Category: Media

Contrary to buzz in the newsroom, Linda Henry says: ‘The Globe is not for sale’

Are John and Linda Henry looking to sell The Boston Globe? Folks in the newsroom have been wondering in recent weeks. But according to Linda Henry, the paper’s managing director, the answer is no.

Henry hosted a Zoom town hall for Globe employees earlier today. Among the questions she was asked, according to a source, was whether the departure of Boston Globe Media president Vinay Mehra last week was related to a possible sale. I contacted her a short time later, and she replied via email:

The question [at the town hall] was if Vinay’s departure had anything to do with our ownership status, which it absolutely doesn’t. This doesn’t affect our thinking or what we have said about stewarding this great institution. The Globe is not for sale, I’m pretty sure you would have picked up on if it was.

The idea that a sale might be under consideration gained steam recently when Sarah Betancourt reported reported in CommonWealth Magazine that — according to the Boston Newspaper Guild — the Henrys were “apparently insisting on the removal of a provision in the existing contract that would keep the contract terms intact if the newspaper is sold.” Management and the Guild have been enmeshed in acrimonious contract talks for quite some time.

Yet in most respects the Globe seems to be doing well, although its status as a profitable business probably came a sudden halt when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and advertising nosedived. The paper went over the long-hoped-for 200,000 mark in digital subscriptions recently, and hiring continues. Just today, editorial-page editor Bina Venkataraman announced that Kimberly Atkins would be leaving WBUR Radio and joining the opinion section as a Washington-based senior writer.

Editor Brian McGrory also announced ambitious plans just last week to improve the diversity of the Globe’s hiring, promotions and coverage.

Two years ago, John Henry responded to similar talk of a sale by saying: “I don’t think of selling any local assets during my lifetime. Linda and I love and are committed to this city.”

It sounds like that hasn’t changed.

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The Globe, the Red Sox and a long-ago story of racism and sexual abuse

Now here’s an interesting media twist. Michael Rezendes, who did so much to expose Cardinal Bernard Law’s involvement in the Catholic Church’s pedophile-priest crisis when he was a member of the Spotlight Team at The Boston Globe, has written a new report about sexual abuse — this one involving the Red Sox, whose principal owner, John Henry, is also the owner of the Globe.

Rezendes, who’s retired from the Globe, now works for The Associated Press. His story was published on the Globe’s website today at 3:40 a.m. and presumably will be in Wednesday’s print edition.

The report is about former Red Sox clubhouse manager Don Fitzpatrick, who for years preyed on young Black clubhouse employees. Fitzpatrick left the Sox in 1991 — 10 years before Henry bought the team — and pleaded guilty to charges of sexual battery in 2002.

Although Fitzpatrick was long gone before the dawn of the Henry era, the team remains entangled in Fitzpatrick’s web. Victims are seeking compensation, suggesting that it’s hypocritical for the Red Sox to come to terms publicly with their history of racism (some of it pretty recent) while failing to reach out to Fitzpatrick’s victims.

One of Fitzpatrick’s alleged victims, Gerald Armstrong, told Rezendes, “Now would be a good time for the Red Sox to show everyone they mean what they say.”

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Globe editor Brian McGrory addresses diversity in the newsroom and in coverage

Also published at WGBHNews.org.

This past Wednesday, Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory sent a long memo to his staff about steps the Globe will take to respond to issues of race and equity — both in the paper’s coverage and the diversity of its newsroom.

So far, at least, the Globe has been able to avoid the sort of public turmoil over race that the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, among other news organizations, have experienced. But the Globe has long suffered from a lack of people of color in leadership positions. The last ranking Black editor, Greg Moore, left for The Denver Post in 2002 several months after losing out on the top position to Marty Baron. (The Globe’s opinion pages are led by Bina Venkataraman, who is Indian American.)

A couple of other points. First, although McGrory sent this out on Wednesday, no one leaked it to me until late Thursday. I don’t know the outcome of the Thursday presentation McGrory refers to. If someone at the Globe would like to send something along, I’d love to see it. I’d consider publishing an anonymous report as long as I knew who it was from.

Second, toward the end McGrory mentions wanting the Globe to adopt what amounts to a “right to be forgotten” for people who’ve been charged or even convicted of minor crimes. This sounds like an excellent idea as long as news stories aren’t going to be deleted from the archives.

Before the web, print editions soon disappeared into microfilm collections that were virtually impossible to search, which meant that the sort of minor incidents McGrory is referring to could not be easily found by, say, prospective employers. We need some way of returning to those days of semi-privacy without destroying the historical record.

What follows is the full text of McGrory’s memo.

Updates and plans

Hey all,

We’ll start with a request: Everyone should do everything possible to attend Thursday’s presentation of the company’s inclusion council. You’ve received an invitation under separate cover for an 11 a.m. Zoom call. The group will share findings and insights that may be hard to hear, but are vitally important to know, so I’d urge you all to participate.

Beyond that, we agreed at our town meeting a few weeks back that discussions about race, even and especially discussions involving deeply uncomfortable truths, are utterly vital. Since then, I’ve been fortunate to have had a good number of one-on-one conversations and small group discussions with people in the room, all of which have been eye-opening to the point of being invaluable. While all these exchanges are important, they are but a start. The real marker of this moment will be the actions that we take. So here, I’d like to outline some of the plans for the newsroom going forward. They are not the final word. They are a starting point, something that will ideally serve as our foundation for durable progress.

