By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
Update, July 27: Just got word that four, not six, Boston Herald employees were laid off last week, none in editorial.
Awful news coming out of the Boston Herald this afternoon. The Newspaper Guild tweets:
Bloody Friday at the Boston Herald. Five layoffs today. One earlier this week. @romenesko @dankennedy_nu @reillyadam
— BostonHeraldWorkers (@HeraldWorkers) July 24, 2015
My friend Susan Ryan-Vollmar has written an important op-ed piece for The Boston Globe about how respect for LGBT rights in the United States has a positive effect on the rest of the world.
Susan recently accompanied the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus to Israel and Turkey. While in Istanbul, government tanks blasted Pride marchers with tear gas and water cannons. It was a harrowing scene, but the chorus itself was able to perform in front of more than 3,000 people — in part because U.S. Consul General Charles Hunter, who’s married to a Turkish man, had made it clear he’d be attending. Susan writes:
The concert in Istanbul was a rare public expression of LGBT culture in the Muslim world. It would not have taken place without Hunter’s intervention. By informing the Turkish government in advance that he would be sitting in the front row, he ensured our safety, and that of the audience. It was one example of many this past June of US-led efforts to celebrate and honor LGBT people around the world by marking LGBT Pride month.
Something to think about as the 2016 presidential campaign gets under way.
In case you missed it, Todd Wallack has a tremendous article in Sunday’s Boston Globe on our broken public-records system in Massachusetts.
Wallack begins with a killer anecdote: a $2.7 million price tag placed on Breathlyzer records a lawyer was seeking from the State Police. The lawyer, Thomas Workman of Taunton, says that other states charged him anywhere between nothing and $75.
“I was more disappointed than surprised,” Workman is quoted as saying. “I do work across the country, and I have more trouble trying to get information in Massachusetts than other places.” And oh, by the way: he never got the records he was seeking.
Right now is when you can make a difference, as I noted in a blog post reporting that the Massachusetts Municipal Association (MMA) is trying to derail reform. Rather than sending my legislators emails, I posted on their public Facebook pages. State Rep. Sean Garballey, D-Arlington, responded by telling me that he’s a co-sponsor of legislation that would significantly improve the law. I haven’t yet heard from state Sen. Pat Jehlen, D-Somerville, but will let you know if and when I do.
And this just in: Bob Ambrogi, a media lawyer who’s executive director of the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association, sent out an email a few minutes ago warning that the MMA may have already succeeded, as a House session to vote on the reform legislation — now House 3665 — has been canceled. Let’s keep pushing. Ambrogi writes that “the bill may now be effectively killed.”
Not yet. Let’s keep pushing. Not sure who’s representing you on Beacon Hill? Just click here.
A serious attempt to reform the state’s broken public-records law — the shortcomings of which I described recently in the WGBH News Muzzle Awards — is on the verge of being derailed by the Massachusetts Municipal Association (MMA), according to advocates.
On Friday came word that the state Legislature was likely to pass the long-awaited reform bill, House 2772, according to The Boston Globe and State House News Service. The bill, though not perfect, includes key provisions to hit noncompliant government agencies with lawyers’ fees and to limit how much those agencies can charge for complying with public-records requests.
Now comes word that the municipal association, a lobbying group for the state’s cities and towns, is working to prevent final passage. Here is a statement sent out by the MMA in which the bill is denounced as an “unfunded mandate” that could be used to “harass” local officials.
The following is an email sent to me by Bob Ambrogi, executive director of the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association.
Hi Folks,
It is do or die time for MassFOIA, because our public records bill, which was on the move, is now under aggressive attack.
As of yesterday, the plan was for a House vote on our public records bill next Weds, with a Senate vote the following week. Now, the MMA is fighting back with everything they have [a reference to the document linked above] and we need to do the same or the bill may be dead. In fact, it appears the House has cancelled their formal session for next week so our reform efforts are in mortal danger. If they kill the bill now, it will be all the more difficult to revive.
So, please:
1) Write to your members to get them to call or email their legislators. I’ve attached an email that Pam wrote to Common Cause members this morning. [Note: I have not included the attachment.]
2) Stay tuned as we develop materials over the weekend and early next week that you may need to sign onto — such as a coalition letter. We will need a quick turn around.
3) Keep your eyes open for updated talking points over the weekend.
Thanks for your support of this critical issue!
Best,
Gavi Wolfe, ACLU of Massachusetts
Pam Wilmot, Common Cause Massachusetts
Bob Ambrogi, MA Newspaper Publishers Association
Justin Silverman, New England First Amendment Coalition
CommonWealth Magazine editor Bruce Mohl reports that The Boston Globe is about to increase its digital-only subscription rate by 74 percent — from $3.99 to $6.93 a week, or about $1 a day.
