NJ Spotlight News, one of the projects that Ellen Clegg and I feature in our book, “What Works in Community News,” has hired a Washington correspondent. Benjamin Hulac will be the only full-time Washington reporter employed by a major New Jersey news outlet, according to an email to subscribers from Spotlight executive director John Mooney.
“Benjamin will cover New Jersey’s congressional delegation as well as the myriad ways in which decisions at the federal level affect our state and its people,” Mooney writes. “Currently, no other major New Jersey media outlet has a full-time reporter in D.C. We’re proud to fill this void.”
Hulac previously worked for CQ Roll Call and Climatewire.
In the course of our reporting for “What Works in Community News,” Ellen Clegg and I were confronted with a reality that cuts against our usual optimism: that though news startups across the country are helping to fill the gap created by the decline of legacy newspapers, the new media landscape is unevenly distributed.
Large regional and statewide nonprofits like The Texas Tribune and NJ Spotlight News are doing reasonably well, though the Tribune has recently hit a few bumps and Spotlight has never been a fundraising behemoth. Smaller projects serving affluent suburbs, like a number of startups in Eastern Massachusetts, are doing well. But there are few independent news outlets serving low-population rural areas and urban communities of color, and those that do exist are often overlooked by the larger philanthropic organizations.
Corinne Colbert writes about that reality for a newsletter called Local News Blues, which I’ll admit I hadn’t heard of until my friend and teacher Howard Owens of The Batavian pointed me to it a few days ago. Colbert is cofounder and editor-in-chief of the Athens County Independent, a nonprofit digital startup that in southeastern Ohio. Late last week she wrote a commentary headlined “Does big philanthropy really care about our smaller news markets?” Now, you know the rule about question headlines: the answer is almost always “no.” She observes:
Nearly 60% of foundation grants go to national and global nonprofit outlets, according to the Institute for Nonprofit News. Local outlets — which INN defines as those serving audiences at the county, city or town level or having a specific focus — represent almost one-fourth of nonprofit news jobs, but we get less than 20% of foundation funding. That gap represents millions and millions of dollars.
Recently the Houston Landing, a well-funded nonprofit with strong backing from the American Journalism Project, imploded when the publisher fired the highly regarded editor and the top investigative reporter without offering any logical explanation. The Landing may recover, but there’s been a serious lack of transparency. Meanwhile, projects that Ellen and I have written about such as MLK50 in Memphis and the New Haven Independent have never been able to attract much in the way of national funding, even though both are performing vitally important work.
Nonprofits are bringing news and information to communities in ways that for-profits often no longer can. But it’s time for major foundations — including Press Forward, a $500 million effort comprising 22 philanthropies — to bring renewed efforts to helping not just large, sexy projects but more quotidian efforts as well. Fortunately there are signs that Press Forward gets it.
“Small markets … present business challenges that corporations are often unwilling to face,” writes Colbert, “and those challenges make launching or growing a local news operation especially difficult. National funders could ease those burdens, but first they have to acknowledge our existence — and our importance.”
I guess it’s Ezra Klein Week at Media Nation, because he published something earlier this week that’s getting a lot of buzz: a lament for the downsizing of the music website Pitchfork, which is being absorbed by GQ, a sister publication in the Condé Nast universe.
Klein’s argument is that the largest media outlets, like The New York Times and a very few others, are doing all right, as are the smallest, such as one-person paid newsletters on Substack. It’s the middle, represented by publications such as Pitchfork, BuzzFeed News, Vice and HuffPost, that’s being lost. Klein writes (free link):
You can thrive being very small or very big, but it’s extremely hard to even survive between those poles. That’s a disaster for journalism — and for readers. The middle can be more specific and strange and experimental than mass publications, and it can be more ambitious and reported and considered than the smaller players. The middle is where a lot of great journalists are found and trained. The middle is where local reporting happens and where culture is made rather than discovered.
For those of us who are wondering how The Washington Post’s new publisher, William Lewis, plans to revive Jeff Bezos’ sagging paper, he provided a few hints over the weekend at Davos. He talked about doing more to surface Post journalism that tends to be buried under the paper’s investigative reporting and voluminous coverage of politics. Specific areas he identified are “climate, well-being and sports,” according to Semafor (scroll down to “The Post’s Smorgasbord.”)
