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.
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.
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.
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.
The altar boy-in-chief resigns. 1974 photo in the public domain.
Two weeks ago The Boston Globe published letters from readers of La Presse, a Montreal newspaper, in which they expressed their views about Donald Trump. The letters were published in both the Globe and La Presse.
Part two, letters from Globe readers to La Presse, appears today. If you’re not a Globe subscriber, you can access the feature at La Presse by clicking here. If you use Chrome, you should see a box at the top asking if you want to translate the page from French into English.
Because I’m always up for a good Nixon analogy, I especially liked a letter written by Sandra Regan of Winthrop, who says in part:
Richard Nixon was an altar boy compared with the entity who is currently impersonating the president of the United States. Donald Trump has trashed our Oval Office and soiled the history and dignity of our beautiful White House. Now he is trying to use you and other allies in yet another shameless attempt to get whatever he wants.
Donna R. Cooper of Provincetown adds:
I want to assure you that many Americans do not support his racist, sexist, and homophobic agenda. He understands only money, so I support you in not spending yours in the United States (although I’ll miss overhearing that lovely French as I sit on the beach this summer). Urge your elected officials not to compromise in the face of Trump’s tariffs. Take your products to other countries. Do not let the bully win.
And Marjorie Martin of Framingham concludes her letter with this: “Please pray for us.” Indeed.
Dallas Morning News headquarters. Photo (cc) 2018 by Shaggylawn65.
This morning I want to share some good news about local news — and from a legacy newspaper company, no less. The Hearst newspaper chain has acquired The Dallas Morning News, adding to its constellation of Texas newspapers including the Houston Chronicle, the Austin American-Statesman and the San Antonio Express-News.
Hearst is a privately held chain and, though corporate chain ownership is always problematic, the company has shown that it’s committed to strong regional and statewide news. We discussed Hearst’s strategy in Connecticut in our book, “What Works in Community News,” where Hearst has a cluster of newspapers that includes the New Haven Register, the Connecticut Post of Bridgeport, the Times-Union of Albany, New York (OK, not quite Connecticut), and the digital-only CT Insider. Hyperlocal is left to smaller outlets and digital startups.
Readers with long memories may recall that DallasNews Corp. at one time was known as Belo, and that it owned The Providence Journal. Rick Edmonds, who analyzes the news business for Poynter, reports that the Texas transaction was worth some $75 million, writing:
Staff reductions on the business side can be expected as those Dallas Morning News functions are consolidated with the rest of Hearst, but except for production, I would expect the newsroom to remain nearly intact. The Morning News’s story on the deal said that it has 157 news employees.
Ken Doctor, a former newspaper industry analyst who now runs local news digital startups in Santa Cruz, California and Eugene, Oregon, had a positive take on the news.
“To have a state like Texas with one owner for those four markets is really something,” he said. “Hearst has held on to their newspaper business and is reinvesting. That’s really contrarian and a good sign for the industry. And they do great journalism.”
The deal ends 140 years of local ownership for the Morning News, which is a shame. Hearst publishes 28 dailies and 50 weeklies. But for the paper to wind up in the hands of a decent publisher rather than a cost-cutting behemoth like Gannett or Alden Global Capital is certainly good news for the News’ staff and the people they serve.
Nonprofit acquires Vt. weekly
A for-profit weekly newspaper in southern Vermont is going nonprofit. The Deerfield Valley News, founded in 1966, is being acquired by The Commons, a venerable nonprofit newspaper based in Brattleboro.
“We’ve never had the resources for more finely grained news coverage like gavel-to-gavel coverage of municipal government news, and The Deerfield Valley News will continue to perform that critical role, as it has, week after week, for years and years. That won’t change,” said Commons editor-in-chief Jeff Potter in a statement. The Valley News writes:
Randy and Vicki Capitani, owners of The Deerfield Valley News for nearly 35 years, have announced the sale of their venerable weekly print newspaper to Vermont Independent Media, publisher of the The Commons.
