Tag: Gulf of Mexico

The AP goes local; plus, the National Trust runs into trouble in Colorado, and a call for de-Foxification

Photo cc (2023) by SWinxy

The Associated Press has been in the news a lot lately, both because of its feud with the White House over Donald Trump’s insistence that it refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” and for some cuts it’s had to implement (see Gintautus Dumcius’ story in CommonWealth Beacon and Aidan Ryan’s in The Boston Globe).

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But here’s some good news: The AP announced on Thursday that it’s creating a Local Investigative Reporting Program to support efforts at the community level. According to an annoucement by executive editor Julie Pace, the initiative will be headed by veteran AP editor Ron Nixon, who “will work with state and local outlets to cultivate stories and support their investigative reporting needs.”

The program will encompass training, resources and access to AP services, and will build on the agency’s Local News Success Team “to localize national stories for member audiences and provide services and support to newsrooms across the U.S.”

Continue reading “The AP goes local; plus, the National Trust runs into trouble in Colorado, and a call for de-Foxification”

In Mississippi, a shocking case of censorship. Plus, the AP ponders a lawsuit, and good news in Texas

Judge Crystal Wise Martin is sworn in by her mother, retired Judge Patricia Wise, in 2019. Photo via the Mississippi Office of the Courts.

In 1971, after a federal court stopped The New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers, the government’s secret history of the Vietnam War, the Supreme Court was so alarmed at that naked act of censorship that it took up the case in a matter of weeks. On a 6-3 vote, the court ruled that the Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and others could resume publishing, though they might face prosecution for revealing classified information. (They didn’t.)

In 1979, after a small magazine in Wisconsin called The Progressive said it intended to publish an article revealing some details about how to manufacture an atomic bomb, a federal judge stepped in and said no — but so agonized over his censorious act that he all but begged the magazine and the government to reach a compromise.

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Then there’s Judge Crystal Wise Martin of Mississippi. On Wednesday, Martin issued a temporary restraining order requiring The Clarksdale Press Register to take down an editorial from its website. According to Andrew DeMillo of The Associated Press, the editorial, headlined “Secrecy, Deception Erode Public Trust,” took city officials to task “for not sending the newspaper notice about a meeting the City Council held regarding a proposed tax on alcohol, marijuana and tobacco.”

The city had sued the Press Register, claiming that the editorial was libelous and that it “chilled and hindered” the council’s work. Mayor Chuck Espy was quoted in the AP story as saying the editorial had unfairly implied that officials had violated the law. He cited a section of the editorial that asked, “Have commissioners or the mayor gotten kick-back [see update below] from the community?”

Continue reading “In Mississippi, a shocking case of censorship. Plus, the AP ponders a lawsuit, and good news in Texas”

SEO in the age of paywalls: A new study examines best practices in driving subscriptions; plus, media notes

The Huffington Post’s “What Time Is the Super Bowl?” headline has been called “the most legendary act of SEO trolling ever.” 2016 photo via the Voice of America.

Recently a source in The Boston Globe newsroom forwarded to me a memo sent to the staff about the paper’s performance in Google search during 2024. “We get 25%-27% of our traffic from Google; it’s a significant way we reach people who don’t come to the Globe on their own,” wrote Ronke Idowu Reeves, the paper’s SEO editor. (SEO stands for search-engine optimization.)

As you might imagine, the big SEO winners in 2024 were the Karen Read trial, the phrase “who won the debate” (perhaps a reference to both presidential debates), the Celtics victory parade and Steward Health Care.

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The memo, though, prompted another thought: What is the purpose of SEO in the age of paywalls? As you probably know, the Globe has an especially strict paywall, with no quota of gift links for the month. I emailed Reeves and asked her whether SEO was successful in getting casual visitors to sign up for a digital subscription given that they couldn’t read even the one story they’d searched for. She forwarded my email to spokeswoman Carla Kath, who told me by email: “Yes, a good number of people do read and subscribe to our stories that they encounter on search. But, because the scope of search is constantly changing, we are always adjusting how we approach it.”

It’s something I’d like to dig into more deeply at some point since it’s fundamental to the economics of digital news. Twenty years ago, paywalls were rare, and the idea behind SEO was to drive massive audiences to your stories so that they’d see the ads that accompanied them. The first iteration of The Huffington Post stressed SEO heavily, and its infamous 2011 headline “What Time Is the Super Bowl?” has been called “the most legendary act of SEO trolling ever.”

Continue reading “SEO in the age of paywalls: A new study examines best practices in driving subscriptions; plus, media notes”

Trump punishes the AP for sticking with the Gulf of Mexico name

From Google Maps

The power to rename things and to demand that others recognize that power is something that is right out of the authoritarian’s playbook. So if you think Donald Trump’s insistence that we refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America isn’t a big deal, think again. By getting us to go along, he makes us complicit.

Earlier today I wrote that Google Maps is now using the Gulf of America name despite 400 years of custom and a complete lack of international support. Now comes more ominous news: The Associated Press, which issued style guidance that keeps it as the Gulf of Mexico, says the Trump administration denied AP journalists access to a White House event. Here is what AP executive editor Julie Pace said:

Today we were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office. This afternoon AP’s reporter was blocked from attending an executive order signing.

It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism. Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s speech not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment.

The AP Stylebook is the industry standard, used not just by the agency’s own journalists but by many other news organizations besides. I hope the AP stands firm.

