Media Nation

Founding editor Marc Levy has left Cambridge Day, the news outlet he launched in 2009

Cambridge Day’s founding editor, Marc Levy, has left the newspaper. His departure was announced in an email to Day contributors from editor-in-chief Michael Fitzgerald that was forwarded to me by a trusted source and confirmed by Fitzgerald. He writes:

Some changes are easier to share than others. I’m sad to say Cambridge Day’s founder, Marc Levy, has resigned effective immediately. Since re-starting the publication in 2009, Marc’s passion for community journalism has been unparalleled. He has been tireless, creative, resourceful, and dedicated to telling the stories of Cambridge and Somerville.

I know many of you, perhaps all of you, began contributing to the publication because of your admiration and respect for him and the publication he worked so hard to build. We are all part of his legacy. There’s still a great deal to do to achieve his goal in a sustainable way and I hope you will continue to work with me to make it so.

Levy has been a vital force for local journalism in Cambridge for 16 years, reporting on the city as the Gannett-owned Cambridge Chronicle cut back on its coverage and, at some point during the past several years, shut down almost unnoticed. The Day has also served as an occasional outlet for our Northeastern journalism students.

But it was always a bare-bones operation. That began to change in late 2024, when the Day — nominally a for-profit — was acquired by a nonprofit organization called Cambridge News Inc. At the same time, according to the Day’s “About” page, the Cambridge Community Foundation set up a Local News Fund to provide some assistance to the paper.

The Day is a digital-and-print operation; Cambridge Day is the name of the website, while the print edition is known as The Week.

Fitzgerald, an experienced journalist whose most recent stop had been as editor-in-chief at Harvard Public Health, came on board as the Day’s top editor in September 2025, with Levy remaining on the masthead as well. Levy’s departure is not the only change that’s taken place. Recently Fitzgerald said the Day would cut back on governmental coverage in Somerville, explaining, “If we’re going to be Cambridge Day, we need to be doing a good job of covering as much of Cambridge as we can.”

Levy declined to comment when I contacted him Tuesday night. Fitzgerald told me by email: “I meant what I said in the note. I’m sad about his departure. He gave his all to keep journalism alive in Cambridge and Somerville, and we’re well-positioned to build on that foundation.”

Watch it while you can: Yashar Ali has posted a broadcast-quality version of that ‘60 Minutes’ report

Click on the image to watch “Inside CECOT.”

We have reached the let’s-hope-Canada-beams-in-news-that’s-being-censored-in-our-own-country stage of authoritarianism.

On Monday afternoon, the “60 Minutes” story on mostly Venezuelan detainees being sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador — canceled by CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss — popped up on Canada’s Global TV app. It was taken down a short time later because of copyright issues, but it’s been showing up here and there on social media ever since. I’m hoping this broadcast-quality version, on Yashar Ali’s newsletter, The Reset, will stick around for a while.

As you’ll see, detainees, many of whom have not been accused of any crime other than being in the U.S. illegally, say there were subjected to beatings, torture and sexual abuse during their time in the CECOT prison. As for Weiss’ complaint that the story did not include any comment from the Trump regime, here’s what we hear toward the end of Sharyn Alfonsi’s report:

The Department of Homeland Security declined our request for an interview and referred all questions about CECOT to El Salvador. The government there did not respond to our request.

We’ve been having a debate on Facebook over whether it’s fair to say that Weiss “canceled” the story given that she has said she wants to run it after it’s re-edited. I contend that it was canceled, not delayed, because it was scheduled to run on Sunday evening and it wasn’t. Also, Weiss has made it clear that if the story does run, it won’t be what you see here.

As Alfonsi said, to cancel the story for lack of White House comment even though they were given an opportunity to weigh in is to hand a “veto” to the very officials that “60 Minutes” was trying to hold to account. As I tell my students, you need to give people you’re reporting on a fair chance to respond — but you can’t let it drag on for so long that their silence is used to kill the story.

Jennifer Peter tells us about The Marshall Project, a nonprofit that covers criminal justice

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Jennifer Peter, who was named editor-in-chief of The Marshall Project in September. The Marshall Project is a national nonprofit that covers issues related to criminal justice. She’s only the third editor in 10 years, replacing Susan Chira, a former New York Times editor. Peter started her career as a reporter, working for 12 years at newspapers in Idaho, Connecticut and Virginia before joining The Associated Press in Boston.

