American hostage Ann Swift shortly after her release in January 1981. Public domain photo by the Department of Defense.
The October Surprise. These days the phrase is often used to describe fears that a political campaign will drop some sort of bombshell in the final weeks before Election Day.
Then-FBI Director James Comey’s reopening of the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016 would certainly qualify, though there was no evidence that the Trump campaign was behind it — nor, for that matter, any evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton.
So, too, would the Hunter Biden laptop story of 2020, though the Trumpers who were behind it were hampered by the inconvenient fact that they’d targeted the wrong Biden.
But I don’t think anyone used the phrase October Surprise until 1980, when it was used to describe something that Ronald Reagan and his associates feared would happen but ultimately did not: the release of more than 50 American hostages who had been held by Iran for many months. If President Jimmy Carter brought them home just before the election, it could have given him the boost he needed to win a second term. Continue reading “The October Surprise, 44 years on; plus, extremism at home, and more on sponsored content”
I want to let you know about one of the biggest events that Ellen Clegg and I have had to discuss our book, “What Works in Community News.” We’ll take part in a public conversation on Tuesday, Oct. 15, at 7 p.m. at the Roux Institute in Portland, Maine. The institute is part of Northeastern University. You can register here.
The program is part of the “Newsroom Live” series, sponsored by the Maine Trust for Local News, the nonprofit owner of the Portland Press Herald and a number of other daily and weekly newspapers and digital publications.
The Maine Trust was created several years ago after the media properties were acquired by the National Trust for Local News, a nonprofit that has also purchased papers in suburban Denver and Georgia to prevent them from falling into the hands of corporate chain owners.
We write about the National Trust and include a conversation with its executive director, Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, in our book. In addition, I wrote about the Press Herald’s pre-Trust ownership struggles in his 2018 book, “The Return of the Moguls.”
The Texas state capitol in Austin. Photo (cc) 2022 by Joe Passe.
If local and regional news is going to survive, we need to find a path for profit-seeking enterprises. The nonprofit sector is becoming increasingly dominant, at least among startups that have any sort of significant reporting capacity. Yet after Ellen Clegg and I finished up our book, “What Works in Community News,” three of the for-profits that we wrote about switched to the nonprofit model: The Colorado Sun, The Mendocino Voice and Santa Cruz Local.
So I was heartened to learn that a new for-profit news site will debut in Texas this Monday. Max Tani reports for Semafor that Barbed Wire, which will cover politics, culture and entertainment, is a for-profit enterprise that’s pursuing advertising and voluntary memberships.
I’m not sure that Barbed Wire will be entirely for-profit, as Tani writes that “the outlet said it had a mix of private investors and nonprofit grants behind it.” But today’s successful for-profits often have a relationship with nonprofits so that they can raise tax-exempt money for public-interest journalism. Those include not just for-profit startups like The Provincetown Independent but also legacy newspapers like The Boston Globe, The Berkshire Eagle of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and The Seattle Times.
Barbed Wire is expected to report statewide news with a point of view, and it’s connected with a number of Democratic political figures, according to Tani. We’ll have to see how that plays out, since Tani reports that the site “won’t necessarily be neutral on issues like climate change or abortion” but “is not explicitly partisan.”
That stands in contrast with the state’s largest nonprofit news outlet, The Texas Tribune, which is decidedly nonpartisan. Texas is also home to statewide outlets like Texas Monthly and The Texas Observer, so Barbed Wire is entering crowded territory. But Texas is a big state.
The Star Tribune of Minneapolis has been something of a doppelgänger for The Boston Globe as well as a model. Like the Globe, the Strib, as it is known, has emerged as a profitable, growing enterprise under the guidance of a billionaire sports owner.
In Boston, of course, that’s John Henry, who’s also the principal owner of the Red Sox. In Minneapolis, it’s Glen Taylor, the principal owner of the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves. Both men have other sports interests as well. I wrote about Henry’s struggles with the Globe in my 2018 book “The Return of the Moguls”; the paper didn’t really take off until sometime after that. My collaborator Ellen Clegg wrote about the Star Tribune in our 2024 book, “What Works in Community News.”
