Media Nation

By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions

Tag: Bill Forry

Startup news leaders tell journalism students how to get that first job

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On March 13, 2024

In Local News

Maya McFadden of the New Haven Independent interviews Victor Joshua, founder of the youth basketball program Respect Hoops. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.

I’ll be part of a panel tomorrow discussing job opportunities for new and recent journalism graduates. My role will be to talk about opportunities at the rising generation of local and regional news startups. I am not quite sure what to tell them, but more than anything I want them to know that they need to be resourceful.

About a dozen years ago, Thomas MacMillan told me how he got hired at the New Haven Independent, one of the original nonprofit digital-only local news sites. He was working at a non-journalism job and started doing some interning. He asked the editor, Paul Bass, how he could turn that into a staff job, and Bass’ unconventional answer was that MacMillan should write a grant to fund his position. MacMillan did it, got hired and, in my 2013 book, “The Wired City,” talked about the rewards.

“It’s really fun for me to feel like we’re on a rising star rather than a sinking ship,” MacMillan said. “There’s just something exciting about feeling like you’re working on the new paradigm, where you can experiment and try different things and people will occasionally take notice of what you’re doing.”

What I will tell students is that jobs at these startups are few and far between, but if you can land one, they come with great mentoring and, in some cases, surprisingly good pay. From my conversations with people, I’ve found that nonprofit boards and independent operators take their obligation to provide a living wage and benefits seriously. At the very least, journalists at these organizations are often making more than they would at a chain-owned newspaper.

Students can’t just expect jobs to open up, because that doesn’t happen all that often. Identify two, three or five that you’d like to work at. Get in touch and stay in touch. Cover some news for them — not for free, of course, but in most cases they’re not going to hire someone they don’t have a prior relationship with.

To prepare for the panel, I contacted an array of startup news folks to see what advice they would give to students. I present their lightly edited answers in full.

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Could the Globe do more to fill the local news gap?

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On February 16, 2021

In Local News

The Globe’s YourTown site for Needham circa 2010

Last Thursday we had a terrific panel discussion at Northeastern’s School of Journalism about the local news crisis in Greater Boston. Our panelists were state Rep. Lori Ehrlich, D-Marblehead, the lead sponsor of a state commission on local news that was recently created; retired Boston Globe editorial page editor Ellen Clegg; Yawu Miller, senior editor of The Bay State Banner; Bill Forry, managing editor of The Dorchester Reporter; and Julie McCay Turner, co-founder and managing editor of The Bedford Citizen, a nonprofit website that started as a volunteer project and that has gradually added paid journalism.

You can read Mihiro Shimano’s account at The Scope by clicking here. But I want to pick up on something that Ellen (my research partner on a book about local news) said about The Boston Globe’s role.

I was moderating and couldn’t take notes. But when I asked her about the Globe’s role in local news, she said the paper discovered about 20 years ago that it couldn’t make much of a dent at the hyperlocal level. Readers looked to their community weeklies and dailies for coverage of day-to-day life in their cities and towns. What the Globe could provide, she said, was regional coverage of issues that affected everyone — which is pretty much the mission statement for the paper in general.

As she also pointed out, the Globe now has a digital Rhode Island section, which is in keeping with the regional focus, and covers Newton through a partnership with Boston University. But could the paper do more?

Now that corporate-owned chains have decimated most of the once-strong community papers that circle Boston, I wonder if the Globe might be able to play more of a role. One idea would be to revive the YourTown websites that were unveiled during the last few years of New York Times Co. ownership. YourTown covered not just the Boston suburbs but neighborhoods within the city as well, which remains a crucial need. That was back in the days of the free web, and it proved impossible to sell ads for the sites. Now that everything is subscription-driven, though, would it be possible to try again?

There’s no substitute for independently owned community media, but a greater presence by the Globe — which itself is independently owned — might be the next best thing.

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What we know about the sale of the Boston Globe’s HQ

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On July 16, 2016

In Media

Update: I was so excited to get a copy of Sheehan’s announcement in my inbox that I didn’t check to see whether the Globe had the story. They did. Here it is.

