Media Nation

I’m running out the door in a few minutes, so just some random observations about the announced deal that will leave Pat Purcell in charge of the Boston Herald. (The Boston Globe covers the story here; the Herald here.)

— Whenever he’s met with the troops during the past few years, newsroom sources say that Purcell has always emphasized what a godsend his 100-paper Community Newspaper Co. chain has been in shoring up the Herald. Even though Purcell says the Herald will now be debt-free, how well can the Herald be expected to do as a standalone product? Or is another shoe going to drop?

— What kind of a steward will Liberty Group Publishing prove to be? The Illinois-based company is purchasing not just Purcell’s CNC chain but also the Enterprise of Brockton and the Patriot Ledger of Quincy — a deal valued at a total of about $400 million. This puts nearly all of Greater Boston’s medium and small newspapers in the hands of out-of-state corporations, including such well-known papers as the Sun of Lowell, the Eagle Tribune of Lawrence, the Standard-Times of New Bedford, the Salem News and the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester. (The T&G, as you may recall, is owned by the New York Times Co., which also owns the Boston Globe.)

— The Herald reports that Liberty Group is changing its name to GateHouse Media. How well-thought-out is that move? Click here, and you’ll see that there’s already a GateHouse Media in the U.K.

— What about the Internet? Purcell owns not two companies but three: the Herald, CNC and Herald Media, which is the parent company for both the Herald’s and CNC’s online presence. Neither the Herald nor the Globe today explain how that’s going to shake out, although a separate chart in the Globe’s print edition lists Purcell’s Town Online site as part of the deal. Whatever the case, unless the Web holdings are broken up, the site is going to host papers owned by different companies.

Shortly after signaling my intention to write more about Mark Jurkowitz’s departure from the Boston Phoenix — and from Boston — I realized I had written pretty much what I had wanted to say nearly a year ago, when it was announced that he would replace me as the Phoenix’s media columnist. You can read it here. Mark is a mentor and a friend, and he’ll be greatly missed. The Project for Excellence in Journalism is lucky to get him.

Nieman Reports has posted the contents of its spring issue, including my review of Danny Schechter’s book “The Death of Media: And the Fight to Save Democracy.” The book is an indictment of the “mediaocracy,” which Schechter defines as “a growing symbiotic relationship between increasingly interlocking media elites and their political counterparts … a political system tethered to a media system.”

Here’s an excerpt:

As Schechter observes, the cheerleading coverage of the war, especially on television, played out at a moment when the major corporations that own much of our media were seeking billions of dollars in deregulatory goodies from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). That the FCC was then headed by Michael Powell, the son of President Bush’s first secretary of state, Colin Powell, only serves to underscore this grotesque conflict of interests. And though Congress and the courts ultimately revolted against Michael Powell’s proposed giveaway, the corporations were not left empty-handed. General Electric, the owner of NBC, which offered perhaps the most flag-waving war coverage among the Big Three networks, later received a $600 million federal contract to take part in the reconstruction of Iraq.

Schechter’s blogging from Copenhagen today. He’s also got an article in Nieman Reports on the credit crisis facing poor and middle-class Americans.

As many of you may already know, Mark Jurkowitz of the Boston Phoenix — my predecessor and successor as the paper’s media critic — is leaving to take a job as associate director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. I spent most of the day at a conference and only learned about this late in the afternoon.

This is a huge blow not just for the Phoenix but for Boston. I’ll write more about this tomorrow. Meanwhile, read the Phoenix’s press release on Mark’s departure, and the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s announcement.

It’s time for Peter Sturges, the unelected executive director of the State Ethics Commission, to appear in public — say, before a legislative committee — and answer some questions.

As Kimberly Atkins reported in yesterday’s Boston Herald, Sturges wrote a column in his agency’s spring newsletter arguing that the Boston Globe got it wrong last month when it claimed that ludicrous new commission guidelines would prevent elected officials from discussing political matters at the State House, even at a news conference.

But the Globe’s Andrea Estes, who broke the original story, reports today that Sturges may merely backing down in the face of criticism. Estes writes:

The April advisory, reported by the Globe last month, angered many legislators, who said yesterday that they believe the Ethics Commission softened its stance in response to their concerns.

