Last week I received some very good news — Jim Haggerty, the editor of The Daily Times Chronicle in Woburn, had been selected to receive the Bob Wallack Community Journalism Award from the New England Newspaper and Press Association. I worked for Jim from 1979-’89, and I was delighted that I was asked to say a few words. Here’s the text of my remarks:
Congratulations to Jim Haggerty for winning the Bob Wallack Community Journalism Award. The award “recognizes an individual who has an exceptional record of commitment to community journalism.” Through his work at The Daily Times Chronicle and through his years of mentoring young journalists, Jim, along with the entire Haggerty family, have shown that they are committed to the highest ideals of local news.
I first met Jim in 1979, when I began working as a part-time reporter covering the town of Winchester. A few months later, after I graduated from Northeastern, Jim hired me. I learned from him and his family what community journalism was about — telling tough stories when they need to be told, but doing it with compassion and with an understanding that holding local government officials, business people and others accountable is not incompatible with treating them like human beings. It’s a lesson I’ve tried to carry with me throughout my own career.
During my 10 years at The Daily Times Chronicle, the paper covered the years-long story of Woburn’s toxic waste tragedy comprehensively and courageously. Families in East Woburn claimed that contaminated drinking water had resulted in their children contracting leukemia and other illnesses. Several of them died. The pressure on Jim and his family from city officials to tone down the coverage must have been overwhelming. But that never trickled down to those of us who were covering the story. Jim’s dedication to journalism and truth-telling during those years was inspiring.
These days, local news is in crisis, as the internet has undermined advertising revenues while corporate chains and hedge funds are slashing the newspapers that they own. The residents of Woburn and the surrounding communities are lucky that The Daily Times Chronicle is still family-owned, still doing good work and still dedicated to the principles that have sustained it for the past hundred years. Best wishes to you, Jim — and good luck to you and your family as you embark on the next hundred.
President Biden. Photo (cc) 2020 by Gage Skidmore.
Is President Biden historically unpopular? Or is he simply experiencing a drop-off that’s similar to what many of his predecessors have gone through?
Nate Cohn of The New York Times tries his hand at analyzing Biden’s popularity — and I don’t know what he’s saying. Consider this:
The president’s approval ratings have sunk into the low-to-mid 40s, putting him into rather lonely historical company. In the era of modern polling, only Donald J. Trump had a lower approval rating at this early stage of his term.
Whoa! That’s not good. But then there’s this:
Many presidents have won re-election after watching their ratings fall to similar depths during their first two years in office.
And this:
Ronald Reagan, Harry Truman, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all saw their ratings sink as low as Mr. Biden’s are today, before ultimately recovering to win re-election.
Cohn is a numbers guy, and I regard him as one of the more reliable journalists at the Times. But this is just incoherent.
Red Sox-Yankees at Fenway Park. Photo (cc) 2018 by Daniel Hartwig.
What a weird Red Sox season. They played way over their heads for three months, were lousy for two and a half months, got incredibly hot and then stopped hitting. They were more fun than anyone thought they’d be on Labor Day. But Chaim Bloom has work to do.
Musts: two additional good starting pitchers (maybe Chris Sale can be one of them), a completely revamped bullpen and better defense. I don’t want to see Kyle Schwarber playing first base again. Maybe they can talk J.D. Martinez into leaving, which would open up the DH position. I’m sure they’d like to, even though he can still hit.
Although it would be a luxury, I’d also like to see them figure out how to get more consistency out of the offense as well. Still, offense is not what’s wrong with this team.
Finally, I was upset when the Sox brought back Alex Cora given his role in the Astros’ 2017 cheating scandal — and his possible role in a lesser Red Sox scandal in 2018. He proved himself once again to be the best manager in Sox history other than Terry Francona, and he seems to be genuinely contrite.
But to echo one of my Facebook friends, he needs to take the next step and tell us exactly what happened in 2017. His role in all that is still kind of a mystery, even though we know what happened in general terms.
Is this Devin Nunes’ cow? Photo via Wikimedia Commons.
Trouble has been bubbling for the past several years regarding libel protections for the press.
