Boston Globe editor Nancy Barnes has sent a message to her staff that speaks to the strains of covering the war between Israel and Hamas. The Globe doesn’t have any journalists who are actually reporting on the conflict from the Middle East, but it regularly publishes news from wire services, and that leads to complaints from readers about tone and emphasis. Her message, provided by a trusted source, follows.
Dear all,
The war between Israel and Hamas has had far-reaching consequences, with strong sentiments and emotions rippling throughout communities around the world. It is being felt by every major institution in the country, the media writ large, our own newsroom, and our colleagues.
Questions have been raised by readers, subscribers and staffers about how we are framing the conflict, the choice of photos we make, the headlines we write, and the adjectives we use to describe these awful events. Every decision is scrutinized.
We want you to know that we take these questions very seriously as we grapple with how to tell this important story carefully and fairly, knowing that our choices will not make everyone happy,
We are discussing this as a leadership group. We have reached out to other newsrooms and standards and practices editors around the country to hear how they are weighing these issues. We have been listening to concerns staff members have raised with us, and we appreciate your willingness to bring those to us. Based on that input, [managing editor] Jen Peter and [senior assistant managing editor for production] Mary Creane have convened a small group to debate on an ongoing basis whether we need to issue any new style guidance. We generally follow the Associated Press stylebook, but not always.
None of this is easy, and we know it’s especially hard on those of you whose personal and family histories are enmeshed in this conflict. My door is open, and I will make myself available to anyone who has thoughts they want to share.
The release of a new report by Penelope Muse Abernathy on the state of local news is always a big deal. For 15 years now, she’s been tracking the extent of the crisis, and has done more than anyone to popularize the phrase “news deserts,” which describes communities without a source of reliable news and information. This week Abernathy, now at Northwestern University’s Medill School, issued “The State of Local News 2023.” It’s a downbeat report, although there are a few bright spots. Here’s a key finding:
The data and insights collected and analyzed in this 2023 report on The State of Local News paint the picture of a country and society increasingly divided between the journalism-have’s — mostly residents in more affluent cities and suburban areas where alternative news sources are gaining traction — and the journalism have-not’s, those in economically struggling and traditionally underserved metro, suburban and rural communities. This partitioning of our citizenry poses a far-reaching crisis for our democracy as it simultaneously struggles with political polarization, a lack of civic engagement and the proliferation of misinformation and information online.
Before I continue, a disclosure: Abernathy, who’s been a guest on our “What Works” podcast about the future of local news, was kind enough to provide a pre-publication endorsement of the book that Ellen Clegg and I have written, “What Works in Community News,” which comes out in January.
Abernathy’s principal collaborator on the new report is Sarah Stonbely, director of Medill’s State of Local News Project, who I interviewed in 2022 when she was at the Center for Cooperative Media, part of Montclair State University in New Jersey.
If you’d like a good summary of Abernathy and Stonbely’s report, I recommend Sarah Fischer’s overview in Axios, which leads with the prediction that the U.S. will have lost one third of its newspapers by the end of 2024.
The cleavage between affluent urban and suburban areas and less affluent urban and rural areas is one of the major challenges Abernathy and Stonbely identify, and it’s definitely something that Ellen and I noticed in our reporting for “What Works in Community News.” I recall asking folks at the start-up Colorado Sun why they were trying to stretch their resources to cover stories across the state rather than focusing on Denver. The answer: the Denver metro area was already fairly well served despite massive cuts at The Denver Post, owned by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital. By contrast, there was very little news coverage in the more rural parts of the state.
As Abernathy and Stonbely put it: “The footprint for alternative local news outlets — approximately 550 digital-only sites, 720 ethnic media organizations and 215 public broadcasting stations — remains very small and centered around metro areas.” Indeed, this chart tells a rather harrowing tale. As you can see, people who live in news deserts are considerably less affluent and less educated than the national average.
The report also includes a section called “Bright Spots in the Local News Landscape.” Although the interactive map is a little hard to navigate, I can see that several projects that Ellen and I profile in “What Works in Community News” are included, such as NJ Spotlight News, the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, The Texas Tribune, The Colorado Sun and the Daily Memphian.