Climate makes sense because the Post has made it a real priority, and it may be one of the few areas in which the paper can distinguish itself from The New York Times, although the Times’ climate coverage is excellent as well. Well-being? Does Lewis really want to compete with the Times’ Well section? As for sports, maybe Lewis sees an opportunity given that the Times has offloaded its sports coverage to its subsidiary The Athletic and that Sports Illustrated may be on the verge of going under. Here’s a thought: Why not acquire SI and run it as a Post vertical?
Lewis also talked about dynamic pricing for subscriptions. I have no idea what that means except that it generally refers to charging some people more than others.
The overall strategy, as Semafor describes it, is to “focus on improving the packaging of the Washington Post’s existing journalism, rather than expensive new initiatives.” No surprise — the money-losing paper is unlikely to go on a hiring spree right after cutting 240 jobs. And it still has one of the largest newsrooms in the country.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, whose clear-eyed analysis of the widening Middle East war have been so valuable since Oct. 7, sat down with Ezra Klein for an hour-long podcast last week. Highly recommended.
The New York Times has published a story (free link) that calls into question the rise of billionaires who own news organizations, noting that The Washington Post under Jeff Bezos, the Los Angeles Times under Patrick Soon-Shiong and Time magazine under Marc Benioff are all losing money. True enough. My problem with the story is that reporters Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson try too hard to impose an ubertake when in fact there’s important background with each of those examples. Mullin and Robertson write:
All three newsrooms greeted their new owners with cautious optimism that their business acumen and tech know-how would help figure out the perplexing question of how to make money as a digital publication.
But it increasingly appears that the billionaires are struggling just like nearly everyone else. Time, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times all lost millions of dollars last year, people with knowledge of the companies’ finances have said, after considerable investment from their owners and intensive efforts to drum up new revenue streams.
The role of wealthy newspaper owners is something of ongoing interest to me. My last book, “The Return of the Moguls” (2018), focused on the Post, The Boston Globe and the Orange County Register in Southern California, owned by a rich Boston-area businessman named Aaron Kushner. At the time the book came out, the Post was flying high, the Globe was muddling along and the Register was failing; it eventually fell into the hands of the slash-and-burn hedge fund Alden Globe Capital. The Post’s and the Globe’s fortunes have since moved in opposite directions.
Here are the particulars that get glossed over in Mullin and Robertson’s attempt to impose an overarching framework:
• Bezos, who bought the Post in 2013, made deep investments in technology and built up the staff. The result was years of growth and profits, which only came sputtering to a halt after Donald Trump left the White House. Former executive editor Marty Baron, in his book “Collision of Power,” suggests that, over time, a disciplined approach to hiring became more lax. In other words, the Post got ahead of itself and is now in the midst of a reset. A new publisher, William Lewis, begins work this month, and we’ll see if he can articulate a strategy that amounts to more than “just like the Times only not as comprehensive.”
• Benioff bought a dog and, predictably, it’s going “woof woof.” Time was the largest of the Big Three newsweeklies, along with Newsweek and U.S. World & News Report; it’s also the only one of the three that still exists in a somewhat recognizable form. Newsweeklies succeeded because, pre-internet, you couldn’t get great national papers like the Times, the Post and The Wall Street Journal delivered to your doorstep. Not only is there no discernible reason for them to exist anymore, but the leading newsweekly these days, at least in terms of cachet, is The Economist.
• Not all billionaire owners are in it for the right reasons, and Soon-Shiong has proven to be an uncertain leader. Does he care about the Los Angeles Times or not? He’s built it up; now he’s tearing it down. He recently pushed out his executive editor, Kevin Merida, the most prominent Black editor in the country, and he’s done some truly awful things such as delivering Tribune Publishing’s papers to Alden Global Capital and more recently selling The San Diego Union-Tribune to Alden.
So what does that tell us about billionaire owners? Not much. As Mullin and Robertson acknowledge, some are doing just fine, including The Boston Globe under John and Linda Henry and The Atlantic under Laurene Powell Jobs. They could have also mentioned the Star Tribune of Minneapolis under Glen Taylor or, for that matter, The New York Times, a publicly traded company that is nevertheless under the tight control of the Sulzberger family. I don’t think the Sulzbergers are billionaires, but they are not poor.
