Media Nation

Disability-rights activists oppose physician-assisted suicide. We need to listen to them.

Not Dead Yet “is a national, grassroots disability rights group that opposes legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia as deadly forms of discrimination.”

Jeff Jacoby has a sharp column up at The Boston Globe on the dangers of physician-assisted suicide, writing that “a decent society does not enlist physicians to end lives; it strives to relieve suffering while upholding life’s inestimable worth.”

I wrote about the same topic a couple of weeks ago in my supporters newsletter. Like Jeff, I was motivated by a deep investigation published by The Atlantic (gift link). Here’s what I had to say:

***

At some point, the Massachusetts Legislature is expected to take up the matter of physician-assisted suicide, and when that time comes, I intend to pull together something more coherent than today’s newsletter.

Suffice it to say that I am extremely skeptical, and I don’t like efforts to relabel it as “medical aid in dying,” a euphemism piled on top of a euphemism in an attempt to play down the reality. As an auxiliary member of the disability community, I’m deeply concerned that physician-assisted suicide could be a way of encouraging people to kill themselves as a way of saving money for the health-care system. As the disability-rights organization Not Dead Yet puts it, “assisted suicide and euthanasia” should be regarded as “deadly forms of discrimination.”

What prompts today’s essay is an article in The Atlantic by Elaina Plott Calabro on Canada’s experience with physician-assisted suicide. If you are interested in this issue at all, then I urge you to read it in full. Calabro is rigorously fair, even going along with Canada’s absurd acronym for medical aid in dying, MAID, as though a kindly woman was going to enter your room and blissfully whisk you off to another dimension.

But what comes through is that a system that began with allowing terminally ill people in their final days of life to opt out of the pain and suffering they were experiencing has devolved into something entirely different, with people choosing to die because they are depressed, because they’re burdened with high medical bills, or just because the Canadian law places patient autonomy ahead of all other values. Calabro writes:

Nine years after the legalization of assisted death, Canada’s leaders seem to regard MAID from a strange, almost anthropological remove: as if the future of euthanasia is no more within their control than the laws of physics; as if continued expansion is not a reality the government is choosing so much as conceding. This is the story of an ideology in motion, of what happens when a nation enshrines a right before reckoning with the totality of its logic. If autonomy in death is sacrosanct, is there anyone who shouldn’t be helped to die?

Physician-assisted suicide rears its head in Massachusetts every so often. The Boston Globe has editorialized in favor of it, and in 2024 was embarrassed when it was revealed that staff member Kevin Cullen had actually signed papers to hasten the death of a woman whose journey he was chronicling. If we begin moving toward legalization here, I’ll have more to say. At the very least, we need stringent protections to make sure that this extraordinary remedy is reserved for extraordinary circumstances. Then again, the Canadian example shows that once physician-assisted suicide is normalized, then protections that had been put in place quickly fade away.

How two-tier Disney is helping to fuel the rise of middle-class anger and resentment

*Walt Disney World. 2023 public domain photo by Tech. Sgt. Andrew Burdette.*

The most profoundly depressing piece of journalism I engaged with last week wasn’t about war, public health or the rise of authoritarianism. It was about Disney World — or, rather, what Disney World says about how our culture has split in two, one for the shrinking middle class, the other for the rich.

Daniel Currell and photographer Paola Chapdelaine put together an opinion piece for The New York Times (gift link) that told the story of Scarlett Cressel, a 60-year-old disabled school-bus driver from Virginia who saved for years so that she and her family could visit the resort.

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What they encountered was a two-tier system that Disney and other corporations have been embracing for many years, and that has been accelerating since the COVID pandemic began to ease. You have to pay massive fees to avoid standing in line for top attractions. You have to stay at an expensive Disney hotel or other Disney-owned accommodations even to get access to the best deals.

