Re Substack: Never mind

I received a message from Substack a little while ago, and it appears that I may have misunderstood the service’s business model in some important ways. Rather than try to fix my item, I’ve taken it down. Thanks for your understanding.

Dam project underway in the Middlesex Fells

I hadn’t visited the Middlesex Fells for several months, and it looks like I missed a lot. The town of Winchester is rebuilding the 147-year-old North Reservoir Dam at a cost of $6 million. The water level has been lowered considerably in order to accommodate the construction. Here’s a story about it from the Winchester Star, back when there was a Star.

Hearst CT de-emphasizes print while expanding its newsroom and digital subs

The New Haven Register’s printing plant is long gone. And now its owner, Hearst, will be printing it out of state as the chain doubles down on digital subscriptions. Photo (cc) 2009 by Dan Kennedy.

A newspaper battle is brewing in Connecticut — but print is becoming an afterthought.

Hearst Connecticut recently announced that it would move its printing operations to Albany, New York, meaning that deadlines for titles such as the New Haven Register and the Connecticut Post of Bridgeport will be earlier than ever. Twenty-eight jobs will be eliminated, reports Greg Bordonaro of the Hartford Business Journal.

At the same time, Hearst has been growing in Connecticut. The chain is adding positions to its combined newsroom of about 160 full-timers. According to confidential sources I’ve been in touch with with, digital subscriptions have risen from about 21,000 to 39,000 over the past 16 months.

With Connecticut’s statewide daily, the Hartford Courant, being strangled by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, the privately owned Hearst is attempting to fill the void. Last summer, Hearst unveiled a new statewide website, CTInsider, that has its own staff and also draws on content from Hearst CT’s eight dailies and 13 weeklies.

It’s an approach that emphasizes statewide and regional coverage over community watchdog reporting, and it’s similar to what Advance is doing in New Jersey, where papers such as The Star-Ledger of Newark, The Times of Trenton and the South Jersey Times have been united under the NJ.com banner. Nevertheless, the emphasis on growth and real journalism at Hearst CT is heartening at a time when hedge-fund cutbacks are dominant.

Memphis newspaper legend Otis Sanford on the rise of a new media ecosystem

Otis Sanford at his 2014 induction into the Tennessee Journalism Hall of Fame

This week on the “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Professor Otis Sanford, who is something of a journalistic legend in Memphis. As a general assignment reporter at The Commercial Appeal in 1977, Sanford covered the death of Elvis Presley. He also covered courts, county government and politics before being promoted into management. After stints at the Pittsburgh Press and Detroit Free Press, Sanford returned to The Commercial Appeal. In 2002 he was named managing editor and in 2007 he became editorial page editor.

As opinion editor in Memphis, Sanford launched a Citizens Editorial Board. While that was a number of years ago, Sanford was ahead of the curve in terms of community engagement.

In 2011, Sanford joined the University of Memphis Department of Journalism faculty. He holds the Hardin Chair of Excellence in Economic and Managerial Journalism. He still writes a column on politics and events in Memphis. It’s published in The Daily Memphian, a thriving startup founded by journalists and business people who were disappointed by the rounds of layoffs at The Commercial Appeal.

The Daily Memphian is one of two digital newsrooms launched by journalists who left The Commercial Appeal. The other newsroom is the award-winning MLK50, started by Wendi C. Thomas, to cover income inequality, race and justice issues.

I’ve got a quick take on the latest from The Baltimore Banner, a digital start-up that will be competing with the Baltimore Sun, acquired last year by the notorious hedge fund Alden Global Capital.

Ellen looks at the new Votebeat site, a Chalkbeat spinoff that just might help election integrity.

You can listen to our conversation here and subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

A heart-breaking example of how local news can bind a community’s wounds

Shortly after the school shootings in Uvalde, Texas, I checked in to see what local newspapers were reporting. The San Antonio Express-News, a Hearst paper, seemed to be doing a thorough job, but its strict paywall meant that I couldn’t read anything. Then I discovered there was a paper in Uvalde — the Leader-News. But at that early stage there was no coverage of the shootings, so I moved on.

