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

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Northeastern marks the 20th anniverary of the 9/11 attacks

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On September 11, 2021

In News

The Center for Spiritual Life, Dialogue and Service held a remembrance for the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks earlier today. The service, marking the 20th anniversary, centered on the life of Candace Lee Williams, an accounting major who died on American Airlines Flight 11 at the age of 20.

“She was the best of us,” her brother Corey Gaudioso told News at Northeastern. “There’s never been anyone like Can. We all just knew she was going to do great things — she could’ve conquered Wall Street or something.”

Several of us spoke at the service, including Mary Kane, Candace’s co-op adviser and now an assistant dean in the D’Amore-McKim School of Business. Kane told News at Northeastern: “Candace was so smart, and beautiful on the inside and out. But I think what struck me most was her appreciation for everyday life. She had this amazing smile, and she appreciated the small things as well as the big opportunities.”

I spoke about my experience as a journalist that day and how the media have changed over the past 20 years.

It was a moving ceremony, organized by the center’s executive director, Alexander Levering Kern.

I wish I had known Candace, who would be 40 and in the prime of her life today.

In which Mike Beaudet and I try to make sense of CNN’s Chris Cuomo problem

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On August 15, 2021

In Media

By Peter Ramjug

Chris Cuomo is expected to be back on the air at CNN this week. Questions still swirl around him following the resignation of his older brother, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and the role the cable network star played in advising the governor through his political crisis and how the network will handle one of the biggest stories of the year going forward.

Cuomo will likely keep his job, say Northeastern journalism faculty experts Dan Kennedy and Mike Beaudet, even as media watchdog groups and others have called for him to step down or be fired for his involvement with the matter. They say network management and Chris Cuomo himself share blame for a “messy situation” that blurred personal and professional lines between the anchor and his embattled sibling.

Read the rest at News@Northeastern.

Can community journalism be saved?

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On June 15, 2021

In Local News

Ellen Clegg and I talked with Hillary Chabot of News at Northeastern about our book project, tentatively titled “What Works: The Future of Local News.”

A Northeastern study shows how animation can enhance local TV news

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On June 3, 2021

In Local News

My Northeastern colleagues Mike Beaudet and John Wihbey, along with some amazing students, have been studying ways to improve local television news. Their latest installment looks at how animation can increase viewer interest, attract younger viewers and make it easier to understand the essential facts of a story.

According to a summary of their findings that they wrote along with graduate student Anna Campbell for RTNDA.org:

After viewing the local news stories that took a fresh approach to animation and graphics, viewers preferred that style across the board, with audiences more likely to rate the animated stories as clear, compelling, and memorable. The graphically-enhanced stories were generally perceived both as more relevant in content and resonant in tone. Animation also captured positive descriptions in the open-ended questions we posed.

As you’ll see if you watch the video presentation above, animation essentially takes the place of irrelevant and boring B-roll. And when Beaudet, Campbell and Wihbey refer to animation, they don’t mean something you might see on “Adult Swim.” Rather, they’re talking about presenting visualizations that help viewers understand what they’re watching.

Media observers like me don’t always pay much attention to local TV news. But it’s incredibly important — it’s the second-most popular news medium that we have (the internet comes in first), and it’s more trusted than other forms of news. So congratulations to my colleagues and their students for finding ways to make it better.

You can find more of their work at Storybench, a School of Journalism web publication that covers media innovation.

Go Huskies!

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On May 10, 2021

In Photography

I had a weirdly news-free weekend, as I volunteered as a marshal at four of Northeastern’s commencement ceremonies on Saturday and Sunday. I’ll be catching up today and tomorrow. Meanwhile, here are some scenes from Fenway.

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The news about COVID is good and getting better. It’s time to celebrate.

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On May 5, 2021

In COVID Diary

Photo (cc) 2020 by Province of British Columbia

Previously published at GBH News.

The end of the pandemic in the United States isn’t going to be marked by a solemn announcement or a celebrity-studded fundraising event on TV. There are too many uncertainties.

Even as the situation improves in Massachusetts, the numbers are much higher — though dropping — in Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado and elsewhere. And, of course, the virus is causing unimaginable suffering right now in India and South America. We need to do all we can to help.

But even though there won’t be a clearly defined endpoint, I’m declaring an end to COVID-19 this week. Just about every adult in the U.S. who wants to be vaccinated has now done so or will be able to soon. Masks are coming off outdoors. Schools are filling up again — safely. Indoor restaurant dining is coming back. Our long national nightmare isn’t over, but we’re slowly beginning to wake up.