The report also highlights The Boston Globe as one of its good-news stories, observing that, under the ownership of John and Linda Henry, the paper has thrived on the strength of its digital subscriptions. In a sidebar, Tom Brown, the Globe’s vice president of consumer analytics, tells Abernathy that digital growth continues, although at a slower rate than during the COVID pandemic. Retention is down slightly, too. “We are nonetheless still seeing overall strong retention,” Brown says, “and we are investing in several areas of the business with the goal of engaging subscribers more and, in particular, our new subscribers.”
Editor Nancy Barnes adds that though the Globe is ramping up its coverage of the Greater Boston area as well as in Rhode Island and New Hampshire, it can’t fill the gap created by the gutting and closure of local weekly papers at the hands of Gannett, the giant newspaper chain that until recently dominated coverage of the Boston suburbs and exurbs.
“Having returned to Boston after many years away, I have been stunned by the decimation of local newspapers across Massachusetts and New England,” Barnes says. “However, our coverage strategy is not tied to specific Gatehouse newspaper communities [a reference to Gannett’s predecessor company]. We cover greater Boston in depth, but we don’t have the bandwidth to be the local news source for everyone.”
This week’s Medill report is the first of a multi-part series. Future chapters will be released over the next few weeks and into January.
CommonWealth Beacon has just published a story by its editor, Bruce Mohl, shedding some light on an exceedingly strange episode from earlier this year: The Boston Globe’s decision to fire veteran investigative reporter Andrea Estes after the paper published a story reporting that three top MBTA managers were living far from Greater Boston when in fact they made their homes in the local area. The story, on which Estes had the lead byline, reported that nine T officials had such an arrangement; in fact, it was six. The Globe had to run several corrections as a result.
Mohl reports that the errors in the story came about because the managers themselves were not allowed as a matter of policy to speak with the press without permission, and that they thought the MBTA public relations office was going to respond on their behalf — but the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) ordered the T to stay silent. Mohl writes:
At the MBTA, workers are advised not to talk to reporters, leaving that job to public relations officials. But in this instance the MBTA public relations officials, on orders from higher-ups at the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, ignored calls from Estes seeking to verify the information she had gathered. The result was a story that unfairly tarred at least three employees at the MBTA and caused the firing of Estes.
Disclosure: I’m a member of CommonWealth’s board of advisers.
This entire saga has been weird, and though Mohl’s story answers some of the outstanding questions, it doesn’t answer all of them. Why would MassDOT not allow the T to defend its own employees? Why was Estes fired if she wasn’t entirely at fault? In addition, editor Nancy Barnes said there would be some public accountability after Estes left the Globe, but Mohl suggests that may have been derailed by a pending arbitration hearing sought by Estes.
A further indication that at least some of Estes’ peers believe she was wronged came when she was hired recently as a staff reporter by the Plymouth Independent, a fledgling nonprofit edited by Mark Pothier, until recently a high-ranking editor at the Globe, and advised by Globe legend Walter Robinson. “Having her on staff sends a strong message about the kind of serious journalism we plan to do,” Pothier said in a press release announcing her hiring.
Thanks to Mohl’s digging, we now know more than we did. I still hope the full story comes out at some point.
The Boston Globe has hired a managing editor for local news, according to a memo to the staff from editor Nancy Barnes. I received the memo earlier today from a trusted source. Cristina Silva, currently managing editor for national news at USA Today, will start work at the Globe toward the end of November. A reporting fellow at the Globe in 2005 and ’06, she has also worked at the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times), The Associated Press, the International Business Times and Newsweek.
According to a job description posted at LinkedIn, Silva will be in charge of business, metro, the express desk and the Rhode Island and New Hampshire bureaus. According to her LinkedIn bio, she is active in the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, co-founding and serving as president of the Los Angeles chapter.
The move comes at a time when the Globe is expanding its local and regional news footprint, adding a New Hampshire bureau to its several-years-old Rhode Island bureau and beefing up coverage in the suburbs, especially in Cambridge and Somerville.
The full text of Barnes’ memo follows:
Dear all,
I am pleased to announce that Cristina Silva, a veteran journalist currently with USA Today, will join our newsroom at the end of November in the newly created role of Managing Editor for Local News.