The sale was completed on June 27, bringing The Deerfield Valley News under the umbrella of Vermont Independent Media, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit news corporation. The Deerfield Valley News will be a nonprofit sister publication of The Commons, an independent newspaper covering Brattleboro, the Connecticut River Valley, and southern Vermont.
Vermont Independent Media and its board of directors plan to maintain the The Deerfield Valley News as a paid-circulation newspaper serving the Deerfield Valley, and current subscriptions will be honored under the new management. The newspaper will continue to operate out of its Wilmington location, and editorial staff and other key personnel will remain in their roles.
N.H. paper shuts down. Again.
Sadly, another newspaper serving New Hampshire is shutting down. The Claremont Eagle Times ceased publishing several weeks ago, Steve Taylor writes in The Valley News. (That Valley News is based in West Lebanon, New Hampshire, and is not to be confused with The Deerfield Valley News.)
According to Taylor, the Eagle Times has struggled since its founding in 1950. Indeed, the news of its closing rang a bell, and sure enough, the paper closed for the first time in 2009. I guess at some point it was revived. When I took note of the first shutdown, there was another news outlet in town called Your Claremont Press. That no longer seems to be in existence, either.
The shutdown came not long after the staff walked out because their paychecks bounced. By the end, the once-daily print paper was coming out three days a week. Its website had reportedly not been updated since June 15, and it currently appears to be down.
Katherine Ann Rowlands. 2017 photo by Cali Godley.
On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Katherine Ann Rowlands, who runs the Bay City News Foundation. The foundation is a nonprofit that publishes journalism for the Greater San Francisco Bay Area at LocalNewsMatters.org and The Mendocino Voice. And by the way, this is our last podcast until September.
The Bay City News Foundation acquired The Mendocino Voice and took it nonprofit a little more than a year ago. I reported on the Voice for our book, “What Works in Community News,” and was visiting in March 2020 when … well, you know what happened next. At that time, co-founders Kate Maxwell and Adrian Fernandez Baumann were hoping to turn the nominally for-profit operation into a cooperatively owned venture, but COVID sidetracked those plans. Maxwell and Baumann have since moved on, and Rowlands has some pointed observations about why there have been no successful examples of local-news co-ops.
Rowlands also is owner and publisher of Bay City News, a regional news wire supplying original journalism for the whole media ecosystem in her area, from TV to start-up digital outlets.
The first-ever COVID news conference in Mendocino County, Calif., on March 5, 2020. Mendocino Voice co-founder Adrian Fernandez Baumann is shooting video and co-founder Kate Maxwell, seated, wearing blue and off to the right, is taking notes. Photo (cc) 2020 by Dan Kennedy.
I’ve got a Quick Take about the New England Muzzle Awards. Since 1998 I’ve been writing an annual Fourth of July roundup of outrages against free speech and freedom of expression in New England during the previous year, first for the late, lamented Boston Phoenix, later for GBH News and now for my blog, Media Nation. This is the 27th annual edition.
Ellen reports on the death of Nancy Cassutt, a newsroom leader at Minnesota Public Radio and American Public Media’s “Marketplace.” Nancy was a driving force in helping Mukhtar Ibrahim get Sahan Journal off the ground.
Several weeks ago we had a reunion of Northeastern University journalism alumni who were involved in student media in the 1970s and early ’80s. Among those attending was David McKay Wilson, one of the very few in our crowd who is still working as a full-time reporter. And he was excited about a story he was digging into about a Republican politician who seemed to have infiltrated a Democratic group in the suburbs north of New York City using a fake name.
Today The Journal News published that story, and it is weird and wonderful. Erin Crowley, a county legislator who also works for Republican congressman Mike Lawler, appears to have gotten herself inserted into an anti-Lawler chat group on Signal using the name “Jack Thomas.” Once in, Thomas — again, almost certainly Crowley — tried to generate an uproar against Lawler at a town meeting he was holding in May. Thomas/Crowley apparently believed that such behavior would create sympathy for her boss.
Although there is no definite proof, Thomas’ phone number is identical to one that Crowley has used. Wilson writes:
After two Lawler critics were carried out of the hall by New York State troopers, Thomas posted that chat group members should leave the auditorium to protest Lawler’s crackdown on dissent and his evasive answers to questions from the audience.