Cressel and her family couldn’t afford any of that. Essentially Disney has morphed into a playground for the wealthy, with the masses left to press their faces up against the window to see what’s going on inside. Currell writes:

For most of the park’s history, Disney was priced to welcome people across the income spectrum, embracing the motto “Everyone is a V.I.P.” In doing so, it created a shared American culture by providing the same experience to every guest. The family that pulled up in a new Cadillac stood in the same lines, ate the same food and rode the same rides as the family that arrived in a used Chevy. Back then, America’s large and thriving middle class was the focus of most companies’ efforts and firmly in the driver’s seat.

That middle class has so eroded in size and in purchasing power — and the wealth of our top earners has so exploded — that America’s most important market today is its affluent. As more companies tailor their offerings to the top, the experiences we once shared are increasingly differentiated by how much we have.

Cressel is a perpetually optimistic sort. By the end of the piece, she pronounces herself pleased with her trip, despite the restrictions and indignities she encountered, and is already planning her next visit.

What really drove home the inequities that Disney now encourages, though, was the very different experience of Shawn Conahan, an affluent tech executive from California who took his 13-year-old daughter to Disney World, paying hundreds of extra dollars to skip lines and get into attractions that ordinary people might not have even been able to access.

I found myself feeling surprisingly emotional, not resenting the easy access that Conahan and his daughter enjoyed (“the best day ever,” she said) but, rather, resenting how the Disney experience has deteriorated from what it used to be. I’ll close with a couple of personal anecdotes.

When our two kids were younger, we were able to visit Disney World three times. We couldn’t afford it, but my in-laws belonged to a Disney vacation club, and we were able to stay for free at a time-share that was not only lovely but that gave us access to some of the perks that Conahan and his daughter were able to enjoy and that Cressel couldn’t. This was in the late 1990s and early ’00s, so the disparity wasn’t as great as it is today. Still, our kids were incredibly lucky to be able to enjoy that kind of access.

Then, two years ago, my now-adult daughter and I visited Graceland. She’d always been a huge Elvis Presley fan, and she’d saved for several years in order to be able to pay her way. For the Graceland tour, I encouraged her to pay for premium access, figuring this would be her one and only trip. I’m glad we did. Among other things, we were able to get into a special museum where Elvis’ sequined jackets and boots were kept. She was smitten, and it didn’t seem unfair to pay more in order to get more.

While we were walking the grounds, though, several other tourists saw us and joined our group. Our guide sternly told them to leave because we had paid extra for our tour and they were part of the unwashed masses. I was embarrassed and appalled.

But this is where we are at in 2025. Increasingly, folks in the shrinking middle class are being shut out of experiences that we once took for granted as part of our common culture. It’s no wonder that we’ve become so angry and resentful. You might even say that it’s one of the ingredients that has helped fuel the rise of authoritarianism.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution will dump print despite lagging on its ambitious digital goal

For some years now, many newspaper analysts, including me, have predicted that most daily newspapers would eventually cut back to one weekend print edition and go all-digital the rest of the week. Print advertising still has some value, and steering all of it into a big Saturday/Sunday paper would seem to be a smart way of maximizing a shrinking revenue stream.

Yet I don’t think any paper has taken that step. Some have cut back to two or three days a week. But large papers whose executives are rethinking print have tended to go whole hog.

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Last year Advance Local shut its print papers in New Jersey, including The Star-Ledger of Newark, and steered subscribers toward its statewide digital news outlet, NJ.com. Now The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is taking the same step, even though Katie Robertson reports in The New York Times (gift link) that the AJC’s print edition is still profitable, and even though digital subscriptions have run well behind what management was hoping for.

The AJC, owned by Cox Enterprises, will shutter its print edition at the end of this year, although it will continue to offer an e-paper laid out like print as part of its digital offerings. Cox is in the midst of a $150 million effort to boost the AJC. Andrew Morse, the paper’s president and publisher, told Robertson: “The fact is, printing newspapers and putting them in trucks and driving them around and delivering them on people’s front stoops has not been the most effective way to distribute the news in a very long time.”

The fact-checker rates Morse’s statement as: true. The question, though, is what effect that’s going to have on the paper’s bottom line. Morse is hoping for 500,000 paid digital subscribers by the end of 2026, but the company told Robertson that it’s only reached 115,000 paid subscribers, of whom just 75,000 are digital-only.

