‘Beat the Press’ hits Substack. Plus, Somerville news blues, and DigBoston co-founder Jeff Lawrence dies.

“Beat the Press with Emily Rooney” v.3.0 made its debut Thursday evening. Click on the image to watch the program.

“Beat the Press with Emily Rooney” is back — this time on Contrarian Boston, local journalist Scott Van Voorhis’ Substack newsletter. Emily, Scott and I kick around one topic: the epic media scandal that has engulfed Olivia Nuzzi and her ex-fiancé, Ryan Lizza, over Nuzzi’s non-touching sexual relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Nuzzi was pushed out of her high-profile job at New York magazine last year after Oliver Darcy of Status News broke the story about her affair. Although the magazine claimed it had uncovered no conflicts of interest, they were gilding the lily. Nuzzi wrote a devastating takedown of then-President Joe Biden before he ended his re-election campaign and while Kennedy was running for president in his own right. Later she penned an oddly sympathetic profile of Donald Trump while Kennedy was angling for a top job in a possible future Trump administration.

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The nonprofit Cambridge Day names a veteran journalist as its new editor

Michael Fitzgerald (via LinkedIn)

The nonprofit Cambridge Day is beefing up, hiring veteran journalist Michael Fitzgerald as its editor. Founding editor Marc Levy will remain on board as well.

For many years the Day operated as pretty much a one-person shop, but now it’s got a board of directors and regular contributors. It also offers a weekly print edition and offers some coverage of Somerville as well as Cambridge.

This is yet another example of a community stepping up to fill the gap left by the newspaper chain Gannett’s abandonment of its weekly newspapers in Eastern Massachusetts. Gannett shut down the venerable Cambridge Chronicle in 2022, ending its print edition and replacing local news on its Wicked Local website with irrelevant filler from around the region.

The full announcement of Fitzgerald’s hiring follows.

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