Herald to work with NAACP following cartoon controversy

Smart move by the Boston Herald: The paper will work with the NAACP following publication of the racist cartoon involving President Obama and watermelon-flavored toothpaste. More links:

Joe Kahn accepts the Globe’s buyout offer

Add veteran reporter Joe Kahn to the list of Boston Globe journalists who have accepted a buyout and will be taking early retirement. Kahn, a graceful feature writer, expects to continue contributing to the paper on a freelance basis while pursuing other interests.

So far, Kahn and former editorial-page editor Peter Canellos are the only two Globe staffers whose departures have been announced, though I’ve heard of other possibilities. If anyone has a list and would like to pass it along, your anonymity will be assured.

Kahn sent this email blast out earlier today, and I am reposting it here with his permission.

After 26 years, I am leaving my full-time job at the Boston Globe. Management has offered me a generous buyout package, which I’ve chosen to accept. In the meantime, I’m negotiating an arrangement by which I hope to become a semi-regular freelance contributor.

I am grateful for the editors’ enthusiasm for this plan and for understanding that this transition could hardly come at a more opportune time for myself and my family.

What’s next? In addition to writing, I’m interested in nonprofit and foundation work, possibly connected to youth sports — something I’m passionate about, as many of you know. More time to spend on the tennis court, golf course, and ski slopes will be nice, too. Also high on my list is travel and seeing far-flung family and friends more often.

I’m excited about this new phase and wish you all the best.

Cheers,
Joe

Matt Bai, Tom Fiedler set sail aboard the Monkey Business

jpgPreviously published at WGBHNews.org.

It was the summer of 2009, and the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication was in town. A group of us went out to dinner at Legal Seafoods at the Pru. Among them was Tom Fiedler, dean of Boston University’s College of Communication and the former executive editor of the Miami Herald.

Fiedler held us in thrall with a blow-by-blow description of his best-known story: the sinking of Gary Hart’s 1988 presidential campaign aboard the good ship Monkey Business. It was the Herald that staked out Hart’s townhouse in Washington and learned that a woman named Donna Rice had been staying with him. Hart soon dropped out of the campaign; he later re-entered it but failed to gain any traction.

Last month The New York Times Magazine published a long excerpt from a book by Times political reporter (and Boston Globe alumnus) Matt Bai arguing that the Herald’s pursuit of Hart represented something new and disturbing in American politics: Journalists in the skeptical post-Watergate era were no longer willing to give politicians a pass on any misbehavior, including their sexual peccadilloes. Perhaps the most damning part of Bai’s piece was his discovery that Fiedler, who had long cited Hart’s challenge to “follow me around” as justification, had actually not learned of that challenge until after the Herald’s stakeout.

Now Fiedler has written a strong, thoughtful article for Politico Magazine in which he responds to Bai, taking the view that a presidential candidate’s lies should not be considered “inconsequential.” Fielder’s take on the “follow me around” matter is worth quoting in full:

For Bai, much hinges on the precise timing of this quote. He claims that the Herald used the “follow me around” challenge to justify its pursuit of Hart. This was dishonest, he suggests, because we couldn’t have known about it before the stakeout — the quote appeared in the [New York] Times on May 3, the same day our story ran. What Bai doesn’t acknowledge is that we didn’t need the [E.J.] Dionne quote for justification.

A week or so before the Herald and the Times’ articles ran, in an interview with me, Hart had been similarly dismissive of the womanizing allegations, saying, “I’ve been in public life for 15 years and I think that if there was anything about my background that anybody had any information on, they would bring it forward. But they haven’t.” The Hart quote I published wasn’t as dramatic as the one Hart provided to Dionne, but its intent was the same. And it was a lie. That’s not news?

Fiedler’s purpose is not to discredit Bai. Indeed, Fiedler calls himself “a great admirer of Bai’s talents as a journalist and a writer.” But Fiedler does manage to provide a different context for why and how Hart’s downfall was covered. If you read Bai’s article, you owe it to yourself to read Fiedler’s as well.

(Disclosure: Fiedler is a friendly acquaintance and a colleague on WGBH’s “Beat the Press.”)

It’s time for the Herald to close the circle

Update: I’m not sure when this was added, but Herald editorial-page editor Rachelle Cohen tells Romenesko that she vetted the cartoon: “Herald editorial page editor Rachelle Cohen tells me neither she nor artist Jerry Holbert saw anything wrong with the cartoon. ‘Jerry doesn’t have a racist bone in his body,’ she says. He chose watermelon because he had just seen that flavor of toothpaste in his house, says Cohen.” So now we have the cartoonist and his editor both claiming that they didn’t see any racist intent in the watermelon reference. At best, this speaks to a lack of diversity in the newsroom.

To their credit, the folks at the Boston Herald clearly and quickly understood that they had a problem on their hands Wednesday after publishing an editorial cartoon by Jerry Holbert that was racist in its effect, if not in Holbert’s intent. The cartoon depicted an intruder in a White House bathroom asking President Obama if he had “tried the new watermelon-flavored toothpaste.”

