A top Globe editor moves on

On By Dan KennedyIn Media1 Comment

Scott Allen, a top editor at The Boston Globe (his title is assistant managing editor for projects), is leaving the paper, according to an email sent to the staff Thursday afternoon by editor Nancy Barnes. Here’s the email, sent to me by several trusted sources.

Dear all,

Scott Allen is leaving the Globe after 30 years to work with his son, John Allen, better known as MrBallen, whose hit podcast on Amazon Prime and his videos on YouTube reach millions each week.

It’s nearly impossible to sum up 30 years of Boston Globe journalism in a few paragraphs, but here goes:  At the Globe, Scott has helped edit four Pulitzer Prize finalists and one Pulitzer winner, the Quick Strike Team’s “Blind Spot” series, which won for investigative reporting. Most recently, he worked closely with Janelle Nanos on her heart wrenching Pulitzer finalist “Kate Price remembers something terrible.”

Scott has also served as Spotlight Team leader and editor of the Globe’s medical, science and environmental coverage. He joined the Globe as a cub environmental reporter back in 1992.

And in recent years, Scott has led the newsroom’s effort to make the most of our intellectual property, pursuing creative ways to repurpose the Globe content in podcasts, on TV and in other media.

“My colleagues at the Globe have been like family to me and I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished together,” he said. “It’s bittersweet to say goodbye, but the opportunity to work with my son was just too good to pass up. I wish my friends here nothing but continued success.”

Scott has agreed to stay on for a few weeks to help me with transition issues. I want to personally thank Scott for welcoming me to the Globe long before I arrived, and for being such a supportive partner as I made my way around the organization.

Nancy

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Pioneering digital publisher Howard Owens tells us about a new idea for raising revenues

On By Dan KennedyIn Local News1 Comment
Howard Owens. Photo by Don Walker and used by permission.

On the new “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Howard Owens, the publisher of The Batavian, a digital news organization in Genesee County, New York, way out near Buffalo. When I first met Howard, he was the director of digital publishing for GateHouse Media, which later morphed into Gannett. Howard launched The Batavian for GateHouse in 2008. In 2009, GateHouse eliminated Howard’s job, but they let him take The Batavian with him, and he’s been at it ever since.

The Batavian’s website is loaded with well over 100 ads, reflecting his belief that ads should be put right in front of the reader, not rotated in and out. He’s also got an innovative idea to raise money from his readers while keeping The Batavian free, which we ask him about during our conversation with him.

We’re also joined by Sebastian Grace, who just received his degree in journalism and political science from Northeastern. Everyone in journalism is freaking out about ChatGPT and other players in the new generation of artificial intelligence. Seb wrote a really smart piece, which is up on the What Works website, assuring us all that we shouldn’t worry — that AI is a tool that can allow journalists to work smarter.

Ellen has a Quick Take on Mississippi Today, which won a Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for stories that revealed how a former Mississippi governor used his office to steer millions of state welfare dollars to benefit family and friends. Including NFL quarterback Brett Favre! We interviewed Mary Margaret White, the CEO of Mississippi today, on the podcast in November 2022. And reporter Anna Wolfe has a great podcast about her prize-winning series.

I observe that journalism these days is often depicted as deep blue — something that liberals and progressives may pay attention to, but that conservatives and especially Trump supporters dismiss as fake news. But Steve Waldman, the head of the Rebuild Local News coalition, says it’s not that simple, and that the local news crisis is harming conservatives even more than it is liberals.

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

Should the press have blown the whistle on Rachael Rollins? No. Here’s why.

On By Dan KennedyIn Media4 Comments

Several people have raised questions as to why the local press didn’t blow the whistle on U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins over what the Justice Department has characterized as her attempts to influence the Suffolk County district attorney’s race between interim DA Kevin Hayden and Boston City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo. Rollins favored Arroyo over Hayden, who was the eventual winner and is now the elected district attorney.

As documented in the inspector general’s report, Rollins leaked like a broken faucet to The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald in an attempt to influence their coverage. The report makes clear that was a serious ethical violation, and that it has possibly landed her in legal trouble as well. Isn’t that a story in and of itself?

Well, now. The relationship between journalists and sources is often not pretty, and this is one of those rare instances of the public being given an inside look. Sources have all kinds of motives, sometimes less than pure. Reporters want to get the story, and they generally don’t worry much about whether their sources are doing the right thing.

