By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
I took one of my favorite rides Saturday — from Danvers Center along the rail trail and then east and north to Wenham, Hamilton and Bradley Palmer State Park, south to Route 97 and back along the rail trail from the Topsfield Fairgrounds to Danvers, a little over 18½ miles. I also cruised around the Pingree School and took pictures of some of the outdoor art installations. Enjoy!
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Ellen Clegg and I will be at my old stomping grounds, the Peabody Institute Library of Danvers, on Tuesday, April 9, from 7 to 8 p.m. We’ll be talking about our book, “What Works at Community News,” followed by selling and signing. It would be great to see you there!
Sports builds character, we are told over and over again. And yet Massachusetts has been hit with multiple cases of racist, homophobic harassment aimed at high school athletes.
🗽The New England Muzzles🗽
The leading journalist tracking those cases is Bob Hohler of The Boston Globe, who’s reported on horrifying cases in Danvers, Woburn, Duxbury and elsewhere. Yet his efforts to dig deeper have been improperly thwarted by the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association. According to Hohler, the MIAA has refused to turn over incident reports in response to a public records request even though the secretary of state’s office has ruled that those records are, indeed, public. Hohler writes:
Details of the alleged misconduct remain untold because the MIAA denied the Globe’s request for copies of the incident reports. The denial follows a ruling by the Secretary of State’s office in November that the MIAA, despite the organization’s objections, is a public entity subject to the state’s public records law.
MIAA executive director Bob Baldwin told Hohler that his organization has chosen to ignore the public’s right to know because officials don’t want to discourage schools from reporting incidents of harassment. Yet the lesson of past incidents is that reforms often don’t occur without exposure. For instance, it was only after Hohler reported that Danvers officials had failed to respond to a “toxic team culture” on the boys’ varsity hockey team that the attorney general’s office investigated and local leaders agreed to a series of reforms centered around policies and training. Hohler’s reporting was also followed by several departures, including the retirement of School Supt. Lisa Dana.
More than anything, Hohler’s report on the MIAA this week underscores the inadequacies of the Massachusetts public records law. There are few consequences for officials who refuse to comply with the law, even when they ignore a direct ruling to turn over public documents, as the MIAA is reportedly doing with Hohler and the Globe.
According to Hohler, the MIAA “has received 50 reports involving discrimination, harassment, or bullying — nearly one a week on average while school has been in session — since the organization began requiring its 380 member schools to file discriminatory incident reports starting with the winter season in late 2021.” The public deserves to know more about those reports.
This is the time of year when I would be putting the finishing touches on the New England Muzzle Awards, an annual Fourth of July feature that highlights outrages against freedom of speech in the six New England states. From 1998 through 2012, the Muzzles were published in The Boston Phoenix. After the Phoenix closed in 2013, they were hosted at GBH News.
The one constant over all those years had been my friend Peter Kadzis’ role as editor at both the Phoenix and GBH. Following Peter’s well-earned retirement, I’ve decided that last year’s 25th anniversary edition will be the last. I’ll still track the kinds of stories that I used to highlight in the Muzzles, and the MIAA story would have been a natural. But rather than an annual round-up, I’m going to write them up in real time for Media Nation. You’ll notice a weak attempt at a logo near the top of this post. I’ll try to come up with something better.
I also want to express my appreciation to GBH News for hosting the Muzzles during the final 10 years of their existence, and to civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate, my friend and occasional collaborator, for coming up with the idea all those years ago.
We parked the car behind the Northshore Unitarian Universalist Church in Danvers earlier today and took a stroll along the Rail Trail and the Swamp Walk. Even after the recent rain, I have never seen it as dry.
I’ll be speaking today at 6:30 p.m. via Zoom about the future of local news at my old stomping grounds, the Peabody Institute Library in Danvers. Hope you can drop in! You can register here.
If you think the public is entitled to know about the security arrangements (or lack thereof) for 15-year-old murder suspect Philip Chism, then you should thank The Salem News.
Chism, charged with murdering Danvers High School teacher Colleen Ritzer, recently attacked a female youth worker at a detention center in Dorchester. The News went to court and asked that documents related to the case be released.
Today the News’ court reporter, Julie Manganis, writes that prosecutor Kate MacDougall had expressed concerns ahead of time that Chism should not be left alone with female staff. We also learn that Chism allegedly attacked the youth worker with a pencil, then “choked and beat her about the head.”
Even more alarming, MacDougall recently raised concerns about serious security lapses at the state’s Worcester Recovery Center and Hospital, where Chism is now being held.
The documents are online here.
This is important public-interest journalism, and it wouldn’t be possible if the News hadn’t been willing to devote legal resources to arguing for the release of the documents. The First Amendment requires that court proceedings be open to all. Good for the News, and good for Superior Court Judge Howard Whitehead, who ordered that the information be made public.
Wednesday evening from the backyard.
U.S. Senate candidate Dan Winslow calls himself “the Dan with a plan.” I am the Dan without a plan. But I do follow Winslow on Twitter. So when I saw that he was heading for Danvers Square, I walked the block and a half from my house to see if we could connect.
Winslow, one of three Republicans running in the primary on Tuesday, was greeting voters and meeting supporters at New Brothers. We’ve conversed so much on Twitter that it was hard to remember that this was actually our first meeting.
Winslow is as ebullient in person as he is on social media, touting his endorsement by the Springfield Republican as representing a “clean sweep” of Massachusetts newspapers. (Most notably, Winslow has been endorsed by both the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald.)
Still, the polls suggest that Winslow — a state representative, former judge and a top adviser to Mitt Romney when he was governor — is running third, behind former U.S. attorney Michael Sullivan and venture capitalist Gabriel Gomez. The winner will square off against one of two Democratic congressmen, Ed Markey or Stephen Lynch, in a special election to be held in June.
Winslow’s hopes would appear to rest on low turnout (likely to be especially low given how little attention the campaign has received following the Boston Marathon bombing) and his get-out-the-vote effort. His profile as a fiscally conservative, socially moderate Republican is one that has traditionally appealed to independent voters in Massachusetts. But he’s not well known, and there are only a few days to go.
Photo (cc) by Dan Kennedy. Some rights reserved.
I was hoping this would go away so quickly that I wouldn’t have to write about it. But today Ethan Forman of The Salem News reports that local business leaders think a 24-hour, seven-day slots parlor in Danvers would just be a wicked awesome way of boosting the North Shore economy.
No surprise that our local Mr. Potters are excited about the idea of turning my town into Pottersville. But it looks as though those of us who oppose casinos and slots are going to have to mobilize — or at least get ready to mobilize.
To that end, I’ve started a Facebook page, No Slots in Danvers, and I’m going to keep a close eye on developments. The last thing we need is 1,250 slot machines behind the Liberty Tree Mall, abutting a residential neighborhood.
As those of you who’ve been reading Media Nation for a few years know, I was a staunch opponent of plans to build a casino — at one time billed as the world’s largest — in my hometown of Middleborough. That plan collapsed, fortunately, and I hope this one will, too. At the very least, I find it hard to believe that the proposal would win a townwide referendum, no matter how many goodies the developers promise.
Just say no to slots and casinos.