The Boston Globe has found a buyer for its headquarters at 135 Morrissey Blvd. The announcement was made in an email to the staff Friday night from Mike Sheehan, chief executive of Boston Globe Media Partners. (Thanks, source! You are a prince or princess among men or women.) Here’s Sheehan:

Just wanted you to know that BGMP has entered into an agreement to sell our headquarters at 135 Morrissey Boulevard. We have also entered into a confidentiality agreement with the buyer, so I can offer no details about the transaction at this time. This is just the beginning of the process; I’ll keep you updated as it proceeds.

Have a great weekend.

Mike

I tweeted out the news a little while ago, but it’s raised more questions than answers among people who don’t follow this stuff obsessively. So here’s a bit of background.

1. The Globe‘s editorial and business operations are moving downtown, into rented office space at 53 State St. The target date for the move is January 1, but I’m guessing that will prove to be ambitious.

2. The printing operations are moving to a new facility in Taunton.

3. This is a true fact:

https://twitter.com/bfs82466/status/754310813700222977

4. In 2013 John Henry bought the Globe, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, and the Morrissey Boulevard headquarters from the New York Times Company for a total of $70 million. He later sold the T&G for an undisclosed amount that has been estimated at somewhere between $7 million and $19 million. In 2014, the Globe reported that the Morrissey Boulevard property might be worth somewhere between $50 million and $70 million. So it is likely that Henry will have ended up getting the Globe for free. On the other hand, he’s losing money—or, as Globe editor Brian McGrory put it recently in a memo announcing buyouts, “The Globe’s numbers aren’t as good as our words (or photos, videos, and graphics).”

5. As Sheehan wrote, the identity of the new owner of the Morrissey Boulevard property and his intentions are not being announced at this time. So here’s some speculation from me and some sharp observations from Bill Forry, editor of the Dorchester Reporter.

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/754294897348341760

https://twitter.com/dankennedy_nu/status/754299131506659328

The end of the road for four Boston neighborhood papers

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On October 26, 2012

In Media

One of the many wonderful things about living in Greater Boston is the abundance of community and neighborhood newspapers — something we take for granted, but that is rare in other parts of the country.

So it was sad news when Dorchester Reporter managing editor Bill Forry wrote on Thursday that his competition, the Dorchester Argus-Citizen, had folded, along with its sister papers. A follow-up in today’s Boston Globe by Patrick Rosso tallies the damage: in addition to the Argus-Citizen, the end of the road came for the South Boston Tribune, the Jamaica Plain Citizen and the Hyde Park Tribune.

I don’t know specifically what happened to those family-owned papers. In Dorchester, at least, it seemed that the Reporter had long since eclipsed the Argus-Citizen as that neighborhood’s primary news source. The other neighborhoods have feisty alternatives as well, including the Jamaica Plain Gazette, South Boston Online and the Hyde Park Bulletin.

In general, though, small community weeklies are beset by the same advertising trends that have devastated the rest of the newspaper business. Such papers may not lack for readers, but classified ads have long since moved to Craigslist, and the big box stores that now dominate the landscape simply don’t advertise the way mom-and-pop shops did when every neighborhood had a vibrant retail strip.

At a time when giant newspaper chains own most papers, both the Argus-Citizen and the Reporter are throwbacks. The Reporter was founded by Ed and Mary Forry in 1983, and Bill is their son. Bill is married to state Rep. Linda Dorcena Forry, which is indicative of the paper’s deep roots in the community, even though it creates dilemmas in covering certain types of stories.

The Reporter also has a well-designed website, put together by Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub.

Writing about the competition’s demise, Bill Forry had this to say:

We’re sad to see that another publication’s time has apparently come to an end. We wish the best for the Horgan family — who lost their father Dan, the papers’ longtime operator, last year. The Argus-Citizen will certainly be remembered for all of the stories it told for many years under his watch. They will live on in microfilm at the BPL and serve as an important record of what it was like to live here.

We salute the men and women who made the Tribune papers part of our community’s history.

Ave atque vale!

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