As Bruce Mohl and Michael Jonas write at CommonWealth: “These sorts of back-channel communications are commonplace in the world of political journalism, where reporters and political figures often use each other for their own ends. But rarely do these exchanges come to light.”

The most famous example I can think of is Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times and The Washington Post. The journalists who received those documents knew that Ellsberg was breaking national-security laws. But rather than turning him in, they published the government’s own secret history of the Vietnam War, thus performing a public service. The government later prosecuted Ellsberg, although the case fell apart. Of course, the motives in the Rollins case were hardly that grandiose.

Keep in mind, too, that reporters in the Rollins case were unaware of the full extent of Rollins’ alleged wrongdoing. Probably the most damaging allegation to come out of the Justice Department report is that Rollins is said to have lied under oath when she was asked by investigators about leaking a confidential document to the Herald. Journalists had no way of knowing about that until Wednesday, when the government released that report.

Finally, there’s the matter of what would have happened if the press had decided to report on Rollins’ leaking. There’s actually a 1991 Supreme Court case that speaks to this — Cohen v. Cowles Media. In that case, a political operative named Dan Cohen leaked information about his client’s opponent to the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press, papers in Minneapolis and St. Paul; the Star Tribune at that time was owned by Cowles Media and the Pioneer Press by Knight Ridder. The reporters were so appalled at Cohen’s attempt to get them to write about a politician’s petty crimes that they decided the real story was Cohen’s sleazy tactics.

Cohen sued at having been outed, and the court sided with him, citing the doctrine of promissory estoppel: Cohen acted the way he did on the belief that his anonymity would be respected. Essentially, the reporters violated a verbal contract with Cohen, and a $200,000 judgment Cohen had been awarded in state court was reinstated. Justice Byron White’s decision began:

The question before us is whether the First Amendment prohibits a plaintiff from recovering damages, under state promissory estoppel law, for a newspaper’s breach of a promise of confidentiality given to the plaintiff in exchange for information. We hold that it does not.

I don’t know what federal or Massachusetts law says about promissory estoppel, but it seems likely that reporters would have run afoul of their legal obligations if they had promised Rollins anonymity and then blew her cover. In any case, there’s no reason to think they even considered doing such a thing. Nor should they have. Promising anonymity to a source is something that should not be undertaken lightly, but once that agreement is in place, no journalist should even consider violating it.

Correction: This post originally misidentified the owner of the Pioneer Press in 1991.

DOJ report on Rachael Rollins provides an inside look into journalistic sausage-making

On By Dan KennedyIn Media3 Comments
Rachael Rollins. YouTube screen capture via Wikimedia Commons.

Earlier today the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General issued a 155-page ethics report regarding U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins, who announced Tuesday that she would resign from her position.

Much of the report details Rollins’ alleged attempts to influence the 2022 Democratic primary in the Suffolk County district attorney’s race between her successor, interim DA Kevin Hayden, and his challenger, Boston City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo. Hayden, who had been appointed on an interim basis by then-Gov. Charlie Baker, defeated Arroyo and is now the elected DA.

The campaign was dominated by two major series of articles in The Boston Globe — one involving Hayden, who reportedly had slow-walked an investigation into serious problems with the MBTA Transit Police, the other pertaining to allegations of sexual assault brought against Arroyo. The Justice Department’s report details Rollins’ attempts to provide information to the Globe and the Boston Herald that would harm Hayden and help Arroyo.

The report is devastating in places, concluding that Rollins “knowingly and willfully made a false statement of material fact under oath when she testified on December 6 that she was not the federal law enforcement source cited in the Herald article and that she did know who the source was.” In that article, the Herald reported that Hayden could face a federal investigation stemming from the Transit Police matter.

Because the report provides a fascinating inside look at how the journalistic sausage is made, I’m reproducing the inspector general’s analysis of the evidence, which can be found on pp. 69-73. The report also includes mountains of information about the nature of Rollins’ contacts with the Globe and the Herald, which the Justice Department obtained voluntarily from Rollins’ cellphone. No journalists were asked for information, in accordance with Justice’s guidelines.