“Should we walk out en masse?” posted Thomas. “Make a point we won’t tolerate his bullsh** anymore.”
Wilson also quotes an anti-Lawler activist named Ann Starer, who says, “Walking out of the hall would have been to their benefit. That would have been great for them. I said on the chat that I didn’t think it was a good idea.”
The story is locked behind a paywall. Because The Journal News is a Gannett paper, I was able to access it through my USA Today subscription. If that’s not an option, you can read a thorough synopsis by Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, who calls it “my official new favorite story ever.”
Wilson has tangled with Lawler before, as I’ve written, and last month he was kicked out of a Lawler event for photographing Crowley. David’s doggedness at holding power to account at an age when many of his peers are retired is an inspiration.
Lyndon Johnson on the campaign trail in 1954. Photo via the LBJ Library.
The IRS has ruled that religious leaders can endorse political candidates from the pulpit, thus overturning a ban that had been in place since 1954. The New York Times broke the story, but in case you can’t get around the paywall, here is The Associated Press’ version.
The news is sure to be greeted with consternation among many observers, especially on the left. But the ban was, in fact, an unintended consequence of a move by Lyndon Johnson to silence a tax-exempt political group that opposed his re-election to the Senate. Johnson’s chief aide, George Reedy, told an interviewer years later that he believed LBJ had not intended to include religious organizations in the ban.
The IRS action comes just days after the presiding bishop of our denomination, Sean Rowe, wrote a powerful commentary in which he called on the Episcopal Church to be an engine of the resistance to Donald Trump’s authoritarian rule. (You may recall that Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budd got Trump’s second term off to a rousing start by admonishing him from the pulpit on Inauguration Day.) It sounds like it just became easier for our church to speak out and not have its tax status threatened, although who knows if the regime will try to punish religious liberals? Here is part of what Bishop Rowe wrote:
Churches like ours, protected by the First Amendment and practiced in galvanizing people of goodwill, may be some of the last institutions capable of resisting this administration’s overreach and recklessness. To do so faithfully, we must see beyond the limitations of our tradition and respond not in partisan terms, but as Christians who seek to practice our faith fully in a free and fair democracy.
We did not seek this predicament, but God calls us to place the most vulnerable and marginalized at the center of our common life, and we must follow that command regardless of the dictates of any political party or earthly power. We are now being faced with a series of choices between the demands of the federal government and the teachings of Jesus, and that is no choice at all.
In 2017 I wrote a commentary for GBH News in which I expressed agreement with Trump after he called for the Johnson Amendment to be overturned. Now that has happened. I’m posting the full piece after the jump.
I’m inclined to believe that any information about a major political figure is newsworthy, especially when they are new to the spotlight. Still, I think it’s important to analyze some of the ethical issues that have been raised by last Thursday’s New York Times report (gift link) that New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani identified himself as “Asian” and “Black or African American” on a Columbia University entrance application when he was 17 years old.
The story sparked outrage on social media, with many Mamdani supporters arguing that the Times made it seem like the candidate had done something wrong when, in fact, he was being entirely accurate: Mamdani was born in Uganda to Indian parents. I’m old enough to remember that Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, identified herself as African American. Though white, she was born and raised in Mozambique. Heinz Kerry was mocked in some circles, but, like Mamdani, she was not wrong. (It’s fair to note that both Heinz Kerry and Mamdani ignored the generally accepted meaning of “African American.”)
Liam Scott’s detailed overview in the Columbia Journalism Review of both the Mamdani story and the fallout provide most of what you need to know, but I want to expand on a few of the issues that have been raised.
John Hancock, better known for his signature than for his accomplishments, is the subject of a new biography, reviewed by Ted Widmer in The New York Times.
“John Hancock: First to Sign, First to Invest in America’s Independence,” by Willard Sterne Randall, is, according to Widmer’s encapsulation, the story of “an 18th-century American who seemed preordained to follow the path of his father and grandfather into the ministry, but then swerved in another direction when his father died and a wealthy uncle offered to adopt him.”
