By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
Great to see Serge Schmemann’s recent New York Times opinion piece about local news (free link) pop up in today’s print edition. Schmemann interviewed Ellen Clegg and me and cites our forthcoming book, “What Works in Community News.”
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The Institute for Nonprofit News, or INN, has a new CEO. Karen Rundlet will succeed Sue Cross, who announced earlier this year that she was leaving the post. Rundlet, who is currently senior director of the Journalism Program at the Knight Foundation, has worked with grant recipients such as City Bureau/ Documenters in Chicago, INN’s NewsMatch program, Sahan Journal (based in Minneapolis and one of the projects that Ellen Clegg and I report on in our book “What Works in Community News”), Solutions Journalism Network and Military Veterans in Journalism.
Rundlet has also worked as a journalist and manager at the Miami Herald as well as the public radio program “Marketplace.”
INN is an important player in the world of local news startups. NewsMatch, which allows community journalism organizations to leverage local donations with matching national money, has been transformative. The organization also acts as a fiscal sponsor for nonprofits that have not yet obtained 501(c)(3) federal tax status — donors can make a tax-deductible gift that is administered by INN and is then passed along to the local media outlet. Its model code of ethics is used by local news organizations across the country; see, for instance, the “Ethics & Practices Policies” at The New Bedford Light.
According to the announcement of Rundlet’s appointment, more than 425 news organizations now make up the INN Network, supporting more than 5,000 people who work in nonprofit news in North America.
“Karen is uniquely positioned as a visionary, passionate and experienced journalist and philanthropist to propel the nonprofit news movement,” Marcia Parker, the chair of INN’s board of directors, said in a statement. “As a leader of our field, she already is driving the national advances to redesign news media that is inclusive for communities of color and can bring trusted information to everyone.”
On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Bob Sprague, a pioneer in hyperlocal journalism and the founder of yourArlington, a nonprofit news project that covers Arlington, Massachusetts. Bob, who has lived in Arlington since 1989, was not only the founder — he was the editor of the website until July 1 of this year, when he retired. The new editor is Judith Pfeffer.
Bob was an Arlington Town Meeting member in 2006-09, and was also a journalist. He has been a reporter and an editor at The Boston Globe and Boston Herald, among other publications. He launched the town’s website in 1998, but also recognized a need for an independent, nonpartisan source of information. In 2006, he launched yourArlington.
I’ve got a Quick Take on the latest report on the state of local news by Penelope Muse Abernathy, who’s now at the Medill School at Northwestern University. The report has a lot of bad news, some good news, and some interesting information from The Boston Globe and the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which is one of the news outlets that we profile in our forthcoming book, “What Works in Community News.”
Ellen talks about another Massachusetts local startup, The Belmont Voice. The nonprofit Voice has an impressive roster of advisers from the print and digital world — and is, along with the Belmontonian, one of two independent sources of community journalism in the town.
You can listen to our conversation here and subscribe through your favorite podcast app.
Correction: Bob contacted us to let us know that a recent town proclamation honoring his service misstated the time when he was a member of Arlington’s Town Meeting — and that it overlapped with his early years of publishing yourArlington. “I did find it difficult to be a TM rep and report about Town Meeting,” he says.
Former Boston Globe reporter Andrea Estes, now with the Plymouth Independent, a brand-new nonprofit, breaks a story that results in the resignation of a town official. Click here for the backstory on Estes’ departure from the Globe.
Somehow Henry Kissinger made it to 100 without getting shipped off to The Hague. When word came down Wednesday evening that the Nixon-era secretary of state had died, many were predicting that the media would slobber all over him. I see little evidence of that today, with The New York Times and The Washington Post featuring Kissinger’s ugly side as well as his accomplishments. Rolling Stone headlined its Kissinger obit, written by Spencer Ackerman, “Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved By America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies”— shades of the magazine’s classic Richard Nixon obit by Hunter S. Thompson, “He Was a Crook.”
More than 20 years ago, the late journalist Christopher Hitchens wrote a two-part essay for Harper’s that was later expanded into a book, “The Trial of Henry Kissinger.” Hitchens argued that the former secretary of state had committed war crimes in Cambodia, Chile and elsewhere and should be brought to trial. It wasn’t a novel argument even then, but Hitchens pulled together the strands in a compelling manner, even if he didn’t quite make the case that Kissinger should be arrested and sent to the Netherlands.
I wrote a lengthy overview of Hitchens’ case against Kissinger for The Boston Phoenix on March 8, 2001. If you’re looking for an antidote to the tributes coming Kissinger’s way, I hope you’ll find this worth your time.
By Dan Kennedy | The Boston Phoenix | March 8, 2001
Henry Kissinger may be the only living American who is casually described — at least in certain liberal and leftish circles — as a “war criminal.” In his heyday, during the Nixon and Ford years, Kissinger was a media superstar, the man behind the opening to China and détente with the Soviet Union. He even won a Nobel Peace Prize for helping to end the Vietnam War. But those triumphs have long since been supplanted in the public’s memory by a darker vision.