“They’ve heard feedback and decided we need to clarify our clarification,” said House minority leader Bradley Jones, a Republican from North Reading. “In an extremely political building like the State House, trying to take the politics out is impossible. Everyone I talked to read it and thought it was more than is now being represented. It’s an attempt to clarify the clarification for the purposes of assuaging the Legislature.”

So which is it? Todd Wallack writes to Media Nation that Sturges’ actual position may be somewhere in the middle — that he was indeed attempting to crack down on political speech, but not to the extent that the Globe originally reported.

In a word, this is ridiculous. An unelected official is attempting to regulate precisely how much free speech may be allowed on state-owned property. (The correct answer, of course, is all of it.) The Globe and the Herald are trying to nail him down, but he won’t talk. Someone should demand some answers.

Update: Atkins, writing on her blog, sends one over Estes’ bow. Does Estes have a blog? Hmmm … apparently not.

I missed this yesterday, but Kimberly Atkins of the Boston Herald reports that an anti-free-speech regulation put forth by the State Ethics Commission — and given front-page play by the Boston Globe last month — isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Atkins’ article begins:

The state Ethics Commission yesterday threw water on a front-page claim by the Boston Globe that the agency issued a sweeping policy change forbidding elected officials to talk politics in the State House.

In a column in the commission’s spring news bulletin, executive director Peter Sturges called the piece, which claimed the agency issued an advisory changing ethics rules in an attempt to curb campaign related chatter by Gov. Mitt Romney, Attorney General Tom Reilly and others on Beacon Hill, “inaccurate.”

“As a result of the Globe article, some columnists and others have suggested that the advisory prohibits a legislator from answering a reporter’s casual questions about his candidacy, a Democratic legislator from criticizing the Governor, or the Governor from criticizing a Democratic initiative if these actions occur in the State House,” wrote Sturges, who declined to comment further to the Herald.

Sturges said none of those activities would run afoul of state law, stressing that the advisory simply updated the language of regulations, to reflect new technologies including e-mail and the Internet.

The Globe’s Andrea Estes wrote on April 19 that the commission had “tightened its rules on political activity by public officials, barring them from writing stump speeches, answering campaign questions, or holding news conferences on political topics inside the State House or other state office buildings.”

Atkins’ story is good news if Sturges is telling the truth, but the possibility that he’s engaging in some after-the-fact butt-covering can’t be ruled out. The commission’s ruling got a lot of attention at the time. How come the only clarification we’ve seen is in the form of a column in a little-read newsletter?

Here is the Ethics Commission’s revised conflict-of-interest policy. No, I haven’t read it, nor do I intend to, since I don’t know how it differs from the previous policy — the key issue in determining whether the Globe got it right or not.

You can read Sturges’ column for yourself by following this link (PDF). Sturges comes across as pretty persuasive, writing:

The Commission recognizes that politics and policy are often inseparable, particularly for elected officials, and that all public officials, elected and appointed, operate to a greater or lesser extent within a political framework. The Commission’s recent advisory continues to recognize that fact. Nothing in the advisory prohibits a legislator from answering questions from a reporter about an upcoming campaign fundraising event or a major policy issue. Indeed, elected officials are generally free to discuss any political topic.

Still, if the Globe story was much ado about nothing, why did Sturges refuse to talk with the Herald this week? Why has the commission been utterly silent since April 19. Don’t the commissioners and their staff work for the public?

Mark Jurkowitz follows up my item on the Globe’s gushing coverage of deluxe travel packages being offered by the newspaper’s corporate partner, the Red Sox, with some tough talk of his own, calling the page-one story “a poster child for the evils of corporate synergy.”

But for truly entertaining Globe-bashing, you have to turn to none other than the Globe’s own Dan Shaughnessy, who buries this nugget in his column today on the Sox’ dubious rain call Tuesday night:

Speaking of no-win propositions, we’ve got a problem here at Daddy Globe. Those of you not living in caves know by now that the New York Times Co. owns us, and also owns 17 percent of the Red Sox. This conflict of interest taints everything we do on these pages and the Globe looks especially compromised on days like yesterday when we ran a Page 1 story entitled, “Hit the road with the Sox and get …”

Yesterday’s journalistic wet kiss included a nifty graphic detailing exactly what Sox fans get if they purchase an official team VIP road trip package. The story contained no inside info that couldn’t be gleaned by a fan with access to the Internet, but the timing was abysmal and the packaging worse. By any measurement, this was a Red Sox infomercial, a front-page story guaranteed to embolden those who believe the Globe is part of a Red Sox Cartel and certain to make life more difficult for Messrs. Snow, Edes, and all others who toil tirelessly to bring balanced coverage to our readers.

