If you received an email in the past day or so telling you that you are owed money resulting from a legal settlement with The Boston Globe, I’m here to tell you that it’s legit.
The email, from the “Ambrose v Boston Globe Settlement Administrator,” pertains to a $5 million settlement that the Globe reached last May for grabbing the identifying information of users who watch videos on its website and sending it to Facebook. Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub and I both wrote about it at the time (here and here), but I could barely remember it when I got my notice on Friday.
Subscribers are receiving anywhere from a week’s extension to, in my case, $158.03, which is also the amount reported by several other people I’ve been in contact with. I don’t know how they arrived at that exact figure, but I’ll take it.
Donna Ladd, the editor and CEO of the Mississippi Free Press, took issue with my post arguing that her regional news outlet ought to stick with covering state issues rather than weighing in on national politics. She voiced her opinions on Twitter/X, noting that the Free Press is in the process of hiring a Washington-based reporter to cover state issues from the nation’s capital. (Good move, although unrelated to the concern I raised.) She tweeted (among other things):
“You might’ve used a different phrase than telling us to stay in our lane, Dan. Or, maybe talked to us as @jbenton did. Our ‘lane’ has always included pro-democracy reporting and Voices, and nothing about our decision means we will do less local reporting.”
Because she and others thought my observation that “local and regional news organizations ought to stay in their lane” was condescending, I’ve gone back and changed it, even though that was not my intent. I think holding power to account at the state and local level is an honorable and much-needed lane, but obviously I failed to make myself understood. That’s on me.
The state Capitol in Jackson, Miss. Photo (cc) 2007 by Jim Bowen.
I want to push back ever so gently against the widespread praise the Mississippi Free Press has received for telling the truth about Donald Trump. As you may have heard, the ex-president was at his outrageous worst at a rally in South Carolina last Saturday, inviting Russia to attack members of NATO that in his view don’t contribute enough money to cover U.S. defense costs. “I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want,” Trump said of his friends in the Kremlin.
Much of the media fell down on the job, giving exponentially more coverage to the special counsel’s gratuitous claim that President Biden is dealing with age-related memory problems than to Trump’s dangerously unhinged rhetoric. So the Free Press, a nonprofit news organization that covers public policy in Mississippi, decided to publish a corrective. Under the byline of news editor Ashton Pittman, the website ran a headline that read: “Trump Encourages Russia to Attack American Allies: ‘Do Whatever the Hell They Want.’” Pittman’s lead:
Former President Donald Trump would encourage Russia to attack U.S. allies whom he claims do not contribute enough to NATO defense costs, he told a crowd of supporters to cheers at a South Carolina rally on Saturday.
Now, this was all true, and the Free Press handled the story with far greater urgency than, say, The New York Times, which buried Trump’s remarks while publishing multiple stories about Biden’s alleged forgetfulness. But why was a regional news organization leading with a national story from another state?
In an editor’s note, Pittman said he was encouraged to do so by his editor, Donna Ladd, explaining: “Several major national media outlets were fumbling the ball and either ignoring those remarks or giving them less weight than they deserve. Donna said we should set an example for how national media ought to cover such extreme policy declarations, and I agreed. So we did.”
My objection to this is that there are good reasons why local and regional news organizations ought to stick with their mission. Multiple studies show that people trust local media more than they do national outlets. At the local level, we should be working to rebuild civic life and help people find ways to come together over local issues even as we are being torn apart by partisan polarization over national politics. Yes, the problem is mainly with the political right, which has become increasingly extreme during the Trump era. But the Mississippi Free Press and outlets like it should stand as an alternative not just to the toxic rhetoric of cable news (and especially Fox), but also to serious purveyors of journalism like the Times and The Washington Post.
Apparently the Free Press is in the midst of a reshuffle. According to Joshua Benton of Nieman Lab, the Free Press recently became an Associated Press subscriber and is starting a national news section. At the moment, the Free Press’ homepage is featuring two AP stories about the fallout from Trump’s remarks. I wonder if that might be a mistake, too. While it makes sense to run AP content with a Mississippi focus, I question the value of running national and international stories on a site whose principal mission is statewide news.
Another, similar site, Mississippi Today, has stuck to its knitting — and won a Pulitzer Prize last year for its coverage of a welfare scandal that implicated, among others, former NFL quarterback Brett Favre. (CEO Mary Margaret White was a guest on our “What Works” podcast in November 2022.)
I don’t want to be too critical of the Mississippi Free Press. We need more projects like it, digging in and holding power accountable in statehouses across the country. What it published about Trump was true and righteous, and stands in welcome contrast to the both-sides timidity of the national press. I’m concerned, though, that the siren call of national politics is a distraction from its main mission, and may alienate some readers who might otherwise be reachable.