To the extent that Kissinger is thought of at all these days, it is for his leading role in the secret bombings of Cambodia during the Vietnam War and in the removal and subsequent murder of Chilean president Salvador Allende, a socialist who had the temerity to win a democratic election. Kissinger biographies, most notably Seymour Hersh’s “The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House” (Summit Books, 1983) and Walter Isaacson’s “Kissinger: A Biography” (Simon & Schuster, 1992), long ago laid bare most of the details of those and other foreign misadventures.
Now comes Christopher Hitchens with a new, devastating portrayal of Kissinger. There’s no insult in observing that Hitchens offers little new information. Hitchens’ journalistic specialties are synthesis and polemicism, not investigative reporting. In a two-part, 40,000-word essay published in the February and March issues of Harper’s, Hitchens makes his purpose clear: to examine Kissinger’s career anew, and thus to show that the now-elderly diplomat committed war crimes — that Kissinger, in Hitchens’ view, knew about and in some cases actively helped plan terrible acts of assassination and mass killings, for which he may yet be called to account. Continue reading “Was Henry Kissinger a war criminal? More than 20 years ago, Christopher Hitchens submitted his brief”
Sen. Bernie Sanders’ stance on the war between Israel and Hamas is thoughtful, nuanced and respectful of the need for a solution that allows Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and dignity. In keeping with that, he’s refused to endorse a permanent cease-fire. So, naturally, some of his supporters on the progressive left are angry with him. Free link to this New York Times story.
The Boston Globe has hired its first full-time dedicated media reporter in nearly 20 years. Aidan Ryan, who currently covers crypto for The Information, will start in January, according to an announcement he posted on X/Twitter. He’s on Bluesky at @aidanryan.bsky.social, and I hope he’ll join Threads, which is where most of the Twitter diaspora seems to be landing.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Ryan was president of The Harvard Crimson when he was in college and did a stint as a summer intern covering politics for the Globe in 2019. So what will he be doing as the Globe’s media reporter? Here’s how his new beat was described when the Globe advertised the position:
Part tech beat, part culture writing, part buzzy local scoops, this job calls for a journalist who’s eager and able to explore the many ways that media shapes modern life, in Boston and beyond. They will cover our region’s advertising and publishing industries and keep an eye on the bold-faced names of local TV, yes. But they’ll also dive into the endless evolution of social media, debates over digital privacy, and the roiling challenges of misinformation in all its forms, from Twitter and Threads to TikTok and new platforms using artificial intelligence.
That’s a lot. Regular media coverage is a welcome addition for the Globe, and it will be interesting to see what Ryan can do with it.
This message from the Boston Herald showed up in my inbox Tuesday night. Read the fine print. Not much attention to detail at MediaNews Group, the chain that owns the Herald and that, in turn, is part of the notorious hedge fund Alden Global Capital.
Fake journalism produced by artificial intelligence is quickly devolving into a fiasco. The latest scandal involves Sports Illustrated, once a great magazine that was part of the Time-Life empire, now — well, who knows? It’s owned by something called The Arena Group, whose holdings also include TheStreet and Parade magazine (remember them?), and whose website says the company “combines powerful brands, in areas consumers are passionate about and delivers compelling experiences.” Corporate gobbledygook perfected except for the misplaced comma.
On Monday, Maggie Harrison of Futurism reported that SI had published articles generated by AI and — get this — included bylines and writer profiles that also had been generated by AI. Fake writers producing fake stories, in other words. All we need are fake readers. Harrison wrote: “After we reached out with questions to the magazine’s publisher, The Arena Group, all the AI-generated authors disappeared from Sports Illustrated’s site without explanation.”
SI later posted a message on X/Twitter that almost literally says, No, we did not publish any AI content. What actually happened was that we published AI content. Huh? The message is worth reproducing in full:
We didn’t do it! The third-party content provider did it! Well, all right then. Poynter media analyst Tom Jones, himself a former sports writer, has a lot to say this morning. He does not seem impressed with The Arena Group’s attempt to deflect blame, writing, “The stories in question do not appear to be the traditional sports features we’re all familiar with when it comes to Sports Illustrated. The stories were more along the lines of product features and reviews. For example, one story from 2022 was about the best volleyballs. Not that it makes any difference.” No, it doesn’t.
The real threat coming from AI-produced fake journalism is that bottom-feeders with no interest in quality are going to load up on the stuff, thus harming the reputation of quality news organizations as well. NewsGuard recently conducted a study that found 49 content farms were using material that seemed to be “almost entirely written” by AI. Even in its shrunken form, Sports Illustrated is better than a content farm. Even so, Henry Luce is rolling over in his grave.
As Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi points out (free link), while it is illegal to leak grand jury information, it is not illegal for a news outlet to publish a story based on that leaked information. An outrageous breach of the First Amendment in Atmore, Alabama, where a reporter and the publisher of the weekly Atmore News face criminal charges for committing journalism.