As I told Bruce for a follow-up, it’s a bold move — maybe too bold. The Globe has had a lot of success with paid digital subscriptions, having sold around 78,000 of them as of last September, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. The AAM does a lot of double- and even triple-counting of digital (the Globe itself claims a more modest 65,000, according to Mohl’s article), but that’s still an impressive number.
I’m sure some subscribers will walk away rather than pay the higher fee, but probably not too many. If you’re paying to read the Globe, it’s most likely because you are a committed Globe reader of long standing. To invoke the old cliché, $1 is considerably less than the cost of a cup of coffee. Still, some will cancel:
https://twitter.com/billweye/status/622065730704556032
Newspaper companies charge for content at their peril. News executives may chafe at giving away their journalism, but members of their audience don’t feel like they’re getting anything for free — not after paying hundreds of dollars a month for broadband, cell service and their various digital devices.
https://twitter.com/billweye/status/622072094835245056
https://twitter.com/billweye/status/622074428550184960
Interestingly, while the Globe itself is becoming more expensive, John Henry and company are also making some big bets on free with sites like Crux, BetaBoston, Boston.com and the forthcoming life-sciences vertical, which will be called Stat according to several employment listings I’ve seen.
I wish the Globe success as its executives try to figure out how to pay for journalism in the 21st century. But at this point I think it would be wiser to focus on building their subscriber base than trying to squeeze more out of their existing customers.
Remember when the iPad was going to save the news business? How did that work out? But if the redemptive qualities of tablets turned out to be overblown, they are nevertheless a compelling platform for consuming all kinds of text and multimedia material, including news.
This morning I spent way too much time with The Washington Post’s new iOS app, which is detailed at the Nieman Journalism lab by Shan Wang. It is beautiful, with large pictures and highly readable type. I was already a fan of what the Post is now calling “Washington Post Classic.” But this is better.
So do I have a complaint? Of course. The Classic app is more complete; it includes local news (no, I have no connection to the Washington area, but it’s nice to be able to look in on occasion), whereas the new app is aimed at “national, international audiences.”
And both apps rely more on viral content than the print edition, a sluggish version of which is included in Classic.
Quibbles aside, this is a great step forward, and evidence of the breakthroughs that are possible with technology billionaire Jeff Bezos in charge. In fact, the new app is a version of one that was released last fall for the Amazon Fire. So it’s also heartening to see that Bezos isn’t leveraging his ownership of the Post entirely to Amazon’s advantage.
Another paper with a billionaire owner has taken a different approach. Several months ago John Henry’s Boston Globe mothballed its iOS replica edition — that is, an edition based on images of the print paper — and replaced it with an app that is still print-centric but faster and easier to use. It was developed by miLibris, a French company.
The first few iterations were buggy, but it’s gotten better. In general, I’m not a fan of looking at the print edition on a screen. But I find that the Globe’s website is slow enough on my aging iPad that I often turn to the app just so I can zoom through the paper more quickly, even if I’m missing out on video and other Web extras.
One big bug that still needs to be squashed: When you try to tweet a story, the app generates a link that goes not to the story but, rather, to the Apple Store so that you can download the app. Which, of course, you already have.
Finally, it’s worth noting that the Boston Herald has a pretty nice iOS app, developed by DoApp of Minneapolis. It’s based on tiles, so it’s fast and simple to use. It’s so superior to the Herald’s creaky website that I wish there were a Web version.
Do apps for individual news organizations even matter? We are, after all, entering the age of Apple News and Facebook Instant Articles.
My provisional answer is that the news organizations should both experiment with and push back against the drive toward distributed content. It’s fine for news executives to cut deals with the likes of Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg. But it would be a huge mistake if, in the process, they let their own platforms wither.
News from The Boston Globe keeps on coming. This press release just arrived in my inbox:
Boston (July 9, 2015) – The Boston Globe has announced the appointment of Veronica Chao as editor of the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, effective immediately.
Chao, the former editor of the Improper Bostonian and the Globe’s City Weekly section, will direct all facets of the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine’s operations, including setting its editorial direction, managing editorial staff, and developing special publications and supplements.
Chao has served as assistant editor for the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine since 2011, editing popular features, columns, and special issues such as the award-winning “Your Home” issues. During her tenure, she has led noteworthy coverage, including a recent feature focused on low-income students enrolled at Ivy League schools, a fan’s perspective of the New England Patriots Deflategate controversy, the state of extramarital affairs, and Boston’s rising class of black politicians.