At the moment, it seems that the only two viable models for large regional dailies is individual ownership by wealthy people who are willing to invest in future profitability and nonprofit ownership, either in the form of a nonprofit organization owning a for-profit paper, as with The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Tampa Bay Times, or a paper that goes fully nonprofit, as with The Salt Lake Tribune and The Baltimore Banner. The Banner is a digital startup that nevertheless is attempting to position itself as a comprehensive replacement for The Baltimore Sun. The Sun, in turn, was one of the Tribune papers that Soon-Shiong helped gift-wrap for Alden, and just this past week was sold to right-wing television executive David Smith.
Sports Illustrated, once among the finest magazines in the country and a model of great narrative journalism, is laying off its entire staff, according to Front Office Sports. SI was recently called out for running sponsored content with fake author profiles generated by artificial intelligence. I doubt this is the end of the road, though. The brand is heavily tarnished at this point, but I can’t imagine that someone won’t want to give it a shot.
An important press freedom case is playing out in a Dedham courtroom, where a prosecutor has asked a judge to force a reporter for Boston magazine to turn over her interview notes.
The magazine reporter, Gretchen Voss, wrote a lengthy article last September about Karen Read, a Mansfield woman who’s been charged with second-degree murder in the 2022 death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe. The case is massively complicated and has become emotionally fraught, as supporters of Read have accused authorities of staging an elaborate coverup. Essentially, though, Read has been charged with running over O’Keefe with her SUV while under the influence of alcohol and leaving him to die in a snowbank. Read and her supporters counter that O’Keefe was severely beaten inside the Canton home of a fellow officer and dragged outside, where he died.
Ironically, a hearing into whether Voss would be compelled to turn over the notes of her interviews with Read was held on the same day that Congress took a rare bipartisan step toward granting journalists the right to protect their sources. More about that below.
According to an account by Ivy Scott and Travis Andersen in The Boston Globe, Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey has asked Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone to demand that Voss cooperate with the prosecution by producing her notes of what Read told her off the record. Voss replied that she would be willing to testify about the article that Boston published, but that going beyond that would be a violation of her First Amendment right to protect her sources. The magazine’s attorney, First Amendment lawyer Robert Bertsche, said the prosecution was demanding that Voss help them compile evidence to help with their case, “which was outside the scope of the law,” as the Globe summarized Bertsche’s argument.
“You can be sure if Karen Read confessed in her interview with Gretchen Voss,” Bertsche added, “that would have made it into the article.”
The Globe also quoted Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally as saying that there is “no reporter privilege in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.” That’s true, but it’s also complicated.
Massachusetts is one of 49 states that offer some protection to journalists to protect their sources, either through a shield law or rulings by their state’s courts. (Wyoming, by the way, is the sole exception.) There is no shield law in Massachusetts, nor has the state’s Supreme Judicial Court ever ruled that there is a reporter’s privilege. But according to an overview compiled by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP), the courts in Massachusetts have recognized that journalists may have a limited right to protect their sources. The overview begins:
Massachusetts does not have a shield law, and the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has not been willing to recognize a reporter’s privilege under either the Massachusetts or U.S. Constitution. Nevertheless, Massachusetts courts have been willing to use a common law balancing test based on general First Amendment principles to protect reporters’ confidential sources in some circumstances.
That balancing test is about as good as it gets in any state, since the reporter’s privilege is not absolute. Way back in 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Branzburg v. Hayes that the First Amendment provides no such protection, although the convoluted ruling suggested that judges should balance concerns about press freedom with the need to compel testimony. What will happen in the Karen Read prosecution is that Judge Cannone will decide whether the information Voss has is so important to the case, and unobtainable from any other non-journalistic source, that she should be compelled to turn it over.
A complicating factor is that no journalist would cooperate with such a demand, leading to the possibility that Voss could be held in contempt of court. One of the more notable Massachusetts examples of that took place in 1985, when WCVB-TV (Channel 5) reporter Susan Wornick narrowly avoided a three-month jail sentence when the source she was protecting in a police corruption case came forward and agreed to cooperate with the prosecution.
As anyone who’s been following the Karen Read case knows, I’m only chipping away at a tiny piece of it. Also on Thursday, Read’s lawyers argued that correspondence between District Attorney Morrissey and the U.S. attorney’s office should be made public and that Morrissey should be disqualified. Federal authorities are investigating how the district attorney’s office has handled the case, although the nature of their investigation has not been made public.