“The AJC’s digital audience far surpasses that of print and has for some time,” writes AJC reporter J. Scott Trubey. “Ending print, however, will be the biggest change of Morse’s tenure and one that will likely be controversial, particularly among some of the AJC’s longest-tenured subscribers.”

Boston Globe photo editor struck and killed by motorist in rural Illinois

A photo editor for The Boston Globe was killed last Saturday when he was struck by a car while bicycling in rural Illinois. Lloyd Young, 57, had traveled to Illinois to visit family, according to the Globe. The driver, a 54-year-old woman, was not identified.

According to 25News, a local television station, Young had worked for the Bloomington Pentagraph before coming to the Globe, where he had worked since 2006. In an email to the staff earlier this week from editor Nancy Barnes and other top editors, they said in part:

Lloyd has been a part of the Globe family since 2006, joining from the Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers in Stuart, FL. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1990 and received his Master’s degree from the VisCom program at Ohio University, focusing on picture editing & newsroom management.

Lloyd led our photographic news coverage, day in and day out. He was an exceptional colleague to other photo editors, photographers and designers, working closely with the copy desk daily, selecting the most significant images locally and from around the world.

We will dearly miss him at the Globe. Please keep Lloyd’s family in your heart and prayers.

In 2013, Young talked about his work in a video interview produced by the Globe. You can watch it by clicking above.

Some context for The Boston Globe’s editorial endorsing a shield law to protect journalists

*Illustration produced by AI using DALL-E*

The Boston Globe has published an editorial favoring passage of a shield law that would protect journalists from being ordered to identify their anonymous sources or turn over confidential reporting materials. The editorial is a strong statement in favor of press freedom, but it would have benefited from some context.

The Globe says that Massachusetts is one of just 10 states that lacks a shield law, which is accurate but not entirely true. In fact, 49 states, including Massachusetts, have some sort of shield protection either in the form of a state law or a ruling by state courts. The sole exceptions are Wyoming and, notoriously, the federal government.

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Massachusetts is among those states that rely on court rulings rather than an actual law, and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press lumps the state in with seven others that provide the lowest level of protection, a list that also comprises Idaho, Utah, Iowa, Missouri, Virginia, Mississippi and New Hampshire.

According to the Reporters Committee, Massachusetts lacks not only a shield law but also a ruling by its highest court, the Supreme Judicial Court, that would recognize some sort of journalists’ privilege. “Nevertheless,” the organization says, “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.”

The way such balancing tests work is that one of the parties in a criminal or civil matter — in criminal court, usually the prosecution — demands that a journalist turn over information that they believe is crucial to proving their case. A judge then determines whether the information is important enough to require that the journalist produce it and if there is any other non-journalistic source for the same information.

As the Globe editorial notes, the most recent time that happened here was last December, when Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone ordered Boston magazine reporter Gretchen Voss to turn over notes she had taken during an off-the-record interview with murder suspect Karen Read. Cannone reversed herself the following month, and Read was acquitted of the most serious charges in her case in June. (As the Globe editorial observes, Boston magazine is now owned by Boston Globe Media, but Voss was defended by the previous ownership.)

The legislation supported by the Globe would protect reporters who find themselves in a situation similar to that of Voss. Two identical bills that are pending in the state Legislature, one filed by Rep. Richard Haggerty, D-Woburn (H.1738), and another filed by Sen. Rebecca Rausch, D-Needham (S.1253), say in part:

In any matter arising under state law, a government entity may not compel a covered journalist to disclose protected information, unless a court of competent jurisdiction determines by a preponderance of the evidence, after providing notice and an opportunity to be heard to the covered journalist, that the disclosure of the protected information is necessary to prevent, or to identify any perpetrator of, an act of terrorism against the United States, the commonwealth or its subdivisions; or the disclosure of the protected information is reasonably likely to prevent a threat of imminent violence, bodily harm, or death.

