Citibank unsuccessfully sued Al in a New York court over his drug war coverage. In its ruling, the court established precedent extending the same freedom of speech protections to online journalists as enjoyed by traditional print media.
For over 14 years, and with the support and participation of dozens of collaborators, Al also ran a workshop for journalists and organizers to share strategies for the effective and strategic coverage of social movements, an effort that created effective networks with global reach among its participants, which remain active to this day. Al also garnered substantial attention for his prescient coverage of the “Obama paradigm shift” in the runup to the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, and he created an online manual for nonviolent revolution after his in-country coverage of the uprising against Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
Al’s death is a shock in the sense that he left us far too soon. But Al had been dealing with ongoing health issues for some time, even after beating back cancer several years ago. Death is never comforting, but it is relief for those enduring serious, chronic health problems. The journey, which includes both emotional and physical pain, is the hard part.
Al lived life hard and fast. That’s how it came at him. But every moment of it mattered to Al, as did winning the good fight. He literally changed the world with his organizing and journalism work. The list of his great accomplishments is long, and his impressive legacy only now launched on a journey of its own.
Even Al couldn’t outrun the reaper. None of us can. But damn, he gave life one hell of a good ride.
Al died on his own terms, still speaking his truth to power and working to organize other people to do the same, so that an even bigger truth rises. His work will live on far past his critics’ last gasps.
All we can do now is use our grief as inspiration for doing what Al would surely want us to continue doing — living authentically and in pursuit of a better world for all. We should also definitely find some time now to honor Al’s life in a manner that works for each of us, to celebrate what Al has left behind for us to build upon.
We all have to keep pushing forward for as long as time permits. Al once said as much, “Authenticity is not the easiest path in life, but it’s the only path that leads forward.”
Al Giordano ¡Presente!
Friends of Al
And the board of directors of the Fund for Authentic Journalism
Doug Wilson, President
Bill Conroy, Treasurer
Wendy Foxmyn, Fund Administrator
———————-
Al Giordano, 1960-2023
Al Giordano falleció la pasada noche del lunes 10 de julio en México. Estaba en su casa, en su propia cama, con amigos a su lado, mientras una fuerte lluvia caía sobre la tierra.
Al fue un periodista y organizador talentoso, con una mente acuciosa y el coraje de sus convicciones. Esas habilidades, junto con mucho trabajo arduo y experiencia vivida, permitieron que Al aparentemente vislumbrase los giros de la historia para situarse en la cabecera de transformaciones mundiales de gran impacto.
Al hizo esto en repetidas ocasiones a lo largo de las décadas, en los Estados Unidos, América Latina y más allá, a menudo enfrentando grandes riesgos personales, pero nunca sin un agudo sentido de la estrategia dirigido al objetivo. Fue el John Reed de nuestra era. Estuvo presente cuando el mundo tembló para contarnos por qué temblaba.
Al participó activamente en algunos de los momentos más trascendentales de cambio político y social de los últimos 50 años, ya sea como organizador, periodista o asesor. Como joven organizador en la década de 1970, ayudó a frenar la expansión de la industria de la energía nuclear como parte de la “Alianza Clamshell”, que llevó a cabo exitosas manifestaciones antinucleares en la entonces propuesta planta de energía nuclear de Seabrook en Nuevo Hampshire. La campaña superó grandes obstáculos e impulsó un movimiento “No Nukes” que inspiró alianzas y acciones similares contra plantas de energía nuclear propuestas y existentes en todo el país.
Posteriormente, Al trabajó en la primera campaña al Senado de John Kerry, antes de convertirse en el aprendiz del legendario organizador Abbie Hoffman en las trincheras, trabajando en campañas de organización en Pensilvania, Nicaragua y otros lugares. Fue uno de los primeros periodistas nacidos en Estados Unidos en documentar el levantamiento indígena del Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) en 1994.
Para apoyar ese esfuerzo y documentar la fallida “Guerra Contra las Drogas” de Estados Unidos en México y toda Latinoamérica, Al creó el periódico en línea Narco News. Este innovador servicio de noticias obtuvo una histórica victoria para la libertad de prensa en línea en Estados Unidos cuando Citibank demandó infructuosamente a Al en un tribunal de Nueva York por su cobertura de la guerra contra las drogas. En su fallo, el tribunal sentó un precedente que otorga a los periodistas en línea las mismas protecciones de libertad de expresión que disfruta la prensa impresa tradicional.