***

Based upon the facts described above, the OIG [Office of Inspector General] concluded that U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins used her position as U.S. Attorney in an effort to influence the outcome of a partisan political election, namely the September 6, 2022 Democratic primary election that would select her likely successor as Suffolk D.A. We further found that Rollins took an active part in Ricardo Arroyo’s primary campaign for the Suffolk D.A. position in an effort to help Arroyo defeat Interim D.A. Kevin Hayden. We concluded that, despite her assertion otherwise, Rollins was very much trying to put her “finger on [the] scale” in the race for D.A., a race that certain local media reports suggested was a referendum on the policies and programs Rollins instituted during her own tenure as Suffolk D.A. — with Arroyo being seen as someone who was more supportive of, and likely to continue, her policies than Hayden. Even Arroyo, moments after he lost the primary election to Hayden, sent a message to Rollins stating that her “legacy work deserved better.”

Additionally, we determined that days after Hayden prevailed in the September 6 primary election, Rollins sought to damage Hayden’s reputation by leaking to the Herald Reporter non-public and sensitive DOJ [Department of Justice] information that suggested the possibility of a federal criminal investigation into Hayden, a matter from which Rollins was recused. Finally, we concluded that Rollins lacked candor during her OIG interview when discussing her communications with the Globe Reporter and with the Herald Reporter, and falsely testified under oath when she initially denied that she was the federal law enforcement source who provided non-public, sensitive DOJ information to the Herald Reporter about a possible Hayden criminal investigation. Rollins only admitted to being the source during subsequent testimony after Rollins produced, in response to the OIG’s requests, relevant text messages, which definitively showed that Rollins had indeed been a source for the reporter. Continue reading “DOJ report on Rachael Rollins provides an inside look into journalistic sausage-making” →

The Wall Street Journal drops honorifics

On By Dan KennedyIn Media4 Comments
Image
Is there a Dr. in the house?

The Wall Street Journal is ending its use of honorifics, leaving The New York Times as one of the very few news organizations that still describe someone with Mr., Ms., etc., on second reference.

Editor-in-chief Emma Tucker writes that “the trend among almost all news organizations and magazines has been to go without, as editors have concluded that the titles in news articles are becoming a vestige of a more-formal past, and that the flood of Mr., Ms., Mx. or Mrs. in sentences can slow down readers’ enjoyment of our writing.” An exception will be made for “occupational titles” such as Gen., Sen. or Dr. As is the case with AP style, Dr. will be reserved for medical doctors.

The Journal also offers this bit of silliness:

Honorifics have dishonorable aspects in history. At the worst, some newspapers had a practice to use courtesy titles for white people only. There were also courtesy-title policies that were sexist: Some newspapers in the past gave courtesy titles only to women, which had the effect of identifying women as either a Mrs. or Miss; meanwhile, the format for couples was Mr. and Mrs. John Smith.

All true, of course, but if you use honorifics without regard to race or gender, as the Journal, the Times and others have for many years, then the problem goes away.

I posted a query on Mastodon and Twitter to find news organizations other than the Times that still use honorifics and came up with an extremely short list. If you know of any others, please post it in the comments.

  • The Christian Science Monitor
  • The New York Sun
  • The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
  • The Blade of Toledo

The Post-Gazette and the Blade share common ownership.

Post-publication additions:

Healey’s choice as housing secretary ‘won’ a 2022 New England Muzzle Award

On By Dan KennedyIn First Amendment1 Comment
Edward Augustus (via Dean College)

Edward Augustus, Gov. Maura Healey’s choice to serve as housing secretary, won a New England Muzzle Award from GBH News last year for his role in suppressing public records about police misconduct during his years as Worcester’s city manager.

The Telegram & Gazette, Worcester’s daily newspaper, spent years seeking those records, which were associated with 12 internal affairs investigations and complaint histories regarding 17 police officers. Superior Court Judge Janet Kenton-Walker said she believed the city had acted in bad faith, ruling that officials had “cherry picked” language in its legal documents and used it in a manner that was “out of context.” She sternly added: “Counsel may not misrepresent to the court what cases and other materials stand for.”

Judge Kenton-Walker’s outrage led her to impose an unusually harsh penalty, ordering the city to pay $101,000 in legal fees and $5,000 in punitive damages — unheard of in a state where public-records violations are as unremarkable as breakdowns on the MBTA. Yet even that proved to be insufficient to punish the city’s outrageous conduct. The T&G went back to court, arguing that the paper should be made whole for the entirety of its $217,000 in legal fees. This past February, the city and the T&G reached an out-of-court settlement for $180,000.

Augustus was gone from Worcester City Hall before last year’s Muzzles were published, having decamped for Dean College in Franklin, where he was named chancellor.

Of course, it’s possible that Augustus’ record in rebuilding Worcester qualifies him for his new position. According to The Boston Globe:

“Ed Augustus is the leader Massachusetts needs to take the helm of our new Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities and drive an ambitious, collaborative strategy to increase housing production and lower costs across the state,” Healey said in a statement.

During his eight-plus years in Worcester City Hall, Augustus helped oversee the redevelopment of Worcester’s Canal District, including thousands of new housing units that have helped revitalize the city’s downtown.

Still, Augustus’ role in stonewalling public records not only slowed the T&G’s efforts to report on police misconduct — vital journalism in the public interest — but it also ended up costing taxpayers $185,000 in addition to whatever legal expenses the city itself might have incurred.

The press ought to start filing public records requests with the state housing office as soon as Augustus takes charge — just to see what happens.

Finally, my standard disclosure: David Nordman, who was the T&G’s editor until this past summer, is now a colleague of mine at Northeastern. We work on opposite sides of the campus, literally and figuratively: he’s the executive editor of Northeastern Global News, part of the university’s communications operation, and I’m a faculty member at the School of Journalism.

A tale of two school systems and how they responded to transphobic incidents

On By Dan KennedyIn First Amendment, News5 Comments

In Amherst, student journalists have reported that three middle school counselors engaged in anti-transphobic behavior, leading to suspensions while school officials investigate. In Middleborough, a seventh-grader who was sent home from school for wearing anti-trans T-shirts is claiming that his First Amendments rights have been violated.

Fortunately, the struggle for transgender dignity and respect is playing out differently in Massachusetts than it is in places like Florida and other red states, where the very existence of trans folks is under attack. Still, transphobia is everywhere, and all of us are faced with the challenge of protecting the LGBTQ community in a way that acknowledges everyone’s right to be heard.

I want take a look at the situation in Amherst first because it was brought to light by an intrepid group of students at Amherst Regional High School — 16 of them, who helped report a 4,800-word story for The Graphic, a 109-year-old student publication produced by the school’s journalism classes.

According to their story, published on May 9, three middle school counselors have “routinely misgendered and deadnamed transgender students and staff, invoked anti-LGBTQ prayer at school, allowed religion to overflow into conversations with students and staff, and failed to provide support to students who were facing gender-based bullying or intimidation at school.”

The article is deeply reported and well-documented, although I should add that the three counselors, Hector Santos, Delinda Dykes and Tania Cabrera, have denied the allegations. Cabrera is Santos’ daughter and is a new hire, though her actions reportedly are in a similar vein.

Astonishingly, The Graphic also reports that students, parents and school staff members have expressed concerns to top administrators, yet no action was taken until after their story was published. On May 11, Scott Merzbach of The Daily Hampshire Gazette reported that three counselors have been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation. School Supt. Michael Morris declined to identify the three or to confirm if they were the trio named by The Graphic.

The Graphic’s story is filled with disturbing details, but I want to focus on one anecdote that I found particularly telling. A secretary identified pseudonymously as John said he was once invited to take part in a private prayer circle held on school property by Santos and Dykes. According to The Graphic:

At first, he didn’t see the harm. He said he identifies as both a Christian and an LGBTQ supporter.

“I was exploring my spiritual side at that time,” he said, noting that the circle did not involve students or teachers. “I thought we were just going to pray for strength to get us through the day. Who doesn’t need that?” But things shifted quickly. He alleges that after some introductory prayers, Dykes changed lanes, saying, “‘In the name of Jesus, we bind that LGBTQ gay demon that wants to confuse our children.”

John said he felt an immediate “tightness in my chest. I looked to the door, wanting to run.” He left shortly afterward, told a trusted colleague he felt they “were crazy to be saying that,” never joined their prayer circle again, and tried to avoid the two at work, making polite talk but keeping his distance.

According to the article, John reported the incident to Marta Guevara, the school’s director of student and family engagement, who in turn reported it to Supt. Morris — one of several disturbing incidents she brought to Morris’ attention. Yet there is no evidence that Morris did anything about it before he announced last week’s suspensions.

I also want to highlight The Graphic’s explanation of the care that it took in reporting the story, which appears at the bottom of the article:

All sources who are referred to by a first-name-only pseudonym wished to remain anonymous. Parents and children sought anonymity on the basis of privacy and an ongoing legal investigation. Some staff members sought anonymity due to fear of retaliation. Some staff members who are named did not speak to The Graphic but were copied on email correspondences that were shared with us by parents or hold district titles related to this report. Nothing in this article was reported secondhand; all stories and facts were provided by firsthand sources in person or via Zoom, phone, or email interviews. We reached out to everyone who was described as engaging in behaviors by others — rather than by their own account — and offered them the right of reply to each allegation. The children interviewed consented to the publication of their stories, as did their parents. The students and their journalism adviser consulted with a lawyer from the Student Press Law Center before publishing this report.

