Could Boston’s two newsy public radio stations merge? Plus, local news tidbits.

WBUR’s CitySpace. Photo (cc) 2023 by Todd Van Hoosear

Before social media, when blogging was everything, a lot of us wrote what were known as “link blogs” — that is, a running list of links with little in the way of commentary. Now that social media is (are?) falling apart as a way for distributing journalism, I’m trying to get back to that, mixing in some short posts with longer pieces.

But there’s a problem. I have a sizable contingent of readers who receive new posts by email and, at least at the moment, I don’t have a way of giving them the option of receiving one daily email with the day’s posts. I’d like to do something about that once the semester ends and I have some time. No one wants to receive multiple emails with short posts throughout the day. So here are three media stories I don’t want you to miss, pulled together in one post.

• Boston Globe media reporter Aidan Ryan follows up the paper’s recent stories on struggles at the city’s two news-oriented public radio stations, GBH (89.7 FM) and WBUR (90.9 FM), with a closer look at whether both of them can survive in their current form. As someone who was a paid contributor to GBH News from 1998 to 2022, I have to say a lot of us were puzzled in 2009 when GBH announced it would turn its classical- and jazz-oriented radio station into a direct competitor with WBUR. You might say that it worked until it didn’t, and now there are some serious questions. The most provocative: Could the two radio stations merge? The answer: Probably not, but who knows?

• The local news crisis has led a number of college and university journalism programs to step up with their own solutions. At Northeastern, for instance, we publish The Scope, a grant-supported digital publication that covers social-justice issues in Greater Boston. Well, The Daily Iowan, an independent nonprofit newspaper that covers the University of Iowa, is going several steps further than that, acquiring two struggling weekly community newspapers. “It’s a really great way to help the problem of news deserts in rural areas,” the paper’s executive editor, Sabine Martin, told The Associated Press.

I contacted the paper to ask whether students who report for the weeklies will be paid. Publisher Jason Drummond responded that the details are still being worked out, but that students will be paid for work they produce exclusively for the weeklies, which are also in the process of hiring paid student interns. The weeklies will be able to pick up stories from The Daily Iowan for free, but the Iowan’s staff members are already paid.

• Four years ago I visited The Mendocino Voice, which covers a rural area in Northern California; it was my first reporting trip for “What Works in Community News.” The Voice, I learned, has to devote a lot of its resources to covering the state’s extreme weather, especially wildfires. Now the Voice’s publisher and co-founder, Kate Maxwell, is putting together a Local News Go Bag Toolkit so that local news organizations can prepare for emergencies. “The emphasis is on preparing before a disaster — it’s the most important step that journalists, newsrooms, and communities can take. This project is designed to be useful for local newsrooms and journalists at any stage of a disaster,” writes Maxwell, who’s currently a fellow at the Reynolds Journalism Institute. The toolkit is a work in progress, and she’s asking for ideas from other journalists.

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An odd omission

An editorial in The Boston Globe about hospitals, internet cookies and online privacy notes that several non-hospital businesses have gotten tangled up in lawsuits — among them The Philadelphia Inquirer, which “faces a federal lawsuit filed by two subscribers to its website for its use of Meta Pixel tracking software.” Yet no mention is made of a lawsuit against The Boston Globe, which in 2023 reached a $5 million settlement for sending user video data to Facebook. As far as I can tell, the two cases are identical, or close to it. (The Globe denied any wrongdoing.)

Many of us Globe subscribers received small checks earlier this year as a result of the settlement. Globe editorial page editor James Dao declined to comment on the omission when I contacted him today. This is hardly a big deal, and the Inquirer angle wasn’t especially relevant to the editorial’s larger point, which involves state law. But it strikes me that if the Globe was going to mention the Inquirer then it should have mentioned its own situation as well.

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How Larry Lucchino saved The Boston Phoenix — and how the Phoenix saved Fenway Park

Larry Lucchino, right, celebrates the Red Sox’ 2013 World Series win. Photo (cc) 2013 by Alicia Porter.

Former Red Sox president Larry Lucchino, who died Tuesday at the age of 78, not only saved Fenway Park — he also saved The Boston Phoenix. His friend and former Red Sox executive Charles Steinberg recalled in an interview with WBUR Radio earlier this week that he once asked Lucchino whether he planned to replace the ancient ballpark. Lucchino’s response: “You don’t destroy the Mona Lisa! You preserve the Mona Lisa!”