Terrorism, imminent violence or death are clearly much more stringent requirements than simply needing confidential information to prove a court case. Unfortunately, the chances of such legislation being enacted must be seen within the context of the Legislature’s inability to accomplish much of anything, let alone something as controversial as this. As the Globe observes, “the Massachusetts Legislature has for at least 15 years running declined to allow even a floor vote on the measure.”

One final bit of trivia: Rep. Haggerty is a member of the family that has owned The Daily Times Chronicle of Woburn since its founding in 1901, and where I was on staff for much of the 1980s.

Longtime Globe managing editor Jennifer Peter is leaving to take the top job at The Marshall Project

Jennifer Peter, the longtime number-two editor at The Boston Globe, is leaving to become editor-in-chief of The Marshall Project, a highly regarded nonprofit news organization that covers criminal justice. Peter will start her new job on Sept. 29.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning outlet was founded 10 years ago with former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller as its top editor. Peter succeeds Susan Chira, who stepped down in December 2024. At The Marshall Project, Peter will be in charge of a staff of more than 60 journalists.

“I’m beyond thrilled to be joining such a high-caliber news organization with such a critical mission, particularly at this time in our history,” Peter was quoted as saying. “The Marshall Project was launched to meet the urgency of this moment, when so much of the criminal justice system is being reshaped.”

Added CEO Katrice Hardy: “Jennifer is the kind of leader and editor who has spent her career helping produce groundbreaking investigations and journalism, sometimes under the most trying circumstances.”

Peter has a background in newspapers and at The Associated Press, joining the Globe in 2004. She’s worked in a variety of editing jobs and oversaw the Globe’s Pulitzer-winning coverage of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. She was named managing editor in 2017.

In an email to the Globe staff that a source forwarded to me, Globe editor Nancy Barnes called Peter’s departure “bittersweet news” and said “she models a leadership quality that I admire: the ability to be kind, compassionate and yet unbending in her commitment to truth and ethics.” The full text of Barnes’ email follows:

Dear all,

This is bittersweet news that I am about to share with you, so brace yourselves.

After nearly 21 remarkable years at The Boston Globe, Jen Peter is leaving to become the editor-in-chief of The Marshall Project, a non-profit news organization focused on criminal justice reporting.

I know this is tough news for so many of you, who have worked with Jen for a long time. As I was joining the Globe, Brian McGrory told me she was beloved, devoted to the newsroom, and incredibly hard-working. I have found all of this to be true. I would add that she models a leadership quality that I admire: the ability to be kind, compassionate and yet unbending in her commitment to truth and ethics. During my tenure, she has overseen our daily news report through a torrential cycle of news, taken leadership of several departments, and guided important projects, including last year’s examination of the handling of the state’s emergency shelter system. In addition, she has served as chief of staff, and helped with budget issues. She seems irreplaceable.

And yet… This is an exciting opportunity for Jen, to lead her own news organization at a time when so much is happening in the criminal justice space. I’m looking forward to seeing where she takes that organization next. Her last day in this newsroom will be Wednesday, Sept. 17. However, the good news is that she won’t be going far as this job will be mostly remote and she and her family will remain in Boston.

Jen started her journey at the Globe in 2004 as a co-editor of Globe North, moving on to become state politics editor and then city editor under then Metro Editor Brian McGrory. She succeeded him in that role during another turbulent news cycle: the Boston Marathon bombing, the capture and trial of Whitey Bulger, the conviction and suicide of Aaron Hernandez, the drug lab scandal, and several hotly contested mayoral, gubernatorial and US Senate elections.

She also oversaw several major projects, including 68 Blocks, a year-long immersion in the Bowdoin-Geneva neighborhood; Getting In, which involved assigning eight reporters to follow families trying to get their children into the Boston Public Schools; Bus 19, which told the story of inequality in Boston through the regulars on a bus that traversed the city; and the Power of Will, Billy Baker’s story of one family’s relentless (and successful) pursuit of a cure for their child’s brain cancer. As managing editor, she conceived of the Valedictorian Project, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and helped guide the newsroom through the COVID years.

Many of you will want to know what’s next for the newsroom as Jen moves on to new challenges. We are going to put that question aside for a few weeks so that we can properly thank Jen, celebrate her innumerable contributions, and send her off in style.