The parallels don’t stop there. The Globe, formerly a New England-wide paper that had contracted to Eastern Massachusetts, has been expanding in recent years, with editions in Rhode Island and New Hampshire and more to come. Executives at the Strib have been working to re-establish the paper as a Minnesota-wide entity.
Now the Strib has taken the next step. In a post for our website, What Works, Ellen writes about the Strib’s rebranding as The Minnesota Star Tribune and the innovative approach being taken by the Strib’s new opinion editor, Phillip Morris. Among other things, Morris is building up an ambitious roster of community writers known as Strib Voices and has abolished political endorsements in favor of a deeper dive into candidates and issues — something Ellen, as a retired editorial-page editor at the Globe, takes a keen interest in.
I’d be surprised if the Globe drops endorsements. Indeed, the paper just unveiled its first endorsement of the 2024 election, backing Mara Dolan in the Democratic primary for Governor’s Council. But at a time when they are increasingly seen as an anachronism, and with even The New York Times ending local and statewide endorsements, I’d also be surprised if it’s not at least being talked about at the Globe.
File this under “the wheels of justice grind slowly”: The former Kansas police chief who ordered an illegal raid against a newspaper office and two private homes one year ago has been charged with felony obstruction of justice.
The single charge against former Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody alleges that he knowingly or intentionally influenced the witness to withhold information on the day of the raid of the Marion County Record and the home of its publisher or sometime within the following six days.
For those of you who have been following this case from the start, the charge pertains to a restaurant owner whose driving records were obtained by the newspaper. The records were obtained legally, and the paper never actually wrote about them, but Cody claimed the paper violated the law because of a statutory quirk. It later turned out that the Record was investigating Cody’s wrongdoing at his previous job — something that was entirely unrelated to the restaurant owner.
Last month, former Record reporter Deb Gruver reached a $235,000 settlement in her federal lawsuit against Cody, whom she accused of grabbing her cellphone and injuring her hand.
Publisher Eric Meyer is suing local officials over the death of his 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, who was stricken a day after officers entered her home and rifled through her property.
Here are a few other developments on the local news front:
In New York City, WCBS-AM is ending its 60-year run as an all-news station, a move that The New York Times reports will claim 23 jobs. The station’s owner, Audacy, will continue with an all-news format on WINS-FM. New York is also the home of WNYC-FM, a large public station devoted to news and information.
Times Media Group, a newspaper chain based in Tempe, Arizona, has gone on a rampage of cuts at four weekly papers and a semi-monthly that it acquired in Southern California recently. Thomas Corrigan, who writes the Inland Empire MediaWatch newsletter, reports that editors at three of the weeklies have been fired and that the new owner has cracked down on freelance expenses as well. Corrigan observes that the papers will “lose years of institutional and community knowledge.”
Michael Aron, regarded as the dean of New Jersey’s press corps, has died at the age of 78. Aron spent the latter part of his career as a political reporter at NJ Spotlight News, one of the projects that Ellen Clegg and I write about in our book, “What Works in Community News.”
Endorsements of political candidates are fading into history. The latest blow was struck on Monday, when The New York Times said it would no longer endorse in local races (free link), although it will continue to endorse in the presidential contest.
In terms of influence, this has it exactly backwards. May we presume that the Times will endorse the Harris-Walz ticket this fall? Yes, we may. Meanwhile, readers in New York City and across the state — admittedly a shrinking share of the Times’ 10 million-plus subscribers, most of them digital — might genuinely want some guidance in deciding whom to vote for in state and local contests.
But there’s no turning back. Increasingly, communities are served by nonprofit local news organizations, which risk losing their tax-exempt status if they endorse candidates or specific pieces of legislation. As Tom Jones notes at Poynter Online, papers owned by the Alden Global Capital hedge fund stopped endorsing in 2022. Those include some of the largest papers in the country, such as New York’s Daily News, the Chicago Tribune and The Denver Post. Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper chain, has cut back on opinion, including endorsements.