Holbert went on the newspaper’s online radio station to apologize, and said he understood he compounded his error when he failed to notify the Herald that his syndicate had told him to alter the cartoon so as to eliminate the racial inference. And today, the paper publishes a straightforward apology. On the editorial page, Holbert apologizes again.

But now it’s time for the Herald to close the circle. Even if Holbert didn’t understand why African-Americans are offended by stereotypes of black people as placid, happy watermelon-eaters, are we to believe that editorial cartoons somehow leap onto the pages of the Herald with no intervention on the part of editors?

Here is an excerpt from a well-sourced article at Wikipedia:

While the exact origins of this stereotype remain unclear, an association of African Americans and watermelon goes back to the time of slavery in the United States. Defenders of slavery used the fruit to paint African Americans as a simple-minded people who were happy when provided watermelon and a little rest. The stereotype was perpetuated in minstrel shows often depicting African Americans as ignorant and workshy, given to song and dance and inordinately fond of watermelon.

I agree with my WGBH colleague Emily Rooney of “Greater Boston,” who said last night (above) that she believes Holbert when he says he had no racial intent — but that someone at the Herald should have caught it before publication. The Herald should tell us who approved the cartoon and why.

In case you missed it, here is how the story unfolded on Wednesday.

The Herald has some explaining to do

Kudos to Greg Reibman, president of the Newton-Needham Chamber of Commerce (and a former Boston Herald staff member), who flagged this on Twitter. It’s currently the lead item at Romenesko.

And it keeps on coming:

https://twitter.com/Bevmire/status/517323716796366848

Here’s the link; screen image below.

Screen Shot 2014-10-01 at 10.47.46 AM

 

So which came first? The watermelon or the raspberries?

Here’s the Herald’s story on Holbert’s apology, which he delivered on the newspaper’s online radio station.

In newspaper innovation, Bezos lags behind Henry

I’ve been saying for some time that John Henry has been more aggressively innovative at The Boston Globe than Jeff Bezos has at The Washington Post. Now Dylan Byers of Politico weighs in with this article, writing that “the Post, far from embarking on the radical reinvention that many thought Bezos would bring, remains more old school than cutting edge.”

Bezos has moved cautiously. His choice as publisher — former Reagan confidant Fred Ryan — seems anything but innovative. Henry, meanwhile, installed himself in the publisher’s office and has presided over high-profile new projects like Capital, a weekly political section, and Crux, a standalone website “covering all things Catholic.”

Byers also writes that Post executive editor Marty Baron is “the epitome of the 20th-century newspaperman,” which strikes me as both tonally and factually wrong. If anything, Baron was one of the more digitally savvy big-paper editors when he ran the Globe newsroom — a period that took place entirely in the 21st century, by the way.

But I think Byers’ overall point is correct. The Post is a fine newspaper, and it’s gotten bigger and better under Bezos’ stewardship. If there is to be a more drastic reinvention, though, we’re going to have to wait.

Ferguson and the importance of citizen media

2848609_300Two of my WGBH colleagues, Callie Crossley and Jim Braude, were welcomed to the honorary board of Cambridge Community Television recently. (Robin Young of WBUR and I were the picks last year.) Congratulations to both Callie and Jim. CCTV is a great example of how volunteer media can make a difference in providing local news and fostering civic engagement.

CCTV executive director Susan Fleischmann asked me to speak for a few minutes, and then published a tweaked-up version of my remarks in Open Studio, the organization’s newsletter. You can read what I had to say here or below:

On the evening of Aug. 13, while I was checking Twitter, I started to see reports coming in that the police in Ferguson, Missouri, were forcibly suppressing nonviolent protests. Five days earlier, on Aug. 9, a teenager named Michael Brown had been killed by a police officer under circumstances that are still unclear.

I turned on CNN, which was running a story on the death of Robin Williams. So I turned back to Twitter.

Several people I was following posted livestreams. I clicked on one called “I Am Michael Brown Live” from KARG Argus Radio, a community radio station. What I saw was incredible. It certainly wasn’t HDTV — the video was dark and green, likely shot with nothing but a smartphone, showing a column of police officers advancing and using flares and rubber bullets to disperse a peaceful crowd.

Later, the cable channels started covering Ferguson live — but they were mainly showing the KARG footage, as it was pretty much the only material they had.

Ferguson showed the power of citizen media. Reports from the scene on Twitter, Instagram and the like kept growing and building until finally the mainstream media were forced to take notice and cover the story.

At a time when the traditional media don’t have the resources to cover stories the way they did 20 years ago, ordinary people armed with smartphones can serve as an early warning signal. A story can begin with citizen media and work its way into the mainstream — and from there into the national consciousness, as was the case in Ferguson.

It was widely reported that two journalists were arrested the night of Aug. 13 — Wesley Lowery of The Washington Post and Ryan Reilly of The Huffington Post. In fact, there was a third — Antonio French, a St. Louis alderman who had been covering the protests on social media from the beginning.

