This will not be Markey’s first Senate run. In 1984 he was one of several Democrats who jumped in after Sen. Paul Tsongas announced he would not seek re-election because of illness. Markey soon jumped right out and ran for re-election to Congress. (Kerry, of course, was the eventual Senate winner.) Trouble was, a former state senator from Winchester named Sam Rotondi, who was also running for Congress, refused to be a domino and decided to stay in the race.
I covered the Markey-Rotondi race for The Daily Times Chronicle of Woburn, and it went right down to primary day. If I’ve got my years right, Markey then had to beat a stronger-than-usual Republican, former Somerville mayor S. Lester Ralph. It was a fun campaign.
There is public information, and there is public information.
If someone makes publicly available data about sex offenders more readily accessible, that might help protect children. But it could also make it more difficult for offenders who have finished paying their debt to society to get on with their lives — theoretically increasing the risk that they will reoffend.
If the names and addresses of people who signed a petition in opposition to same-sex marriage are posted online, it may expose the tactics of anti-marriage activists who fooled people into thinking they were signing something else. But it could also expose sincere gay-marriage opponents to ridicule or worse for simply exercising their democratic rights.
It’s a discussion I’ve had with my students on several occasions, and now the dilemma has spread to guns. The Journal News, a Gannett paper that covers the affluent suburbs of Westchester County, N.Y., and beyond, has put together a map showing the names and addresses of people who hold permits for handguns, which it obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
“About 44,000 people in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam — one out of every 23 adults — are licensed to own a handgun,” writes Dwight R. Worley of The Journal News.
As with the examples I cited up top, this is public information. The Journal News has every legal right to do this. But it has prompted an outcry from gun owners and others who say the information ought to be private. One critic has responded by posting the names, home addresses and personal information of every Journal News employee he can find, reports Patrick Clark of The New York Observer.
Personally, I’m not sure what to make of this. I’ve been trying to think of a journalistic or social good that has been accomplished by publishing this, and I’m having a hard time thinking of one. I guess if I had a neighbor who behaved erratically, I’d want to know if he might have a legally obtained gun. But that seems like a stretch.
Before The Journal News put together its map, the information fell into a gray area — public, yes, but not easily accessible. Is there a reason for some types of information to be public but also hard to get? Is there anything we can or should do about that in the age of the Internet?
Old friend Danny Schechter the News Dissector is seeking to revive the Media Channel, which not that many years ago tracked coverage by national and international news organizations from a progressive point of view. Schechter writes:
HELP MEDIA CHANNEL RETURN STRONGER THAN EVER
From: Danny Schechter, Your News Dissector, and Editor, Mediachannel.org
Dear Friends,
First, some not so good news.
Last spring, we woke up one morning to find that we could no longer access many of our domains including Mediachannel.org and NewsDissector.com, two well-known and respected websites that we launched in the year 2000 to provide a global platform for media analysis, criticism, debate, and activism. I’ll spare you the details of our externally created travails; it was an ordeal no one should have to go through!
But now …
With help from good friends, colleagues, and supporters, we have recovered our domains.
Finally, Mediachannel.org will be back!
We are rededicating ourselves to revitalizing the fight for media accountability and transparency, because every day, consolidated corporate media shapes our future by disseminating and reinforcing government and corporate propaganda. Too often, this mechanism inhibits social and political change by artificially restricting public debate, undermining democracy for the benefit of narrow interests, rather than strengthening it for us all.
Mediachannel.org will once again become a “one stop shop” for the best writing, reflections, and investigations on the power and impact of media in our world. We will name and shame dishonest journalism, feature stories on best practices, and showcase media resources. We know we have important information and analyses to share, and hope you will join or rejoin us.
Additionally, we will resume sending out our newsletter, Media Savvy, and my blog, News Dissector, recognized as Blog of the Year by the Hunter College Media Department in New York City, directly to your inbox, free of charge.
How do you think Mediachannel.org can be most effective?
What do you think we should be covering and offering in this new media age?
Which media websites do you find most useful and why?
If you can, please click here and help us by making a year-end tax-deductible gift.
Checks can be made payable to: The Global Center; P.O. Box 677 ; New York, NY 10035 (please note Mediachannel on the check).
Your support will enable us to finally get back into action, providing you with unique investigative journalism that spans the globe. As a token of my appreciation for any donation above $50, I will happily send you a copy of my latest eBook, “Dissecting the News and Lighting the Fuse,” published with help of Coldtype.net. This new 220-page book features updates of our best work along with new articles and essays. It is an exciting collection of timely dissections.
Thank you for your support over the years. We didn’t disappear voluntarily, and we know you will be pleased to read our latest reporting and commentary again regularly as a member of Mediachannel.org.
