At North Station, posters of people kidnapped in Israel during Hamas’ terrorist attack.
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GBH News will launch a daily arts and culture program on radio and YouTube
A lot of observers were surprised earlier this year when GBH News canceled its weekly arts and culture television show, “Open Studio,” hosted by Jared Bowen. Even more surprising was a statement from GBH president and CEO Susan Goldberg: “We’ve had the privilege of showcasing the depth and breadth of Boston’s incredible arts and culture scene through Jared’s eyes. We will be building on that strength as well as on GBH’s long legacy as a leader in culture content. GBH continues to be deeply committed to covering the local scene.”
It turns out that Goldberg knew whereof she spoke. Because GBH News is getting ready to launch a daily one-hour radio program devoted to arts and culture, also hosted by Bowen, that will have a video component as well. The program will have rotating co-hosts, including my former “Beat the Press” co-panelist Callie Crossley. Here’s the full press release:
In a major expansion of GBH’s local arts and culture programming, GBH News is launching The Culture Show, a one-hour daily local radio program on 89.7 offering listeners a wide-ranging look at society through art, culture and entertainment. Beginning November 3, The Culture Show will air on Fridays from 2–3 p.m., following Boston Public Radio with Jim Braude and Margery Eagan.
On December 4, The Culture Show will expand to a daily broadcast, Monday through Friday, at the same time slot, adding five hours per week of local arts and culture content to the Greater Boston media market. The show will also air on CAI, the Cape, Coast and Islands NPR station, starting on December 4. Beginning in the new year, the show will also stream on the GBH News YouTube channel, and video clips will be integrated into the daily GBH News program Greater Boston.
“The Culture Show builds on GBH’s deep legacy in the arts and culture space. We are proud of our seven-decade commitment to bringing local audiences vibrant and inspirational culture programming,” said Pam Johnston, general manager of news at GBH. “Culture is the lens through which our audiences experience the world. We’re proud to be expanding our arts and culture team, offering people daily engaging conversations about what we see, watch, taste, hear, feel and talk about.”
GBH Executive Arts Editor Jared Bowen will host The Culture Show. He will be joined by rotating co-hosts Callie Crossley, the host of Under the Radar with Callie Crossley; Edgar B. Herwick III, host of The Curiosity Desk; and James Bennett II, a GBH News arts and culture reporter and CRB Classical 99.5 contributor and a panel of cultural correspondents.
“The arts are vital to articulating and understanding our place in the world. The Culture Show offers an unprecedented opportunity to put the local arts scene front and center for listeners,” said Jared Bowen. “I can’t wait to join Callie, Edgar, James, and our listeners and guests in a shared exploration of our region’s extraordinarily vibrant cultural landscape.”
The Culture Show will drive conversations about how listeners experience culture across music, movies, fashion, TV, art, books, theater, dance, food and more, and help audiences make the most of their leisure time by guiding listeners to the best cultural experiences within a day’s drive from Boston. The show will amplify local creatives, profile the homegrown arts and culture landscape, check in with touring productions and tap into conversations about topics in the national cultural spotlight. The show will introduce a newsletter to expand its offerings in the new year.
The Culture Show will be the first permanent new daily radio show launched by GBH News since the debut of Boston Public Radio in 2013. The Executive Producer of The Culture Show is Chelsea Merz, who has a decade of experience as the executive producer of the market’s most popular midday show, Boston Public Radio. Accomplished radio professional Brian Bell will be the show’s producer and engineer.
A Muzzle for the officers who removed a teenage journalist from a GOP event
It’s hardly a surprise that Republican officials in New Hampshire would throw a 15-year-old out of a political event for doing nothing other than shooting video. But there is no excuse for police officers going along with their outrageous demand.
According to Samantha J. Gross of The Boston Globe, Quinn Mitchell, an aspiring journalist who’s become something of a celebrity for asking tough questions of presidential candidates, was escorted out of a political event at the behest of party officials in Nashua, New Hampshire, on Friday — apparently because someone didn’t like his recording videos of a longshot presidential candidate.
🗽The New England Muzzle Awards🗽
“They told me I was being a disruption,” Mitchell was quoted as saying. “I was taking a video like anybody else.” He added that five officers were involved in removing him from the Sheraton Nashua hotel.