Recent assignments

In terms of our coverage, some key assignments have already been made and are worth sharing with you now. We launched a criminal justice team to look at the underlying racism in law enforcement that has served as the tipping point in the protests and calls for action. About two weeks old, it’s already had remarkable impact with stories on outrageously high overtime payments and ballooning payrolls, police officers on the streets despite numerous civilian complaints, a T officer who quietly resigned after abusing a homeless man, the acquisition by Boston Police of more miltary-style equipment, and clear-eyed looks at the push to defund. There is much more on the way. That team includes Milton Valencia, Vernal Coleman, Evan Allen, Tonya Alanez, Andrew Ryan, and Evan Allen, with strong assists from Dugan Arnett, Laura Crimaldi, and Danny McDonald. It’s led by Brendan McCarthy and Nestor Ramos, in a pitch-perfect example of cross-department collaboration. We are past time giving Boston Police and other law enforcement the scrutiny they warrant; this team is already addressing that.

If we focus only on criminal justice, we have failed in our mission to address core issues of racial inequality in and around Boston, one of the most unequal places on the planet. This, as we’ve discussed for years, should be a part of everyone’s beat, whether you cover the environment, the arts, sports, transportation, retail, or real estate. It’s especially vital in primary education, where society blithely accepts systems that are profoundly unequal. We have a strong education team already in place. Naomi Martin will join it, and the indefatigable Felicia Gans will also play a pivotal role ramping up the digital presence as part of her broader portfolio. Felice Belman will now help editor Sarah Carr with oversight.

In addition, we’ve asked Deanna Pan, Zoe Greenberg, Dasia Moore, and Jenee Osterheldt to focus a good part of their time and creative energy on broader racial and social injustice issues, including that wide space where race and COVID collide. And our business staff will remain focused on the epic economic injustices that are prevalent in this region.

Before, during, and after the recent town meeting, many colleagues have been forthright and generous with their insights and ideas. Not surprisingly, they’ve been really thoughtful — and really appreciated. Many of the plans below are pulled from these conversations, discussions with senior editors, and feedback from smaller groups. Again, there should and will be more to come.

• Cover the neighborhoods of color in and around Boston with more intensity — the culture, the economics, the challenges, the triumphs, the people, while also looking at broader stories about city life. We would assign at least one but likely more reporters to it, with strong editing guidance. We would also look for partnerships and innovative ways to get information to residents.

• Promote and/or hire Black editors and other editors of color to significant roles, including, but by no means limited to, the masthead. This is of paramount importance.

• Require a staff-wide work audit for racial representation. Each reporter, photographer, columnist, producer, and editor will be given the necessary time to look back six months and assess their work through a racial lens — how many people of color were subjects, how many were quoted as experts, how many were depicted in photographs and videos, and in what fashion?
Likewise, we’ll go through home pages and print section fronts, as well as the magazine, to see how often and in what ways we depicted Black people and other people of color.

This exercise is not meant to embarrass or penalize anyone. It’s to learn from our own work and create awareness of what we need to do. We’ll figure out a meaningful way to share the broader results.

Meantime, it is of the utmost importance for everyone to include a diverse range of voices in stories and to develop sources who don’t look like you. Jenee has worked up a strong list of Black sources to share, with an assist from Adrian [Walker] and Yvonne Abraham, to help people get started.

• We’ve had important success hiring star journalists of color over the past couple of years, but we are nowhere near where we want or need to be. We’ll redouble our efforts to make the newsroom more diverse, with a dual focus on retention and hiring.

• Make sure we dedicate the right resources to cover law enforcement agencies as a key part of our regular and ongoing coverage.

Internal changes

• Reframe our summer internship program, beginning in 2021, to a diversity internship and training program in which all participants will be students or recent graduates of color.

• Mandate that a specific proportion of our co-ops are students of color.

• Work with the Guild to amend the newsroom’s ethics policy to allow for participation in Black Lives Matter rallies by staffers.

• Form a newsroom advisory council to weigh in on coverage and initiatives that involve race issues.

• Explore outside funding for a training program for early-career journalists of color, in partnership with universities, nonprofits, and possibly other news organizations. This program would allow for the hiring of journalists for a predetermined tenure at the Globe involving intensive training, mentorship, and meaningful work while they are here.

One more

• Launch a ‘right to forget’ initiative that allows people to appeal their presence in a story from the Globe archives and ask for it to be de-linked from search engines. This includes, but is not limited to, someone charged and even convicted of non-violent crimes. Our journalism was never meant to be a permanent obstacle to someone’s success, with the worst decisions and moments in regular people’s lives accessible by a few keystrokes for the rest of time. This will be a complicated endeavor, involving a small committee and imperfect judgments, but it will be worthwhile.

There will undoubtedly be additional measures. And we will also be working closely in the newsroom with ReadySet, a diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting firm that has been smartly engaged by the Globe’s inclusion council to help the entire organization.

As tends to happen in this business, we find ourselves at the intersection of opportunity and responsibility. It’s on all of us to make the most of it and to have the strongest impact, meaning we have much work to do in the weeks ahead.

Please keep reaching out with your thoughts, insights, and ideas.

Brian

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Boston Globe Media president Vinay Mehra is leaving

Vinay Mehra. Photo via LinkedIn.

Vinay Mehra, president of Boston Globe Media Partners, is leaving after three years at the helm, according to an announcement to employees by managing director Linda Henry late this afternoon.

No idea of what prompted this, but I wonder if Mehra’s departure might help break the logjam between the Boston Newspaper Guild and management, which are bogged down in protracted contract negotiations.

Then, too, the union has raised the prospect that John and Linda Henry are interested in selling the Globe, according to a recent story by Sarah Betancourt of CommonWealth Magazine. It seems unlikely, but who knows?

What follows is Linda Henry’s message, a copy of which was provided to me by a trusted source a little while ago.