Onward,
Danny Schechter
Editor and News Dissector
P.S.: I want to extend a special thank you to Rob Kall of OpEdNews.com, who rebuilt Mediachannel when our site was taken down, and Aaron Krowne of ML-Implode.com, for hosting Newsdissector.net.
Michael Graham has left WTKK Radio (96.9 FM), according to AllAccess.com. I certainly won’t miss him, but his departure, unfortunately, would appear to presage Greater Media’s rumored decision to relaunch WTKK as an automated music station. Here’s more from Radio Insight.
Talk radio, as we all know, is not what it used to be. But if WTKK is taken out of play, I wonder if Entercom might decide to reinvigorate WRKO (AM 680), which has all but disappeared except for Howie Carr’s afternoon-drive show. If Jim Braude and Margery Eagan are out at ‘TKK, then they deserve a slot somewhere.
Meanwhile, Dan Rea continues to do well evenings at WBZ (AM 1030) with a talk show that is as conservative as any on the air — but that is also intelligent and respectful of its listeners. Is there a lesson in that?
Brian McGrory has been named editor of the Boston Globe, succeeding Marty Baron, who left recently to become executive editor of the Washington Post. McGrory was widely seen as a popular candidate inside the Globe newsroom, so no doubt they’re celebrating at 135 Morrissey Blvd. this afternoon.
McGrory drew praise inside and outside the Globe for his performance as metro editor several years ago. Although he returned to his slot as a metro columnist following three years on the job, that may have been the last ticket he needed punched given his previous experience as a local reporter, White House correspondent and roving national reporter.
McGrory is just the sixth Globe editor of the modern era, dating back to the 1960s. He follows, in chronological order, Tom Winship, Michael Janeway, Jack Driscoll, Matt Storin and Baron.
McGrory takes over the newsroom at a time when the future of the Globe is unclear. Although the Baron era was a journalistic success highlighted by six Pulitzer Prizes, the Globe, like all newspapers, is unsteady financially. The Globe’s owner, the New York Times Co., is thought to be almost certain to sell the paper at some point, though it is not believed to be actively shopping it at the moment.
Here is the press release the Globe sent out a little while ago:
Brian McGrory, a 23-year veteran of The Boston Globe who led groundbreaking coverage of corruption as an editor, and writes with depth and texture about the region as a columnist, has been named the next editor of The Boston Globe, effective immediately.
Mr. McGrory, 51, will report to Christopher M. Mayer, Globe Publisher. A Boston native, he will be charged with running the newsroom for The Boston Globe and BostonGlobe.com and the newsroom’s contribution to Boston.com.
“Brian has distinguished himself throughout his career at the Globe as a reporter, editor and columnist and as a native of Boston, he is the ideal candidate to lead the Globe’s newsroom,” said Mr. Mayer. “Brian will continue to emphasize the accountability reporting that has been the Globe’s trademark, combined with narrative storytelling that gives readers a strong sense of our unique community.”
“This is a great honor to guide the Boston Globe news operations, since I grew up delivering the Globe, then reading the Globe, and later writing for the Globe,” said Mr. McGrory. “It is also a great honor to work with my colleagues and build on what I believe is the best metro newspaper in America.”
Mr. McGrory joined the Globe in 1989 as one of the first reporters hired into the South Weekly section. Since then, he has covered the city of Boston as a general assignment reporter, served as White House correspondent, and as a roving national correspondent. In 1998, he became a metro columnist, and quickly made his mark as a must read. He was named associate editor in 2004.
In 2007, he was named deputy managing editor for local news. He led the metro staff in a comprehensive investigation of corruption and cronyism on Beacon Hill that eventually led to resignations and indictments.
Governor Deval Patrick and the State Legislature passed a pension reform bill after an investigation by the Globe revealed public pension abuses, coverage that brought Sean Murphy recognition as a finalist for the Goldsmith Investigative Reporting Prize by the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University. Under McGrory, the newsroom also reported extensively on a city system that bestowed benefits on favored developers.
He directed wide-ranging, sensitive coverage of Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s struggle with brain cancer, his death, and his funeral.
McGrory steered the metro staff to new levels of narrative journalism, stressing the value of vivid and detailed storytelling in an era when consumers have many media choices. An 8,000-word narrative about a pair of sisters who died in an arson fire in South Boston after years of neglect won the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism and led to widespread reforms in government services for children.
After nearly three years as metro editor, he resumed his twice-a-week metro front column, where he has regularly enlightened readers about the quirks and character of the community and held public officials and business leaders accountable. He is the author of a memoir and four novels.