The adviser, by the way, is Sara Barber-Just, an English teacher at Amherst Regional High School who in 2014 was honored by Williams College with the George Olmsted Jr. Class of 1924 Prize for Excellence in Secondary School Teaching. It sounds like the student journalists at her school are being extraordinarily well served.

***

If school officials in Amherst were slow to investigate incidents of anti-trans hate, officials in Middleborough might have been a little too quick. Liam Morrison, a seventh-grader at the Nichols Middle School, has been sent home from school twice, according to Christopher Butler of The Enterprise — the first time for wearing a T-shirt that read “There Are Only Two Genders” and, the second time, for amending that to “There Are (Censored) Genders.”

Now, there’s no doubt that Liam is learning some hateful lessons at home. The question, though, is whether he has a First Amendment right to express those views in a school setting. Sandy Quadros Bowles of Nemasket Week reports that his choice of attire has been the subject of a school committee meeting as well as a demonstration by anti-trans activists and counterprotesters.

Liam is being represented by the American Family Institute, a religious-right organization that says that it’s planning to take legal action against the school system. Samuel Whiting, lawyer with the institute, claims that Middleborough educators are “doubling down on its violation of Liam’s free speech rights.”

School officials, by contrast, argue that the T-shirts violate state law because they “may be reasonably considered intimidating, hostile, offensive or other unwelcome.’’ In addition, the school system’s dress code states: “Clothing must not state, imply, or depict hate speech or imagery that target groups based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, or any other classification.”

So, are Liam’s free speech rights being violated or not? I think it’s a close call. State law presumably has more to do with how teachers, administrators and other employees behave than with students. School dress codes, on the other hand, may be enforced as long as they are reasonable. This ACLU guide to dress codes suggests that the Middleborough code might go too far, though, noting, “All students, whether transgender or cisgender, must be allowed to wear clothing consistent with their gender identity and expression,” and “Schools can’t discriminate based on the viewpoint expressed by your clothing.”

Given all that, it seems likely that Liam Morrison may be correct in claiming that his free speech rights are being violated. His choice of wardrobe is unfortunate, to say the least, and he and his parents really ought to think about why they find it necessary to express hatred toward his transgender classmates. But he has a right to do it.

Let’s hope that he’s soon confronted with a sea of pro-LGBTQ T-shirts.

Spare Change News co-founder James Shearer dies at 64

On By Dan KennedyIn Media2 Comments
Hawker selling Spare Change News. Photo (cc) 2011 by Bogdan Seredyak.

James Shearer, who co-founded Spare Change News some 30 years ago, has died at the age of 64. The paper is sold by homeless people on the streets of Boston, and was begun with the idea that it would provide them an alternative to panhandling. Bryan Marquard has written a lovely obituary of Mr. Shearer for The Boston Globe. His public Facebook feed is filled with tributes as well.

Samuel Scott, who was the editor and executive director of Spare Change News from 2004-’07, sent along the following statement:

James co-founded a newspaper that has always done two amazing things over the decades: It brings attention to homelessness and other social justice issues, and it gives homeless people bona fide jobs selling the paper on the street so they can earn a respectable living just like anyone else with a job. Countless homeless and other marginalized people have been helped by the newspaper that he helped to found over the years, and I hope that everyone in the Boston area is still buying Spare Change to this day.

It’s easy to pass by someone selling Spare Change News, and its visibility decreased during the COVID years. Vendors often sold the paper outside T stations, and with many people now working hybrid schedules, there aren’t as many opportunities to buy it. The next time you see someone hawking Spare Change, please stop for a moment and pay for a copy.

Congratulations, CNN. You let Donald Trump put a police officer’s life in danger.

On By Dan KennedyIn Media, Politics5 Comments
Photo (cc) 2016 by Gage Skidmore

If you’re so inclined, you can sift through mounds of commentary on CNN’s alleged news event Wednesday night with Donald Trump. Tom Jones of Poynter has a solid account here. I thought beforehand that it would be terrible, but it was even worse than that.

If you saw it, or if you’ve just read about it, you know that the hall was filled with MAGA types who cheered Trump’s every utterance, whether it was his support of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists or his dismissal of E. Jean Carroll as a “whack job.” Carroll just won a $5 million jury verdict against Trump for sexually attacking her and for libel.

CNN moderator Kaitlan Collins was well-prepared and tried the best she could to hold Trump to account. Predictably, though, he shouted over her, spewing lies at such a rapid clip that she could only latch onto a few of them in an attempt to push back. It was a disgraceful night for CNN, and president Chris Licht ought to be fired. Then again, he was only doing what his corporate overlords want, and he seems quite pleased with himself today.

I do want to zero in on one moment. When Collins pointed out that people died on Jan. 6, Trump immediately cited Ashli Babbitt, an insurrectionist who was fatally shot by a Capitol police officer. Trump denounced Lt. Michael Byrd, who’s Black, as a “thug,” and by injecting him to the proceedings unbidden, he put the officer’s life and safety in danger at the hands of deranged right-wingers and white supremacists. Byrd told NBC News in 2021 that he’d gone into hiding. If he has since been able to resume his normal life to some degree, Trump has now shattered that.

“America was served very well by what we did last night,” Licht told his staff after the event, according to tweets by Brian Stelter, the network’s media reporter until Licht fired him. No we weren’t, and CNN’s current media reporter, Oliver Darcy, said so in his morning newsletter, writing, “It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening.”

I’m back on Twitter, and no, I’m not especially happy about it

On By Dan KennedyIn Media1 Comment
Illustration (cc) 2009 by Pete Simon

Recently I wanted to add a news feed to What Works, the website that Ellen Clegg and I host about the future of local news. There are a fair number of items that come to our attention, and we wanted a way to alert our readers without necessarily writing a full blog post.

Because we had deleted our Twitter account last fall in response to Elon Musk’s sociopathic debut as the platform’s new owner, I looked into setting up a Mastodon news feed. I began by signing up for a Mastodon account for What Works. That was simple enough. Then I tried to figure out how to embed it at our website. I’m not going to get into the technical details except to say that it would have required either more money than we wanted to spend or more hassle than I wanted to put up with. We revived our Twitter account — we’re at @whatworks_nu — and added a news feed to the right-hand column of whatworks.news.

How long will it last? I don’t know. Musk has been arbitrarily cutting off access to Twitter’s API, which means that the feed could stop working at any moment. For now, though, it’s by far the best alternative we have. Which brings me to the state of Twitter and its various alternatives and would-be alternatives.

Twitter is of no importance to most ordinary people, and they should feel fortunate. I’d been a heavy user since the early days, though, and I wasn’t sure what to do when Musk took over. But in late November, following some particularly vile behavior by the Boy King, I decided I’d had enough. I stopped using Twitter and went all-in at Mastodon, writing about it a few weeks later.

And I stuck with it for three months. I don’t believe I posted any tweets in December, January and February except to remind people that they could find me here or on Mastodon at @dankennedy_nu@journa.host, or to rip into Musk. I was so anxious to get rid of my blue check mark that I found out how to do it myself without waiting for Musk to get around to it. In March, though, I started drifting back, and there I remain — mostly on Mastodon, but on Twitter as well.

If you don’t care, believe me, I get it. You’re under no obligation to read this post. But if you’re dealing with the same dilemma as me, here are the various reasons that I came back: Only a tiny handful of the people and accounts I follow on Twitter moved to Mastodon. Black Twitter has most decidedly not moved to Mastodon. Likewise with conservative voices that I value. Some of Mastodon’s biggest boosters have continued tweeting like crazy. Most media and political people are still exclusively on Twitter, especially at the state level. The local news outlets and journalism organizations I follow as part of my work are not on Mastodon. Big Media won’t move, either. Finally, despite everything, Twitter is not nearly as broken as some observers will have you believe. It still works, even though it goes down more than it did before Musk laid off most of his workforce and stopped paying the bills.

Everything is always subject to change, and I wish I hadn’t sounded as definitive as I did when I wrote that I was leaving. If you want to call me a hypocrite, go right ahead. I still like Mastodon, I still expect that at some point it will become more feasible (or necessary) to leave Twitter for good, and I continue to be interested in other alternatives — especially Bluesky, with which Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is involved.

For now, though, I’m back on Twitter — chagrined, not as active as I was before, but with a greater understanding that most people are not obsessed enough with social media to go to the bother of packing up and moving to a new, unfamiliar platform.