After three years with us, today is Vinay Mehra’s last day with Boston Globe Media Partners.

We are grateful for his work in helping to stabilize and grow our remarkable organization and are especially thankful to him for building an incredibly strong and effective Senior Leadership Team. This team is well-positioned to lead our organization and to continue the important work of ensuring that our institution continues to serve our community and our mission for years to come.

We wish Vinay the best of luck in his next venture.

Linda Henry

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Baron was right to stop Woodward from exposing Kavanaugh’s duplicity

Bob Woodward. Photo (cc) 2010 by Miguel Ariel Contreras Drake-McLaughlin.

There is a lot to chew over in Ben Smith’s deep dive into The Washington Post, which — like news (and non-news) organizations everywhere — is struggling with issues of diversity. But let me keep the focus narrow here, because Smith leads with a blockbuster anecdote about something that unfolded during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 2018. Smith writes in The New York Times:

Bob Woodward, the Post legend who protected the identity of his Watergate source, Deep Throat, for 30 years, was going to unmask one of his own confidential sources. He was, in particular, going to disclose that Judge Kavanaugh had been an anonymous source in his 1999 book “Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate.”

Mr. Woodward was planning to expose Mr. Kavanaugh because the judge had publicly denied — in a huffy letter in 1999 to The Post — an account about Kenneth Starr’s investigation of President Bill Clinton that he had himself, confidentially, provided to Mr. Woodward for his book. (Mr. Kavanaugh served as a lawyer on Mr. Starr’s team.)

What Kavanaugh allegedly did pretty much defines one of the circumstances under which a reporter might consider exposing an anonymous source: he told the truth (apparently) to Woodward and then lied about it in public. And the stakes were high, as Woodward’s story, if published, could have presented yet another obstacle to Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

But executive editor Marty Baron intervened, according to Smith: “Mr. Baron and other editors persuaded Mr. Woodward that it would be bad for The Post and ‘bad for Bob’ to disclose a source, one of the journalists told me. The piece never ran.”

Among those siding with Baron is Matt Storin, his predecessor as editor of The Boston Globe, where Baron served for nearly more than a decade before moving to the Post. “I’m not in a position to render judgment on a lot of this piece, but @PostBaron absolutely did the right thing on the Woodward issue, supporting any reporter in the future who needs an anonymous source,” Storin tweeted.

I agree with Storin — and, thus, with Baron. Unless Woodward promised Kavanaugh he’d keep his identity confidential only if he subsequently told the truth in public about their exchange, then Woodward had no business breaking their agreement. It’s a tough call, and the fact that someone of Woodward’s stature wanted to go the other way shows that good people can differ on this. But Woodward, pressured by Baron, ultimately did the right thing.

It’s not like Kavanaugh is the first source to tell a reporter one thing in confidence and then say something else publicly. It’s happened to me, and I’m sure most reporters would tell you the same thing. But that’s one of the risks you take when grant anonymity to someone.

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Trust is down, subscriptions are up — and the demand for objective news is falling

Previously published at WGBHNews.org.

The COVID-19 pandemic has given a boost to trusted sources of news such as television and online mainstream outlets, but has battered print newspapers for the simple reason that people find it harder to get their hands on them while on lockdown. And though paid digital subscriptions are on the rise, that may be driving a demand for coverage that’s more in line with readers’ political views.

Those are some of the findings of the 2020 Digital News Report, an annual study of news-consumption habits compiled by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and the University of Oxford. The new report is based on a YouGov survey of some 80,000 people in 40 markets, most of them Western democracies but also including countries such as Kenya and the Philippines.

“The seriousness of this crisis has reinforced the need for reliable, accurate journalism that can inform and educate populations, but it has also reminded us how open we have become to conspiracies and misinformation,” writes Nic Newman, senior research associate at the Reuters Institute.

The study was mainly conducted pre-pandemic, with some follow-up in late March and early April in order to determine how COVID had affected news habits. The report is massive, but there are a few findings that I think are worth highlighting.

• Trust in the media rose somewhat at the height of the pandemic, but overall it continues to fall. For me, the most striking finding is that news consumers said their levels of trust are low even in the media that they use.

Globally, trust in the media that people actually use was 46%, down three points from the previous survey. In the United States, 45% of respondents said they trust the news they use. In addition, 29% of U.S. respondents said they trust the news media in general, 22% said they trust news from search and only 14% said they trust news from social media.

If Americans no longer trust even the media they rely on, that represents a new and unsettling challenge for journalism — and a dramatic change from just a few years ago. For instance, take a look at this 2014 survey by the Pew Research Center. More than 60% of self-identified liberals said they trusted NPR, PBS, the BBC and The New York Times. Similarly, 88% of conservatives said they trusted Fox News.

What could explain the slide? No doubt it has a lot to do with the hyperpolarization of the Trump era. I can’t explain what’s going on among conservatives; Fox News is more popular than it’s ever been, and I assume that supporters of President Donald Trump watch it because they like it.

But among liberals, and especially among politically engaged Twitter users, we’ve all seen an exponential rise in anger when supposedly liberal outlets like the Times or NPR report the news in a way that plays down Trump’s lies and wanton acts of cruelty.

There is, in fact, some substance to these complaints, and the current media business climate makes news consumers feel empowered. Which brings me to my next observation.

• As advertising revenues plummet, paid digital subscriptions continue to rise. About 20% of Americans now report paying for a digital subscription, up four points in just a year. According to the report, the digital-subscription increase has come in two waves — the first in 2017, when anti-Trump readers stepped forward to support mainstream outlets, and the second this year, as news outlets cut back on free sampling while enticing new subscribers with steep discounts. (Such discounts, for example, help account for a surge at The Boston Globe to more than 200,000 digital subscribers.)