Finally, blogger Aidan Kearney, who goes by Turtleboy, and who has taken Read’s side, is currently being held in custody on charges of witness intimidation and domestic assault and battery. Kearney and his supporters claim those charges were filed in retaliation for his crusade on Read’s behalf.
As I wrote up top, all of this is playing out against the background of a positive step taken by Congress. Despite the existence of some shield protections in 49 states, there is no shield law at the federal level. On Thursday, though, the House unanimously passed the PRESS Act, which the the RCFP describes as “a bipartisan federal reporter’s shield law that would protect journalists from being forced to name their sources in federal court and would stop the federal government from spying on journalists through their technology providers.” The sole exceptions, according to a summary of the bill, would be in “limited circumstances such as to prevent terrorism or imminent violence.”
Given that the Republican House was able to act for all its dysfunction, there would appear to be reason for optimism that the Senate will approve the measure as well.
Say hello to the new ethics committee. Photo (cc) 2012 by D J Shin.
The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics identifies four broad principles: Seek Truth and Report It; Minimize Harm; Act Independently; and Be Accountable. Each of them is fleshed out in some detail. You will note that the slippery concept of objectivity is not mentioned. These days most journalists believe, as I do, that truth-seeking, independence and fairness are the standards to which we should aspire, and that holding up objectivity as a goal only leads to endless debates over what that actually means.
On Wednesday evening, I asked students in my graduate ethics seminar to come up with a fifth principle. There are only eight students in the class, so I had them work in teams of two. I also asked the gremlins of artificial intelligence to weigh in. But first, here’s what my students came up with; I’ve edited them very lightly.
Listen to Others
Be open to feedback
Promote cooperative relationships between journalists and the public
Be receptive to events in the world
Be open to a community that is not your own
Admit Limitations, Accept Your Own Bias
Don’t hide your own humanity
Accept that you can’t be objective
Accept you may not be able to follow all ethics codes all the time
Welcome criticism
Respect Relationships with Sources
Don’t get so close with sources that personal feelings might get in the way of reporting
Protect them if they will be harmed for their sharing of the truth
Provide full disclosure to the sources of what the article is about and where it is being published
Create Spaces for Untold Stories
One of the main priorities of a journalist should be to be prepared to fight for those who struggle. Journalists should:
Be righteous
Be brave
Create a sense of justice
Not be afraid to correct mistakes within their stories
Report on marginalized communities and use their personal resources to continue sharing information
I think these are terrific. The SPJ Code provides a pretty wide umbrella, so it’s not easy to come up with a fifth principle that isn’t already covered. But these proposals represent some fresh thinking. The “full disclosure” idea is important because when we’re interviewing people who aren’t accustomed to dealing with reporters, they may not understand the full implications of having their name, their quotes and in some cases their photos put before the public. And I love “Be brave.” That’s obviously true for, say, war correspondents. But journalists also have to deal with a rising wave of harassment and threats, both online and in real life. If they find that they’re unable to stand up to that, then they are not going to be able to serve their community. (They also shouldn’t be expected to put up with harassment, and newsrooms need to develop anti-harassment training and policies.)
Now … what about AI? While my students were working, I took the lazy way out and asked a couple of AI programs to come up with a fifth principle. Here’s the question I asked: “The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics has four principles: Seek Truth and Report It; Minimize Harm; Act Independently; Be Accountable. What would be a worthwhile fifth principle?” Once I finished playing, I deleted the answers and then asked them again so my students could watch everything unfold in real time. And here’s the answer from ChatGPT:
The addition of a fifth principle to the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics could focus on promoting transparency. Here’s a suggestion:
“Foster Transparency: Journalists should strive to maintain transparency in their reporting processes, disclosing sources, conflicts of interest, and methodologies to enhance the credibility and trustworthiness of their work. By being transparent, journalists contribute to a more informed public and uphold the integrity of journalism.”