Lowery — who video-recorded the officer who was arresting him — and Reilly were quickly released. It took longer for French. But how much longer still if he hadn’t been an elected official? At at time when everyone can engage in acts of journalism, we need protection not just for professional journalists but for people using the tools they have available to report what is happening around them.

What professional journalists do is incredibly important. The stories they tell, when done well, give us the information we need to govern ourselves in a democracy.

What you as citizen journalists involved in public media such as Cambridge Community TV are doing is every bit as important. Many times you are on the front lines of local stories that are too local for the mainstream to bother with. And you’re the early warning signal for the mainstream.

What happened in Ferguson underscores the value and importance of what you do every day. All of us in professional journalists admire what you’re doing, or at least we should. This evening is to salute you.

New York Times journos discuss Innovation Report

Screen Shot 2014-09-28 at 4.28.30 PMAn all-star panel came together on Friday evening at the Online News Association conference in Chicago to discuss The New York Times’ celebrated Innovation Report — an internal document about the Times’ efforts to adjust to the digital age that became public when it was leaked to BuzzFeed.

The report, wrote Joshua Benton of the Nieman Journalism Lab last May, is “one of the most remarkable documents I’ve seen in my years running the Lab.” Both the full document and a comprehensive summary are available as part of Benton’s piece, and they are well worth reading. The report describes how the Times — in many ways an innovator in the transition to digital — is still being held back by an antiquated management structure, an overemphasis on what goes on page one of the print edition, and a lack of understanding of how to promote and distribute the Times’ journalism.

The ONA panel was moderated by Ann Marie Lipinski (@AMLwhere), curator of Harvard’s Nieman Foundation. The panelists were Amy O’Leary (@amyoleary), deputy editor for digital operations at the Times and one of the authors of the report; Tyson Evans (@tysone), the Times’ editor of newsroom strategy, who also contributed to the report; and Alex MacCallum (@alexmaccallum), recently promoted to a newly created assistant managing editor’s slot to oversee audience engagement.

Hundreds of people were on hand, and many of them — including me — live-tweeted the panel. Bursts of fragmentary news are no substitute for a well-crafted story about the event (here’s one by a student who covered it), but they can give you some flavor of the discussion. Here’s what I had say, including a couple of retweets that I thought were worth sharing.

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/515638644028489728

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/515640356046905345

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/515641386117640192

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/515641711557890048

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/515641932325081089

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/515643566836969472

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/515645167823781889

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/515646695141822464

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/515652338045157376

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/515653245948424192

Will Globe and Herald go to war over sex registry story?

Deval Patrick
Gov. Deval Patrick. Photo (cc) 2008 by Alison Klein of WEBN News and published under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

This story may take another day or two to ripen. But Gov. Deval Patrick’s firing of two members of the Sex Offender Registry Board has all the ingredients of a major donnybrook between The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald.

Globe reporter Michael Levenson writes that Patrick fired the two officials in part because of their insistence that his brother-in-law register as a sex offender. The brother-in-law, Bernard Sigh, was convicted of raping his wife (Patrick’s sister) in 1993 and served a short prison sentence. The couple later reconciled, but the Herald made it an issue during Patrick’s first run for governor in 2006. Levenson writes:

Blaming the Herald and the Republican Party for the revelation, Patrick said the disclosure that his brother-in-law had been convicted of raping his wife, Patrick’s sister, more than a decade earlier in California “nearly destroyed their lives.”

In the Herald, Erin Smith and Matt Stout offer a similar account, including Patrick’s lambasting of their paper. A Herald editorial criticizes Patrick mainly for the week-long delay in explaining the reason for the two officials’ firing: “Eight years and multiple bureaucratic scandals in, how has this administration not figured out that honesty — from the outset — is the best policy?”

Finally, if you’d like to read a thorough account by a neutral reporter, I recommend Gin Dumcius of State House News Service. [Update: I don’t mean to imply that the Globe and Herald accounts today are not neutral; they both seem pretty straight. I simply mean that the two papers are rivals, and the Herald’s 2006 reporting may become an issue.]

So will this spark another chapter in the Hundred Years’ War between the Globe and the Herald? I think it mainly comes down to how vigorously Herald editors want to defend their paper’s 2006 reporting. As they say, stay tuned.

Aaron Kushner is shutting down the LA Register

CA_LAR
Click on image for larger view.

In April, when Orange County Register publisher Aaron Kushner launched the Los Angeles Register, the bloom was already off the rose. (Here’s what I wrote in June.) So it’s not really a surprise that Kushner is shutting down the misbegotten daily. Andrew Khouri of the Los Angeles Times has the details.

And here’s the inevitable quote from Kushner and his business partner Eric Spitz about all those darn naysayers:

Pundits and local competitors who have closely followed our entry into Los Angeles will be quick to criticize our decision to launch a new newspaper and they will say that we failed. We believe, the true definition of failure is not taking bold steps toward growth.

Image via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages.