Tag: Boston Globe

Pulitzer notes: The Globe’s harrowing story on child abuse is named a finalist

Photo via Pulitzer.org

The word “harrowing” is an overused cliché, but it’s exactly the right word to describe Janelle Nanos’ story about an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse, published by The Boston Globe Magazine last summer. Nanos’ 11,000-word account of Kate Price’s long quest to learn the truth about what had happened to her was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in feature writing; this year’s Pulitzers were announced on Monday.

Price remembers being raped by her father — possibly starting when she was as young as 3 — and being pimped out to other men who he would contact via CB radio. She has spent her adult life trying to nail down the details, and by the end of the story we learn that she’s succeeded in coming about as close as she’ll probably ever get to proving that her memories are real.

Nanos, a reporter and editor for the Globe’s business section, has been following Price for 10 years and is currently expanding it into a book. The personal tone she takes is handled deftly, enhancing the narrative by making herself part of Price’s journey. Her story also helps puncture the argument, still made in some circles, that claims of childhood sexual abuse are not to be believed because memories of such abuse are not reliable.

More from the Pulitzer announcements:

• Anna Wolfe of the nonprofit news organization Mississippi Today was one of two winners in local reporting for her coverage of former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, who directed that state welfare money amounting to millions of dollars be given to family members and friends, including NFL quarterback Brett Favre. I mention this because Mary Margaret White, the CEO of Mississippi Today, was a guest last fall on the “What Works” podcast that Ellen Clegg and I host.

• Ukraine was the subject of several Pulitzers, including the prestigious public service award, won by four journalists for The Associated Press for what the Pulitzer board called their “courageous reporting from the besieged city of Mariupol that bore witness to the slaughter of civilians in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” The New York Times won the international reporting award and The AP photo staff won for breaking news photography. The Times’ Lynsey Addario’s photo of an entire family that had been killed while they were trying to flee the suburb of Irbin, perhaps the best-known image of the war, was a finalist in breaking news photography.

• The Los Angeles Times won the award for breaking news reporting for revealing the existence of an audio recording in which several city officials are heard engaging in bluntly racist speech, leading to follow-up stories and resignations. It’s a worthy winner in any case, but I mention it because of a similar recent story in McCurtain County, Oklahoma, where several officials resigned under nearly identical circumstances.

The big difference: The Los Angeles audio was leaked anonymously to the Times, whereas the Oklahoma audio was captured by the McCurtain Gazette-News, whose publisher-reporter left his recorder behind after a meeting ended because he suspected that officials would continue to discuss county business in violation of the open meeting law. That, in turn, has led to a dispute over whether the Gazette-News broke the law by making a secret recording.

 

A smart analysis of Andrea Estes’ ‘compelling and consequential’ career

Scott Van Voorhis offers some important context about Andrea Estes’ departure from The Boston Globe. In his Contrarian Boston newsletter, Van Voorhis calls her work “compelling and consequential,” and observes that her reporting uncovered a kickback scheme that resulted in a federal prison term for former House Speaker Sal DiMasi and exposed the $300,000-plus salary of Methuen’s now-former police chief.

The current controversy involves two lengthy corrections the Globe published after an Estes-bylined story reported that nine top MBTA managers were working remotely. According to the corrections, the actual number was six, and there were other problems as well. Van Voorhis writes that “to pin the alleged mistakes in the story solely on Estes seems grossly unfair. Where was her editor? And with the prominent play the Globe gave to the story, there surely were other editors involved in at least reviewing the piece.”

Globe editor Nancy Barnes has told her staff that she’s “working to unravel all of this,” adding: “We will hold ourselves accountable for our mistakes because trust is so essential to us as journalists.”

Earlier:

Globe editor Nancy Barnes tells her staff she’s working to unravel the MBTA fiasco

Boston Globe editor Nancy Barnes has told her staff that the paper plans to offer an explanation about what went wrong with former reporter Andrea Estes’ story about MBTA managers who work remotely. Her email was passed along to me by a trusted source and closes with this:

Finally, I want to acknowledge the concerns individuals have raised about the multiple corrections in the recent MBTA story about executives living remotely. I am still working to unravel all of this and so there is not a lot I can say publicly for now except this: We will hold ourselves accountable for our mistakes because trust is so essential to us as journalists

This is good news and sends exactly the right message. Barnes took over for Brian McGrory just a few months ago, and this is her first public crisis. I look forward to reading the Globe’s account of what happened.