From the AP, she moved to the Globe, where she rose quickly through the ranks. She was regional editor, politics editor and city editor. As metro editor, she oversaw the Globe’s Boston Marathon bombing coverage, which won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. In 2018 she was promoted to managing editor, the number-two position in the newsroom. In our conversation, Peter tells us about The Marshall Project’s mission, including its foray into local news in Cleveland, St. Louis and Jackson, Mississippi.

A production note: I’m at Northeastern, but Ellen is beaming in from a studio at Brookline Interactive Group, which handles multimedia for the town of Brookline. BIG, as it is known locally, is also host to a class of Brandeis students who travel to Brookline to report and write stories for Brookline.News, the nonprofit newsroom Ellen is part of. BIG provides audio and video of Brookline civic meetings and also works with Brookline public school students on multimedia projects.

I’ve got a Quick Take about yet another newspaper that’s gone out of business, although this one has an unusual twist. The devastating wildfires that ripped through the Los Angeles area last January have claimed the Palisadian-Post, a twice-monthly newspaper that had been publishing since 1928. The problem is that many of the residents were forced to leave, and though rebuilding is under way, the community hasn’t come close to recovering.

One of my Northeastern students, Abbie O’Connor, is from the Pacific Palisades — her home is still standing. She wrote several times in my opinion journalism class during the semester about how the Palisades were affected by the fire. Among other things, an enormous number of Palisades residents moved to Manhattan Beach, re-creating the sense of community they had in their former homes.

*Home in Altadena, still unbuilt earlier this month. Photo © 2025 by Abbie O’Connor.*

Abbie’s final project was an enterprise story on racial and economic disparities in the rebuilding resources that are being made available to the mostly white, affluent residents of the Pacific Palisades and the lower-income, historically Black community of Altadena.

Ellen’s Quick Take is about Brian McGrory returning as editor of The Boston Globe in January. McGrory left in early 2023 to become chair of Boston University’s journalism department. He’ll replace Nancy Barnes, who announced earlier this month that she’d be stepping aside. Although McGrory’s departure from BU is not being described as a leave of absence, he says he expects to return to his academic post no later than 2027.

You can listen to our conversation here, or you can subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

Two weeks after a hopeful sign from ‘60 Minutes,’ Bari Weiss cancels a story and trashes the brand

Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes” interviews Marjorie Taylor Greene. Photo via Paramount.

A Dec. 7 “60 Minutes” interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene by veteran correspondent Lesley Stahl raised hopes that new CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and her corporate overlords, Larry and David Ellison, wouldn’t destroy the legendary news program. Greene criticized Donald Trump, and Trump in turn complained that “60 Minutes” “has actually gotten WORSE!” since the Ellisons acquired CBS earlier this year, as CNN media reporter Brian Stelter writes.

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Well, hope springs eternal — or, in this case, two weeks. Because now the worst has happened. On Sunday, “60 Minutes” postponed a heavily promoted story about the Trump regime’s cruel practice of sending Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, where they have reportedly been mistreated and even tortured.

Liam Scott and Scott Nover report for The Washington Post that Weiss decreed that the story be postponed in order to give the White House another opportunity to respond, even though “60 Minutes” had already contacted administration officials in an unsuccessful effort to obtain comment.

CBS News said in a statement that the story “needed additional reporting.” But “60 Minutes” reporter Sharyn Alfonsi said in an internal email that Weiss was giving the White House a “kill switch,” explaining, “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.” The Post story continues:

“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Alfonsi wrote in the note, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”

Weiss said in a statement late Sunday: “My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason — that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices — happens every day in every newsroom. I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready.”

Weiss, lest you have forgotten, is a right-leaning opinion journalist with no experience in straight-news reporting or in television journalism.

Times reporter Michael M. Grynbaum writes that CBS News announced the story would be pulled just three hours before airtime. Grynbaum also reminds us that the Ellisons’ path toward purchasing CBS was greased by the previous owner’s decision to settle a bogus lawsuit brought by Trump over the entirely routine manner in which “60 Minutes” edited an interview with Kamala Harris just before the 2024 election. Trump got $16 million from that corrupt transaction. And how’s this for condescension? Grynbaum writes:

One of Ms. Weiss’s suggestions was to include a fresh interview with Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff and the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown, or a similarly high-ranking Trump administration official, two of the people said. Ms. Weiss provided contact information for Mr. Miller to the “60 Minutes” staff.