In 2019, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that it was time to reconsider the landmark 1964 ruling of New York Times v. Sullivan, which decreed that public officials can’t bring a successful libel suit unless they can prove that false, defamatory material about them was published in the knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard for the truth. (That standard was later extended to public figures as well.)
Then, as I wrote earlier this year, Thomas was joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch in an opinion so slick you could slip on it and get hurt.
Next week, the court will consider whether to hear two libel cases that would give them an opportunity to weaken the Times v. Sullivan protections. Thomas and Gorsuch may prove to be outliers, but given the court’s new supercharged conservative majority, we shouldn’t take anything for granted. First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams writes in The New York Times:
Should the court agree to hear one or both of the libel cases does not mean, of course, that either or both would be overruled…. But it is troubling that two of the court’s nine justices have criticized Sullivan and seem ready to overrule it. Only four votes are required for the full court to take up cases, and if it does so, a fifth would be needed for any ruling.
And that’s not the only sign of trouble on the libel front. Erik Wemple of The Washington Post details a bizarre case involving U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes, a California Republican who is so litigious that he once sued a Twitter account called “Devin Nunes’ Cow.”
I’m not going to go deep into the details; Wemple’s got that nailed down for you. But the outline of it is that Nunes sued the journalist Ryan Lizza over an article he wrote for Esquire. Nunes’ libel claim appears to be hanging by a thread — again, because it seems unlikely that Nunes will be able to meet the Times v. Sullivan standard. But at some point after he filed his lawsuit, Lizza tweeted out a link to the article. Nunes, of course, claimed that was libelous as well.
I noticed that Devin Nunes is in the news. If you’re interested in a strange tale about Nunes, small-town Iowa, the complexities of immigration policy, a few car chases, and lots of cows, I’ve got a story for you… https://t.co/yzXHlCihDY
Rather than tossing the Twitter claim, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit have kept it alive for further consideration, “even though” as Wemple writes, “other courts have ruled that just linking to a long-standing story doesn’t constitute ‘republication.'” The court ruled that because Nunes’ suit put Lizza on notice that his story might contain falsehoods, then he should have refrained from tweeting it out (never mind that Lizza insists his story was true). But Wemple quotes Jeffrey Pyle, a Boston-based First Amendment lawyer at Prince Lobel Tye:
Until now, the courts have been unanimous that hyperlinks, retweets, and other references to allegedly defamatory articles are not “republications.” The Eighth Circuit departs from this consensus without much, if any, explanation why.
Journalists are able to do the work they do because they don’t have to worry about frivolous lawsuits. That has now come under question, and we all need to keep a close eye on what happens next.
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens has spoken out against the cancellation of a speaking appearance by his Times colleague Nikole Hannah-Jones at the Middlesex School in Concord. Stephens is an alumnus and a member of the board of trustees. Stephens told Christopher Galvin of Boston.com:
I had no knowledge that an invitation had been extended to Nikole. I had nothing to do with the decision not to bring her to the school. The first I heard about it was when someone sent me her tweet… I don’t believe in canceling speakers.
Stephens is a conservative who has written critically about the 1619 Project, a reimagining of the role of slavery in American history that Hannah-Jones oversaw and for which she won a Pulitzer Prize.
Eliot Hall at the Middlesex School. Public domain photo by Daderot.
I think it’s pretty obvious that we’re only in the beginning stages of learning the story behind the Middlesex School’s decision to invite, and then uninvite, New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones to speak during Black History Month. Middlesex is an exclusive prep school in Concord. Hannah-Jones is best known for the 1619 Project, a reimagining of the role of slavery in American history that won her a Pulitzer Prize.
What always amazes me when something like this happens is the failure of the imagination we see on the part of those in charge. Does David Beare, the head of school who issued a limp statement about concerns over “individuals from outside our community” making a ruckus, really think this is going to end well either for the school or for him? This is not North Carolina.
A few other points worth noting. Among the school’s trustees is New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, a conservative and frequent critic of so-called cancel culture. Will he speak up on behalf of his Times colleague? Another prominent trustee is Cass Sunstein, a well-known Harvard Law School professor and a good bet to criticize this abomination.