Quinn said that a party official told him he was being kicked out because he had a reputation for disrupting events. No doubt that official was referring to Mitchell’s journalism, which can indeed be disruptive because he does it the right way. Earlier this summer Quinn asked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, “Do you believe that Trump violated the peaceful transfer of power, a key principle of American democracy that we must uphold?” He also asked former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a born-again Never Trumper, whether Hillary Clinton would have been a better choice than Donald Trump in 2016.
Although Mitchell was reportedly back in the hall Friday an hour after his removal, the incident led to a story in The New York Times. It also leads to an important question: Should police officers who work for the public go along with a demand to remove a teenager — or anyone — from an event simply because he was exercising his First Amendment rights? The answer, quite obviously, is no, and it really doesn’t matter whether the officers were on the taxpayers’ dime or if they were being paid as part of a private detail. (The Times reported that it tried and failed to get a comment from the Nashua police department.)
For that, police officers who removed Mitchell from the hotel have earned a New England Muzzle Award.
Paid circulation of Worcester’s daily newspaper has dropped by about 80% in 10 years
With a population just north of 200,000, Worcester is the second largest city in New England; surrounding Worcester County is home to more than four times that number of residents. Yet the 157-year-old Telegram & Gazette, the daily newspaper of record in Central Massachusetts, has lost most of its paid readership under the ownership of Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper chain.
According to Statements of Ownership that the T&G filed with the U.S. Postal Service on Oct. 1, average weekday paid circulation of the print edition stands at 8,698. The paper also reported an average of 4,133 paid electronic copies for a total paid average weekday circulation of 12,831. On Sundays, the numbers are 12,403 for print, 4,054 for electronic, and 16,457 for total paid average circulation. And as I pointed out the other day, digital circulation is reported using guidelines from the Alliance for Audited Media, which are somewhat inflated since AAN allows for some double-counting of print and digital.
Ten years ago, the T&G enjoyed paid circulation (print plus digital) of 74,000 on weekdays and 78,000 on Sundays, according to a story published just after then-new owner John Henry visited the paper’s offices, which means that circulation is down about 80% over the past decade. The aftermath of that meeting proved to be contentious, with T&G folks coming away from it believing that Henry — who acquired the paper as part of his purchase of The Boston Globe — had promised not to sell unless he could find a local buyer.
“It’s good to hear John Henry is focused on finding the right owner for the newspaper,” T&G publisher Bruce Gaultney was quoted as saying after meeting with Henry.
Henry later told me that he believed he’d promised only that he wouldn’t sell to GateHouse Media chain, which was notorious for laying off journalists and slashing coverage. Henry ended up selling to a Florida chain, which in turned handed it off to GateHouse, now Gannett. And Gannett has gutted the T&G, as it has so many of its properties.
Worcester is not a news desert. It has a number of other outlets, including the Worcester Business Journal, MassLive, the fledgling nonprofit Worcester Guardian, a GBH News bureau and several smaller outlets, including a lively aggregation service called The016. The once-mighty Telegram & Gazette, though, is barely a shadow of its former self.
Jason Pramas on HorizonMass, a news nonprofit that brings students and professionals together
On the latest What Works podcast, I talk with Jason Pramas, executive director of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and editor-in-chief of a new project called HorizonMass. (My co-host, Ellen Clegg, expects to return for the next episode.) Along with Boston journalist Chris Faraone, Jason is a co-founder of BINJ, which partners with community publications on investigative stories and civic engagement initiatives, and offers training programs to promising young journalists.
Now Jason is making a bold bet on the future of news by training a new generation of journalists. He’s launching HorizonMass, a statewide digital news publication with a focus on public interest journalism. At HorizonMass, college interns work as reporters, designers, marketers and editors alongside more experienced professional freelance writers.
Later on, in Quick Takes, I look at some data about news referrals from social media giants, specifically Facebook and X, or Twitter, or whatever it is this week. Large news organizations had become reliant on both of those platforms while the sort of local news outlets that we track here at What Works were more dependent on Facebook alone. In any case, those days are drawing to a close, and it’s long past time for community journalists to be asking themselves: What’s next?
You can listen to our conversation here and subscribe through your favorite podcast app.
That WSJ report on Iranian involvement in Hamas’ attack is coming under question
One of the more chilling early reports following Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel was that Iran was involved in planning and approving it. The story, reported by The Wall Street Journal (free link), began:
Iranian security officials helped plan Hamas’s Saturday surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last Monday, according to senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, another Iran-backed militant group.