“During his tenure as metro editor, Brian built a strong team of reporters and editors and imbued the newsroom with a competitive spirit. Day after day, Brian and his team delivered award-winning journalism, in print and online,” Mayer added.
McGrory was raised in Roslindale and Weymouth. He received a B.A. from Bates College in Maine, and worked early in his career at the New Haven Register and The Patriot Ledger in Quincy.
The timing was serendipitous. As the media swarmed around Newtown, Conn., following last Friday’s horrifying massacre, some observers were beginning to ask why so little attention was being paid to the ongoing crisis of urban violence. (Here’s one example, from The Phoenix’s Chris Faraone.)
On Sunday, the Boston Globe provided an answer of sorts: the first installment of “68 Blocks: Life, Death, Hope,” a five-day, multi-part series on Dorchester’s Bowdoin-Geneva neighborhood — a predominantly African-American community that is a vibrant center of family life but that is also beset by gangs and guns. The Globe went all in. The paper even rented an apartment in the neighborhood, where two of its reporters, Meghan Irons and Akilah Johnson, lived during the five months that they and others were doing their reporting.
It was only a week ago that the paper published an ambitious three-part series on the problems of immigration. The long-term prospects for the newspaper business may be bleak, but the Globe continues to produce important, expensive, time-consuming work.
At a time when you sometimes hear that various forms of digital storytelling have made narrative obsolete, “68 Blocks” is an example of how digital and narrative can work together. The story itself — 29,000 or so words spread out over five days — is unusual for newspaper writing. There is no news hook and, in the end, no real conclusion.
Thus we are left to wonder if Nate Davis and his wife, Trina Fomby-Davis, will be able to move on with their lives after the murder of one son and the imprisonment of another; if “Tal” will ever make something of himself; if Father Doc Conway can truly make a difference; and if Jhana Senxian will succeed in her efforts to remake her small part of Bowdoin-Geneva.
But if you’re only reading “68 Blocks” in print, you’re missing a lot. Fortunately the Globe has dropped the paywall for this package, so you can take the time to explore. It stands as a lesson in how to do multimedia, how to use data and how to involve your readers — “the people formerly known as the audience,” as Jay Rosen calls them — to help tell their own stories. For instance:
• Instagram and voices from the neighborhood. My students and I have taken several tours of the Globe Idea Lab, an innovation skunkworks inside the paper’s Dorchester headquarters. The lab is dominated by a giant vertical screen comprising nine smaller screens. On it is a map of Boston, with geotagged Instagram photos popping up as soon as people post them. The Globe tracked down some of the amateur photographers in Bowdoin-Geneva, got their permission to use their pictures (unlike, uh, Instagram) and recorded brief audio interviews to go with each one. Rachel McAthy has more at Journalism.co.uk.
• Kids using video to tell their own stories. This might be my favorite: the Globe distributed video cameras to young people in the neighborhood and posted the results. There are six short videos online, and every one is worth watching.
• Interactive data visualizations. Using maps and charts, “68 Blocks” lays out in graphic detail a number of quality-of-life measurements ranging from homicides to rodent activity. By letting the user call up the data she wants, the visualizations invite repeated visits.
All of that is in addition to more typical offerings such as professionally produced videos, slideshows and diary entries written by Globe reporters.
This is a series that should have a long post-publication life — perhaps supplemented by an e-book. It’s a great example of what a large news organization is able to do if it’s got the resources and is willing to commit them to a long, complex project. Those of us who live in Greater Boston are lucky that the Globe is still taking on such important work.
One day in the summer of 2003 I found myself in a hotel lobby, engaged in an intense conversation with Andrew Solomon. His book on depression, “The Noonday Demon,” had won the National Book Award. Now he was working on a new project — about families with children who were so different from their parents that they called into question the very meaning of identity.
Solomon wanted to interview me because our daughter, Becky, has achondroplasia, the most common form of dwarfism. She had survived a rather harrowing infancy during which her too-small airways left her struggling for survival. She needed a tracheotomy, oxygen tanks and home nursing until she was nearly 3 years old …
Former Globe managing editor Greg Moore has been named the Benjamin C. Bradlee Editor of the Year by the National Press Foundation for his leadership of the Denver Post. Moore was recently seen in the vicinity of the Globe, according to several people I’ve spoken with, although there’s also talk that he has no desire to return to Boston.
The smart money is on an internal candidate. The names that come up most frequently are metro columnist Brian McGrory, editorial-page editor Peter Canellos and managing editor Caleb Solomon. At The Phoenix, Peter Kadzis is predicting Solomon, and floats several other names as well. But, really, who knows what might happen?
Regardless of who ultimately moves into the glass house being vacated by Baron, congratulations to Greg Moore.
