Media Nation

Could Alden swoop in and destroy Dallas’ newspaper? Plus, Soon-Shiong’s latest scheme for the LA Times.

Less than two weeks ago I wrote that Hearst’s plan to acquire The Dallas Morning News and add it to its expanding group of Texas newspapers was a positive development for the Lone Star State. Hearst is a privately owned chain that has a reputation for producing quality statewide and regional news, although its community-level coverage is lacking.

Sign up for free email delivery of Media Nation — and become a supporter for just $6 a month.

Now comes a terrifying development: Katie Robertson reports in The New York Times (gift link) that Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund that has inflicted so much damage on journalism, is countering with a higher offer — $88 million as opposed to $75 million. Let’s be clear that Alden can afford to pay more because it will finance the acquisition by slashing the Dallas paper’s newsroom and perhaps selling off its real estate, as it has done in so many other places, from Denver and Chicago to Hartford, Connecticut, and Lowell and Fitchburg in Massachusetts.

According to Robertson, the Morning News would be added to Alden’s MediaNews Group, one of two chains it owns; the other is Tribune Publishing. She quotes from a MediaNews Group letter to the DallasNews Corp. board:

We have been considering a potential transaction with DallasNews for several years because we are consistently impressed with its commitment to high-quality local journalism supported by operational efficiency that maximizes resources available for the newsroom.

Under Hearst ownership, Poynter media-business media analyst Rick Edmonds predicted that some business operations would be consolidated but the newsroom would be left alone. If the ghouls from Alden take charge, though, all bets would be off. Robertson reports that Alden has already bought up 10% of DallasNews’ stock. We can only hope that the board is willing and able to fight off this truly frightening takeover attempt.

Meanwhile, Patrick Soon-Shiong, the medical-device billionaire who helped deliver the Tribune papers to Alden, has yet another scheme for resuscitating the Los Angeles Times, which has failed to thrive under his feckless ownership and which has been floundering since he killed his paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris just before the election, and just days before Jeff Bezos did the same at The Washington Post.

The “red-pilled billionaire,” to use Oliver Darcy’s wonderful description, has decided to take the Times public. He announced the news during an interview with Jon Stewart that Darcy describes as weirdly obsequious, with Stewart and his staff seemingly not having done any research on the MAGA-curious Soon-Shiong. The aforementioned Edmonds writes (fourth item) of Soon-Shiong’s harebrained scheme to engineer a Wall Street bailout:

The truly baffling part, though, is how in the world he imagines going public is a match for the Times’ situation. Typically, initial public offerings allow founders who have put together a business with a still-growing, big base of customers to cash in. Plus, it’s a vehicle to raise capital for major expansion.

But who wants to buy into a particularly troubled franchise in a declining industry?

These are dark times for the news media, with major papers and television networks paying obeisance to Donald Trump. The need for tough, independent journalism is greater than ever. It’s still out there, but you really have to wonder who’s going to be picked off next.

Adopt A Station is an ingenious effort to help at-risk public radio outlets

This is ingenious. On Monday, Media Nation commenter Steve Stein asked:

The $1.1B cut to public broadcasting is less than $10 per taxpayer. (BTW, is that PER YEAR or over 10 years?) [Congress rescinded spending that had been approved over the next two years.]

I plan on upping my yearly pledge to public radio in some form. Should I up my pledge to WHYY? Would that help the situation nationally? (My guess is WHYY is doing very well compared to, say, WYSO in Yellow Springs OH) Do you think there will be a mechanism from NPR or CPB that could funnel money from the bigger stations to the rural stations that will bear the brunt of cuts?

Later that day, Nieman Lab mentioned a tool called Adopt A Station. You call up the public radio stations in your state (or in any state), and you are shown a station in another part of the country that’s losing more than 50% of its funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, whose funding was eliminated by Donald Trump and the Republican Congress. Overall, local public radio stations are losing $350 million in federal funding in each of the next two years.

If you call up Pennsylvania in Adopt A Station, you’ll see that Steve’s station, Philadelphia-based WHYY, is losing just 2% of its funding. But Adopt A Station suggests that he consider supporting not just WHYY but also WRVS in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, which is losing 71% of its funding. Elizabeth City is located in the northeast corner of the state, about 45 miles south of Norfolk Virginia.

I tried to look up Elizabeth City at the U.S. Census QuickFacts site only to find that it’s down, because of course it is. Thanks, Elon! But according to Wikipedia, Elizabeth City has about 18,700 residents, half of whom are Black, 38% white and 7% Hispanic. In 2011, about 28% of the population was below the poverty line, including 42% of those under 18. About 64,000 people lived in the metro area.