In that position, she will report to me, and work closely with the Metro, Business, Express, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire teams.
Some of you may be familiar with Cristy from her time as a reporting fellow here in Boston from May of 2005 to August of 2006. Since those early days, she has gone on to do exceptional work as a reporter and editor, with reporting stintsat the St. Petersburg Times and the Associated Press. Her editing experience ranges from serving as Managing Editor of the International Business Times, News Director for Newsweek, and several enterprise roles at USA Today before being promoted to her current position of Managing Editor for National News.
During her tenure at the USA Today Network, she has overseen a wide range of coverage: the Surfside condo collapse in Miami, the Astroworld Festival disaster, theJan. 6 insurrection, and the Ukraine War. She has managed major projects that examined the failures of schools across the country during the COVID crisis, and ground-breaking work examining the discriminatory effect of COVID on communities of color.
Cristy has been a fierce advocate for promoting diversity in reporting and hiring not just in her own newsroom, but through her work with myriad national journalism associations.At Gannett,she helped create and run a Latino Leadership Academy and a Diversity Leadership Academy aimed at retaining top talent. Her colleagues told me repeatedly that she is valued as a generous mentor to her staff and peers alike.
Cristy will join the newsroom Nov. 28, when she will be here in Boston, and will commute between here and Los Angeles until Jan. 2, when she will relocate permanently. She is thrilled to be joining us.
“I am deeply honored to rejoin The Boston Globe, this time as Managing Editor for Local News. The Globe’s legacy of excellence and its commitment to serving the community have long shaped who I am as a journalist,” she said. “I look forward to supporting this talented newsroom and working closely with the community to deliver the exemplary news coverage Boston and New England deserve.”
Please join me in welcoming Cristina Silva back to Boston.
The Boston Globe is expanding its coverage of the Boston suburbs, adding the inner belt, the North and South Shores and MetroWest to Rhode Island and New Hampshire, where it has set up bureaus during the past few years.
The staffing is minimal enough that the Globe won’t be able to provide granular reporting in each of the many dozens of cities and towns in Greater Boston — although it is promising substantially more coverage of Cambridge and Somerville. But there are strong independent local news outlets in many suburban communities, and I expect that the Globe will be keeping an eye on them for story ideas. And here’s a thought: Perhaps the Globe could work with those outlets as well. In any event, more is more, and more is better than less. I’ve already signed up for the newsletter.
What follows is an email to the newsroom from editor Nancy Barnes and Anica Butler, the deputy managing editor for local news. Nothing coy about where I got it this time — it came directly from the Globe’s PR operation.
Hi all —
We are pleased to announce that we are launching a regional news team to bolster our coverage of news outside of Boston’s city limits, with the goal of meeting our existing readers where many of them are and attracting new eyes from the many surrounding communities.
Think ambitious enterprise and accountability journalism with statewide appeal, accompanied by creative digital storytelling, bolstered by audience engagement. We’ll also have a newsletter dedicated to our regional stories. Sign up here to get the first edition in your inbox.
Our expanded coverage will reflect the broad diversity in cities and towns outside of Boston, from the Gateway cities to the wealthy western suburbs to the growing Black middle class in Randolph and Stoughton to the new immigrants making their homes in Greater Boston. We will also be making Cambridge and Somerville — Camberville if you will — a beat of its own, reflecting the importance of these cities on Boston’s doorstep.
(And if you’ve already noticed an uptick in stories from outside of Boston this summer, it’s because our team has already gotten a start!)
Here’s the team:
Roy Greene, a deputy metro editor, will bring his great journalistic instincts and creative story ideas to lead this new team. Roy, who has been at the Globe for more than 20 years and has worked on past local news initiatives, lives in East Cambridge.
Assisting Roy in leading the team will be Steve Annear, one of our most creative and enterprising journalists, with an unparalleled ability to put his finger on the pulse of the region and determine which storylines are percolating online. Steve, who lives in Somerville, will edit our Cambridge and Somerville coverage and will lead the team’s digital efforts, including the newsletter.
Here are the reporters:
Spencer Buell, who has a knack for identifying and crafting viral stories (the Cop Slide!), will cover Cambridge and Somerville.