Durante más de 14 años, y con el apoyo y la participación de docenas de colaboradores, Al también dirigió un taller para periodistas y organizadores con el fin de compartir estrategias para la cobertura efectiva y estratégica de los movimientos sociales; un esfuerzo que creó redes efectivas con alcance global entre sus participantes, que siguen activas hasta el día de hoy. Al también obtuvo una atención considerable por su presciente cobertura del “cambio de paradigma de Obama” en la antesala de las elecciones presidenciales de Estados Unidos de 2008, y creó un manual en línea para la revolución no violenta después de su cobertura presencial del levantamiento contra el dictador egipcio Hosni Mubarak en 2011.
La muerte de Al es impactante en el sentido de que nos dejó demasiado pronto. Sin embargo, Al llevaba un tiempo lidiando con problemas de salud persistentes, incluso después de haber vencido el cáncer hace varios años atrás. La muerte nunca es reconfortante, pero sí es un alivio para aquellos que sufren problemas de salud graves y crónicos. El viaje, que incluye tanto dolor emocional como físico, es la parte difícil.
Al vivió la vida intensa y rápidamente. Así fue como se le presentó. Pero cada momento fue importante para Al, al igual que ganar la buena batalla. Literalmente cambió el mundo con su trabajo de organización y periodismo. La lista de sus grandes logros es extensa, y su impresionante legado apenas comienza a emprender su propio viaje.
Ni siquiera Al pudo burlar a la parca. Nadie puede. Pero vaya que le dio a la vida un paseo impresionante.
Al murió en sus propios términos, aún diciendo su verdad al poder y trabajando para organizar a otras personas para que hagan lo mismo, para que surja una verdad aún más grande. Su obra vivirá mucho más allá de los últimos suspiros de sus detractores.
Lo único que podemos hacer ahora es tomar parte de nuestra tristeza y canalizarla en lo que Al seguramente querría que continuáramos haciendo: vivir auténticamente y buscar un mundo mejor para todos. Definitivamente también deberíamos encontrar algo de tiempo ahora para honrar la vida de Al, de la manera que funcione para cada uno, para celebrar lo que Al nos ha dejado para construir.
Tenemos que seguir empujando hacia adelante mientras el tiempo lo permita. Al alguna vez dijo: “La autenticidad no es el camino más fácil en la vida, pero es el único camino que conduce hacia adelante”.
Al Giordano ¡Presente!
Amigos de Al
Y la junta directiva
del Fondo para el Periodismo Auténtico
Doug Wilson, Presidente
Bill Conroy, Tesorero
Wendy Foxmyn, Administradora del Fondo
Patrick Soon-Shiong. Photo (cc) 2014 by NHS Confederation.
Patrick Soon-Shiong, the wealthy surgeon who owns the Los Angeles Times, has delivered yet another daily newspaper into the greedy hands of the hedge fund Alden Global Capital. Soon-Shiong announced Monday that he’d sell The San Diego Union-Tribune to Alden’s MediaNews Group. By my count, the Union-Tribune becomes the 10th paper that Soon-Shiong has helped turn over to Alden. As Sara Fischer and Andrew Keatts report for Axios, the new owners immediately announced cuts to the newsroom.
When Soon-Shiong bought the LA Times in 2018, the Union-Tribune was thrown in as part of the deal. Soon-Shiong was hailed by optimistic media observers as someone who, like Jeff Bezos at The Washington Post and John Henry at The Boston Globe, would provide his papers with the runway they needed to become self-sustaining enterprises.
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It’s been a mixed bag. Soon-Shiong’s main interest has been the LA Times, but he’s gone back and forth between investing and cutting. By no means has the Times been hollowed out as if it had been owned by, oh, let’s just say Alden Global Capital. But he’s run a lean ship, with the Times announcing just a few days ago that the recent sale of its press meant that game stories, box scores and standings would be eliminated from its print edition, according to Andrew Bucholtz of Awful Announcing.
Selling off the San Diego paper to one of the worst possible buyers is reminiscent of John Henry’s decision to sell the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester to a Florida chain back in 2014. As I recount in my book “The Return of the Moguls,” folks at the T&G thought Henry had promised not to sell unless a local buyer could be found; Henry told me his only promise had been not to sell to GateHouse Media. In any case, GateHouse managed to acquire the T&G within months and immediately began hollowing it out. GateHouse later morphed into Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper chain with about 200 dailies, which is notorious for its cost-cutting.
Alden Global Capital’s two newspaper chains, MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing, make it the second largest owner with about 100 dailies. Alden is often described as the worst newspaper owner in the country, denounced as “vulture capitalists” who slash news coverage and sell off real estate in an attempt to squeeze out as much revenue as possible. Locally, Alden owns the Boston Herald, The Sun of Lowell and the Sentinel & Enterprise of Fitchburg.
Soon-Shiong was perhaps the central player in Alden’s acquisition of Tribune Publishing. Whereas MediaNews Group comprises mainly smaller papers, plus a few large dailies such as The Denver Post, Tribune owns eight of the largest, most iconic papers in the country, including the Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, the Orlando Sentinel and, closer to home, the Hartford Courant.
In the spring of 2021, Tribune, then comprising nine papers, was up for grabs, as it had been many times before. Stewart Bainum, a Baltimore hotel magnate, was attempting to buy the chain and sell off some of its properties to what he hoped would be public-spirited local owners. His main interest was in saving the Sun. Also bidding for the papers Alden. The hedge fund actually offered less money than Bainum, but its offer was reportedly less complicated as well.
The Tribune board ended up voting to sell the papers to Alden — a move that could have been halted by just one board member. Soon-Shiong, who was on the board, abstained, and he did so in a way that mean his vote essentially counted as a yes. As The Washington Post reported at the time, Soon-Shiong submitted his ballot without having checked the “abstain” box; if he had, his vote would have been counted as a “no.”
Bainum went on to found the nonprofit Baltimore Banner. Tribune, meanwhile, spun off one of its most prominent papers, the Daily News of New York, which remains part of the Alden empire as a separately owned entity.
So what’s next for The San Diego Union-Tribune? Nothing good, you can be sure. Voice of San Diego, a nonprofit news site, headlined its story “LA’s Richest Man Sells Union-Tribune to Feared ‘Chop Shop.’” Will Huntsberry and Scott Lewis interviewed the news-business analyst Ken Doctor, who predicted that San Diego will not be rid of Alden anytime soon.
“People get confused because these people are cut-throat capitalists,” Doctor told them. “But their papers are making money and they’re holding onto them for the time being.”
The New York Times’ purchase of The Athletic last year was starting to look ill-advised. The sports website continued to lose money after the Times paid $550 million for it, and it recently went through a round of downsizing. A new emphasis was announced: more trends and broad strokes, less coverage of teams and games.
Few, though, could have predicted what came next. Earlier today the Times said that it would actually do away with its own sports department and instead, in what you might call an act of internal outsourcing, turn over sports coverage to The Athletic — some of whose stories will now appear in the Times, both in print and online. It was a shocking move. Even though no one will be laid off, it marks the end of a small but high-quality operation that has won its share of Pulitzer Prizes over the years. Alexandra Bruell has the story for The Wall Street Journal (free link).
Speculation began to mount that such a move might be in the works over the weekend, when Ben Strauss of The Washington Post reported that the Times’ sports staffers had sent a letter to executive editor Joe Kahn and chair A.G. Sulzberger that said in part: “The company’s efforts appear to be coming to a head, with The Times pursuing a full-scale technological migration of The Athletic to The Times’s platforms and the threat that the company will effectively shut down our section.”
A Times spokesperson told the Post, “We’ll update when we have more to share.” Hours later, the hammer came down.
Although it’s hard to know exactly what Times management is thinking, you have to wonder if The Athletic’s status as a nonunion newsroom has something to do with it. Those of us with long memories can recall that some tensions were created when The Boston Globe launched Stat to cover health and life sciences — and stories from Stat, initially a nonunion shop, began running in the Globe, which, like the Times newsroom, is represented by a union. (Stat journalists joined the Boston Newspaper Guild in 2021.) Athletic publisher David Perpich told Bruell of the Journal that he’d respect a decision to unionize. Maybe so, but that’s generally not how it works.
The Times has been enormously successful at selling digital subscriptions, and The Athletic has been offered as part of its All Access offering — a higher-priced subscription that includes extras such as Cooking, the consumer-advice site Wirecutter and puzzles. It would appear, though, that The Athletic was not a major contributor to goosing those All Access subscriptions. And now this.
Tom Jones, a former sportswriter who’s now the media reporter for Poynter Online, expressed his misgivings just before the Times’ sports department was vaporized, writing:
It would be a real shame if Times leaders decided to alter the current Times’ sports section by cutting staff and/or integrating the coverage into The Athletic. They are two distinct sports outlets.
In a perfect world, both The Athletic and Times sports section would co-exist, each doing what they do best. For the Times, that’s deeply reported stories, superb writing and topics that you aren’t going to find routinely on most sports and/or news websites.
The Times is a juggernaut, the last great American newspaper that continues to grow and prosper. The idea that an outlet like the Times can’t support a sports section without a jerry-rigged system involving its own subsidiary is just absurd. This has all the appearance of a face-saving solution aimed at papering over its own poor decision to buy The Athletic in the first place.
The Boston Globe is 
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