No doubt some on the political right already castigate the Free Press as a tool of the liberal elite, because that’s what right-wingers do. And no, the Free Press shouldn’t pander to them. But this strikes me as an unforced error.
Update: Donna Ladd has taken issue with this post, and I write about that here. I’ve also tweaked the wording, which I explain in my new post.
Remember Vinay Mehra, the former Boston Globe Media president who sued the company for compensation he claims he was owed after he was fired in 2020? Well, his suit continues to wend its way through the legal system, but Suffolk Superior Court Judge Peter Krupp trimmed back Mehra’s demands recently, ruling that Mehra is not entitled to triple damages should he prevail. Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub, channeling Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, has more.
Adrienne Johnson Martin, executive editor of MLK50. Photo (cc) 2023 by Dan Kennedy.
Ellen Clegg and I have written a commentary for Poynter Online about our book, “What Works in Community News.” The piece is focused on Ellen’s reporting in Memphis, Tennessee, where two nonprofit startups, MLK50 and the Daily Memphian, are filling the gap created by Gannett’s hollowing out of the legacy daily, The Commercial Appeal. Our bottom line:
We are heartened by the work being done by these news entrepreneurs. At a time when advocates are proposing solutions to the local news crisis such as tax credits, legal action to force Google and Facebook to share advertising revenues, and expanded philanthropic efforts, we’ve learned that there is no substitute for the dedication of grassroots news activists. We hope our work will inspire others to start similar efforts in their own communities.
Attorney General Andrea Campbell. Photo (cc) 2022 by Dan Kennedy.
A past winner of a New England Muzzle Award is in the news, while a more ambiguous case is making its way through the federal courts.
First, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell recently issued guidance stating that local elected officials have no fear of violating the state’s open meeting law if they take part in re-election activities such as debates or candidate forums where they discuss pending municipal business. Campbell’s decision follows a ruling by our Muzzle winner, Waltham City Solicitor John Cervone, that such activities would be “potentially problematic,” raising the specter that officials running for re-election would be barred from any substantive discussion of local issues.
Campbell’s guidance was hailed in a Boston Globe editorial, which noted that a similar situation had arisen in Newton. The editorial observed that Campbell gave her blessing even to situations at which a quorum of officials are present (for instance, three members of a five-member selectboard) “as long as they address their answers to the public, not to each other.” Campbell’s guidance reads in part:
The Open Meeting Law does not restrict an individual’s right to make comments to the general public, particularly as a candidate for office. Rather, it restricts communication between or among a quorum of a public body outside of a meeting; thus, the intent of the public official is an important consideration.
The Waltham and Newton restrictions were absurd, and Campbell was right to set them aside.
Second, Liam Morrison of Middleborough, Massachusetts, who as a seventh-grade student last year was banned from wearing an anti-transgender T-shirt to school, has taken his case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit after losing his bid to overturn the ban in federal district court. Morrison wore a shirt that said “There Are Only Two Genders.” And when that didn’t pass muster, he returned to school with a T-shirt that said “There Are [Censored] Genders.” That earned him a trip back home as well.
According to a report by Reuters, the appeals court seemed unimpressed with Morrison’s free speech argument at a recent hearing. Here’s part of the Reuters article:
U.S. Circuit Judge Lara Montecalvo contrasted the shirt with a brochure handed out by students expressing a particular message, saying unlike those pieces of paper, a student could not throw away the shirt that Morrison was wearing.
“A T-shirt that is worn all day is worn all day,” she said. “You have to look at it, you have to read it.”
Deborah Ecker, a lawyer for the Middleborough School Committee, said the school officials’ actions were motivated by concern for the mental health of LGBTQ students, “who are captive in this classroom looking at it.”
Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby sides firmly with Morrison, writing:
In court filings, Middleborough’s lawyers argue that the school was entitled to suppress Morrison’s message out of concern that it could have led to “disruption.” Yet contrary messages are permitted. No discipline was imposed when a student came to class in a “He she they, it’s all okay” T-shirt. School administrators cannot have it both ways, allowing students to express the popular side of a debatable issue but silencing those who disagree because their opinion might provoke an angry reaction. The First Amendment does not bow to the heckler’s veto.
My own opinion is that this is not as simple as Jacoby makes it seem. As Jacoby himself notes, public school students have limited free speech rights when they are on school grounds. And though there’s a certain logic to the either/or choice Jacoby presents, it doesn’t hold up to closer scrutiny. An anti-LGBTQ message expresses animosity toward specific people, including fellow students whose orientation is something other than he or she. A pro-LGBTQ message affirms everyone’s humanity without — and this is the key — expressing any animosity toward people like Morrison who hold a different viewpoint.