Billy Baker, who most recently showcased his considerable writing chops on the outdoors beat, will cover the North Shore.
John Hilliard, an indefatigable news hound with sources galore, will continue his coverage of the metro west and gateway cities. John always seems to land in the right place when a big story breaks.
Sarah Ryley, a data journalism expert, will cover the South Shore and will also help with metro west.
Roy and Steve will also work with reporters and editors across the newsroom whose beats are unfolding outside the city. So expect plenty of collaboration. And please feel free to send story ideas their way as the team gets going!
Scott Van Voorhis offers some important context about Andrea Estes’ departure from The Boston Globe. In his Contrarian Boston newsletter, Van Voorhis calls her work “compelling and consequential,” and observes that her reporting uncovered a kickback scheme that resulted in a federal prison term for former House Speaker Sal DiMasi and exposed the $300,000-plus salary of Methuen’s now-former police chief.
The current controversy involves two lengthy corrections the Globe published after an Estes-bylined story reported that nine top MBTA managers were working remotely. According to the corrections, the actual number was six, and there were other problems as well. Van Voorhis writes that “to pin the alleged mistakes in the story solely on Estes seems grossly unfair. Where was her editor? And with the prominent play the Globe gave to the story, there surely were other editors involved in at least reviewing the piece.”
Globe editor Nancy Barnes has told her staff that she’s “working to unravel all of this,” adding: “We will hold ourselves accountable for our mistakes because trust is so essential to us as journalists.”
Boston Globe editor Nancy Barnes has told her staff that the paper plans to offer an explanation about what went wrong with former reporter Andrea Estes’ story about MBTA managers who work remotely. Her email was passed along to me by a trusted source and closes with this:
Finally, I want to acknowledge the concerns individuals have raised about the multiple corrections in the recent MBTA story about executives living remotely. I am still working to unravel all of this and so there is not a lot I can say publicly for now except this: We will hold ourselves accountable for our mistakes because trust is so essential to us as journalists
This is good news and sends exactly the right message. Barnes took over for Brian McGrory just a few months ago, and this is her first public crisis. I look forward to reading the Globe’s account of what happened.
Update: Globe spokeswoman Heidi Flood confirmed this morning that Andrea Estes “no longer works at the Globe.” I have edited the headline to reflect that.
Update 2: Globe editor Nancy Barnes has told her staff that she’s working to unravel what went wrong.
Boston Globe reporter Andrea Estes, an investigative journalist whose recent error-riddled story about absentee managers at the MBTA led to a lengthy correction, has disappeared from the Globe’s online staff directory. You can still find her official Globe listing, though. She’s described as a “former reporter,” and her bio begins: “Estes was an investigative reporter specializing in government accountability.”
On Wednesday evening I sent an email to Globe spokeswoman Heidi Flood asking, “Has Andrea Estes left the Globe?” Flood’s response: “Thanks for reaching out. The company does not comment on personnel matters.” I also emailed Globe editor Nancy Barnes, who did not respond. I tried emailing Estes at her Globe address earlier this morning, and it bounced back.
It seems pretty clear that Estes is gone. And though no reason has been given, her most recent story, which led the Sunday paper on April 23, has proved to be an embarrassment for the Globe. The idea that some of the T’s leading executives were working virtually from distant places while bus drivers, subway operators and maintenance workers were putting themselves on the line every day was enraging. Here’s the heart of her story, which comes from a PDF of the print edition:
The MBTA is facing an unprecedented crisis of confidence in its service, punctuated by slow trains, endless delays, and gruesome accidents. Yet, many top T managers live far from the troubled system they’re trying to rescue and some are rarely seen in person by their employees. A Globe review has found that nine senior managers (including one who has left the agency) have a primary residence more than 100 miles from the nearest T station — and some much farther.
The story was later revised to cut that number from nine to six, and was appended with a lengthy correction:
Earlier versions of this story incorrectly reported that three MBTA managers live primarily in homes far from the T’s service area. Dennis Lytton, the deputy safety chief, has an apartment in Brighton and says he has not worked remotely since starting the job in February. Michele Stiehler, the T’s chief of paratransit, lives in Boston and walks to work. Jennifer Tabakin, who oversees the T’s South Coast Rail project, also has a home in Boston within walking distance of T headquarters. In addition, the story incorrectly reported that Ronald Ester’s “primary residence” is in Chicago; Ester said he considers his home in Massachusetts as his primary residence.