Please join me in congratulating her — and let’s also remind her every day why she is going to miss this newsroom.

Nancy

Andrew Jackson redux? Trump’s attacks on the Fed echo a predecessor’s ruinous bank veto.

*“The Downfall of Mother Bank,” with Andrew Jackson holding a scroll that reads “Order for the Removal of the Public Money deposited in the United States Bank.” Via the Library of Congress.*

The Federal Reserve Board was set up to be free from political interference so that it could engage in the uncertain art of steering the economy without regard to the needs and desires of elected officials. Board members are appointed by the president to staggered 14-year terms and confirmed by the Senate.

But now Donald Trump has threatened to end all that by claiming he has fired Fed Governor (as board members are known) Lisa Cook. Trump is paying lip service to the rule that says he can’t fire governors except for cause by accusing her of mortgage fraud. But not only has Cook not been formally charged with misconduct, there isn’t even an investigation under way.

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Trump has also suggested that he might fire Fed board chair Jerome Powell, which he also lacks the authority to do. Even this Supreme Court said recently that the president’s authority does not extend to breeching the Fed’s independence.

The Fed regulates interest rates with an eye toward keeping inflation in check and unemployment low, two goals that are sometimes at odds with each other, which means the agency must aim for a delicate balance. Trump wants lower interest rates, in part to finance the massive increase in the federal debt that he’s presided over with tax cuts for the rich. As The Wall Street Journal puts it:

Both the central bank and the economy at large are entering unknown territory. Presidents have periodically criticized the Fed since its founding in 1913 and attempted to sway its decisions. But especially in recent decades, politicians have broadly recognized that an independent central bank is important because it has a free hand to make unpopular moves that preserve the economy’s long-run health.

There’s a historical analogy that’s worth keeping in mind. I’m currently reading Jill Lepore’s massive history of the United States, “These Truths.” As with Trump, Andrew Jackson didn’t like bankers telling him what to do, and in 1832 he refused to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States. Congress vetoed his action, and Jackson overrode its veto. Lepore describes what happened next:

Jackson’s bank veto unmoored the American economy. With the dissolution of the Bank of the United States, the stability it had provided, ballast in a ship’s hull, floated away. Proponents of the national bank had insisted on the need for federal regulation of paper currency. Jackson and his supporters, known as “gold-bugs,” would have rather had no paper money at all. In 1832, $59 million in paper bills was in circulation, in 1836, $140 million. Without the national bank’s regulatory force, very little metal backed up this blizzard of paper, American banks holding only $10.5 million in gold.

Moreover, Jackson’s irresponsible action led to a financial panic in 1837, just in time for the inauguration of his vice president and chosen successor, Martin Van Buren, who earned the nickname “Martin Van Ruin.” The panic set off a seven-year depression; it also led to the abolition of debtors’ prison and to bankruptcy reform. Van Buren was easily defeated for re-election in 1840 by the Whig candidate, William Henry Harrison.

If Trump follows through on turning the Fed into just another arm of MAGA, will similar economic calamities follow? As I write this, the market indexes are flat, which suggests that Wall Street isn’t too worried about Trump’s threat against Cook. But Jackson’s war on the national bank shows what can happen when economic expertise is thrown aside in favor of political expediency.

The Bedford Citizen staffs up with a new managing editor and a community reporter

The Bedford Citizen, which may be the oldest nonprofit local-news startup in Massachusetts, is back on track after losing its top two newsroom employees earlier this year.

Bill Fonda is joining the Citizen as its new managing editor, replacing Wayne Braverman, who retired this past spring. Fonda, who worked nearly four years as editor of the award-winning Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in New Hampshire, is the citizen’s third managing editor; Braverman succeeded co-founder Julie McCay Turner in 2022.

Fonda’s hiring was announced Thursday in an email from Elizabeth Hacala, the Citizen’s board president and publisher.

The Citizen also recently hired a community reporter to replace the legendary Mike Rosenberg, who died while on the job last February. Rosenberg’s replacement, Piper Pavelich, had previously worked for The Lincoln County News, based in Newcastle, Maine.