Traditionally, advertising paid for newspaper journalism while the nominal amount that consumers paid covered the cost of printing and distribution. As advertising continues to decline in importance, though, subscribers may be demanding a bigger say in how the news is covered.

At a webinar on the Reuters report on Tuesday, Rasmus Nielsen, director of the Reuters Institute, said one of the reasons Americans, in particular, cite when asked why they subscribe to digital news is “because they believe in the mission of journalism and they want to support it.”

Given the overwhelmingly liberal orientation of subscribers to The New York Times and The Washington Post, the two leading national general-interest newspapers, it would hardly be a surprise if they see harshly negative coverage of the Trump administration as part of that mission.

And yet that runs counter to the third finding that I think is worth noting.

• Most survey respondents say they prefer neutral, objective news. This contradicts fears that an explosion of internet outlets and cable channels would lead many of us to seek out news that conforms to our ideological predilections. In the U.S., for instance, 60% “still express a preference for news without a particular point of view,” whereas 30% prefer news that reflects their beliefs.

In many other countries, though, the preference for nonpartisan news is higher than it is in the U.S. — and the percentage of American consumers who want ideologically compatible news is up seven points since 2013.

No doubt the difference between the U.S. and other countries is grounded in the sort of polarization that dismisses COVID as “fake news” and that has transformed wearing a face mask into a partisan political statement.

In addition, the report noted that countries where the preference for neutral news is highest — Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and Denmark — all have “strong and independent public broadcasters.” That is decidedly not the case in the U.S., where the federal government spends more on the Pentagon’s public-relations office than on PBS.

Bottom line: Although it’s somewhat heartening that a solid majority of Americans prefer objective news to partisan spin, we’re not doing as well as other countries — and the trend is heading in the wrong direction.

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Wall St. Journal’s newsroom calls out opinion section over Pence’s COVID falsehoods

The Wall Street Journal’s excellent newsroom is calling out its often-nutty opinion section. The Journal’s Rebecca Ballhaus reports that an op-ed by Vice President Mike Pence earlier this week in which he praised the Trump administration’s response to COVID-19 had some, uh, problems:

Mr. Pence wrote that as of June 12, Project Airbridge had delivered more than 143 million N95 masks, 598 million surgical and procedural masks, 20 million eye and face shields, 265 million gowns and coveralls and 14 billion gloves.

According to FEMA data, through June 18 the program had delivered 1.5 million N95 masks, 113.4 million surgical masks, 2.5 million face shields, 50.9 million gowns, 1.4 million coveralls and 937 million gloves. The total number of those supplies is about 7% — or one-thirteenth — of the numbers cited in Mr. Pence’s article.

We talked about the Journal’s decision to publish Pence’s dubious propaganda Friday on “Beat the Press” (above). At the time, I thought the problem was more a matter of absurdly optimistic spin in the face of rising infection rates in many states rather than factual inaccuracies. I may be been giving Pence too much credit.

I still think Sen. Tom Cotton’s recently op-ed in The New York Times was worse, since he falsely claimed antifa involvement in Black Lives Matter protests in order to justify military attacks on Americans.

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WBUR lays off 29, freezes salaries and says goodbye to four senior leaders

This is heartbreaking. WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) is laying off 29 people “because of the economic fallout of the past several months,” according to a memo sent to the staff by the station’s chief executive officer, Margaret Low. A salary freeze has been imposed. In addition, senior executives Tom Melville, John Davidow and Peter Lydotes are leaving, and Sam Fleming will retire later this year.

Overall, Low says, the current budget of $46 million will be reduced to $40 million in the next fiscal year.

The memo also contains some ideas and observations about increasing the diversity of the staff and about the station’s ongoing commitment to local news.

This is bad news for the Boston area. Along with WGBH News, where I’m a contributor, WBUR is an incredibly important part of the regional news ecosystem system. It’s also terrible news for the folks who’ll be losing their jobs. Best wishes to everyone during this challenging time.

I got the memo from a trusted source. The full text follows:

Dear All,

I have important news to share this morning about a significant reorganization and some of the difficult choices I’ve had to make because of the economic fallout of the past several months.

To begin, we are laying off 29 people. Many of them are part time staff. This means valued colleagues are losing their jobs at a very challenging time and will be leaving WBUR over the next days, weeks and months. We’ve already reached out to everyone who is immediately affected by the changes.

While I’m confident that WBUR has a bright future, this is a hard moment — because longtime coworkers and friends will be departing.

There will also be some shared sacrifice. There will be no wage increases for FY21, except for negotiated union salary adjustments, and there will be no contributions to retirement funds. And we’ve developed a much reduced budget for the next fiscal year. The WBUR Board approved a FY20 budget of just under $46 million. For FY21, the Board will be presented with a budget of just over $40 million.

Beyond the layoffs, we will reduce expenses across the board. Most notably — we are eliminating seven unfilled positions, cutting travel and marketing costs and canceling various contracted services. I’m taking a 10% salary cut.

A number of senior leaders, who collectively have dedicated the better part of a century to WBUR, will be leaving us. They include: Tom Melville, John Davidow and Peter Lydotes. Sam Fleming plans to retire this year. He will be with us three days a week for the next few months.

In addition, we will stop production of Only A Game at the end of September. The New York Times will take over the wildly successful Modern Love podcast at the end of the month, and Kind World, which blossomed from a digital experiment back in 2012 into an award winning Morning Edition feature and podcast, will end its run in July.

At the same time as we are losing cherished colleagues, this restructuring means that we will be hiring for a number of new positions that will make WBUR stronger.

There is a lot more to share, and I apologize in advance for the length of this note. I want to reflect the decisions we’ve made with precision, care and respect for all our colleagues. I will be meeting with some individual teams today and tomorrow and I will hold an AMA later this afternoon, so I can answer any questions you have.

The changes I’m making are necessary to streamline the organization and to reflect the budget realities of the moment. But beyond this restructuring, there is much more work to be done to forge our long term strategic future. Over the summer, we will begin to fully articulate what will define our journalism and our programming going forward and what it will take to become even more essential in people’s lives.

My decisions rest on four pillars — three that I’m addressing immediately with this reorganization and a fourth that I will enlist all of you in tackling in the days and months ahead:

    • Editorial Excellence — we must strive to be the most trusted and beloved source of local news in Boston and beyond, distinguished in a competitive media landscape by the quality and ambition of our journalism and our programming.
    • Organizational Efficiency and Effectiveness — we must ensure that WBUR is a disciplined and well-run operation that supports and empowers people, holds them accountable and reflects our values at every turn.
    • Economic Sustainability — we must rightsize the organization so we aren’t spending more money than we are bringing in. At the same time we must double down on generating revenue and finding new ways to fuel WBUR.
    • The Road Ahead — there are two issues of great consequence to our future that require our concerted attention.

The first is racial equity. In the weeks following the police killing of George Floyd, we have witnessed a global outpouring of people calling for racial justice — and an end to the profound inequities that have defined the American experience. These days are filled with anguish, but endowed with the possibility of achieving lasting change.

This reckoning demands that we confront elements of systemic racism that have  persisted in our country and our institutions, even as we’ve expressed a commitment to diversity. WBUR is not exempt from this examination — we have a lot of work to do. And it can’t be addressed by simply restating our values of inclusion. This effort must be different in kind and substance than anything we’ve done before. It requires change in every aspect of our culture, our coverage, our hiring and our leadership development. I don’t have all the answers, but I’m committed to leading the way and not letting up. Our future depends on it.

Second, our future also depends on identifying how we continue to grow our audience and cultivate the loyalty and financial support that is essential to sustaining our journalism. This is a time of profound technological change and the clock is ticking. WBUR has been a credible digital innovator. But as listening habits and media consumption patterns continue to shift, we have to confront how we reach new audiences and become even more relevant in people’s lives. So that they can’t imagine a day without WBUR. And they believe we’re worthy of their support.

Both of these efforts will require the investment of every single person at WBUR.

Given all this, it was clear that a restructuring of WBUR was imperative, but everything was accelerated by an unexpected financial crisis that compelled deeper cuts. In laying out the details, I can’t possibly give proper due to all the people who have devoted themselves to WBUR for so many years. Finding ways to celebrate our departing colleagues is made more difficult in the age of social distancing. But we will make sure that happens.

In the meantime, I’ve tried to capture the most important aspects of the restructuring below.

Local News

Local journalism has always been core to our mission. Increasingly it is paramount. We have the biggest local newsroom in public radio and in order to produce agenda-setting coverage, we are reorganizing the team, strengthening our leadership ranks and deepening our bench of editors.

To begin, Dan Mauzy will become Executive Editor for News. In my five months at WBUR, I’ve seen Dan demonstrate editorial depth, impressive leadership, and an unmatched command of every aspect of the newsroom operation. Dan will work closely with Tom Melville to ensure a smooth transition.

For nearly nine years, Tom has led the newsroom with grace, generosity and a deep love and knowledge of the region. This has never been more evident than in these last few months, as first COVID and then the death of George Floyd transformed the nation and the globe. That WBUR’s local journalism has soared, amid the disruption to our operations and the pain we feel in our personal and professional lives, is a testament to Tom. I’m enormously grateful for his intelligence, integrity and extraordinary kindness.

I am also moving the team responsible for the editorial dimension of our digital efforts into the news division, so that our journalism on all platforms is more closely aligned.

Tiffany Campbell, our Executive Editor for Digital, will continue to oversee her editorial staff and newsroom digital strategy, and will now report to Dan. In addition, Cognoscenti, led by Frannie Carr Toth, will move into the newsroom under Tiffany. More on the rest of the digital team in a moment.

John Davidow will be leaving us after a remarkable 17 year run at WBUR. He joined the station after a distinguished career as a producer in commercial television (when it was in its prime). John was hired to lead the local news team, and radio became his new medium. More than 10 years ago, John made another leap, when he took over our fledgling digital operation. His work propelled WBUR to become one of the most prominent local digital operations in the system. At the same time, John gained national recognition in public media for his expertise on emerging technologies. He spotted great talent like Tiffany along the way and built a first class digital team that will remain a vital part of WBUR’s future.

Managing Editor Elisabeth Harrison, who has so skillfully overseen our coverage of COVID-19, will take on additional newsroom responsibilities and also report to Dan. Beyond  health and business, she will oversee our general assignment reporters and those covering politics, immigration and other beats.

Dan Guzman and Jon Cain will become Executive Producers of Morning Edition and All Things Considered, respectively. They will now supervise show hosts, writers and producers. This will add organizational structure and cohesion to our flagship local NPR shows.

Weekend Managing Editor Paul Connearney, will also take on new responsibilities and supervise the newscast anchors.

In addition to what I’ve laid out above, we will be posting three new newsroom positions. They are:

    • A second managing editor to work side by side with Elisabeth and Tiffany and a new managing producer (see below). This new managing editor will report to Dan and oversee our investigations team as well as our coverage of arts and culture, education and the environment.
    • A deputy managing editor, reporting to Elisabeth, who will deepen the editing bench for health, business, politics, and other beats.
    • We are also posting a managing producer This person will oversee all local news programs: Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Radio Boston and local newscasts.