Earlier:

Andrea Estes has left the Globe following an error-riddled story about the MBTA

Photo (cc) 2022 by Dan Kennedy

Update: Globe spokeswoman Heidi Flood confirmed this morning that Andrea Estes “no longer works at the Globe.” I have edited the headline to reflect that.

Update 2: Globe editor Nancy Barnes has told her staff that she’s working to unravel what went wrong.

Boston Globe reporter Andrea Estes, an investigative journalist whose recent error-riddled story about absentee managers at the MBTA led to a lengthy correction, has disappeared from the Globe’s online staff directory. You can still find her official Globe listing, though. She’s described as a “former reporter,” and her bio begins: “Estes was an investigative reporter specializing in government accountability.”

On Wednesday evening I sent an email to Globe spokeswoman Heidi Flood asking, “Has Andrea Estes left the Globe?” Flood’s response: “Thanks for reaching out. The company does not comment on personnel matters.” I also emailed Globe editor Nancy Barnes, who did not respond. I tried emailing Estes at her Globe address earlier this morning, and it bounced back.

It seems pretty clear that Estes is gone. And though no reason has been given, her most recent story, which led the Sunday paper on April 23, has proved to be an embarrassment for the Globe. The idea that some of the T’s leading executives were working virtually from distant places while bus drivers, subway operators and maintenance workers were putting themselves on the line every day was enraging. Here’s the heart of her story, which comes from a PDF of the print edition:

The MBTA is facing an unprecedented crisis of confidence in its service, punctuated by slow trains, endless delays, and gruesome accidents. Yet, many top T managers live far from the troubled system they’re trying to rescue and some are rarely seen in person by their employees. A Globe review has found that nine senior managers (including one who has left the agency) have a primary residence more than 100 miles from the nearest T station — and some much farther.

The story was later revised to cut that number from nine to six, and was appended with a lengthy correction:

Earlier versions of this story incorrectly reported that three MBTA managers live primarily in homes far from the T’s service area. Dennis Lytton, the deputy safety chief, has an apartment in Brighton and says he has not worked remotely since starting the job in February. Michele Stiehler, the T’s chief of paratransit, lives in Boston and walks to work. Jennifer Tabakin, who oversees the T’s South Coast Rail project, also has a home in Boston within walking distance of T headquarters. In addition, the story incorrectly reported that Ronald Ester’s “primary residence” is in Chicago; Ester said he considers his home in Massachusetts as his primary residence.

Estes’ story led to an editorial that has now also been appended with a correction. That correction includes a wrinkle that doesn’t appear in the one attached to Estes’ article: “The original editorial also incorrectly stated where Dennis Lytton, an MBTA safety official, was when reached by reporters. He was in Boston.” Estes’ original story said, “When contacted by the Globe recently, Lytton, who makes $175,000 a year, said he was home in Los Angeles at the time.” That sentence was deleted from the revised version.

Reporters make mistakes. We’ve all had corrections appended to our work. But to level such a serious accusation against three MBTA managers by name and then have to retract it is unusual.

As for Flood’s comment that the Globe doesn’t comment on personnel matters, I would note that there have been a number of prominent situations in the past when people have been fired, pushed into leaving or suspended, and the paper has gone into considerable detail in telling its audience what happened. We all know who they are, and I’m not going to drag their names into this.

I wrote last week that the Globe should have an ombudsman — an in-house reader advocate paid to look into fiascoes like this and write about them. At one time, many news outlets, including the Globe, had such a person on their staffs, but that’s pretty rare these days.

Even in the absence of an ombudsman, though, the Globe still owes us an explanation of what went wrong, and it should be published in a prominent spot.

An ombudsman could have explained what went wrong with the Globe’s MBTA story

A Red Line train at Charles/MGH. Photo (cc) 2018 by Eric F. James.

There was a time when many major news organizations, including The Boston Globe, had an ombudsman — a reader advocate who would report on the inside workings of the newsroom when problems arose.

Well, I’d really like to know what happened with the Globe’s reporting on MBTA managers who live far from Boston. The story was written by Andrea Estes and led Sunday’s print edition. It told a pretty compelling tale of inequity, with subway operators, bus drivers, maintenance workers and others required to show up to work every day while some of the agency’s top executives checked in from distant locales.

Trouble is, the story has now been appended with this:

Correction: Earlier versions of this story incorrectly reported that three MBTA managers live primarily in homes far from the T’s service area. Dennis Lytton, the deputy safety chief, has an apartment in Brighton and says he has not worked remotely since starting the job in February. Michele Stiehler, the T’s chief of paratransit, lives in Boston and walks to work. Jennifer Tabakin, who oversees the T’s South Coast Rail project, also has a home in Boston within walking distance of T headquarters.

Estes is a fine reporter who’s done a lot of important work, and it does appear that absentee executives really are a problem at the MBTA — but not these three. I think the Globe owes us an explanation. An ombudsman could have told that story.

Should the Globe have used private data to try to expose a toxic commenter?

Boston City Hall. Photo (cc) 2005 by Ken Lund.

A story in The Boston Globe reports that a caustic online commenter appears to be posting “vicious Internet attacks” against Mayor Michelle Wu and others from a city email address and a shared subscription used by city councilors and staff members. The comments have been published under the handle “Interested Party.”

Globe reporter Emma Platoff writes that “the comments posted by the Interested Party account stand out because they appear to be authored by one or more of those public officials’ colleagues — members of the City Council or council employees — according to account details and people with knowledge of the subscription.”

It’s not the first time I’ve seen a news outlet do this. The one that stands out in my mind involved a Haverhill city councilor who was exposed years ago by the local newspaper. I’ll get to that. But, first, more on the Globe’s story.

Although the Globe doesn’t have enough information to identify the person (or persons) behind the comments, Platoff appears to have used internal information provided by every user (“account details”) in order to get as far as she did. If you look at comments on the Globe’s website (or just about any other website), you won’t find any email addresses — that’s information you provide when you sign up, but it doesn’t appear alongside your screen name. Likewise, the Globe almost certainly has access to each commenter’s IP (internet protocol) address, which can help the paper locate where a user is based.

Nor does the Globe warn users that it reserves the right to use information commenters provide in order to track them down. If you try to post a comment, you’ll find guidelines that speak to what’s allowed and what isn’t; but there’s nothing about the possibility of being outed. (The guidelines refer not to the Globe but to its free sister site, Boston.com. I’m not sure whether that means the rules haven’t been updated for years or if it’s simply an indication that the same rules are in effect at both places.) Another message advises you, “This comment may appear on your public profile.” But when you click on the “Public Profile FAQ,” you hit a 404.

The question is whether it’s ethical to use information that the Globe’s subscribers freely give the paper in order to track them down. Users have a right to expect that their information won’t be used to violate their privacy. Platoff wasn’t able to expose “Interested Party,” but she’d clearly like to. Is that fair?

All of that brings me to the Haverhill situation I mentioned up top. In 2008, The Eagle-Tribune of North Andover reported that a Haverhill city councilor named James Donahue had posted comments on the paper’s website under at least 38 different screen names, an accusation that Donahue partly confirmed, though he claimed that some of the comments had actually been posted by someone else. As I wrote at the time, Donahue’s activities included lambasting the mayor and some of his colleagues. The Tribune apparently used the IP address attached to Donahue’s multitudinous screen names in order to locate him and to figure out that all those screen names were coming from the same computer. The Tribune defended its actions in an editorial:

It is not the general practice of this newspaper to seek the identity of those who comment on stories, although there is no explicit guarantee of anonymity. Virtually all the management of the comments section of the online edition is aimed at removing posts that are profane, racist or personal attacks.

However, one of the forum moderators noticed a pattern of posts under dozens of different names, and then discovered that they had all come from the same computer address. When it became clear that they were coming from the computer of an elected public official, it became our obligation to let the public know.

The average citizen does not take an oath to serve the public. An elected official does. An attempt to deceive the public is clearly not serving it, and a public official who does so is not only undeserving of the protection of confidentiality, but deserves public criticism.

I was uncomfortable with the Tribune’s actions, and I said so, writing: “It seems to me that the paper has chosen to humiliate Donahue for doing something the paper itself implicitly invited him to do, and that it used information available to no one else.” But many of my commenters disagreed with me and sided with the Tribune, arguing — as the paper itself had — that Donahue’s status as a public official overrode any expectations of online privacy that he might have had.

Which brings me back to the Globe and “Interested Party.” Arguably, there is a public-interest reason to try to expose the commenter. The comments are being posted by a public official or officials, whether they are members of the city council or employees. It’s a story, and it will be interesting to see whether the Globe is able to take the next step and name names. It makes me a little queasy, as The Eagle-Tribune’s actions did 15 years ago. On balance, though, I think my commenters were right in 2008 and that the Globe is right now.

A final observation: The Globe’s comments are a toxic-waste pit. The paper shouldn’t have them unless it’s willing to screen all of them before they’re posted. If that’s impossible, then get rid of them. Plenty of news organizations have, and no one seems to miss them.

The Globe and the Times publish remarkably similar stories about a troubled chef

It’s the end of the semester at Northeastern, so you’ll have to forgive me for weighing in rather late about the remarkably similar stories that The New York Times (free link) and The Boston Globe published about Barbara Lynch, a celebrity chef whose abusive behavior has finally caught up with her.

Although I’m speculating, what happened seems fairly obvious: Tim Dearing, the former lead chef at Menton, almost certainly contacted both papers after he told Lynch he was going to “drag” her when she fired him at a particularly volatile meeting following the overdose deaths of Dearing’s beloved predecessor, Rye Crofter, and a younger chef Crofter had mentored. No doubt both stories were close to being ready when one paper learned that the other was about to publish. Both stories were published Thursday within about a half-hour of each other.

Still, I’ve never seen anything like the structural similarities in two long stories like this. The Globe’s Janelle Nanos and the Times’ Julia Moskin open the same way, repeat many of the same anecdotes, reproduce the same sorry-not-sorry statement from Lynch (OK, that’s not surprising) and reach the same conclusion: that Lynch is out of control, and her chain of restaurants is in serious trouble. Please understand that I’m not suggesting any ethical violations here — it was just striking to see two good reporters approach the story in exactly the same way.

There was, though, one difference. The Times noted that Lynch is the first cousin of U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, a powerful South Boston Democrat, and has connections to the influential lobbyist Tom O’Neill, a former lieutenant governor. As my old colleague Adam Reilly of GBH News tweeted:

Adam’s implication is that the Globe should have included that fact as well, and I agree with him. Perhaps editors at the Globe decided not to pull Lynch’s connections into the story given that they are not responsible for her behavior. Still, readers may reasonably wonder if that had something to with why she got away with her act for as long as she has.

On the other hand, the Globe’s story, unlike the Times’, observes that the food has gone downhill at Lynch’s restaurants as her behavior has spiraled out of control. Nanos — with contributions from the paper’s food critic, Devra First, as well as reporter Dana Gerber — writes:

What’s more, restaurants have changed, in part reshaped in part by both the #MeToo movement and the pandemic. Long overlooked behavior is no longer being tolerated. Workers are demanding fairer treatment. And Lynch’s world of fine dining is shifting beneath her feet amid staffing shortages and rising food costs, particular challenges for the pricey, labor-intensive model of haute cuisine.

And indeed, on a recent evening, Menton seemed to have lost the luster of its early days, when the food was plated like precious jewels, both delicious and beautiful, and customers were cosseted by multiple servers at once. Menton now serves one $180 six-course chef’s tasting menu each night, but the dishes feel less inventive and refined than they did a decade ago when it first opened. Flavors are less precise, portion sizes are small, and the lag time between courses can be overly long. It was fine dining in the most literal sense of the word.

This is not an insignificant part of the story, and it’s telling that it appears in the local paper rather than in the outlet from out of town. The Globe also has some cringey details missing from the Times about crude T-shirts that Lynch wanted her employees to wear.

I have never eaten at any of Lynch’s restaurants as the prices are well out of my range. The food scene in Boston, though, is a vital part of our local culture, and the Globe has devoted a lot of resources to covering it over the years. It will be interesting to see whether Lynch’s problems are isolated, or if they represent the first cracks in that culture.

A remarkable set of front pages mark Trump’s day in a New York courtroom

Tuesday was, as we keep being told, historic. We don’t know what will happen to Donald Trump next, and he may be faced with more serious charges in Georgia and Washington. These front pages, though, tell quite a story about the former president’s arraignment on felony charges in New York. (From the Freedom Forum’s indispensable Today’s Front Pages website.)

Maine publisher Reade Brower says he’s ready to move on. So what comes next?

Portland Harbor. Photo (cc) 2021 by Paul VanDerWerf.

Maine newspaper publisher Reade Brower is getting ready to move on. Michael Shepherd and Lori Valigra of the Bangor Daily News, the only daily in Maine that Brower doesn’t own, reported on Thursday that the publisher is seeking to wind down his stewardship of the Portland Press Herald, four other daily papers and a number of weeklies.

In a follow-up by the Press Herald’s Eric Russell, Brower sounded like he isn’t in any hurry, and that he was not yet sure what the transition might look like. Brower put it this way in a memo to the staff:

The truth is I am beginning the search for what’s next, whether that be a new steward or perhaps partners willing to join me in carrying the torch. We are watching new ownership models emerge across the country from B-corporations to nonprofit efforts. Transparency has always been a pillar of journalism, and it’s important to me personally. That said, people will speculate because it is human nature. Over the past couple of years, I have been approached and looked at different pathways for the future but did not pull the trigger — either I wasn’t ready, I still felt my job was not completed, or the path just didn’t feel right.

A B-corporation is another name for a public benefit corporation — for-profit that is under no obligation to maximize earnings, allowing revenues to be reinvested in the mission. In the news world, some well-known B-corps include The Colorado Sun, Lookout Santa Cruz and, closer to home, The Provincetown Independent.

Brower, by all accounts, has been a decent steward of his Maine properties. More important, he’s kept the national chains out of the state, and he may well have outlasted them. Gannett is getting rid of papers, as Sarah Fischer of Axios observes, so it would be unlikely that the company would bring its special brand of looting and pillaging newsrooms to Portland The hedge fund Alden Global Capital hasn’t acquired anything for quite a while, so perhaps we can hope that its executives are content with their current holdings. As I told Russell, “Whether this has a happy ending or not depends on who steps forward as buyer.” If Brower’s memo is any indication, he cares about his legacy.

Brower came in after a tumultuous period at the Press Herald, which I recounted in my book “The Return of the Moguls.” In 2008, the paper’s then-owner, The Seattle Times, sold it to a businessman named Richard Connor, who promptly ran it into a ditch. Four years later, the paper was nearly sold to Aaron Kushner, a wealthy Boston-area tech entrepreneur who had previously been spurned in his bid to purchase The Boston Globe.

Union leaders at the Press Herald rebelled at Kushner’s demand for concessions. Kushner moved on, buying the Orange County Register in Southern California and steering it into bankruptcy after a massive, ill-advised expansion failed to produce the revenues he was hoping for. The Press Herald’s fortunes, meanwhile, began to improve. First, billionaire Donald Sussman stepped forward and ran the paper for a few years. Then, in 2015, Sussman was succeeded by Brower, a printer who lacked Sussman’s deep pockets but who cared about news coverage and kept cuts to a minimum.

The Press Herald and its affiliated newspapers have a reputation for doing things the right way, and Brower surely deserves credit for that. I hope this week’s news means the continuation of what he has accomplished — and not the beginning of the end.

 

The Globe’s long-awaited New Hampshire initiative finally goes live

How many times can you announce a launch? In the case of The Boston Globe’s New Hampshire edition, the answer appears to be: twice.

Several months after the news leaked out, the Globe today is formally unveiling its digital initiative in the Granite State, emulating its current efforts in Rhode Island. The two will even share an editor — the estimable Lylah Alphonse, my former colleague on GBH-TV’s “Beat the Press.”

It is remarkable that the Globe keeps expanding at a time when much of the newspaper business is imploding. Alphonse unveils the initiative and introduces the new team here.