We’re all going to have our own end-of-COVID story. Mine — and probably yours — begins with family. This Thursday will mark two weeks since my second Pfizer shot. By Memorial Day, my wife, son and daughter will all be at full immunity. We are incredibly lucky. Even though three of us have been regularly working outside our home, we’ve all stayed healthy.

To put a punctuation mark on it, I’m writing this column inside a local coffee shop for the first time in more than a year. The last column I wrote here was published on Feb. 26, 2020. Ironically, it was about a newspaper in Texas that had built a café next to its newsroom so that people could come in and order a burger and beer. It was an experiment in journalism and civic engagement that could help ease the local news crisis — and exactly the sort of activity that had to be put on hold once the virus began raging. Now it looks like it’s back.

Despite the increasingly upbeat feeling many of us are enjoying, the pandemic has taught us humility. Remember when we thought the shutdown would last two or three weeks? It would have been unfathomable back in March 2020 to think that it would take more than a year to begin reopening without putting everyone’s health at risk.

More than 576,000 Americans have died, and the death toll continues to rise, though at a much slower rate. And as The New York Times’ Apoorva Mandavilli reported earlier this week, the goal of achieving herd immunity is starting to look like a fantasy. Rather than eliminating the coronavirus, we’re going to have to learn to live with it. We didn’t eradicate the flu after the great pandemic of 1918, either. What we can hope for is that continued vigilance and annual vaccines will keep COVID-19, like the flu, at a manageable level.

For the foreseeable future, we’re also going to be held back by the anti-intellectualism of the Republican Party. A recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 29% of Republicans say they will “definitely not” get vaccinated against the coronavirus, compared to 5% of Democrats and 9% of independents. It’s stunning that highly effective vaccines, like masks, have become a tribal signifier. But that’s where we’re at in a country in which one of the two major political parties has slipped into a hermetically sealed universe of alternative facts.

Disturbing as this is, though, it can wait for another day. Right now, the COVID-19 news is better than it’s been since the start of the pandemic — and it’s only going to keep improving.

This weekend, I’ll put on a cap and gown for the first time in two years and attend Northeastern University’s commencement activities at Fenway Park. Everyone will be masked and socially distanced, regardless of whether we’ve been vaccinated. But we’ll be together, in person, celebrating the success of our students as their families — well, OK, one guest per graduate — cheer from the stands.

It’s going to be great.

Who’s that on the phone? A hilarious story about a New York Times reporter

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On April 30, 2021

In Media

In case you missed it, Spencer Buell of Boston magazine has a hilarious story about Zolan Kanno-Youngs, a reporter for The New York Times who covers the White House. It seems that his phone number is almost identical to that of Roller World in Saugus, and for at least 10 years Kanno-Youngs has been fielding calls meant for the rink. Kanno-Youngs tells Buell:

There have been times where I’m on deadline, or I’m on the verge of a good story. And I’m like, “Oh, here it is. Here’s the source that I’ve been wanting to call me.” And I’ll pick up and it’s like, “Hey, so Saturday at 9 a.m. you guys still going?” And I’m like, “What’s going on?” And then they’re like, “Yeah, you know, my birthday party!” And I’m like, “Oh my God, not right now!”

Of course I should mention that Kanno-Youngs is a Northeastern journalism alum. I hadn’t heard him tell this story before. I assume he’s now going to have to change his phone number — Buell doesn’t tell us what it is, but it’s easy enough to figure out.

Salem mayor calls for the Legislature to be covered by the open meeting law

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On March 29, 2021

In First Amendment

Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll. Photo (cc) 2020 by the office of Gov. Charlie Baker.

Well, isn’t this a lovely surprise on a Monday morning. Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll has written an op-ed piece for The Boston Globe calling for an end to the state Legislature’s exemption from the open meeting law — a law that requires virtually all city and town boards and many state commissions to conduct their business in public. It’s a bit too late for Sunshine Week, but we’ll take it. Driscoll writes:

If 351 cities and towns can adopt budgets, engage in policy debates, hire and evaluate staff, and create local laws — all while meeting the rightly rigorous standards of the Commonwealth’s Open Meeting Law — there is no valid reason why our state colleagues cannot do the same.

Driscoll also notes that Massachusetts is one of only 11 states whose legislature is exempt from open meeting laws.

Similarly, the Legislature and the courts are exempt from the state’s public records law, and a succession of governors, including Charlie Baker, have claimed that their immediate staff is exempt as well.

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Last fall, our Northeastern journalism students contacted all 257 candidates for House and Senate seats and asked them whether they would support ending that exemption. Sadly, only 71 responded despite repeated emails and phone calls; but of those who did respond, 72% said they favored applying the public records law to the Legislature.