Given that difference, it seems to me that Middleborough school officials got it right. Based on the Reuters report, it sounds like the appeals court is likely to agree when it issues its ruling.
Nieman Lab now has a reporter devoted to covering developments in local news. Sophie Culpepper previously worked at The Lexington Observer, one of a number of nonprofit news startups in the Boston suburbs, and her Nieman beat is evidence that the local news crisis has moved to the forefront of issues that media innovators care about.
Last week Culpepper published an in-depth, two-part story on concerns raised by small startups that they are overlooked by the major foundations that are seeding new organizations, such as the Knight Foundation and the American Journalism Project. It’s something that Ellen Clegg and I have heard from some of the entrepreneurs we’ve included in our book, “What Works in Community News.”
Among the people Culpepper interviews is Jason Pramas, who has his hand in many projects but who at the moment is focused mainly on his work with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and HorizonMass, the latter a nonprofit that showcases paid student labor. Pramas is a founder of the Alliance of Nonprofit News Outlets, or ANNO, a group of smaller outlets that tend to be overlooked by the major players. (Pramas was a guest on our “What Works” podcast recently.) Pramas tells Culpepper: “I’m basically saying, there are haves and have-nots in the nonprofit journalism space. And this isn’t right.”
What worries Ellen and me is that the large funders tend to support what they regard as sure bets — big regional projects rather than the tiny operations that are covering one small town or a rural county. Not that those sure bets always pay off. After all, the high-profile Houston Chronicle was recently shaken by the unexplained firings of its editor and top investigative reporter. The large-funder, large-projects paradigm may become even more entrenched with the rise of Press Forward, an effort by more than 20 nonprofit foundations to provide $500 million to help fund local news over the next five years.
Regional and statewide nonprofits — including two that Ellen and I wrote about, The Texas Tribune and NJ Spotlight News — are doing great work and need to be supported. But that support shouldn’t come at the expense of tiny operations that are keeping people informed about their community and their neighborhood.
Ultimately, funding has to come from local sources, with national money used as a supplement. That requires an ongoing educational effort to convince local philanthropic organizations that reliable news is just as important to the health of a community as youth programs, educational initiatives and the arts.
One of the hazards of working as a media critic for many years is that you’ll inevitably run afoul of people you admire. There was, for instance, the time that Mike Wallace called me a “son of a bitch.” And Bob Edwards, the host of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” once complained bitterly to me in an email about something that I wrote — and used a general mailbox so I couldn’t respond. Edwards, a steadfast companion to millions on their morning commutes until he was forcibly retired in 2004, has died at the age of 76. He and his incomparable voice will be missed.
Correction: It turns out that Wallace called me a “bastard,” not a “son of a bitch.” Much better!
Since the fall of 2022, when Elon Musk acquired Twitter and proceeded to take a wrecking ball to it, those of us who are heavy users of short-form, text-based social media have been looking for a new platform. I bet heavily on Mastodon, but though I find it to be a pleasant environment most of the time, with a lot of activity and high engagement, it has not been adopted by more than a handful of news organizations, journalism think tanks, the Massachusetts political community and ordinary people. Those folks have, for the most part, remain firmly planted on Twitter/X.
Threads is a different matter. Since it debuted last summer, the platform has largely fulfilled its promise of becoming a better version of Twitter, a place to have conversations about news, journalism and other topics with less sociopathy than you encounter in Musk’s hellhole. Threads reportedly has about 130 million active monthly users, compared to 500 million on Twitter, which is pretty impressive for a service that’s less than a year old and is still rolling out features.
Unfortunately, it appears that Threads will not fulfill the hopes of its most news-obsessed users. On Friday, Mark Zuckberg’s Meta, which owns Threads, repeated previous statements that it has no intention of becoming a platform that is heavily focused on politics. Posts that the almighty algorithm deems political will not show up in the “For You” listing, which is what you see when you first log on and which is determined by software that thinks it knows what you’re interested in. Any accounts you’re already following will continue to show up, but discovering new accounts will become more difficult. The change also applies to Instagram.
According to Adam Mosseri, who runs Threads and Instagram, “we’re not talking about all of news, but rather more focused on political news or social commentary.” But as Taylor Lorenz and Naomi Nix report for The Washington Post (free link), who’s to say what’s political? They quote Ashton Pittman, news editor of the Mississippi Free Press, who tells them:
If I post about LGBTQ rights, or about being a gay man, is that political? If I post about Taylor Swift, is that political because bad actors are making everything political? Everything is political if we’re honest with ourselves — it’s just about who’s defining what’s political and who gets to define that and what does it mean?