In other words, it’s exactly the sort of place that is being devastated by the CPB cuts, unlike affluent, well-educated metro areas like Greater Philadelphia — or, for that matter, Greater Boston, where WBUR Radio is losing 5% of its funding and GBH Radio is losing 1%. (GBH-TV is losing 8%, and, among Massachusetts public radio stations, WICN of Worcester is losing the most at 18%.)

Adopt A Station was designed by Alex Curley, who writes a newsletter about public media called Semipublic. The idea grew out of a long, data-heavy post he wrote that showed some 15% of public radio stations across the country are in danger of shutting down, including every station that’s losing 50% or more of its funding. He explained:

I was talking with friends within the public media system the next day, debriefing what is the most significant event in the industry’s history since President Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, when an idea was brought up: What if there was an easy way to connect donors looking to make the biggest impact with stations that were truly at risk?

In addition to volunteer efforts like Adopt A Station, NPR itself is cutting its budget by $8 million and will give that money to stations that are being the most harmed by the elimination of funding. NPR depends on direct federal funding for just 1% of its budget, but a much larger share comes from fees paid by local stations for programming such as “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.”

Despite these efforts, I wouldn’t be surprised if we still lose a few public radio and television stations over the next few years. But through cooperative projects such as Curley’s and NPR’s, the damage, I hope, will be minimized until the MAGA extremists can be voted out of power.

Getting panoramic in the Fells

I tried something new with my iPhone camera during an (almost) 7-mile hike through the Middlesex Fells this afternoon — I used the Pano setting to take a panoramic view of the Middle Reservoir while standing on the south shore. I really like the results.

If you haven’t used Pano, you pan across a scene as if you were shooting video, and it stitches together a series of images into one seamless whole. Here is the original, non-Pano shot:

Click on image for a larger high-resolution view.

Here is the unedited Pano version:

And, finally, here’s the Pano version with some cropping.

Jonathan Capehart may be the most prominent journalist yet to quit The Washington Post

Brooks and Capehart on the “PBS NewsHour.”

Is Jonathan Capehart the most visible journalist to quit The Washington Post? With his roles on the “PBS NewsHour” and MSNBC, he is ubiquitous. And now he’s taken the buyout rather than stick around for whatever forced-optimism libertarian hell new opinion editor Adam O’Neal imposes on the opinion section that owner Jeff Bezos has destroyed.

Sign up for free email delivery of Media Nation — and become a supporter for just $6 a month.

It seems like it was only a matter of time once Bezos decided to take a wrecking ball to the operation, starting with his decision to kill an endorsement of Kamala Harris right before the election. That was followed by other embarrassments, including the resignations of cartoonist Ann Telnaes after a drawing that mocked Bezos was nixed, of longtime Post stalwart Ruth Marcus and, finally, of opinion editor David Shipley after Bezos announced the section would be reoriented toward cheerleading for free-market capitalism.

Through it all, Capehart stuck with it, no doubt biding his time until the moment was right. There was one especially memorable moment when, during their weekly segment on the “NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks tore into Bezos while Capehart just sat there with a big grin. It was obviously rehearsed, with Brooks waiting until the end so that Capehart wouldn’t be put in the awkward position of having to respond. I wish I could find the segment, but I can’t remember when it happened.

I suspect Capehart will be plenty busy with his non-Post jobs, but I hope his writing pops up in another publication.

From Colbert to Epstein to Breonna Taylor, a roundup of today’s terrible news from Trumpworld

There is so much awful Trump-related news to make sense of today that I’m going to offer a roundup, though I doubt I’ll attain the eloquence or profundity of Heather Cox Richardson. I’ll begin with two stories that are puzzling once you look beneath the surface — CBS’s decision to cancel Stephen Colbert’s late-night show and The Wall Street Journal’s report on Trump’s pervy birthday greetings to Jeffrey Epstein.

Sign up for free email delivery of Media Nation — and become a supporter for just $6 a month.

First, Colbert. Late-night television isn’t what it used to be, though Colbert’s program was the highest-rated among the genre. Like most people, I never watched, and what little I did see of it was through YouTube clips. Still, it’s only natural to think that he was canceled because CBS’s owner, Paramount, which recently gifted Trump $16 million to settle a bogus lawsuit, is trying to win favor as it seeks regulatory approval for its merger with Skydance. Colbert is an outspoken Trump critic, and he hasn’t been shy about taking on his corporate overlords, either.

If that’s the case, it seems odd to announce that Colbert’s show will run through next May. That makes no sense if the idea is to appease Trump. If it’s a contractual matter, Colbert could be paid to stay home. Now he’s free to unload on Trump and network executives every night without having to worry about whether his show will be renewed. And for those who argue that Colbert is on a short leash: No, he isn’t. I suspect we’ll learn more.

Now for that Wall Street Journal story (gift link). I don’t want to minimize the importance of Trump’s demented message and R-rated drawings that he gave to Epstein for his 50th birthday. There was a time in public life when it would have — and should have — been a major scandal. But I didn’t think the article quite lived up to its advance billing. Before publication, media reporter Oliver Darcy called it “potentially explosive” and wrote about Trump’s personal efforts to kill it, but I’m not sure that it is.

Continue reading “From Colbert to Epstein to Breonna Taylor, a roundup of today’s terrible news from Trumpworld”

Follow-up: How Redbankgreen handles requests to remove news items from search

In my previous post, I raised the question of whether the New Jersey news outlet Redbankgreen should consider making an item about an arrest that has been expunged invisible to search engines, an increasingly common practice with minor police matters. This is totally aside from the outrageous criminal case being brought against the site for its refusal to delete the item.

That prompted the editor, Brian Donohue, to contact me. He told me that Redbankgreen sometimes agrees to render certain stories unsearchable upon request — but that it won’t do so until after two years have passed.

“That is something we take enormously seriously here,” he said, “so people’s worst day of their lives don’t haunt them forever or a mistake that they made won’t haunt them forever.” He added: “The key to this case is it’s our decision. It’s not up to the government.”

Although Donohue wouldn’t talk about the particulars of the case, he did say this: “Thankfully we’re being represented by the best First Amendment firm in the state. It’s not too much time or money. It’s a lot of energy. But we think it’s important that the government cannot tell news organizations under the threat of the criminal code what to publish or what to unpublish.”

Redbankgreen, by the way, has been around for nearly 20 years. Donohue joined about a year and a half ago after a career at The Star Ledger of Newark and in local television news. Publisher Kenny Katzgrau is also the founder of Broad Street, which provides advertising services to the media business, and who was a “reluctant witness” for the defense, as Editor & Publisher put it, in the Google antitrust trial. That earned him an appearance on Mike Blinder’s podcast, “E&P Reports.”

An assault on the First Amendment? Yes. But also a lesson in the ethics of reporting police news.

*Red Bank, N.J. Photo (cc) 2008 by Jazz Guy.*

Now here’s an interesting dilemma. A digital news organization publishes a police blotter item about an arrest. The arrest is later expunged, and the arrestee contacts the news outlet demanding that any mention of it be deleted. They refuse, though they do add a note saying that the matter had been dropped. But that’s not good enough for the arrestee, and now prosecutors are pursuing criminal charges against the two journalists for sticking by their policy against unpublishing news items.

Sign up today for free email delivery of Media Nation.

Whew. This came to my attention recently in the form of a press release from the Freedom of the Press Foundation. The news outlet, Redbankgreen, covers Red Bank, New Jersey, and the journalists being targeted are publisher Kenny Katzgrau and editor Brian Donohue. The journalists have a clear and unambiguous First Amendment right to publish truthful information without interference from the government, but that’s not what makes this interesting.

The arrest itself was a big nothing. In August 2024, Kyle Pietila was charged with simple assault, and in March 2025, after the charge was dropped, Redbankgreen updated the item to note that a judge had expunged it “under an order determining the arrest ‘shall be deemed to have not occurred.’” I am naming Pietila only because he is pursuing criminal charges against Redbankgreen and has thus made himself a public figure.

According to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, which is part of the Freedom of the Press Foundation:

An attorney for the journalists filed a motion to dismiss and expunge the charges on July 11, arguing that the “publication of truthful information on matters of public significance cannot be punished unless it involves a state interest of the highest order.”

“Moreover, information concerning the arrest was published prior to the expungement, and there is no requirement in law that it be removed from the publisher’s website simply because an expungement had taken place,” Bruce Rosen wrote. “The issuance of probable cause in this matter is plain legal error, this prosecution is unconstitutional and in fact unfathomable, and the matter should be promptly dismissed.”

Unconstitutional and unfathomable are good descriptions of this. Yet there are two ethical issues that need to be considered as well.

First, in recent years thoughtful news organizations have ended the practice of regurgitating the local police blotter for the entertainment of their readers. Such alleged news, to quote the late Jack Cole, serves no public purpose, and in some cases it can reinforce racial stereotypes. A few years ago I wrote about how the Keene Sentinel in New Hampshire eliminated routine police news in order to concentrate on more serious crime and broader stories about criminal justice.

Second, I think Redbankgreen acted ethically by appending the police blotter item to note that the arrest had been expunged. What’s not clear from the coverage is whether Katzgrau and Donohue offered to engage in a milder form of unpublishing: keeping it on their website but making it invisible to search engines. A number of news organizations have done this, including The Boston Globe with Fresh Start program.

The prosecution of these two journalists is an outrage, and any officials involved should be reprimanded and punished. Nevertheless, I hope Redbankgreen’s ordeal might lead to a rethink of how they cover news from the local police.

Update: After this item was published, I heard from Brian Donohue, and we talked about Redbankgreen’s unpublishing policy.

How Fall River’s sparse news ecosystem is responding to the tragic Gabriel House fire

The tragic fire in Fall River, Massachusetts, which claimed the lives of nine residents at an assisted living facility, is a significant news story not just locally but nationally. Broadcast networks and The New York Times have all weighed in with coverage.

Sign up for free email delivery of Media Nation — and become a supporter for just $6 a month.

But the story is also playing out in a community whose own news ecosystem is shaky. The Boston Globe and local television news have made it their top story, but what about Fall River-based news organizations? Northeastern journalism student Alexa Coultoff took a look at how Fall River gets its news and wrote up her findings for our What Works project on local journalism earlier this year. She also appeared on our podcast.

What she found was that the legacy paper, The Herald News, had been hollowed out by its corporate chain owner, Gannett, and that perhaps the most reliable source of coverage was produced by the public access cable channel, hosted by Bristol Community College.

Yet the fire is getting solid coverage at the local level. Despite its small staff, The Herald News has published multiple stories. Today’s front page is taken up entirely by the fire, with reports on the firefighters union’s concerns about staffing, how local hospitals responded, and how survivors are coping. Inside there’s a sidebar on who owns the assisted living facility, known as Gabriel House.

A digital news organization called the Fall River Reporter, which Alexa described as a breaking news service for the city and a number of other communities, has had some coverage as well, with stories by former Herald News reporter Jo Goode and local journalist Ken Paiva as well as from State House News Service.

The public access outlet, Fall River Community Media, has posted quite a bit of information on its Facebook page, including the video of a news conference by Fire Chief Jeffrey Bacon and updates from the city, the United Way and the firefighters union.

The fire at Gabriel House is a community tragedy, and the way these stories are told is a reflection of civic health and engagement. Despite lacking the resources of the Boston-based media, Fall River’s information providers are giving a voice to officials and residents rather than relying on outsiders to tell their story.

More: Fall River has an independent radio station, WSAR, which broadcasts at AM 1480 and 95.9 FM. The website carries some links to coverage from other outlets, but the station has also broadcast segments on the fire.

Taking a closer look at the numbers behind a major new study of the local news crisis

*Click on the map for the interactive version.*

For the past 16 years I’ve been reporting on the decline of local news and on efforts to offset it. But though it’s simple enough to spout anecdotes, it can be more challenging to come up with hard numbers, though some have tried.

Sign up for free email delivery of Media Nation — and become a supporter for just $6 a month.

The latest attempt dropped last week: a comprehensive study by Rebuild Local News and Muck Rack, the latter a platform that connects journalists and public relations professionals. I’ve been looking over some of the findings this week, and what’s interesting is that it’s based entirely on data from millions of articles published during the first three months of this year. That means it’s not dependent on the vagaries of counting news outlets by hand, but it also means the researchers had to pile assumption upon assumption and then hope they got it right. I think they did for the most part.

Continue reading “Taking a closer look at the numbers behind a major new study of the local news crisis”

The New Bedford Light and The Boston Globe file lawsuits to pry loose public records

Downtown New Bedford, Mass. 2008 public domain photo by Marc N. Belanger.

The New Bedford Light and The Boston Globe are both suing the city of New Bedford in an attempt to pry loose public records. The Light seeks records pertaining to funds the city awarded that it received through the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, as well as the city’s contract with a consultant that it hired following the Globe’s Spotlight series on the police department’s dubious reliance on confidential informants. The Globe’s suit also pertains to the Spotlight series.

Sign up for free email delivery of Media Nation.

The Light’s story about the lawsuits notes that this is the first time since the nonprofit’s founding in 2021 that it has sued the city. Executive editor Karen Bordeleau is quoted as saying:

The role of journalism in a democracy ensures that elected officials serve the public’s interest and the best way to accomplish this is through public records. Unfortunately this administration has refused multiple times to turn over public documents that would shed light on its decision to award ARPA grant money to high risk projects or to release the cost of a police consultant’s review of departmental conduct.

Indeed, suing for public records is an extreme step taken only after other avenues of appeal have been exhausted. The Globe is also suing the cities of Boston, Worcester and Springfield as well as Massachusetts State Police.

The Light’s and the Globe’s lawsuits are both pending in Bristol County Superior Court.