Estes’ story led to an editorial that has now also been appended with a correction. That correction includes a wrinkle that doesn’t appear in the one attached to Estes’ article: “The original editorial also incorrectly stated where Dennis Lytton, an MBTA safety official, was when reached by reporters. He was in Boston.” Estes’ original story said, “When contacted by the Globe recently, Lytton, who makes $175,000 a year, said he was home in Los Angeles at the time.” That sentence was deleted from the revised version.
Reporters make mistakes. We’ve all had corrections appended to our work. But to level such a serious accusation against three MBTA managers by name and then have to retract it is unusual.
As for Flood’s comment that the Globe doesn’t comment on personnel matters, I would note that there have been a number of prominent situations in the past when people have been fired, pushed into leaving or suspended, and the paper has gone into considerable detail in telling its audience what happened. We all know who they are, and I’m not going to drag their names into this.
I wrote last week that the Globe should have an ombudsman — an in-house reader advocate paid to look into fiascoes like this and write about them. At one time, many news outlets, including the Globe, had such a person on their staffs, but that’s pretty rare these days.
Even in the absence of an ombudsman, though, the Globe still owes us an explanation of what went wrong, and it should be published in a prominent spot.
And there it is. Nancy Barnes, The Boston Globe’s first female editor, makes her masthead debut. Barnes succeeds Brian McGrory, who after a 10-year run is off to Boston University, where he’ll chair the journalism department.
It was a little more than nine years ago that John and Linda Henry completed their purchase of The Boston Globe from the New York Times Co. But it wasn’t until today that they hired their first top news editor.
Late this afternoon the Globe announced that Nancy Barnes, currently the chief news executive at NPR, would replace longtime editor Brian McGrory on Feb. 1. McGrory said in September that he would retire at the end of the year in order to become chair of the journalism department at Boston University.
Barnes, 61, has local ties, having grown up in the Boston area and worked as an intern at the Globe and as a reporter at The Sun of Lowell earlier in her career. Before coming to NPR as senior vice president for news and editorial director in 2018, she had held the top editing jobs at the Houston Chronicle and the Star Tribune of Minneapolis.
Barnes’ tenure at NPR was not entirely a happy one. In September, after a new executive position was created above her, she said she would leave by the end of the year, saying, “Now is the right time for me to pursue some other opportunities.” NPR media reporter David Folkenflik wrote that Barnes could seem “aloof” at times, although he noted that she had come in under stressful circumstances: her predecessor, Michael Oreskes, had departed amid multiple accusations of sexual harassment. Folkenflik described her legacy in glowing terms:
Barnes helped NPR News achieve substantive accomplishments in a period buffeted by external crises that the network had to both endure and cover. She accelerated NPR’s investigative and enterprise reporting efforts; helped map out reporting on the pandemic and the war in Ukraine; and broadened the network’s coverage of issues of race, identity and social justice.
In addition, she oversaw a more aggressive stance in reporting on the growing threat to democracy from supporters of former President Donald Trump. Barnes also established a more muscular presence for the network in covering climate change. The newsroom continued to garner major accolades, winning its first Pulitzer, in collaboration with two member stations, and becoming a Pulitzer finalist several times.
Like Marty Baron, who preceded McGrory as the Globe’s editor, Barnes is an outsider. Throughout the Globe’s history, though, most of the paper’s editors, including McGrory, have been insiders. And here’s a qualification that Linda Henry cited in her memo to the staff, which appears below: Barnes has served as the top news executive at an organization other than a newspaper. As the Globe moves more into podcasts and other forms of media, Barnes will be in a good position to help lead the way.
McGrory — who did as much as anyone to recruit the Henrys as buyers for the Globe, as I described in my 2018 book “The Return of the Moguls” — leaves quite a legacy of his own. On McGrory’s watch, the Globe has thrived journalistically and has emerged as among a handful of large regional newspapers that have achieved financial sustainability. He was a popular metro columnist before becoming the editor, and he will write a column for the opinion section once he leaves the paper.