Now the Ellisons are seeking White House assistance in derailing Netflix’ pending acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. There are lots of reasons having to do with antitrust law that WBD shouldn’t end up in the hands of either Netflix or Paramount Skydance, as the Ellisons’ company is known. But Netflix, at least, plans to spin off CNN from WBD, giving the news outlet a fighting chance of remaining an independent voice.

An Ellison acquisition, on the other hand, would most likely put Weiss in charge of CNN.

David Brooks tells the ‘PBS NewsHour’ that he didn’t know Jeffrey Epstein was in the room

The last thing I want to be doing on the Saturday morning before Christmas is writing about David Brooks’ undisclosed (by him) encounter with the notorious pedophile and sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein. But it’s in the news, and there are plenty of people, especially on social media, who are demanding that the New York Times columnist and “PBS NewsHour” commentator be held accountable.

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So let’s review the facts that have come out. As Jeremy Barr reported in The Guardian, photos released on Thursday by House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform reveal that Brooks attended a lunch or dinner where Epstein was present in 2011. Unlike photos of many other powerful men that have been released recently, there are no photos of Brooks actually with Epstein.

Continue reading “David Brooks tells the ‘PBS NewsHour’ that he didn’t know Jeffrey Epstein was in the room”

Sign of the times: A witness in the Brown mass-shooting case went to Reddit first, then the police

Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez, in white shirt, before the start of Thursday’s press conference. Photo (cc) 2025 by Alexander Castro / Rhode Island Current.

With the suspect now dead in the mass shooting at Brown University and the killing of an MIT professor in Brookline, I want to call your attention to a very strange aspect of the investigation: the role of a witness who posted what he knew on Reddit before finally going to the police. The Boston Globe reports (sub. req.):

On Wednesday, officials released several images of someone they said was “in proximity of the person of interest” in the shooting. They had previously released photos and video surveillance of the person of interest himself, though none that included a clear image of his face. Video showed the two appearing to approach each other near the corner of Cooke and Benevolent streets, before the suspect turned around and veered the other way.

In an arrest affidavit released Thursday night, officials identified the witness as a man they identified only as John. They said he later led investigators to the car. When they released his photos, investigators didn’t realize John had already posted on Reddit saying police should look into a man with a grey Nissan with Florida plates, who was acting suspiciously, the affidavit said.

The New York Times has an entire story devoted to the Reddit angle, and the emphasis is slightly different. Whereas the Globe makes it sound like investigators were led to John after they saw photos of him, the Times reports that John contacted police on his own — but not until the day after he had posted what he knew on Reddit:

“I’m being dead serious. The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental,” the Reddit user posted, according to an affidavit filed by the police in Providence, R.I.

That tip would later lead to a breakthrough in not only the search for the campus attacker but also the suspect in the murder of a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It also ended the dayslong manhunt that had put both the Brown and M.I.T. communities on edge.

A day after the Reddit post was made, the writer approached law enforcement officials and told them about his encounter with a suspicious man in Brown University’s Barus and Holley building.

The information “blew this case right open,” Attorney General Peter F. Neronha of Rhode Island said in a news conference Thursday.

I don’t want to call John irresponsible, because he did come forward and provide information that proved vital to solving the case. But this is the way too many of us think these days. Rather than immediately alerting law enforcement about what he’d seen, he posted to social media. Perhaps he was assuming that the police should already know what he knew — oblivious to the reality that law enforcement in such a situation depends on tips from members of the public.

Moreover, by posting what he’d seen on Reddit, John might have harmed the investigation by tipping off the suspect, identified by authorities as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, who had once attended Brown and who may have known MIT Professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro when they took classes together in Portugal.

Law enforcement seems confident that Neves Valente, who died by suicide in Salem, New Hampshire, was the shooter. His victims were Professor Loureiro and Brown students MukhammadAziz Umurzakov and Ella Cook. The focus should now be on them and their families and friends.

Correction: I initially reported that the suspect’s body was found in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Looking back at how once-and-future editor Brian McGrory recruited John Henry to buy The Boston Globe

John Henry on the Jumbotron after the Red Sox won the 2007 World Series. Photo (cc) 2007 by Patrick Mannion.

Brian McGrory’s return to The Boston Globe represents just the latest chapter in his relationship with the paper’s owners, John and Linda Henry. The once-and-future editor actually recruited John Henry, the principal owner of the Red Sox, to purchase the Globe after it was put on the market by the New York Times Co. in 2013. I reported on that in my 2018 book “The Return of the Moguls.” GBH News published an excerpt, and I’m bringing it back for an encore this morning.

How John Henry Overcame His Doubts And Decided To Buy The Boston Globe

GBH News | May 18, 2018

Rumors that The Boston Globe might be for sale began circulating as far back as 2006, when a group headed by retired General Electric chief executive Jack Welch, who was a Boston-area native, and local advertising executive Jack Connors was reported to be nosing around. At the time, the Globe was said to be valued at somewhere between $550 million and $600 million, vastly more than the price John Henry paid seven years later.

But the New York Times Co. wasn’t selling — at least not yet. The following year, Ben Taylor, a former publisher of the Globe and a member of the family that had owned it from 1873 until selling it to the Times Co. 80 years later, told me in an interview for CommonWealth magazine that he might be interested in returning to ownership in some capacity if the Globe were put on the market. But he added that he thought such a development was unlikely. “I can’t imagine a scenario where that would be an opportunity,” he said, “but you never know, I guess. Stranger things have happened.”

Ben Taylor and his cousin Stephen Taylor, also a former Globe executive, became involved in a bid to buy the paper in 2009 when the Times Co. finally put the paper on the market. So did a Beverly Hills, California-based outfit known as Platinum Equity. With the Taylors thought to be undercapitalized and with Platinum having gutted the first newspaper it bought, the San Diego Union-Tribune, Globe employees were understandably nervous about their future.

Although it was not a matter of public knowledge at the time, there was also a third possibility. After the Times Co. put up the Globe for sale, Brian McGrory, a popular columnist who was then serving a stint as the paper’s metro editor, decided to call around town to see if any public-spirited business executives might be interested. Among those he contacted was John Henry.

“I asked him at that time why he wouldn’t flip the paradigm,” McGrory told me. “It used to be that newspapers would own sports franchises. Why not have a sports franchise owner own a newspaper? Because without a healthy Boston Globe, which causes community discussion about a sports team — I made the argument, right or wrong; I have no idea if it was right — the value of a sports team might be diminished. And I did it because I thought he would be a very thoughtful, steady owner.”

Read the rest at GBH News.

In ‘The Wired City,’ I wrote about a murder and the ethics of naming a ‘person of interest’

I was appalled earlier this week when multiple news organizations, citing anonymous sources, named the “person of interest” who had been taken into custody in connection with the mass shootings at Brown University. That person was later released, and which led to a scramble by some of those media outlets to memory-hole their earlier coverage.

My 2013 book “The Wired City” opens with a story about why the New Haven Independent took a different approach in response to a high-profile murder. The Independent, a digital nonprofit founded in 2005, is still going strong. Here’s an excerpt from that book.

A murder, a media frenzy and the rise of a new form of local news

Nieman Lab | June 5, 2013

Paul Bass felt uneasy. It was a Friday — Sept. 11, 2009. He was getting ready to leave the office for Shabbat, the Jewish sabbath. And he was beginning to wonder if he had blown a big story.

Two days before, Bass had received an email from someone at Yale University telling him that a 24-year-old graduate student named Annie Le was missing. Could Bass post something on his community website, the New Haven Independent? Sure thing, Bass replied. So he wrote a one-sentence item with a link to a Yale Daily News account. As he recalled later, he didn’t think much about it after that.

Now Bass was facing a dilemma. Annie Le was still missing, and the media were starting to swarm. He was off until Saturday night; as an observant Jew, he does not work on Saturdays until after sundown. On top of this, his managing editor, Melissa Bailey, was leaving town for a few days. Bass remembered reading somewhere that Le had once written a story about students and crime for a magazine affiliated with Yale. He found it, linked to it, and wrote an article beginning: “A graduate pharmacology student asked Yale’s police chief a question: ‘What can one do to avoid becoming another unnamed victim?’ Seven months after she printed the answer in a campus publication, the student may have become a crime victim herself.” It was a start — nothing special, but enough to get the Independent into the chase. Then Bass went home.