A newspaper endorsement is a recommendation to vote for a particular candidate written in the institutional voice of the news organization. At larger newspapers, editorial boards comprising the staff of the opinion section and sometimes some outside members make those decisions in consultation with the publisher. In many cases these boards interview the candidates before making their decision.
The opinion section of a newspaper is entirely separate from the news staff, with the editor and the editorial-page editor reporting directly to the publisher, who may or may not be the owner of the paper as well. Publishers have been known to overturn the editorial board’s recommendation — that’s their prerogative. At smaller papers these lines tend to get blurred. At now-defunct Boston Phoenix, where I worked for many years, the editorial board comprised publisher Stephen Mindich and the news staff. Then again, the Phoenix, as an alt-weekly, mixed opinion and reporting, so the wall separating news from commentary didn’t really exist.
There was a time when rich men bought newspapers mainly so that they could express their political views, with the news section taking a back seat to the editorial page. These days, though, endorsements are often regarded by political reporters as a hindrance in their efforts to convince candidates who were not endorsed by the opinion section that they will cover them fairly. My conversations with students over the years have led me to believe that they are skeptical of the whole notion of a news outlet speaking as an institution, and that they’re more comfortable with signed opinion pieces such as those that typically appear on the op-ed page.
When a local news organization chooses not to endorse, either on principle or to keep the IRS at bay, it loses an opportunity to share its expertise with its audience. For instance, the nonprofit New Haven Independent covers a city that is served a 30-member board of alders, as the city council is known. How is anyone supposed to keep track?
But there are other steps a news outlet can take. It can put together a guide to where candidates stand on the issues and link to that guide every time it publishes a story on that particular race. The guide can take the form of a series of articles or an issues grid — or both. And I should add that the Independent covers city politics with depth and fairness.
If you’re interested in learning more about this topic, Ellen Clegg and I talked with Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby about endorsements on our “What Works” podcast back in 2022. Ellen, who’s a retired editorial-page editor for the Globe which continues to endorse in state and local elections, is pro-endorsement; Jeff is against them. I’m (uncharacteristically) in the middle.
I’ll be speaking this Monday, Aug. 12, from 1 to 2 p.m. on “What Works: The Future of Local News” as part of the Summer Institute for Journalism Education at Fitchburg State University. The event will be held at the Fitchburg Historical Society at 781 Main St. and is free and open to the public.
I’ll discuss what caused the local news crisis as well as “What Works in Community News,” the book that Ellen Clegg and I wrote about possible solutions. The three-day conference features a great lineup of speakers from journalism, public access television and academia, so I hope you’ll check it out. Please register here.
Well, this was fun. Ellen Clegg and I recently spoke about “What Works in Community News” with Charlotte Henry, the U.K.-based host of “The Addition,” a podcast about tech, media and politics. Charlotte turns out to be a sharp interviewer with a sense of humor, so we hope you’ll give it a listen. Here’s part one, and here’s part two. Of course, you can also subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Cambridge City Hall. Photo (cc) 2010 by andrew_cosand
Government assistance for journalism exists along a continuum. Media scholars such as Paul Starr and Victor Pickard have observed that the American press got an enormous boost starting in Colonial times by way of generous postal subsidies — a benefit that lasted until several decades ago, when market fundamentalists began demanding that the Postal Service cover its expenses. Public notices — advertisements that government agencies and corporations are legally obliged to take out in order to publicize certain types of meetings, contracts, bids and the like — are another form of subsidy.
As the local news crisis has deepened, other ideas have been put forward. As Ellen Clegg and I write in our book, “What Works in Community News,” an independent board in New Jersey, the Civic Information Consortium, has awarded some $5.5 million to fund reporting and information projects over the past few years. In California, a $25 million appropriation is paying the salaries of recent master’s degree journalism graduates at UC Berkeley to cover underserved communities over a three-year period. Legislators in New York and Illinois are moving toward approving tax credits for local news publishers to hire and retain journalists after similar efforts at the federal level have stalled.
The challenge is to keep government assistance as indirect as possible so that journalism can maintain its vital role as an independent monitor of power. Which is why an idea that’s being discussed in Cambridge goes too far.
Boston Globe reporter Spencer Buell writes that the City Council is considering a proposal to set aside $100,000 a year in public money to support local news over the next three years. If enacted, the money, to be administered by an independent board, could be awarded to Cambridge Day, a longtime and well-regarded local newspaper, as well as other outlets. Among the proponents: Cambridge News Matters, a nonprofit that has been working with Cambridge Day and could partner with others as well. (Disclosure: I’ve offered some advice and counsel to Cambridge News Matters when I’ve been asked, and I told them just recently that I thought this was a dubious idea.)
Mary McGrath of Cambridge News Matters told Buell: “We heard loud and clear that quality local journalism is critical to democracy, that you can’t have a cohesive community without an informed citizenry. The business model to deliver this kind of journalism is broken.” Buell also interviewed me. Here’s what I told him:
We want local news organizations to be able to cover government and other institutions and keep an eye on them — not always in an adversarial way, but always in an independent way. If you’re going to have a direct transfer of money from local government to local news organizations, you’ve lost that. So I just don’t think this is a good idea.
Philosophical objections aside, what’s being discussed is pretty short money to put journalistic independence at risk. As Buell notes, Cambridge News Matters hopes to raise several million dollars in private donations over the next few years. The Boston area is home to many local news startups that were launched in response to the giant newspaper chain Gannett’s abandonment of its weekly newspapers, including the Cambridge Chronicle. None of them, whether nonprofit or for-profit, has had to rely on direct government funding.
I’m a longtime admirer of Cambridge Day and its editor, Marc Levy, as well of McGrath and the folks at the nonprofit. I would love to see more local news coverage in Cambridge than Marc is currently able to provide, and I have no doubt that everyone involved in this would make strenuous efforts not to be influenced by any government funding they might receive. But I just don’t see how this is the way to go.
Gordon Borrell may not be a name who’s familiar to you, but he’s a big deal in the world of local news: he’s the CEO of Borrell Associates, based in Williamsburg, Virginia, whose business is “tracking, analyzing, and forecasting 100% of what local businesses in the U.S. spend on all forms of advertising and marketing, right down to the county level for all markets.”
Over the weekend, he appeared on “E&P Reports,” the vodcast hosted by Mike Blinder, publisher of the trade magazine and website Editor & Publisher. Blinder was excited enough to contact me and make sure I gave it a listen. I did, and if you’re interested in the future of advertising for local news outlets, you’ll want to check it out.
Essentially, Borrell offered some basic wisdom about what community journalism organizations need to do if they want to compete successfully for advertising. They need to offer quality local content. And they need to be able to provide prospective advertisers with “first-party data.” That means information about their audience that they collect themselves rather than relying on distribution via third-party platforms. In other words: newsletters, yes; Facebook, no, at least not as a primary means of distribution.
Because Borrell is placing renewed emphasis on local content, he’s moving his annual conference from Miami to the Walter Cronkite journalism school at Arizona State University.
Pretty wonky stuff, but it validates a lot of what Ellen Clegg and I have written about successful local news outlets in our book, “What Works in Community News.” They have to make themselves essential to their communities, and the way to do that is to be present in people’s lives. Irrelevant content from distant locales, the strategy that corporate-owned newspaper chains are pursuing, appeals neither to readers nor to advertisers.
Moreover, at a time when nonprofit has proven to be the path forward for many local media organizations, Borrell holds out the hope that for-profit news can succeed as well. That said, Borrell is pessimistic enough that he told Blinder he thinks we’ve entered the “final phase” of local news. The goal is to be one of the survivors.