In the years before the John Henry-Tom Werner group bought the Red Sox in 2001, the fate of Fenway Park was far from clear. The previous owner — a trust set up by the late Jean Yawkey and headed by Yawkey confidant John Harrington — wanted to build a new ballpark farther south on Brookline Avenue. And that would have required the razing of 126 Brookline Ave., an office building owned by Phoenix publisher Stephen Mindich. The building’s second and third floors were occupied by the Phoenix.

Mindich declared war on Harrington’s plans, and the Phoenix was mobilized on his behalf. My friend Seth Gitell and I as well as others, including future Wall Street Journal sports columnist Jason Gay, inveighed against the proposal, arguing that a new ballpark would be better suited to a different neighborhood, such as what is now the Seaport District but was then a barren landscape of parking lots.

One of the last stories we published before the Red Sox were sold came in December 2001. Written by Seth and me, it includes this:

But if the winner of this high-stakes sweepstakes has yet to be named, it’s already clear who the loser will be. Us. Us as in baseball fans. Us as in taxpaying citizens. Us as in ordinary people who occasionally enjoy the simple pleasure of attending a game at the ballpark or tuning in the Sox on TV without having to pay through the nose.

Well, we were certainly right about the cost of attending a game and of NESN cable fees.

There were all kinds of names being bandied about at that time, including cable magnate Charles Dolan as well as local favorites Joe O’Donnell and Steve Karp. Dolan was thought to favor keeping Fenway, telling The Boston Globe: “If they can’t watch the game here, they can watch it on TV.”

But the Henry group was coming together, and it was clear that then-Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig was hoping to steer the sale Henry’s way. That’s exactly what happened later that month, with Lucchino brought in as part of the ownership group and emerging as the main cheerleader for refurbishing Fenway Park rather than demolishing it. As the force behind Baltimore’s retro Camden Yards, the first of the new generation of classic ballparks, Lucchino was the ideal person to lead that effort.

The Phoenix was saved, at least for the time being; it shut down in 2013, falling victim to the economic forces that had been battering the newspaper business. Henry bought the Globe later that year and slowly transformed it into a growing and profitable paper. And the Red Sox, playing in the iconic ballpark that John Harrington wanted to tear down, won World Series in 2004, 2007, 2013 and 2018, although they are currently in the midst of an uncertain rebuilding process.

Larry Lucchino deserves credit for giving the Phoenix another dozen good years. And Stephen Mindich, who died in 2018, deserves some credit for saving Fenway Park in the years before Lucchino arrived on the scene.

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The main event: A Kansas publisher and his newspaper file suit over illegal raid

Eric Meyer speaks with reporters in August 2023. Photo (cc) 2023 by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector.

Obviously I should have waited before hitting “publish” on Monday’s item about the latest lawsuit to be filed regarding the illegal police raid last summer against the Marion County Record in rural Kansas. Because that turned out to be just a preliminary to the main event.

Publisher and editor Eric Meyer has been conspicuous by his absence in the the various legal maneuverings that have been playing out in the intervening months. Well, that changed big-time on Monday, when Meyer and the paper itself filed a First Amendment lawsuit in federal court. Interestingly, the principal defendant is not the former police chief, Gideon Cody, although he’s certainly among them. Rather, it’s the former mayor, David Mayfield.

The Record’s own story is trapped behind a paywall, but the nonprofit Kansas Reflector has published an in-depth report that includes the new developments as well as the relevant background. The most interesting twist is the inclusion of Mayfield, who, according to the paper’s lawsuit, ordered Cody to conduct an illegal raid against the newspaper over the paper’s handling of driving records, which were publicly available online but could only be used for certain restricted purposes. Cody met with Marion County Sheriff Jeff Soyez, the lawsuit charges, and Soyez agreed to take part in “their illicit plan to take down the Marion County Record.”

That raid, conducted against the newspaper’s offices, Meyer’s home and the home of city council member Ruth Herbel, has now resulted in a total of four lawsuits, with more promised. Among other things, Meyer’s 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, who was home at the time that police burst in looking for documents, died the next day after a sleepless, stress-filled night.

The purported reason for the raid has always seemed like a pretext. We learned later on, for instance, that the Record was looking into misconduct by Cody at his previous job. And now we know that the Record had been harshly critical of Mayfield, too. The story in the Reflector, by Sherman Smith, includes this choice tidbit:

The federal lawsuit says Eric Meyer seeks justice “to deter the next crazed cop from threatening democracy the way Chief Cody did when he hauled away the newspaper’s computers and its reporters’ cell phones in an ill-fated attempt to silence the press.”