The story conjured up the horrifying possibility of a multi-front war dragging in not just Israel and Iran but possibly the United States and Russia as well. It was a Journal exclusive, and the paper has not retracted its report. But the problem with an exclusive is that, as the days go by and no one else matches your reporting, it starts to look like an exclusive for the wrong reasons.
Almost immediately, Josh Marshall took note of the Journal’s reliance on sources inside Hamas and Hezbollah and dismissed the notion of any direct tie between Iran and Hamas’ actions over the weekend. “Anyone looking for a rationale for Israel or the U.S. to declare war on Iran needs to be smacked down hard and ignored,” he wrote. Of course, Iran and Hamas are close allies, and Marshall was careful to note this:
Iran funds and arms Hamas and is cheering on their attack. Hamas also receives training from the network of Iran-backed militias in the region. So it’s not like there’s some big mystery about whose side they’re on or whether they support and supply Hamas.
On Wednesday, meanwhile, The New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence agencies could find no evidence that Iranian officials had advance knowledge of the Hamas attack. The account begins:
The United States has collected multiple pieces of intelligence that show that key Iranian leaders were surprised by the Hamas attack in Israel, information that has fueled U.S. doubts that Iran played a direct role in planning the assault, according to several American officials.
The events that are unfolding right now are bad enough without whipping up hysteria that could lead to a wider, even more deadly conflict. Although we can’t know for sure, it looks like the Journal might have gotten played. It’s in Hamas’ interests to drag Iran into the war, and of course Iran would like to stop peace talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia. But that doesn’t make the Journal’s story true, and we should regard it as unsupported unless more evidence emerges.
Circulation holds steady at the Globe while it continues its slow decline at the Herald
The news about paid circulation at Boston’s two daily newspapers is so-so. The Boston Globe is hanging in there, trading paid print for paid digital, while the Boston Herald continues its long, slow slide.
First the Globe. This week the paper published its Statements of Ownership for both the Sunday and daily papers, something it’s required to do under federal postal laws. Average weekday paid print distribution for the one-year period from Sept. 1, 2022, to Aug. 31, 2023, was 64,977, down from 74,220 a year earlier. That’s a decline of nearly 12.5%. The story was the same on Sunday, as the paid print edition on average registered a decline from 128,920 to 116,456, or about 9.7%.
Paid digital, though, gave those numbers a boost. Using the methodology employed by the Alliance for Audited Media, the average weekday combined print and digital circulation for the 12-month period that ended Aug. 31 was, 346,944, up from 337,748 a year earlier. That’s an increase of 2.7%. On Sunday, total paid circulation is now at 408,974, compared to 403,566 the year before. That’s up about 1.3%.
Now, why am I invoking AAM’s methodology? Because its figures have always involved some double-counting, and it’s not entirely clear what they’re measuring and what they’re not measuring. For instance, according to the Globe’s Statements of Ownership, its current average paid electronic distribution on weekdays is 281,967, and on Sundays it’s 292,518. Globe spokeswoman Heidi Flood told me that those numbers are taken from the figures that the paper reports to AAN using the auditing agency’s rules. Also, digital subscribers to the Globe know that you pay one price, so different numbers for weekdays and Sundays make little sense.
So what is the Globe’s own assessment of its paid digital circulation base? Flood told me in an email that the Globe currently has “more than 245,000 digital-only subscriptions.” That’s an increase of about 10,000 since February 2022, when then-editor Brian McGrory said in an email to his staff that paid digital was around 235,000.
Given all that, let’s put current paid circulation of the Globe at about 310,000 on weekdays and 361,000 on Sundays. That’s more or less unchanged over the past year or so, although readership continues to shift from print to digital. Print brings in more money than digital both from subscribers and advertisers, but it also costs more. The Trump years and the COVID-19 pandemic sparked a lot of growth at the Globe, and that has now leveled off.
One possible good omen for the Globe is that the Statements of Ownership show slightly higher paid circulation on the days closest to the filing dates, in early September 2023, than the 12-month averages. That could mean growth continued over the previous year, but I don’t want to overinterpret a small (literally a one-day) sample size.
Over at the Herald, meanwhile, journalist Mark Pickering has taken a look at the latest AAM reports, which cover the six-month period ending March 31 of this year. Pickering, writing for the newsletter Contrarian Boston (sub. req.), found that paid weekday print circulation at the Herald was down 20%, from 20,353 to 16,043; on Sunday, the print Herald dropped 16%, from 23,702 to 19,799.