As it turned out, the Annie Le saga — soon to become a murder story — developed into one of the most heavily publicized news events to hit New Haven in many years. Her body was discovered inside a laboratory wall at Yale Medical School on Sunday, Sept. 13, the day she was to be married. The grisly fate of the beautiful young Yale student proved irresistible to the national media. From The New York Times to the New York Post, from the “Today” show to Nancy Grace, reporters, producers and photographers besieged city and university officials.

Read the rest at Nieman Lab.

BBJ: Newly named Globe editor Brian McGrory tells students he’ll return to BU no later than 2027

Newly appointed Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory says he plans to return to Boston University no later than 2027, according to a report (sub. req.) in the Boston Business Journal.

Crystal Yormick of the BU Statehouse Program quotes an email that McGrory sent to current and former students: “The CEO of the Globe reached out recently asking if I’d come back to help them through a sensitive time, and after a great deal of thought and internal debate, I’ve decided to do it.”

McGrory stepped down as Globe editor in 2023 to become chair of BU’s journalism department. On Monday, the Globe announced that he would return to his previous job, replacing Nancy Barnes, who said last Friday that she would be leaving that position, though she will remain an editor-at-large.

During his time at BU, McGrory has also filled in temporarily in several top jobs at The Baltimore Banner, a large digital nonprofit. He continues to serve on the Banner’s board of directors.

McGrory’s email suggests that his return to the Globe was in the works before last Friday, but it’s not clear how much before. William McKeen, who’ll serve as interim chair, said he was told “late last week” that McGrory had asked for a leave of absence.

“We all wish Brian the best, but we want him back,” McKeen was quoted as saying.

Linda Henry says McGrory will not be the ‘interim’ editor but will take an extended leave from BU

I’ve now received a copy of a statement that Boston Globe Media CEO Linda Henry has sent to the staff. She splits the difference on the “interim” issue: Brian McGrory will be fully back as the Globe’s editor, but he’ll also be on an “extended leave of absence” from Boston University. (Here’s my earlier post.) Her full statement follows.

We are thrilled that Brian McGrory will be rejoining our organization as editor of the Globe, starting January 5th, 2026.

Brian, as many of you know, brings a strong record of leadership and innovation from his prior time at the Globe, and will return with an enhanced set of experiences from his current work in academia and from the increasingly vital sector of nonprofit news. His career reflects a deep commitment to this institution and the city and region that we cover.

Brian spent 34 years with the Globe in his prior run. He started in 1989 as a reporter in the then-South Weekly section, rising to general assignment, a roving national reporter role, White House correspondent, signature metro columnist, editor of our metro department, and then Editor from 2012 to early 2023. During his tenure as Editor, he successfully navigated dramatic industry change while overseeing coverage of massive regional and national stories. He worked with the entire organization to position the Globe as the paper of interest rather than a conventional paper of record, always pressing the newsroom to be relentlessly interesting. During this stretch, the Globe essentially reinvented its coverage, with new beats, a new outlook, and a far stronger emphasis on its digital report, while winning multiple Pulitzer Prizes and rapidly growing its base of digital subscribers.

Brian’s post-Globe life has been very active. As the chair of the Journalism Department at Boston University and a professor of the practice, he has launched the Local News Initiative, an ambitious effort designed to foster collaboration among local nonprofit and independent news organizations across New England. A key component of this work is the BU Newsroom, which Brian launched last year. That newsroom, with a newly hired editor in chief, has produced more than 400 student-written stories published with local nonprofit and independent news organizations, each story professionally edited before it leaves BU. Brian plans to keep his hand in this initiative going forward.

We’re especially enthused about Brian’s extensive experience from multiple leadership roles at The Baltimore Banner, which has quickly become one of the country’s largest nonprofit news organizations since its launch just a few years ago. Brian has served as a board member, strategic adviser, interim CEO, and as interim editor this past summer. The Banner won its first Pulitzer Prize in May and has rapidly grown its subscriber base.

It’s worth noting that Brian is returning to the Globe as the Editor, not in an interim role, and we are grateful to the leadership of Boston University for granting him an extended leave of absence.

We know well of Brian’s passion for the Globe and his love of Boston, and how the two fit together. We are excited to welcome Brian back, and I look forward to the work that our world-class newsroom will continue to do to help our community thrive.

Thanks everyone,

Linda Henry