Mayfield, a former Kansas Highway Patrol trooper and Marion police chief who works part-time for the sheriff, wanted to punish Eric Meyer and Councilwoman Ruth Herbel for their criticism of his actions as mayor, according to the lawsuit. In editorials, Eric Meyer referred to Mayfield as a dictator, bully and liar. Mayfield had tried and failed to remove Herbel from the city council through a recall petition in January 2023.

There’s this as well: “On July 25, just 17 days before the raid, David Mayfield wrote on his personal Facebook page: ‘The real villains in America aren’t Black people. They aren’t white people. They aren’t Asians. They aren’t Latinos. They aren’t women. They aren’t gays. They are the radical ‘journalists,’ ‘teachers’ & ‘professors’ who do nothing but sow division between the American people.’”

The raid was almost certainly a violation of the federal Privacy Protection Act of 1980, which requires authorities to obtain a subpoena — not just a search warrant — when seizing documents from news organizations.

The defendants named in Meyer’s suit are the City of Marion; former Marion Mayor Mayfield; former Police Chief Cody; Acting Police Chief Zach Hudlin; the Board of County Commissioners for the County of Marion; Marion County Sheriff Soyez; and Marion County Detective Aaron Christner.

Meyer is reportedly seeking more than $5 million for the wrongful death of his mother — compensation that will be sought in a subsequent claim. As for what would happen to local finances if he wins, Meyer said:

The last thing we want is to bankrupt the city or county, but we have a duty to democracy and to countless news organizations and citizens nationwide to challenge such malicious and wanton violations of the First and Fourth Amendments and federal laws limiting newsroom searches. If we prevail, we anticipate donating any punitive damages to community projects and causes supporting cherished traditions of freedom.

Previous coverage.

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A third plaintiff sues over an illegal raid at a Kansas newspaper last summer

A third employee of a weekly newspaper in Kansas has joined a federal suit against a local police department over an illegal raid conducted at the newspaper’s office and the publisher’s and the vice mayor’s homes, according to The Associated Press. Cheri Bentz, who was the office manager at the Marion County Record, claims she was illegally detained and questioned, and that her cellphone was taken from her as well.

The case set off a First Amendment fury last summer after a home security camera captured the paper’s 98-year-old co-owner, Joan Meyer, berating the officers who had invaded the home she shared with her son, publisher Eric Meyer. Joan Meyer collapsed and died the next day following a sleepless, stress-filled night.

The raid led to the resignation of Police Chief Gideon Cody, who initially defended the action. Despite the official line that the raid was linked to a convoluted situation involving private driving records, it turned out that the Record was investigating possible wrongdoing by Cody at his previous job.

Earlier coverage.

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Israel must be held to account for the targeting and killing of journalists

Protest in Tel Aviv against the Netanyahu government last June. Photo (cc) 2023 by RG TLV.

CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy wrote an important analysis last week about journalists who have been killed by Israeli forces in the the Gaza war. Citing figures from the Committee to Protect Journalists, Darcy observes that at least 95 journalists have been killed since Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel last Oct. 7, and that all but five of those journalists are Palestinian — the highest death toll for members of the press since CPJ began tracking such casualties in 1992.

In addition to deaths that might be attributed to the fog of war, there have also been killings that Israel carried out despite what appear to be clear indications that it was targeting media workers. Darcy writes that the United Nations recently finished a report showing that Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah had been killed in southern Lebanon after a tank fired at a group of “clearly identified journalists.” Israeli officials responded to the U.N. that it “does not deliberately shoot at civilians, including journalists.”

In addition, The Washington Post last week found that a Jan. 7 missile attack resulting in the deaths of two Al Jazeera journalists and two freelancers in southern Gaza may have lacked any military justification. The Israeli military claimed it had “identified and struck a terrorist who operated an aircraft that posed a threat to IDF troops” — but the Post found that the “aircraft” was a drone apparently being used for reporting purposes.

Darcy includes accounts of Palestinian journalists who have alleged been abused by Israeli forces as well — a topic that is the subject of a new report from CPJ, which “found multiple kinds of incidents of journalists being targeted while carrying out their work in Israel and the two Palestinian territories, Gaza and the West Bank” as well as the deaths of journalists’ families.