“There are so many exciting changes going on at the Globe, and a real spirit of innovation here,” said Chao. “For the magazine, it’s all about finding compelling stories – from regular columns to longform reporting – and smart new ways of telling them that surprise, delight, inform, and involve readers.”
Chao joined the Boston Globe in 2007 as editor of City Weekly, a regional supplemental section that was included in the Boston Sunday Globe. Prior to working at the Globe, she served as the editor of the Improper Bostonian magazine for five years.
A resident of Boston, Chao grew up in the Washington D.C. area and is a graduate of University of Virginia.
Ellen Clegg has been named editorial-page editor of The Boston Globe, less than a year after she was brought in to serve on an interim basis following the departure of Peter Canellos, now a top editor at Politico.
The move, announced by publisher and owner John Henry, strikes me as overdue. You don’t let an interim editor completely remake the pages, as Clegg was recently allowed to do. In an email to the staff obtained by Media Nation, Henry wrote:
When Ellen Clegg graciously accepted the challenge to take on the role of Editor, Editorial Page on an interim basis, she did so with enthusiasm, resolve, and a commitment to bring a fresh perspective and new voices to the section. I truly believe her leadership has brought vitality and relevance to the section, reflective of the improvements I’m seeing throughout the organization. From Day One, Ellen has acted as if the term “interim” was just a word, not her destiny. So it is my great pleasure to announce that as of Monday, Ellen Clegg is Editor, Editorial Page of The Boston Globe. No ifs, ands, buts, nor interims about it.
Thanks, Ellen. Keep up the great work.
JWH
Clegg has a closer relationship with Henry than Canellos did, having previously served as the top spokeswoman for the Globe — and, thus, for Henry. Before that she was a longtime Globe journalist, serving in a variety of editing positions. Among other things, she is the author of the award-winning book “ChemoBrain: How Cancer Therapies Can Affect Your Mind” (Prometheus Books, 2009). You can read more about her background here.
Today’s editorial pages — simply labeled “Opinion” since the redesign — are characteristic of Clegg’s graphics-intensive vision.
To my eye, the most interesting piece today is a short commentary by editorial writer Marcela García on a dangerous proposal to make it easier for Massachusetts families to opt out of mandatory vaccines. It’s accompanied by a large, data-heavy map. Online, you can find a chart showing the opt-out rate at every public school in the state. It should fuel follow-ups by community news organizations across Massachusetts.
Clegg is also soliciting short opinionated videos that will run in a new section to be called “Opinion Reel.”
I’ve heard laments from several Globe readers — older, but smart and engaged — who think the redesign represents a dumbing-down of the paper’s traditional editorial and op-ed pages. For Clegg, it’s going to prove to be a balancing act in trying to attract new readers while not alienating her most dedicated audience. One thing that would help: doing a better job of alerting print readers that there’s additional content online.
As editorial-page editor, Clegg is a masthead equal with editor Brian McGrory. Both report directly to Henry. It’s taken a couple of years, but it looks Henry’s team is finally in place.
The Massachusetts Legislature did something Tuesday night to make it more difficult for tax money to be used to help pay for the Boston 2024 Olympics bid. But it’s not entirely clear exactly what — or how important it is.
Matt Stout in the Boston Herald quotes unnamed “lawmakers” as saying that the final budget deal produced by House and Senate negotiators “includes language preventing the use of state funds or tax expenditures for the 2024 Olympics.” His lede describes it as a “ban.”
But Andy Metzger of State House News Service offers a somewhat different spin, writing, “The budget … requires passage of a special act of the Legislature before any public funds can be spent to benefit the proposed 2024 Boston Olympics.” Maybe that amounts to the same thing, though it’s not clear.
Bruce Mohl’s analysis in CommonWealth Magazine offers this:
The budget contains a provision requiring that any expenditure of tax dollars for hosting the Olympics in 2024 must first be approved by the Legislature after public hearings. The budget, of course, remains in effect for one year, through the end of June 2016.
Of course, one legislature’s actions are not binding on the next, and it seems pretty unlikely that the Boston 2024 folks are going to ask for public funds anytime in the next year. Which may explain why The Boston Globe’s budget story, by David Scharfenberg and Joshua Miller, makes no mention of it at all.
Or maybe not.
It strikes me that the measure was worth a mention, even if it’s largely symbolic. The implications of budget deals often become clearer in the days after they are reached. I hope we find out more about what actually happened Tuesday night.
From fast-food chicken chain Chick-fil-A to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, everyone, it seems, has got a problem with free speech.
Please have a look at the 18th edition of the New England Muzzle Awards — launched in 1998 at the late, great Boston Phoenix and now hosted exclusively by WGBHNews.org. The Campus Muzzles, as always, are helmed by civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate.