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

Tag: Frontline

Boston.com hires an editor and a deputy editor

Tim Molloy (via LinkedIn)

Tim Molloy (via LinkedIn)

Well, this seems promising. Boston.com finally has an editor — and a new deputy editor as well. Even better, both of them have high-level editing experience, digital chops and local roots. The new editor is Tim Molloy, currently digital engagement editor at PBS’s “Frontline.” His deputy will be Kaitlyn Johnston, executive digital editor at Boston magazine. Their appointments take effect on March 16.

Other than generating clicks, it’s been unclear what Boston.com’s mission was supposed to be when it was relaunched last year and stripped of Boston Globe content. In a recent piece for WGBH News, I suggested turning it into an arts-and-entertainment site, filling the void left when my former employer, The Boston Phoenix, went under two years ago. (That post also provides some background on Boston.com’s woes, which is why I’m not rehashing them here.)

Kaitlin Johnston (via LinkedIn)

Kaitlyn Johnston (via LinkedIn)

In any event, I look forward to seeing what Molloy and Johnston can bring to the digital table. The press release follows.

Boston.com, one of the nation’s most highly trafficked regional news websites, today announced the appointments of Tim Molloy as Editor and Kaitlyn Johnston as Deputy Editor, effective March 16.

Molloy joins Boston.com from PBS’s Frontline, where he served as the Digital Engagement Editor after amassing nearly twenty years of experience as an editor and reporter at  TheWrap.com, TVGuide.com and The Associated Press.

Johnston comes to Boston.com after having served as the Executive Digital Editor for Boston Magazine, where she directed all facets of the digital operation.

Corey Gottlieb, Executive Director, Digital Strategy & Operations and General Manager of Boston.com, looks forward to working with Molloy and Johnston.

“I could not be more excited to welcome these two dynamic news professionals onto our team,” said Gottlieb. “Tim’s blend of vision and presence make him the embodiment of the journalistic values that should resonate through every story we choose to tell on the site. Kaitlyn’s proven ability to craft stories that reflect Boston to the rest of the world will be invaluable as we continue to shape Boston.com’s editorial mission with such narratives at our core,” said Gottlieb.

The pair’s responsibilities will span the entirety of Boston.com’s editorial operation, including: developing and executing on content strategy for the site; management of all editorial staff; development of new initiatives; audience retention and expansion; and strategic long-term planning for the brand.

During much of his career, Molloy has also been responsible for audience engagement and has worked across diverse constituents managing multiple media channels, from print to online and broadcast media. Molloy readily steps into his role: “As an online editorial and multimedia professional, I am compelled by news environments that seek to deliver content in dynamic ways. Boston.com has taken ambitious strides in that direction over the past year; the opportunity to build on that is what drew me to this role. I think we have the chance to become one of the most powerful storytelling entities in the country,” commented Molloy.

Before moving to Boston, Johnston worked as Digital Editor of Pittsburgh Magazine and earned a Master’s Degree in Media Arts & Technology at Duquesne University. Johnston echoes Molloy’s enthusiasm: “I am looking forward to joining Boston.com, a thriving platform whose audience makes this a truly unique opportunity. The site has a large, diverse and highly engaged community of web, social and mobile readers who use Boston.com to discover, experience, and share news and information about all things Boston,” she said.

Goldsmiths honor journalism in the public interest

b_kirtzBy Bill Kirtz

It started with one miner’s medical and legal nightmare and developed like a John Grisham novel. And finally it led to extensive reform of black lung diagnosis.

The Center for Public Integrity’s and ABC News’ yearlong work won it the $25,000 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting this week.

It took a medical database and exhaustive scrutiny of previously classified legal findings to produce the series. But Chris Hamby, the Center’s lead reporter, told a Harvard audience on Thursday that his research began with a plight “you just couldn’t ignore”: miner Gary Fox’s “outrageous” treatment by doctors and lawyers.

While Hamby circumvented privacy laws by getting miners’ consent to view their records, ABC News producer Matthew Mosk discovered a law firm that operated “like a John Grisham novel.”

As in past years, finalists for the Goldsmith awards, administered by the Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, included much such collaboration between media and public service organizations. Goldsmith winners and finalists are traditionally seen as front-runners for Pulitzer Prizes, which will be announced next month.

• The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which bills itself as “the world’s best cross-border investigative team,” used Australian, Chinese and British reporters to reveal a universe of offshore money manipulation that has sparked international tax investigations.

ICIJ director Gerald Ryle said he was leaked 2.5 million files via hard drive and is proud that none of his operation’s anonymous informants has been caught. The 50-article series provides important context into powerful figures’ financial machinations. “We didn’t want to be Wikileaks and just dump documents,” he said.

While Ryle said his reporting was attacked in the Australian Senate and drew four libel suits, he noted that a Chinese colleague has faced even more danger. Kevin Lau, the former chief editor of the Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao, was fired and then critically wounded in an attack last month. Ming Pao was one of ICIJ’s partners in the Offshore Leaks investigation.

• Another wide-ranging project was a bilingual multimedia revelation of widespread sexual assault against immigrant women by the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism, the Center for Investigative Reporting, “Frontline,” Univision and KQED.

Reporter Andres Cediel said it took 18 months after an anonymous tip to produce the series, which has sparked criminal charges and pending legislation. The problem: he was committed to telling their story in a human way, but the victims were afraid to talk on camera. His colleague Bernice Young said it took countless trips going door to door to gain their trust. “It was a long, slow process to build a relationship,” she said.

“Frontline” producer-correspondent Lowell Bergman, lead reporter on the project, noted that this was Univision’s first foray into investigative reporting and predicted more such efforts in foreign language media.

• Shorenstein director Alex Jones said the free weekly Miami New Times was “punching above its weight” when it tackled the steroid industry.

New Times managing editor Tim Elfrink, who noted his paper had previously done investigative reporting on a very local scale, said the series started when a whistleblower came to him irate over a $4,000 dispute. The informant gave him a bunch of confusing documents about a Biogenesis operation running out of a Coral Gables strip mall. Elfrink called thousands of clients’ phone numbers — getting rejected 90 percent of the time — but eventually scanned court records to uncover the shady records of some clinic operators.

The stories, which have won a prestigious Polk Award, led to the suspension of 13 baseball players and changed how baseball owners and players approach drug use.

• Seeking national impact and backed by supportive news executives, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel scoured medical records throughout the country to expose potentially fatal flaws in newborn screening. Lead reporter Ellen Garber led a five-person team through a maze of withheld data and official denials.

When her data requests were denied, she had to negotiate state by state for records — finally penetrating the system by discovering that Arizona had kept detailed records of newborns babies from a small Native American tribe. She then confronted the head of that state’s health department, who finally released complete records.

Garber said the series, which has won the Taylor Award for fairness in journalism and the prestigious Selden Ring award for the year’s top investigative work, has had an “incredible impact,” revamping the system so blood samples arrive promptly.

• The Wall Street Journal’s Michael M. Phillips doesn’t consider himself an investigative reporter, but after covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he followed up his novelist brother’s discussions with a psychiatric researcher. This led to the discovery of secret lobotomies of servicemen after World War II.

His problem was to find out how widespread this pattern was. Freedom of Information requests denied, he turned to the National Archives, which he recommends as a fertile source of vintage information. He unearthed 18 boxes of surgical records filed under “L” — lobotomy. He picked the cases with unusual names, thinking their families would be easier to trace after more than 60 years. The multimedia presentation revealed that more than 2,000 servicemen were lobotomized, and he was able to portray some surviving victims.

• Putting a human face on a “numbers” story is a perennial challenge for investigative reporters.

Reuters staffers Scot Paltrow and Kelly Carr found egregious and widespread Defense Department accounting mistakes. Their editors shared the view of the subject’s importance but wrestled with how to make it interesting.

“Vast amounts of dollars resonates little,” said Paltrow. So they settled on a human-interest beginning to show how massive programs affect individuals:

EL PASO, Texas — As Christmas 2011 approached, U.S. Army medic Shawn Aiken was once again locked in desperate battle with a formidable foe…. This time, he was up against the U.S. Defense Department. Aiken, then 30 years old, was in his second month of physical and psychological reconstruction at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, after two tours of combat duty had left him shattered…. But the problem that loomed largest that holiday season was different. Aiken had no money. The Defense Department was withholding big chunks of his pay.

Bill Kirtz is an associate professor of journalism at Northeastern University.

A crowdsourced documentary

No one spoke the word “crowdsourcing.” But that was the theme of a presentation Thursday evening by “Frontline” producer Rachel Dretzin, whose next documentary, “Digital Nation,” will be a collaborative effort between her team and visitors to the “Digital Nation” Web site. “Digital Nation” is an attempt to explain how our dependence on — and obsession with — the Internet is changing our culture for better and for worse.

Dretzin is putting all of her footage and interviews online. There’s a blog tracking progress of the documentary. A series of interactive chats is under way. And folks are encouraged to submit their own video and audio commentaries about the good, the bad and the ugly aspects of online existence. There’s even a recommended “Digital Nation” hashtag (#dig_nat) for Twitter users.

“There is absolutely no way to be an expert. This is all of our story,” said Dretzin in an appearance at WGBH-TV (Channel 2), where “Frontline” is based. (Disclosure: I am a paid contributor to another WGBH program, “Beat the Press.”)

The idea, she added, is that rather than making the film in isolation and then getting reaction from the audience, the reaction would come first, followed by the documentary, which will come out sometime in 2010. “It’s an experiment for all of us,” she said.

Dretzin’s last “Frontline” film was 2008’s “Growing Up Online.” As was the case with that film, the author Douglas Rushkoff will be the on-camera correspondent in “Digital Nation.”

Collaborative journalism that combines the efforts of professionals and amateurs — sometimes called “crowdsourcing” — is one of the more promising developments to arise from Internet-based news ventures. New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen, a leading new-media thinker, refers to such amateurs as “the people formerly known as the audience.”

The challenge for Dretzin is to integrate what the former audience has to say into her film, rather than merely featuring it as an online adjunct.

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