In the days since the shootings, the twice-weekly Leader-News has emerged as a symbol of a community’s suffering. An all-black front page garnered quite a bit of attention. And a sensitive, detailed story in The New Yorker by Rachel Monroe brought us into the lives of the staff members. We learn that Kimberly Rubio, the reporter whose daughter, Lexi, was among those killed, had been a receptionist at the paper and was offered a newsroom job because publisher Craig Garnett often saw her reading a book. “I said, ‘You know, if you love to read that much, you can write,’” Garnett told Monroe. “And, by gosh, she didn’t let us down.”

The New Yorker story is heart-breaking, but it’s also affirming. You’re not going to turn to the Leader-News for an investigative report on the failures of the local police. But as Garnett said, what the paper can provide is “context. A source of understanding, and hand-holding, and healing.” Finally, here is a story from the paper on the victims of the shootings. The headline: “They were smart, funny, loved.”

The Globe leads with a story from public media outlet WBUR

Here’s something I hadn’t seen before. The Boston Globe’s lead story today, on the backlog of cases at the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, is from WBUR, one of the city’s two major public media outlets. It strikes me as semi-smart.

On the one hand, I’m all in favor of collaboration. On the other, I assume that the overlap between the Globe’s and WBUR’s audiences is extensive. Some Globe readers might not appreciate paying for something they already heard on the radio or read at WBUR.org.

Next time I might think twice about leading the paper with it. Maybe run it below the fold, as we used to say back when print mattered. Overall, though, it’s a good, important story that deserves the wider distribution the Globe can give it.

Oliver Mill

Oliver Mill in Middleborough on Sunday. A correction to the bottom sign: Muttock was not “largely ignored” until the 1960s and ’70s. Crowds always went there during herring season, where you could see waves of fish migrating upstream. The restoration got mixed reviews at the time, as it involved the removal of a lot of trees.

It was legal to catch herring back then. One time I brought a few home and cleaned them. My grandmother baked them. The taste was pretty horrible, and they were filled with bones, so I didn’t try that again. And no one called it Oliver Mill. It was Muttock.

In Uvalde, the press reported the official account — and then kept digging

The Uvalde school massacre is shaping up as a massive police scandal. Officers failed to respond as they had been trained to do. We’re going to learn a lot more in the days and weeks to come, but for now, I want to comment on one narrow aspect — the media’s dependence on official sources in such situations. There’s been a lot of criticism on social media about the press’ reliance on police in the initial coverage. Adam Johnson put it this way:

Jay Rosen offered a more nuanced critique.

There’s no doubt that journalists rely too heavily on police sources who may or may not be telling the truth. Sources lie, especially when the truth would make them look bad. I have no reason to think that police officers are more likely to lie than anyone else. But they’re not less likely to lie, either. I’ve written about the problem of “the police giving us good stories in return for our not asking too many questions.”

But I don’t think the Uvalde shootings are an example of journalistic malfeasance. In the immediate aftermath of a terrible breaking-news situation, official sources are often the only ones available. You pass along what they have to say and you keep reporting. That’s what happened in Uvalde. Yes, we learned that the original police account was wrong, and that officials may have been flat-out lying. And it was the press from whom we learned about those falsehoods.

It’s an imperfect process. But the press did not blindly accept what they were being told. They kept digging, and that’s why the official narrative has fallen apart.

This week on ‘Beat the Press’: the Supreme Court leak, the dark web, UFOs and more

Photo (cc) 2014 by Vladimir Pustovit

The latest episode of the “Beat the Press” podcast is up. This week we chew over the Supreme Court leak; how so-called replacement theory, the dark web and Fox News may have contributed to the Buffalo mass murders; why the government is rebranding UFOs as UAPs; and much more. Plus our Rants and Raves. With Emily Rooney at the helm of our flying saucer, joined by Susie Banikarim, Mike Nikitas and me.

You can find “Beat the Press” right here, so hop to it.

Globe Direct is hauled off to the landfill

Globe Direct is no more.

Twitter is celebrating.

Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub, who’s been crusading against Globe Direct for years, posted this photo from a Cambridgeport resident in 2015.