This is the second major hire at the Globe this year. In May, James Dao was recruited from The New York Times to edit the paper’s opinion section. Barnes and Dao will both report directly to Linda Henry, the chief executive of Boston Globe Media, and John Henry, the publisher of the Globe. Linda Henry’s full memo to the troops was fowarded to me a few hours ago by several trusted sources. Here it is in full with the exception of the search committee members, since those names would be meaningful only to Globe insiders:
A few months ago, I shared that we began a search for the next leader of the Globe’s newsroom as Brian McGrory begins his next chapter at BU and resumes a familiar, but new(ish) role as columnist for the Globe on the Opinion side. In the time since, we have met with a field of incredibly talented leaders — both inside and outside our organization — and I am thrilled to share with you today that Nancy Barnes will become the 13th editor of The Boston Globe.
Nancy, as many of you know, is an accomplished journalist and transformational leader who has held the top job at some of the largest newsrooms in the country. She currently serves as NPR’s senior vice president for news and editorial director, leading a team of more than 500 journalists and newsroom executives, with oversight of NPR’s journalism around the world and across platforms. She’s also deeply engaged in the industry, serving on the prestigious Pulitzer Prize Board, the Peabody Awards, and as a past president of the News Leaders Association.
This is somewhat of a homecoming for Nancy, who was born in Cambridge and grew up in Wilmington before moving to Virginia. She holds something in common with many of the country’s top journalists, having started her lifelong career in journalism as an intern at The Boston Globe. After college, she returned to the area to work at the Lowell Sun, and then spent a decade at the News & Observer [of Raleigh, North Carolina]. She earned an MBA before joining the Minneapolis Star Tribune as executive editor, where she modernized their digital journalism and led the newsroom to win multiple national awards, including a Pulitzer Prize in local reporting. When Nancy moved to Texas to take on the role of SVP and Executive Editor for Hearst Texas newspapers, The Houston Chronicle won its first Pulitzer Prize and was named a Pulitzer Finalist three other times during her tenure.
I’ve been delighted and inspired by my conversations with Nancy. She has shared that her priorities in this role are to tap into the tremendous innovation that our company has embraced over the last several years and to ensure that our mentorship and development for journalists at all levels of their careers remains vibrant and transformative. Nancy knows the importance of serving an engaged local audience and has a proven track record of elevating metro news outlets to their highest potential.
On top of her proven track record with metros, I was particularly inspired by all that she has learned in her time away from newspapers over the past few years, immersed in an innovative, digital-forward, and global environment at NPR. She is thrilled to return to Boston with our regional expertise, and I know that her time at NPR has given her best practices, insights, and strategies that will inform her next chapter at the Globe. I am excited for her to guide our continued digital evolution, working with the incredible team of journalists here to better serve our growing reader base.
I once again would like to share my gratitude to Brian McGrory for his bold leadership as editor over the past ten years. Under Brian’s leadership, the Globe has continuously produced ambitious journalism, inspiring the talented journalists here to be searingly relevant and relentlessly interesting. He expanded coverage, led a newsroom reinvention which engaged the entire staff, and has helped the Globe adapt during one of the most challenging times in the newspaper industry. Our work has been recognized locally and nationally with many awards, including multiple Pulitzer Prizes and most recently, the award of General Excellence in Online Journalism by the Online News Association. Today, the Globe is arguably the most successful regional news organization in the country.
Inclusive of Stat News, Boston Globe Media now has the highest number of total subscribers that this institution has had since 2008, and we continue to lead in subscription numbers among our industry peers. We are extremely proud of all the ways that this growth has fueled continuous investment in our journalism, and we look forward to building on that momentum with Nancy’s extensive industry perspective and deep journalistic experience.
Please join us tomorrow, November 15th at 2pm in the newsroom, where Brian and I will be welcoming Nancy in person and she will introduce herself in the news hub. We will send an audio link for those who are not able to join us in person. She will officially join our team on February 1, 2023 and we will plan a time for her to meet many more of you in the new year.
A special thank you to the internal team that helped with this comprehensive and inspiring search process….