And shame on Google. Throughout the day, I saw anti-Trump folks on social media announce they would switch to Apple Maps or Microsoft’s Bing Maps. It’s futile. They’re standing fast for now, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see one or both of them give in a few days from now.

The Globe reports on Maine’s troubled papers; plus, the Gulf of What?, and some recovery in DC and LA

Boston Globe media reporter Aidan Ryan has written an interesting examination of what’s gone wrong at the Portland Press Herald and other papers that are part of the Maine Trust for Local News.

On the one hand, the story feels provisional — we still don’t know why two top executives left suddenly, and severe cuts that observers had told me were coming are, well, still coming. The executives who left recently were Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, co-founder and CEO of the National Trust for Local News, which acquired the papers in 2023, and Lisa DeSisto, CEO of the Maine Trust — and, before that, publisher of the Press Herald. Other top people have departed as well.

On the other hand, Ryan has some details I hadn’t seen before. For one thing, the Trust reported that it lost $500,000 in 2024 as the decline of advertising outpaced gains in digital subscription revenue.

More shocking is that former owner Reade Brower apparently considered David Smith as a potential buyer before selling to the National Trust. Smith, the head of the right-wing television network Sinclair Broadcasting, is currently turning The Baltimore Sun into an embarrassment. Sinclair owns WGME-TV (Channel 13) in Portland, so who knows what sort of synergistic hell Smith had in mind.

Brower instead sold the papers to the National Trust for $15 million (a figure that’s being reported for the first time from documents that Ryan obtained) in the hope that a nonprofit organization would prove to be a better steward.

One data point I do want to address is Dr. Hansen Shapiro’s compensation, reported in the National Trust’s public 1099 filings and noted by both the Press Herald at the time that she stepped down and now by the Globe.

Hansen Shapiro did make a lot of money — nearly $371,000 in 2023 compared to just $117,000 in 2021. At the same time, though, 2021 was when the Trust pulled off its first deal, buying 24 weekly and monthly newspapers in the Denver suburbs. The Trust today owns 65 papers in Colorado, Georgia and Maine. Given the Trust’s pivot to a hands-on operating role, Hansen Shapiro’s job responsibilities changed as well.

I’m not writing this to defend her compensation or, for that matter, the Trust’s change of focus. But it’s important context to think about.

“Journalists employed by the Maine Trust said while they remain hopeful about the new ownership, they question aspects of its approach,” Ryan writes, who notes that no one among the rank and file would speak with him on the record “because they feared retaliation.”

Finally, my usual disclosures: Ellen Clegg and I interviewed Hansen Shapiro for our book, “What Works in Community News,” and featured her on our podcast; we are both professional friends with DeSisto; and we gave a book talk at a fundraiser for the Maine Trust last fall.

Google caves

I learned this last night from journalist Dan Gillmor’s Bluesky feed: Google has apparently become the first of the internet map publishers to give in to Donald Trump’s ridiculous demand that the Gulf of Mexico now be referred to as the Gulf of America.

“I typed Gulf of Mexico into Google Maps,” Gillmor wrote. “It edited my query without permission and showed me the Trump cult invention that isn’t and never will be the real thing.”

At least as of this writing, Apple Maps and Microsoft’s Bing Maps are sticking with the Gulf of Mexico. But who knows what we’ll find tomorrow?

After Trump announced that he was renaming the Gulf of Mexico and Denali mountain in Alaska (it is reverting back to Mount McKinley), The Associated Press issued guidance for its bureaus and any other news outlets who use its stylebook.

The AP will continue to refer to the Gulf of Mexico, which is an international body of water whose name has 400 years of tradition behind it; but it will go along with Mount McKinley because it is entirely on U.S. territory. It was only in 2015 that President Barack Obama issued an order restoring the mountain’s original Indigenous name.

By the way, the U.S. Geological Survey is going with Gulf of America too — but that’s hardly surprising given that it’s a federal agency.

No thanks to their owners

Good work is the best answer to the damage that two billionaire owners have done to their storied newspapers.

Semafor reports that The Washington Post has seen an upsurge in web traffic since Trump’s chaotic return to office, notwithstanding owner Jeff Bezos’ untimely killing of a Kamala Harris endorsement just before the election. One especially hot story: a report on the White House’s illegal federal spending freeze.

Meanwhile, Sarah Scire reports for Nieman Lab that the Los Angeles Times experienced a rise in paid subscriptions during the recent wildfires even though the paper had temporarily dropped its paywall. Like Bezos, LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong canceled a Harris endorsement, provoking outrage, resignations and cancellations.

A political speech that fell short

I wasn’t sure why President Obama decided to deliver his first Oval Office speech on the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. I’m even less sure now. If he had been in the habit of giving regular White House news conferences, this would have been an ideal occasion for him to make a 10-minute statement and take questions. Instead, he raised expectations and failed to meet them. It was an entirely political speech, driven by perceived political need.

Understand that I’m talking about rhetoric, not reality. In fact, I don’t have a huge problem with the way the federal government has responded for two simple reasons: It didn’t cause the explosion, and it can’t stop the gusher. Those are the facts. Everything else pales in importance.

I’ll be rounding up media reaction for the Guardian tomorrow morning. No doubt the right will hammer him. Based on the initial reaction of Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman on MSNBC, it looks like liberals are going to hammer him as well. It’s going to be an interesting morning.

Go Celtics!