The Citizen, which was founded in 2012, is among the projects that Ellen Clegg and I feature in our book, “What Works in Community News.” It began as an all-volunteer project and gradually added paid professional journalism, though it still has a significant volunteer component.

What follows is an article that will be published in the Citizen later today:

Bill Fonda is The Bedford Citizen’s New Managing Editor

Please join us in welcoming Bill Fonda as The Bedford Citizen’s Managing Editor.

Bill most recently spent nearly four years as the editor of the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, a twice-weekly newspaper published by Newspapers of New England that covered 16 towns in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire.

During his time at the Ledger-Transcript, the paper won two first-place awards and one second-place award for General Excellence from the New Hampshire Press Association, was named a Distinguished Newspaper/Small Circulation Weekly by the New England Newspaper and Press Association and received second place in General Excellence for weeklies over 5,000 circulation from the New England Newspaper and Press Association.

Bill also spent 16 years with the former GateHouse Media (now part of Gannett) after beginning his career with Spotlight Newspapers outside of Albany in his native New York. Joining The Bedford Citizen is a return of sorts, as his time at GateHouse included serving as managing editor for newspapers in and around Concord, including Bedford.

It is that experience which makes him appreciative of what The Citizen has accomplished and continues to achieve.

“To see the work that has been done to build and rebuild local news coverage in Bedford is inspiring, and something I want to be a part of,” he said. “I hope that I’ll be able to help advance the good work that is already going on here.”

Boston’s top two public media leaders argue that building community is the way forward. They’re right.

At a moment when public broadcasters are staggering from the loss of $1.1 billion in federal funds over the next two years, Boston’s two leading public media executives say that rebuilding trust and community are the keys to survival.

“I think the best way to build trust is from the local community up,” said Susan Goldberg, president and chief executive of GBH, which operates television, radio, and digital platforms. She touted the radio station’s studio at the Boston Public Library as a way for people to come in “and watch us create the content in front of them,” saying: “I think it’s that kind of transparency that can help build back trust.”

Margaret Low, chief executive of WBUR Radio, agreed, observing that her station reaches beyond its airwaves and digital presence through events at its CitySpace venue and through such initiatives as the WBUR Festival.

“There’s something very powerful about bringing people together in a place to talk about some of the most pressing issues of the day,” she said. “And it’s different than the one-to-many that broadcasting is, or even a newsletter is. It’s actually people feeling like they’re part of something bigger than themselves, that they’re part of a community.”

Goldberg and Low spoke Wednesday at a webinar sponsored by the New England chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. The theme of the evening was survival. Earlier this summer the Republican-controlled Congress, acting at the behest of President Trump, eliminated the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a semi-independent agency that provided funding for PBS, NPR and local public television and radio stations.

Read the rest at CommonWealth Beacon.

Why a philanthopic effort to bolster public broadcasting may harm local news outlets

Major philanthropies are stepping up to offset some of the cuts to public television and radio, Benjamin Mullin reports in The New York Times (gift link). But will it be enough? And what possible downstream effects might there be on local news organizations that also depend heavily on foundation money?

As we all know, the Republican Congress, acting at the behest of Donald Trump, eliminated funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting earlier this summer. The CPB, a semi-independent agency, had been set to spend $500 million over the next two years.

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PBS and NPR receive most of their funding from grants and donations by, well, viewers and listeners like you, but their member stations — especially in less affluent and rural areas — are more dependent on government funding. Both national networks have been cutting their budgets in an attempt to help their member stations survive.

According to Mullin, foundations such as Knight, MacArthur, Ford and others have come up with an emergency $26.5 million to keep those stations afloat with a goal of reaching $50 million this year. “We believe it’s crucial to have a concerted, coordinated effort to make sure that the stations that most critically need these funds right now have a pathway to get them,” Maribel Pérez Wadsworth, the president and chief executive of the Knight Foundation, was quoted as saying.

Continue reading “Why a philanthopic effort to bolster public broadcasting may harm local news outlets”