The Herald’s combined print and digital weekday circulation dropped from 50,707 to 46,783, for a decline of around 8%. But remember, AAM’s digital numbers are somewhat inflated, as some print subscribers are also counted as digital subscribers. As with the weekday numbers, add about 30,000 digital subscribers to get the Herald’s combined paid Sunday circulation.
“For the Herald,” Pickering wrote, “the numbers seem to show that there will be some circulation to be gained through digital subscribers, but how much remains to be seen.”
Northeastern students evacuated while hundreds rally in solidarity with Israel
I don’t intend to overwhelm you with news from Northeastern, but it seems appropriate in the days following Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel. Besides, all news is local.
The first story, from our in-house operation, Northeastern Global News, is about the evacuation of three students who were working in Israel on co-op jobs. Cesareo Contreras writes:
All three Northeastern students who were in Israel during Hamas’ surprise attack have been safely evacuated from the country with the help of the university’s global security team.
Two of the students, Jesse Ruigomez and Keren Doherty, were completing co-ops in Tel Aviv. The third student, Joshua Einhorn, is an N.U.in student studying in Greece. He was in Jerusalem visiting family and friends for the Jewish holiday Simchat Torah.
The second story was published by The Huntington News, our independent student newspaper. Zoe MacDiarmid reported on a vigil that drew hundreds to the Cabot Quad Tuesday night. The account begins:
Hundreds of Northeastern community members gathered Tuesday night on Cabot Quad in solidarity with Israel. Since Hamas’ Saturday assault on Israel, over 1,200 people in Israel and 900 people in Gaza have been killed, with thousands more injured.
The Quad was saturated with the blue-and-white colors of the Israeli flag as students, faculty and other community members gathered to show support for the country. Many wore the flag like a cloak. Most men wore kippot. As Jewish student organization leaders and rabbis spoke, the crowd cheered, embraced one another and cried.
The gap between the NY Times and the WashPost continues to widen
Two consecutive headlines in Nieman Lab’s daily newsletter Tuesday drove home the growing gap between The New York Times and The Washington Post. The first: “The Washington Post is reducing its workforce by 240 positions.” The second: “The New York Times opinion section has tripled its size since 2017.”
I’ve written about this before, including a suggestion I made last year that the Post should reconnect with local news. As someone who covered the early years of the Post’s revival under Jeff Bezos, I find the current situation sad. Both the Post and the Times flourished during the Trump presidency, but the Times has continued to soar in the post-Trump years (yes, I know we’re not really in the post-Trump years) while the Post has sputtered, losing money and circulation.
We need two great general-interest national newspapers. If the Post is going to get back in the race, it needs to find a way to differentiate itself from the Times. For a few years, the Post difference was a tougher, more truth-telling brand of political coverage, but these days both papers seem pretty much the same. I don’t blame Sally Buzbee, who succeeded the legendary Marty Baron as executive editor. The vision — and the resources — have to come from the very top.
- The Washington Post to cut 240 jobs (New York Times)
- New York Times opinion editor: ‘I don’t have pressure around metrics in any way’ (Press Gazette)
Northeastern’s leadership issues statement on the war between Israel and Hamas
Northeastern University has issued a statement about the war between Israel and Hamas. I’d like to share it with you:
To all Members of the Northeastern Community,
The terror and bloodshed inflicted by Hamas’s attacks on Israel are cause for the deepest sorrow and most vehement condemnation. As war now ravages Gaza and Israel, we mourn for all the innocent lives that have been lost. To the many members of our community directly affected by these horrific events, you have our utmost solidarity and support.
Three of our students who were in Israel at the time of the attacks are safe and secure. We are also in touch with students, faculty and staff with connections to the region to ensure their wellbeing in this traumatic time.
We realize that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ignites strong views on all sides. As an academic institution, we welcome peaceful dialogue and debate that is inclusive of all viewpoints. But we should all be united in our condemnation of terrorism and the killing of innocent civilians.
Northeastern is a global community of learning, and our fundamental values are rooted in knowledge over hate, harmony over division, and reason over brutality. These values will continue to guide us as we move forward together.
These resources are available to all who may need them during this painful time …
As we hope for a peaceful resolution to the violence and suffering, let us affirm our commitment to our shared values. Northeastern will always stand against hatred.
Sincerely,
Joseph E. Aoun
President
David Madigan
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs
Kenneth W. Henderson
Chancellor and Senior Vice President for Learning