A New Product Team

As I said in my 100 day note, WBUR has a powerful history. We have been broadcasters for 70 years and, over those years, we have fostered deep and lasting relationships with our radio audience. Our next job is to develop that connection, to build those relationships, for digital audiences in ways that ensure we’re here for another 70 years. We must be laser-focused on that, because with time — and likely sooner than we think —  digital revenue will need to replace much of the traditional broadcast revenue that supports our journalism. And it won’t happen unless we build the kind of loyalty and devotion that we’ve historically had with our radio audience.

To that end, I’m creating a product team, led by Joan DiMicco. Her job will be to make sure that every experience with WBUR, on any platform, is exceptional. She will be responsible for the strategy, design, and implementation of all our products and will help ensure their demonstrable success. This includes our owned platforms such as wbur.org, our newsletters, and our mobile app; and third-party platforms including NPR One and smart speakers. She will also stay abreast of tech developments across the media landscape as we craft what comes next.

The programmers, developers and digital audio editors, who were part of the larger digital team, will now report to Joan. This new team will work hand in hand with all our editorial teams, marketing and membership.

Operations

As I mentioned above, Peter Lydotes, who has overseen WBUR operations for 16 years, will be departing in the fall. Peter joined WBUR in 1992 as a board operator and over the years has gained an impressive understanding of how just about every system at WBUR works. Peter has absorbed many production responsibilities, keeping our people and our increasingly complicated operation and production efforts humming.

With Peter’s planned departure, Glenn Alexander, who oversees all the BRTs, will now report to Karl Voelker and Glenn’s whole team will be part of engineering and operations. This will help align our technical staff and ensure greater consistency across the organization. And, as I mentioned earlier in this note, the newscasters, who were part of Peter’s team, will join the news division.

In addition to this shift, the station will be automated overnight, as it has been throughout most of the COVID crisis. That means, aside from special circumstances, the last local newscast will be at 10 p.m. weekdays and 7 p.m. on weekends.

Only a Game

After 27 years, Only a Game will end its run this fall. Executive Producer Karen Given along with founding members Gary Waleik and former host Bill Littlefield — had an amazing  journey producing public radio’s only sports program, featuring highly-produced narrative storytelling and reaching more than 360,000 listeners each week on 260 stations. This is the end of an era for WBUR and I look forward to recognizing those who made this show such a meaningful part of public radio weekends for so many years.

More Staffing News

After nearly 30 years at WBUR, Sam Fleming is ready to pass the baton. He wants to spend more time with his wife who lives on Martha’s Vineyard. Sam let me know his plans long before I stepped into my role in January. Thankfully, he promised to stick around as long as he is needed and I’ve asked him to help me with this transition and importantly to work on WBUR’s ethical guidelines. Sam will begin working part time next month and, whether virtually or in person, we will give him a fitting farewell.

Organizational Structure

Right now I have more than a dozen people reporting to me. In the long run that’s not tenable. But given budget constraints, I will hold off on additional senior hires. It is more important to shore up other parts of the organization. This will be a good opportunity to see the newly structured team in action. If there are significant gaps, we will add positions when we have the resources to do so. But I’m going to be conservative on that front for now.

Some Final Thoughts

Organizational changes of this magnitude are hard. But they are also necessary to ensure that we are financially sound and in fighting shape to deliver on big ambitions. This is a two step process. First, we had to deal with the current financial reality and make the necessary organizational changes. Next, we will begin to lay out our strategy and chart our path forward.

To those who are leaving, I’m sorry that you are departing at this difficult moment in the country and the world. I’m enormously grateful for the years that you have devoted to making WBUR such an exceptional place. You will exit with my profound gratitude and a promise to build on the legacy you leave behind.

To those who are staying — thank you for all you’re doing to keep WBUR strong. Your work has never been more consequential. That is what gives us the stamina and resolve to press on — even during the hardest hours. We play a vital role in Boston and beyond. Serving the public. Reporting the truth. Enriching lives. It is a galvanizing cause —  one that is impossible to equal.

Margaret Low
Chief Executive Officer, WBUR

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Sorting through the racially charged wreckage of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Previously published at WGBHNews.org.

Even as national attention was focused on the latest internal drama at The New York Times, a disturbing, racially charged crackdown was playing out in a newsroom nearly 400 miles to the west. Pay attention, because what’s happening at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette threatens the ability of journalists everywhere to exercise their conscience and cover their communities with integrity and empathy. Consider:

• Alexis Johnson, an African American reporter, was taken off the Black Lives Matter beat as punishment for an innocuous tweet about litter.

• Michael Santiago, a Black photographer who expressed his support for her, quit after he, too, was pulled from covering the protests.

• Stories by other reporters who’d retweeted Johnson in solidarity were removed from the web.

• A supermarket chain announced that it would stop carrying the paper.

• The union that represents some 140 of the Post-Gazette’s employees called on the editor and the managing editor to resign.

The story is still playing out — but it’s only the latest misstep by a paper that has been in turmoil for several years as it has lurched to the political right.

While the chattering classes have obsessed over the departure of New York Times editorial-page editor James Bennet and Philadelphia Inquirer executive editor Stan Wischnowski, both of whom misjudged the rising anger in their newsrooms over issues of race, diversity and privilege, what’s happening in Pittsburgh may prove to be more important. Ultimately, the Post-Gazette is a story about what happens when a newspaper’s ownership becomes so insular and out of touch that its ability to serve the community is called into question.