Of possibly more significance is that Robert and Anne Bass are both vice presidents of the board. As Gabriel Snyder observes, the Basses are “part of a billionaire family that has bankrolled a lot of campus conservative outrage over the years.”
Two other names on the list: Robert and Anne Bass, part of a billionaire family that has bankrolled a lot of campus conservative outrage over the years
Stay tuned. There is going to be much more to come, I’m sure.
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Did a member of Donald Trump’s inner circle tell a woman he was trying to pick up that he’d killed two men during his misspent youth? And if he did say that, was he telling the truth — or was he merely boasting?
The answers to those questions could presumably be obtained through a vigorous probe by law enforcement officials as well as some dogged investigative reporting. But the story slipped beneath the surface almost as soon as it broke three weeks ago.
That lassitude stands in contrast to the endless updates we’ve been subjected to on what is rattling around inside Sens. Joe Manchin’s and Kyrsten Sinema’s heads at any given moment. Then again, “Dems in Disarray” is a narrative the media never tire of. Who cares if someone who may yet play a prominent role in Trump’s comeback is a killer, or likes to play one when he’s trying to impress women?
Our story begins on Sept. 29, when Alex Isenstadt of Politico reported that a well-connected Republican donor named Trashelle Odom was claiming that Corey Lewandowski — one of Trump’s 2016 campaign managers and still someone who has the former president’s ear — had made “unwanted sexual advances toward her at a Las Vegas charity event over the weekend.”
Isenstadt’s article included a number of disturbing allegations Odom had made about Lewandowski — that he had crudely bragged about the size of his endowment, that he had stalked and touched her and that “she grew fearful for her personal safety as Lewandowski described incidents of violence that took place earlier in his life.”
Isenstadt followed up on Oct. 1 with a report that Odom had filed a statement with police. Details, though, were lacking.
And here we come to the most problematic part of this saga. Because the following day the full text of Odom’s statement was made public — not by a reputable news organization, but by the Daily Mail, a sleazy tabloid based in the U.K. The statement contained all the salacious details, including Lewandowski’s alleged claim that he had killed two men by stabbing them in the back of the head, once when he was just a wee lad of 10, and again at some unspecified time when he was older.
Was the statement for real?
The quality media, understandably, have approached the document with rubber gloves and tweezers, alluding to Odom’s claims in general terms (remember, Politico had already reported on them) while staying away from the details contained in the alleged police statement. Neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post has reported Odom’s supposed claim about Lewandowski’s homicidal boasting.
Among those that have taken the plunge by citing the Daily Mail’s story are The Daily Beast, Salon, Mediaite and The Bulwark, an anti-Trump conservative website that ran a piece by Tim Miller mocking Lewandowki. But Miller also asked a serious question, and it’s one we all ought to ponder:
“Maybe the whole thing will turn out to be a hilarious mixup, the kind of sitcom setup that everyone laughs about later. Ross said to Rachel, ‘I stabbed five guys!’ And Chandler says, ‘Ix-nay on the abby-stay!’
“But also: Maybe not?”
Indeed. Maybe not. Assuming the police report is genuine and that Odom was telling the truth, it seems more likely than not that Lewandowski was lying, just as he was lying about running 400 miles a week and staying in “the Elvis suite.” But Lewandowski has a thuggish reputation as well as a history of women filing assault claims against him. So who knows?
Almost as soon as the Politico story was published, Lewandowski was removed from the Trump-aligned Super PAC he had been running. “He will no longer be associated with Trump World,” a Trump spokesman was quoted as saying. But as Maggie Haberman wrote in The New York Times, “Whether Mr. Lewandowski remains permanently banished from Mr. Trump’s orbit remains to be seen.”
The next day, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem announced that Lewandowki was being cut off from his role as an unpaid adviser to her campaign. Noem’s statement cited Odom’s allegations as the reason. Michael Scherer of The Washington Post noted, though, that Noem has also been hit with allegations that she and Lewandowski had an extramarital affair — rumors that she called “total garbage and a disgusting lie.”
After that, the story all but vanished.
Any day now, it seems, Trump will announce he’s running for president in 2024. Will Lewandowski be at his side once again?
Maybe Trump’s supporters, who don’t care that he was impeached twice and now praises the Jan. 6 insurrection he helped incite, also won’t care if one of his advisers may have boasted that he had fatally knifed two men. Maybe they won’t even care if it’s actually true.
But journalists ought to care. This isn’t a matter of political commentators gaming out how murder plays with undecided voters in swing states. This is as serious as it gets. I hope that teams of investigative reporters are looking into it right now.
I had a chance on Monday to listen to Brian Stelter’s CNN podcast with Bari Weiss, the semi-conservative journalist who left The New York Times over what she perceived as an overabundance of left-wing groupthink.
It was an interesting conversation. I agreed with some of what Weiss had to say and disagreed with some of it. But I was put off by the revisionist history she espoused about the resignation of James Bennet as editorial-page editor of The New York Times. Stelter didn’t push back. I will.
Weiss offered up as fact the notion that Bennet was forced out of the Times in 2020 solely because he published an op-ed piece by Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, calling for military force to be used against Black Lives Matter protesters. She described a letter signed by Times staffers saying that Cotton’s op-ed put their lives in danger as “craziness.”
And yes, Bennet’s departure came shortly thereafter. But here are a few facts that neither Weiss nor Stelter brought up:
After Bennet defended Cotton’s op-ed, it was learned that he hadn’t even bothered to read it before it was published — an inexcusable dereliction of duty.
Shortly before the Times published Cotton’s op-ed, Cotton called for the government to give “no quarter” to looters. As The Bulwark, a conservative website pointed out, giving no quarter in military terms means to kill indiscriminately — a war crime. Cotton, a veteran, knows that. Unfortunately, neither Bennet nor any other Times editor asked Cotton to address that in his op-ed.
In late 2019, Times columnist Bret Stephens suggested that Ashkenazi Jews might be genetically more intelligent than other people. Bennet allowed him to clean it up unscathed, although Stephens did have to suffer the indignity of an Editor’s Note being appended to his column. As Politico media critic Jack Shafer wrote at the time, “The Times disavowal and re-edit (tellingly neither co-signed nor acknowledged by Stephens) was too little and too late — if you’re going to edit a piece, the smart move is to edit before it publishes.” That, ahem, would be Bennet’s job. Wonder if he read that one before it was published?
Sarah Palin has sued the Times for libel over a 2017 editorial in which Bennet personally added language suggesting that a map published by Palin’s PAC, festooned with crosshairs, incited the shooting that severely wounded then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed six others. There is no evidence — none — that the mentally ill shooter ever even saw the map. The lawsuit is still pending.
In other words, the mishandled Tom Cotton op-ed was merely the last in a series of banana peels that Bennet stepped on. It’s a wonder he lasted as long as he did.
After leaving the Times, Weiss moved to Substack and started the newsletter Common Sense. She is currently in the process of hiring a team of opinion writers to create what she told Stelter will be “the op-ed page that I want to read.”
Well, if the selective omission of relevant facts is what she wants to read — and wants to publish — then you can count me out.
The Devil Strip, a pioneering cooperatively owned magazine in Akron, Ohio, has closed its doors. More of an arts and culture outlet than a news organization, the operation has nevertheless stood as a successful example of an independent project owned by its employees and the community.
WKYC reports that the end came over the weekend — staff members were told on Friday that the money had run out, and on Monday they received layoff notices. The station adds:
Founded in 2014, The Devil Strip was a community-owned magazine that focused on music, arts, news, and culture in Akron. For as little as a dollar a month, readers had the opportunity to become members of the co-op. An investment of $330 allowed you to become a co-owner.
In March 2020, I spent a week in Northern California reporting on The Mendocino Voice, a for-profit news site that was converting to cooperative ownership. At that time the founders, publisher Kate Maxwell and editor Adrian Fernandez Baumann, told me that The Devil Strip was one of the projects they had studied.
I hope The Devil Strip might be able to reorganize and come back, though the tweet makes it sound like they’ve hit the end of the road. Founder Chris Horne has not tweeted about it except for a cryptic reference to a “sabbatical.” I’m sure he’ll have more to say soon.
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