“Mercy,” as the late Ned Martin would say. This is good stuff. Perhaps Shaughnessy should demand that Bruce Allen do a recount of his best and worst local sports columnists.

Yes, the Boston Globe ran the requisite disclosure about its shared business interests with the Red Sox. But that doesn’t really explain why the editors believed it was necessary to run a front-page wet kiss today about the deluxe travel packages the team is setting up for well-heeled fans. At least make the Sox buy an ad.

By the way, the Web version includes a nine-photo slideshow with a headline right out of the Red Sox P.R. department: “Livin’ the dream: Red Sox DestiNATIONs.” Good grief.

The Boston Herald’s Jay Fitzgerald has an entertainingly unoriginal story today. Here’s the lead:

A San Diego blogger has already proved that many of Raytheon chief William Swanson’s “Unwritten Rules of Management” had previously been written down in a 1944 book.

Now it turns out other folksy business adages in Swanson’s booklet were also previously written — by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and newspaper humorist Dave Barry.

Are there no new rules out there?

Speaking of unoriginal writing, I guess this is just about a wrap for Harvard typist Kaavya Viswanathan.

Update: The Herald ran a graphic comparing Rummy to Swanson and Dave Barry. Pretty amazing.

The Boston Globe’s Michael Levenson reports this morning that an art exhibit by Palestinian children has been removed from the Brandeis University library because of objections at the largely Jewish institution that the work was one-sided in its portrayal of Palestinian suffering at the hands of Israel.

One-sided though the exhibit may be, this reeks of artistic censorship — lamentable in any situation and just plain wrong in an academic environment. Still, there’s an interesting bit of context that Levenson alludes to but doesn’t expand on. He writes:

The controversy occurs at a sensitive time for the campus, which has angered some students and Jewish groups with the appointment of a prominent Palestinian scholar and with a partnership with Al-Quds University, an Arab institution.

Intrigued, I headed over to the Web site of the Justice, the Brandeis student weekly, and found an article by Hannah Edber that begins thusly:

The University has once again drawn the ire of Zionist Organization of America President Morton Klein — this time for its partnership with Al-Quds University, a Palestinian institution in Jerusalem.

The ZOA accused Al-Quds University of denying Israel’s right to exist and praising suicide bombers on its Web site in an April 4 press release.

“[Al-Quds University President Sari] Nusseibeh has actually demonized Israelis, praised jihad fighters and justified the killing of so-called Palestinian ‘collaborators,'” the press release said.

John Hose, the executive assistant to University President Jehuda Reinharz, said Klein’s allegations are “farfetched in the extreme.”

Edber notes that the ZOA has also criticized the university for naming a Palestinian pollster, Khalil Shikaki, as a senior fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, claiming that Shikaki has ties to the terrorist organization Islamic Jihad — a claim the administration rejects.

I know nothing about the ZOA; a Google search suggests that it’s mainstream, though very conservative. Or, as the Philadelphia Jewish Voice put it, the ZOA is “so right-wing extremist a group that it denounced Prime Minister Arik Sharon for selling out Israel by withdrawing from Gaza.”

I did manage to find on the ZOA’s Web site a statement denouncing the Brandeis art exhibit. The headline: “New Anti-Israel Horror At Brandeis U. — Ghastly ‘Voices From Palestine’ Art Exhibit.” Which raises at least the possibility that the Brandeis administration is starting to buckle under the ZOA’s relentless pressure.

It sounds like there’s a lot going on at Brandeis these days. I don’t see how the administration can defend censoring art, whether it’s offensive, one-sided or, for that matter, inept. But there’s a bigger story to be told in Waltham. The Globe has run a couple of squibs on this in recent months, but it’s time to dig deeper.