Not bad. Now, this is ChatGPT 3.5. You have to pay for the latest version, 4.0, and I’m obviously not going to do that. But I also asked the same question of Google Bard. As I understand it, the version that’s available to the public represents Google’s best tech. So here’s the answer:
There have been many suggestions for a fifth principle to the SPJ Code of Ethics, each reflecting evolving priorities and challenges in the journalism landscape. Here are some intriguing options to consider:
1. Foster Inclusivity and Diversity: This principle could emphasize the importance of representing marginalized voices, amplifying underrepresented perspectives, and ensuring newsrooms and reporting reflect the rich tapestry of society. It could challenge journalists to actively seek out diverse sources, challenge their own biases, and avoid harmful stereotypes.
2. Uphold Digital Responsibility: This principle would address the unique ethical challenges of the digital age, such as misinformation, disinformation, and privacy concerns. It could encourage journalists to verify information meticulously, source responsibly, and be transparent about online tools and methods.
3. Champion Civic Engagement: This principle could encourage journalists to go beyond informing the public and actively engage citizens in civic discourse. It could promote collaborative reporting, fact-checking initiatives, and platforms for audience participation, empowering the public to be informed participants in democracy.
4. Protect the Vulnerable: This principle could emphasize the need to protect vulnerable individuals and communities from exploitation or harm through reporting. It could call for sensitivity in covering sensitive topics, ensuring informed consent, and avoiding sensationalism that could endanger individuals.
5. Champion Transparency and Openness: This principle could focus on promoting transparency within the media itself, advocating for open access to information, and holding powerful institutions accountable. It could encourage self-reflection within journalism, critical examination of industry practices, and fostering a culture of ethical news consumption.
Ultimately, the “best” fifth principle is subjective and depends on the priorities and concerns of the journalism community at any given time. Each suggestion above addresses a critical aspect of ethical journalism in the 21st century, and ultimately, the decision lies with the SPJ and its members to determine which principle would best serve the mission of responsible and ethical journalism.
I hope this provides a helpful starting point for your exploration of this important topic!
This is pretty good. My students were meh about the ChatGPT answer but were impressed with Bard. If you’ve played with either of these programs, you know that the answer comes up almost instantaneously, which in itself is an impressive feat. I also think that though “Uphold Digital Responsibility” is fine as far as it goes, it should state explicitly whether or not AI is being used to help with reporting and writing.
Retired Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron writes about an unusual idea in his recent book, “Collision of Power.” Baron thinks that the time has come for news organizations to turn the tables on their tormenters and sue them for libel. Think of it like Dominion Voting System’s lawsuit against Fox News, which brought a $787.5 million settlement, except that the plaintiff would be a media outlet rather than a voting-machine company.
In his book, Baron observes that Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis have both suggested that the law should be changed to make it easier for public officials and public figures to bring (and win) libel suits. He writes:
Legacy media have always vigorously defended against libel suits. Rarely have they brought defamation lawsuits of their own. What good could come of pursuing the sort of litigation we deplored? However, those who smear us find comfort in the expectation that, while we might complain, we’re unlikely to sue. We have rendered ourselves sitting ducks for slander.
I don’t want mainstream journalists to behave like warriors in the practice of their craft, but neither do I want us to suffer attacks on our character without fighting back. Winning in the court of public opinion may require, at times, going to court. If DeSantis, and copycat governors, make it easier for defamation plaintiffs to prevail, perhaps we should make some of those victories our own.
The reason I’m bringing this up now is that Baron expanded on the idea in a recent appearance on “Double Take,” a podcast produced by Newton Investment Management. Baron was interviewed by two Newton analysts, Rafe Lewis (formerly of The Boston Globe) and Jack Encarnacao (formerly of the Boston Herald). It’s a sharp interview, and well worth a listen.
As befits a podcast hosted by a financial firm, much of the conversation covered the revival of The Washington Post as a business under the ownership of Jeff Bezos. Unfortunately, the Post has gone backwards since Baron departed, and neither Lewis nor Encarnacao asked him about it. No doubt if they had, Baron would have simply said he’s not there anymore. But the Post lost a reported $100 million in 2023 and is shedding staff with the same alacrity that it was adding bodies a few years ago.
A new publisher, William Lewis, began work this month. In “Collision of Power,” Baron offers a mixed assessment of Lewis’ predecessor, Fred Ryan. Perhaps Lewis, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal and CEO of Dow Jones, will come up with a strategy for Post to thrive in the post-Trump era — that is, if we’ve even entered the post-Trump era.