CPJ has posted an open letter signed by 36 leaders of top U.S. and international news organizations calling Israel to end its attacks on journalists. Among the Americans the letter are Julie Pace, the executive editor of The Associated Press; Mark Thompson, the chair and CEO of CNN; A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times; Sally Buzbee, the executive editor of The Washington Post; Kim Godwin, the president of ABC News; and Rebecca Blumenstein, the president of editorial at NBC News. Significantly, the international news leaders signing the letter include Aluf Benn, the editor-in-chief of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The letter includes this:

Journalists are civilians and Israeli authorities must protect journalists as noncombatants according to international law. Those responsible for any violations of that longstanding protection should be held accountable. Attacks on journalists are also attacks on truth. We commit to championing the safety of journalists in Gaza, which is fundamental for the protection of press freedom everywhere.

This weekend, as NPR reports, tens of thousands of Israelis demonstrated against the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netananyu, calling for a deal with Hamas to release the more than 100 hostages the terrorist group is still believed to be holding.

The horrendous situation in the Middle East began with Hamas’ attacks, claiming some 1,200 lives and leading to Israel’s invasion of Gaza, which have killed more than 30,000 people, mostly civilians. Starvation looms. President Biden has been ever-so-slowly been backing away from the Netanyahu government, allowing a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire and the release of the hostages to take effect.

Israel’s targeting of media workers is a small part of a much larger picture — a horrendous problem that would seem to have no good solution. But let’s start with this: Journalists are the world’s eyes and ears. They need to be able to tell us what is taking place on the ground without fear of being killed.

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Mike Reed, Gannett’s $3.9 million man, claims union ‘lies’ to his employees

It’s that time of the year when Gannett has to report how much it’s paying Mike Reed, the CEO of Gannett, the largest newspaper chain in the U.S. and the publisher of USA Today. Don Seiffert of the Boston Business Journal looked up the company’s annual proxy filing for 2023 and found that the answer to that question is $3.9 million, an increase of 14% (but still down from the $7.7 million he received in 2021).

A couple of other notable tidbits in Seiffert’s story:

  • “Median employee compensation fell last year by $179, a fraction of a percent, as inflation rose 3.4% over the same period.”
  • Although Gannett has been touting an upsurge of hiring, including some 500 newsroom positions, the company reported employing 3,200 journalists at the beginning of January 2024, down 100 from a year earlier.

Meanwhile, Gannett’s $3.9 million man has been blasting the NewsGuild, the union that represents many of his underpaid, overworked employees. “I think the Guild, unfortunately, plays dirty and lies to our employees,” Reed told Axios last week. And check this out: “Reed also accused the Guild of lying about the company cutting jobs ‘to increase profitability.’ He said that’s not true — ‘they’re designed to keep a newsroom in the market itself,’ he said.” Huh?

In response, Axios quoted from a statement by NewsGuild-CWA president Jon Schleuss, who said in part: “It’s a shame that Mike Reed is attacking journalists again instead of listening to them. If he did, he’d understand that the only sustainable future is to invest in the talented reporters, photographers and others who drive the company’s success — not enriching corporate executives and shareholders.”

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Kyle Munson on how nonprofit dollars are keeping for-profit Iowa newspapers alive

Kyle Munson leading a workshop at the Okoboji Writers’ Retreat in 2023. Photo by Doug Burns.

On our latest podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Kyle Munson, president of the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation. The foundation was launched in August 2020, during the heart of the pandemic. It was a challenging time for newspapers. As we write in their book, “What Works in Community News,” the Storm Lake Times Pilot saw a real collapse in local advertising. Art Cullen, the editor, was worried about survival.

The foundation is set up as a nonprofit, so it can receive tax-free donations and philanthropic grants. In turn, it has doled out grants to small papers in western Iowa, including the Carroll Times Herald, La Prensa and the Times Pilot. These grants were critical because the crisis in local news has hit rural areas hard.

I’ve got a Quick Take on The Associated Press, which is the principal source of international and national news for local newspapers around the country — and in many cases for state coverage as well. Two major newspaper chains, Gannett and McClatchy, have announced that they are going to use the AP a lot less than they used to, which will result in less money for the AP — and either higher fees, less coverage or both for their remaining clients.

Ellen looks at Outlier Media, a woman-led team of local journalists in Detroit. They formed a network called the Collaborative Detroit Newsrooms network to produce and share news for underserved populations. They’ve won a major international award from the Association of Media Information and Communication. Executive editor Candice Fortman traveled to Barcelona to pick up the juried prize.

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

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