Some background. On June 4, the alternative Pittsburgh City Paper reported on a memo from the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh that Johnson had been yanked from demonstrations protesting the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Her offense: a tweet in which she humorously — but pointedly — compared the damage caused by looters to the mess left behind by tailgaters at a Kenny Chesney concert:

“Horrifying scenes and aftermath from selfish LOOTERS who don’t care about this city!!!!! …. oh wait sorry. No, these are pictures from a Kenny Chesney concert tailgate. Whoops.”

 

The situation quickly spun out of control, blossoming into a national story and attracting the attention of The New York Times. Johnson said she was told by the paper’s managing editor, Karen Kane, as well as other editors that she was being taken off the protest beat because she had expressed an opinion in her tweet that showed she couldn’t be fair.

That, in turn, led to accusations that Johnson was being punished for reporting while Black — drawing a blistering response from the paper’s editor, Keith Burris.

“Editors at this newspaper did not single out a black reporter and a black photographer and ban them from covering Pittsburgh protests after the killing of George Floyd,” Burris wrote in a column published by the Post-Gazette. “And we certainly did not single out two people and keep them from covering local protests because they were black. That is an outrageous lie — a defamation, in fact.”

Johnson wasn’t buying Burris’ explanation. In an interview with CNN’s Brian Stelter on the “Reliable Sources” podcast, she accused her bosses of being simultaneously clueless and self-serving. “I can only conclude that it was because I was a Black woman and I was speaking on an issue that involves Black Lives Matter,” she said. “I said that to them at that moment, ‘I feel like it’s because it’s a Black issue that you feel like I have this bias.’”

Management’s contention that her Kenny Chesney tweet expressed an opinion about an issue that she was covering seems like a considerable stretch. But even if you grant that it was inappropriate (which I don’t), Johnson had a compelling retort. “Keith Burris is still head of our editorial board. And he’s also our executive editor of the newsroom,” she told Stelter. “So for them to claim that I have a bias is pretty ironic. And not only that, he continues to write columns for us, he continues to give his opinion, and then comes over to the news and tells us what to write and what angles he wants us to have. So it’s just a lot of hypocrisy.”

For the Post-Gazette, it’s been a rapid descent. As recently as 2019 the paper won a Pulitzer Prize for its heart-breaking coverage of the mass shootings at the Tree of Life Synagogue. But the paper’s respected editor, David Shribman, a former Washington bureau chief for The Boston Globe, took early retirement, paving the way for Burris to claim the top newsroom job while keeping his hand in on the opinion side as well.

In late 2019, Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan documented a series of bizarre and disturbing incidents, including a newsroom tirade by publisher John Block; the firing of cartoonist Rob Rogers for harshly lampooning President Donald Trump; and an editorial written by Burris that defended Trump against charges of racism following Trump’s outburst over “shithole countries.” The editorial was published on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

The Post-Gazette has been owned for decades by the Block family, which also owns The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, as well as television stations and cable holdings. Even though there has been no change in ownership, the Post-Gazette was regarded as generally liberal for most of its recent history. Indeed, the late right-wing financier Richard Mellon Scaife, a conspiracy theorist who promoted the false story that Hillary Clinton was involved in the death of Vincent Foster, launched the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review to provide a conservative alternative to the Post-Gazette.

In recent years, though, John Block, known as “J.R.,” has become increasingly enamored of President Trump, turning the Post-Gazette into a right-wing mouthpiece. In a sense, the Pittsburgh newspaper war is now over, and Scaife won. Media ownership is haphazard, and it’s the luck of the draw as to whether a community is served by a civic-minded business leader, a cost-cutting corporate chain or — as appears to be the case in Pittsburgh — a family publisher who puts his personal politics above journalism.

As is the case in many cities, the newspaper economics of Pittsburgh have proved daunting. The Post-Gazette appears in print only three days a week — Thursday, Friday and Sunday — while relying on digital distribution the other four days. The Tribune-Review lives on, sort of, as a digital-only publication called TRIB Live.

At this point, the question for readers of the Post-Gazette is: What’s next? Much of the staff has risen up in revolt over the treatment accorded to Johnson, and management shows no sign of backing down. What happens in the days ahead will tell us a lot about the future of a once-excellent newspaper.

As Johnson put it in her interview with CNN: “The Post-Gazette has chosen to be on the wrong side of history.”

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Journalist-activist Winona LaDuke honored with fifth annual DANNY Award

Winona LaDuke. Photo (cc) 2014 by Sustainability at Portland State University.

The late activist-journalist Danny Schechter was a friend and inspiration to many of us, and his voice is deeply missed. Fortunately, his spirit lives on in the form of the DANNY Awards, which honor those who combine excellence in journalism with social activism. What follows is a press release announcing that this year’s award will go to Native American activist Winona LaDuke. And here is an accompanying essay by Schechter’s business partner, Rory O’Connor.

NEW YORK — The Global Center, a nonprofit educational foundation dedicated to developing socially responsible media, is pleased to announce that the Native American leader Winona LaDuke is the recipient of the fifth annual Danny Award. The award, which honors the life and work of the late Danny Schechter, the “News Dissector,” is given each year to those who best emulate Schechter’s practice of combining excellent journalism with committed social activism. It includes a $3,000 grant to further the recipient’s work.

An environmentalist, economist, author and activist, LaDuke has already written six nonfiction books and has a new one, “To be A Water Protector,” coming out this fall. She’s also written “Last Standing Woman,” a novel about an American Indian reservation’s struggle to restore its culture. Her writings are widely published and cited in academic writing.  A graduate of Harvard University, LaDuke has worked extensively in Native and community-based organizing and groups. In 1985 she helped establish the Indigenous Women’s Network, dedicated to “generating a global movement that achieves sustainable change for our communities,”  and then, with the proceeds of a humanrights award, founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project to help the Anishinaabeg Indians regain possession of their original land base.