Which brings me back to Bluesky. Unlike Threads, the platform is not fully for-profit; unlike Mastodon, it’s not a nonprofit. Rather, it’s a public benefit corporation, which means that it’s a for-profit company that must serve the public interest in some way and that reinvests any profits it makes back in the operation. Of the three major Twitter alternatives, Bluesky has garnered the most skepticism. For one thing, among Bluesky’s founders is former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who thought selling out to Musk was just fine. For another, Bluesky’s rollout has been painfully slow. Until last week, you couldn’t join without an invitation, which is why it has just 3.2 million users, far behind Threads and Twitter.
After Bluesky finally opened itself up to the public, though, the influential tech writer Mike Masnick wrote an enthusiastic post at Techdirt saying he was “pretty excited” about where the platform is heading. What has Masnick most excited is Bluesky’s roll-your-own approach to content moderation. He writes:
For example, the company has added some (still early) features that give users much more control over their experience: composable moderation and algorithmic choice. Composable moderation lets users set some of their own preferences for what they want to encounter on social media, rather than leaving it entirely up to a central provider. Some people are more willing to see sexual content, for example.
But, the algorithmic choice is perhaps even more powerful. Currently, people talk a lot about “the algorithm” and now most social networks give you one single algorithm of what they think you’ll want to see. There is often a debate among people about “what’s better: a chronological feed or the algorithmically generated feed” from the company. But that’s always been thinking too small.
With Bluesky’s algorithmic choice, anyone can make or share their own algorithms and users can choose what algorithms they want to use. In my Bluesky, for example, I have a few different algorithms that I can choose to recommend interesting stuff to me. One of them, developed by an outside developer (i.e., not Bluesky), Skygaze, is a “For You” feed that … is actually good? Unlike centralized social media, Skygaze’s goal with its feed is not to improve engagement numbers for Bluesky.
For some time now, I’ve been using Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky more or less equally on the theory that we’re a long way from knowing which platform, if any, will emerge as the main alternative to Twitter. (I’m also still on Twitter, mainly for professional purposes, though I’ve locked my account and post less frequently there than on the other platforms.) Even though I have far fewer followers on Bluesky than elsewhere, I’ve found the engagement to be quite good and the content consistently interesting — more so than on Mastodon, and with less crap than on Threads.
We will never go back to the days when there was one platform where everyone gathered, for better or worse. But Bluesky seems like a worthy entry into the social media wars now that it’s (finally) open to the public.
Michael Mann. Photo (cc) 2020 by Oregon State University.
Media coverage of climate scientist Michael Mann’s victory in a libel case against two right-wing commentators might lead you to believe he won at least in part because those commentators, Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn, compared him to a convicted child molester. For instance, here’s The Washington Post’s lead:
Michael Mann, a prominent climate scientist, won his long-standing legal battle against two right-wing bloggers who claimed that he manipulated data in his research and compared him to convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky, a major victory for the outspoken researcher.
And here’s a paragraph from The New York Times’ account:
In 2012, Mr. Simberg and Mr. Steyn drew parallels between controversy over Dr. Mann’s research and the scandal around Jerry Sandusky, the former football coach at Pennsylvania State University who was convicted of sexually assaulting children. Dr. Mann was a professor at Penn State at the time.
I was alarmed because the statement at the heart of the Sandusky comparison, written by Simberg in a blog post for the Competitive Enterprise Institute and repeated by Steyn (with reservations) in National Review, speaks of Mann’s alleged “abuse” of data, comparing him to Sandusky only tangentially. Here’s what Simberg wrote:
Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except for instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.
This is pretty rough stuff; even Steyn writes, “Not sure I’d have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers with quite the zeal Mr Simberg does.” But it does not actually compare Mann to a child molester. I was taken aback when I read accounts of the verdict because, on the face of it, it didn’t strike me as libelous to reach for an admittedly horrendous metaphor in describing what you regard as someone’s scientific misconduct.
Fortunately, I discovered that a 2016 ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which allowed Mann’s suit to move forward, made clear that the case hinged on a straightforward distinction between assertions labeled as fact versus opinion. (Both the Simberg and Steyn pieces are reproduced in full in that ruling.) In that regard, Thursday’s verdict did no damage to the protections that the press enjoys against meritless libel suits. Continue reading “How a 2016 ruling defined the issues in climate scientist Michael Mann’s libel suit”
Campbell’s guidance was 
Among the people Culpepper interviews is Jason Pramas, who has his hand in many projects but who at the moment is focused mainly on his work with the 