Sounds interesting, but I wish Widmer had mentioned an earlier Hancock biography — “The Baron of Beacon Hill,” published in 1980 by my friend Bill Fowler. I read it as soon as it came out, so I can’t say I remember much about it 45 years later except that it was dauntingly well researched and a great read.
William M. Fowler Jr. was one of my favorite professors at Northeastern in the 1970s and was the inspiration for my deciding to get a master’s degree in American history at Boston University. My master’s thesis, “The Boston Massacre and the Press,” came straight out of my love for Colonial New England that Bill had sparked.
There was (and is) a group of journalism students from the mid- to late ’70s who were all members of the Bill Fowler Admiration Society. We took as many classes as we could with him, and we got him to write a column called “Bygone Boston” for the Northeastern News, as the student newspaper was then known (it’s now the independent Huntington News); he wrote a similar column for MetroNorth Magazine, a short-lived venture that I published in 1989 and ’90.
Bill is still doing well. The last time I saw him was about a year ago at the opening of the revamped Archival Center at Northeastern’s Snell Library. Unfortunately, he couldn’t attend a recent alumni reunion we held a few weeks ago because he was on a long-planned vacation.
I could not find any direct evidence that Randall cites “The Baron of Beacon Hill,” although I did find some indirect hints. I wasn’t going to spend $15 on the Kindle version to find out, but at some point I’ll be sure to look. In the meantime, I recommend Fowler’s earlier biography. According to Amazon, the hardcover can be yours for just $286.80.
One day you’re telling yourself that at least the billionaire owner of your local newspaper hasn’t thrown in with Donald Trump. The next day a group of players from the baseball team he owns are lined up in the Oval Office, shaking hands with the president on the very day that Congress passed the worst piece of legislation in our lifetime.
Apparently we’ve already moved on from the news that a group of Red Sox players were greeted by Trump on Thursday during what has been described as a family visit. News accounts have been sketchy on the details, and it seems that no one is inclined to follow up. They should. I mean, this is Boston, and it’s the Red Sox, not the Trump-supporting Patriots. Has our favorite fourth-place, below-.500 team gone MAGA?
Here’s what we know, according to Chris Cotillo of MassLive. Thursday was an off-day before the Red Sox’ Fourth of July game against the Washington Nationals. A number of players decided to visit the White House as part of their annual family outing. Margo Martin, part of Trump’s communications team, posted a 17-second video on Twitter (you can watch it above) of 10 players shaking hands with the president. Those players were Trevor Story, Justin Wilson, Abraham Toro, Romy Gonzalez, Connor Wong, Greg Weissert, Wilyer Abreu, Garrett Whitlock, Brennan Bernardino and Rob Refsnyder. If there were any others, they haven’t been identified.
Not everyone on the team attended. Garrett Crochet posted a photo of a panda that he took while visiting the zoo, which may or may not have been intended as a zing at his teammates. Also missing were manager Alex Cora, coaches and team officials. This appears to have been an unofficial visit — an extremely embarrassing unofficial visit.
“It was scheduled as an apolitical, behind-the-scenes tour with no expectations of publicity or meeting President Trump, a source familiar with the visit said,” the Globe’s Tim Healey reported. Whether that source is being straight with Healey or not, at least the Sox realize this is not something they want to associate themselves with. As they say, hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.
The Globe’s owner, John Henry, is a billionaire financier, and he’s also the principal owner of the Red Sox. That’s what makes this so dicey. Unlike Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post and Patrick Soon-Shiong’s Los Angeles Times, the Globe has remained a liberal paper, and its editorial pages enthusiastically endorsed Kamala Harris for president last year. Henry and his wife, Globe Media CEO Linda Pizzuti Henry, are regarded as politically liberal. Any signs of slippage would be alarming, which is why I hope that Thursday’s White House visit was just something that 10 players did on their own.
William M. Fowler Jr. was one of my favorite professors at Northeastern in the 1970s and was the inspiration for my deciding to get a master’s degree in American history at Boston University. My master’s thesis, “The Boston Massacre and the Press,” came straight out of my love for Colonial New England that Bill had sparked.