In the 1990s LaDuke became involved with the Green Party and was presidential candidate Ralph Nader’s running mate in both the 1996 and 2000 elections. Today she is the executive director of Honor the Earth, a Native environmental advocacy organization she co-founded in 1993 with the folk-rock duo the Indigo Girls. The organization played an active role in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests and remains a key opponent to proposals by the Canadian multinational corporation Enbridge to bring more tar sands to the United States. LaDuke continues to write and speak in support of water protectors and in opposition to other pipelines and mega projects near Native land and waters.

Among her many previous honors and awards, LaDuke was chosen by Time magazine as one of America’s 50 most promising leaders under 40 years of age; won a Reebok Human Rights Award and a Thomas Merton Award; was named the Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year for her work with Honor the Earth; and has been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

Whether or not activism and journalism should mix remains controversial, but in the face of allegations of “fake news,” the invention of “alternative facts,” charges that the news media is an “enemy of the people,” and outright police assaults on reporters covering protests, it has increasingly become embraced by professional practitioners. To Matt Pearce of the Los Angeles Times, “Journalism is activism in its most basic form.” Wesley Lowery, who left The Washington Post in a dispute over his own activism, says the core value of news organizations “needs to be the truth, not the perception of objectivity.”

America’s “view-from-nowhere, ‘objectivity’-obsessed, both-sides journalism is a failed experiment,” Lowery has said. “We need to rebuild our industry as one that operates from a place of moral clarity.” A NewsGuild spokesperson added, “When people in power are sowing doubt about basic facts, journalism looks like activism.” And Lowery concludes, “Journalists perform acts of activism every day. Any good journalist is an activist for truth, in favor of transparency, on the behalf of accountability.”

Decades ago, pioneering journalists like Danny Schechter took a stance toward such controversial topics as apartheid in South Africa and human-rights abuses around the world that led to being branded with a metaphoric scarlet letter – A for Advocate – and told that his activism meant that he really wasn’t a journalist at all. As one of the first to marry the two, Schechter often faced scorn for combining journalistic endeavors with advocacy and activism in support of causes for the social good. While at CNN and later ABC News, he pushed against the constraints of cable and broadcast news. He left ABC to partner in the independent production company Globalvision and began producing programming about such topics as apartheid in South Africa and human rights abuses around the world.

Schechter knew from firsthand experience at CNN and ABC that the commercial media world was not then open to such coverage. So he offered it instead to public television. Rather than being welcomed, he was told by top PBS executives that opposition to the racist regime in South Africa was too controversial and that human rights was “an insufficient organizing principle” for a television program. The PBS reaction, combined with deceitful right-wing protests, led to being told that advocacy on behalf of human rights meant that he wasn’t a journalist at all.

Sadly, such views, while not universally held, are still somewhat prevalent in today’s media world. But as the pace of change within the field of journalism continues to accelerate, many are raising questions about the role of advocacy and the concept of objectivity. Journalists with strong points of view are now giving us news and insights we can’t find elsewhere — even within so-called “mainstream” media. Should we even bother any more trying to distinguish between so-called “objective” journalism and advocacy? Many experts now say no.

“We might have passed the point where we can talk about objectivity in journalism with a straight face,” Patricia Aufderheide, founder of the Center for Media & Social Impact at American University, has noted. “Objectivity was always a shortcut. It was a useful little shortcut of a concept to say you should be fair, you should be honest, you should have integrity, you should tell people accurately and responsibly what you think are the important things about what you saw or researched. If what we’re doing is advocating for the public, that’s our job.”

And if a piece of journalism “isn’t advocacy, it isn’t journalism,” declares Jeff Jarvis, director of Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. “Isn’t advocacy on behalf of principles and the public the true test of journalism? The choices we make about what to cover and how we cover it and what the public needs to know are acts of advocacy on the public’s behalf. Don’t we believe that we act in their interest? After all, what is a journalist, if not an advocate on behalf of the public?”

Perhaps the last word for now should go to someone who epitomizes the so-called mainstream media, New York Times publisher A. G. Sulzberger. While “we’re not retreating from the principles of independence and objectivity,” Sulzberger recently told his paper’s media columnist, “we don’t pretend to be objective about things like human rights and racism.”

The Board of The Global Center congratulates Winona LaDuke and applauds her for both her exemplary reporting about women’s and indigenous rights and sustainable development and for advocating for change in the spirit of the late News Dissector, Danny Schechter.

ABOUT THE GLOBAL CENTER: The Global Center is a nonprofit educational foundation dedicated to developing informative and socially responsible media and a new type of journalism in which the reporting of events and conditions is done in conjunction with those most affected by those events. In addition to operating its own projects, the Center also acts as a fiscal sponsor for outside media efforts that fit within its mission and guidelines.

ABOUT THE DANNY: The Danny Schechter Global Vision Award for Journalism & Activism is given annually to individuals who best emulate Schechter’s practice of combining journalism with social activism and advocacy. In addition to the award, announced each June, recipients receive $3000 to support future work. Previous winners include Jose Antonio Vargas, Patrice O’Neill, the reporters and editors of the Eagle Eye, the student newspaper of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

There is no way to apply for the DANNY. Recipients are chosen from a pool of qualified candidates. Those interested in contributing to the award can make tax-deductible donations to The Global Center. Please send contributions to:

The Global Center
P.O. Box 677
New York, NY 10035
Contact Rory O’Connor: roc@globalvision.org

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