As with the open meeting law, Massachusetts is an outlier: it is one of only four states whose public records laws do not cover legislative proceedings.

The central argument Driscoll offers is unassailable. If cities, towns and state agencies can comply with the open meeting and public records laws, so, too, can the Legislature. It’s long past time to drag the proceedings of the Great and General Court out into the sunlight.

In Provincetown, a startup weekly newspaper is challenging Gannett

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On March 15, 2021

In Local News

Launching a community news outlet at a time when local news is under siege might seem like a foolhardy risk. But journalists with an entrepreneurial spirit are taking that risk — and, for some, it’s paying off.

Take, for example, The Provincetown Independent. Founded in October 2019, the weekly competes with Gannett’s Provincetown Banner. According to co-founder and editor Ed Miller, the Independent already has more than 100 advertisers and a full-time staff of 10, including three editors and three and a half reporters, as well as a number of freelancers. He and the other co-founder, publisher Teresa Parker, are aiming for break-even and a staff of 20 by year five.

“The fact is that the majority of these legacy small-town papers are actually doing perfectly well,” Miller said last week at an event at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism via Zoom. He added, though, that “they’re not making anybody rich.”

The Independent covers four towns — Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet and Eastham. The paper has both a print and a paywalled digital edition. Although a number of local news startups are digital-only, Miller said he’s convinced that print is necessary for a for-profit enterprise such as his, since it’s a more effective way to attract advertisers. (The Independent is a public-benefit corporation, which means, according to its About page, that it is “committed to prioritizing the social and environmental benefits of our corporate decision-making.”)

The formula has worked, he said, noting that the current edition comprises 32 pages, 27% of which are advertising.

One type of advertising he’s not getting are legal notices, a problem he blamed on town officials who don’t like the tough coverage the Independent is providing. Instead, legals continue to go to the Banner and another Gannett weekly, the Cape Codder, whose coverage area overlaps with the Independent in Eastham.

Miller began his career as a small-town newspaper owner in the town of Harvard in 1973, an experience that led him to co-write a 1978 book called “How to Produce a Small Newspaper.” He worked for four years for the Banner before deciding to launch his own venture, saying that GateHouse Media, which later acquired Gannett and took its name, “pretty much systematically stripped it of all its staff and other capacities.”

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As for the Independent, he said the paper now has paid print circulation of about 3,200 (subscriptions plus newsstand sales), with another 450 digital-only subscribers, most of whom live far from Cape Cod.

The paper’s revenues last year were about $640,000, with $217,000 coming from subscriptions and $242,000 from advertising. Nearly $70,000 came in the form of government assistance related to the pandemic, and another $74,000 was from donations and grants to the Independent’s nonprofit arm, which it uses to pay interns and cover the cost of in-depth reporting on issues like climate change, affordable housing, health care and LGBTQ issues.

Although not every local news startup is as successful as the Independent, there has been an upsurge in recent years of independently owned community outlets. Some are for-profit, some are nonprofit. Some are online-only, some have a print edition. Some were launched to challenge a chain-owned newspaper, some were founded in communities with no news outlet. Later this week, LION (Local Independent Online News) Publishers will release a study showing that the number of independents in the U.S. and Canada has risen by 50% over the past five years.

What all of these startups have in common is that, even with the challenges to local news posed by the likes of Craigslist, Facebook and Google, independents can succeed.

“We hear from people in various other places where their papers have really withered and they’ve heard about what we’re doing,” Miller said. “Every place is different. What we’re doing out here in Provincetown is geared to this place. People will need to find their own ways of making this work wherever they are.”

Correction. This post has been updated regarding the length of Miller’s tenure at the Provincetown Banner and the Independent’s total print circulation.

Could the Globe do more to fill the local news gap?

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On February 16, 2021

In Local News

The Globe’s YourTown site for Needham circa 2010

Last Thursday we had a terrific panel discussion at Northeastern’s School of Journalism about the local news crisis in Greater Boston. Our panelists were state Rep. Lori Ehrlich, D-Marblehead, the lead sponsor of a state commission on local news that was recently created; retired Boston Globe editorial page editor Ellen Clegg; Yawu Miller, senior editor of The Bay State Banner; Bill Forry, managing editor of The Dorchester Reporter; and Julie McCay Turner, co-founder and managing editor of The Bedford Citizen, a nonprofit website that started as a volunteer project and that has gradually added paid journalism.

You can read Mihiro Shimano’s account at The Scope by clicking here. But I want to pick up on something that Ellen (my research partner on a book about local news) said about The Boston Globe’s role.

I was moderating and couldn’t take notes. But when I asked her about the Globe’s role in local news, she said the paper discovered about 20 years ago that it couldn’t make much of a dent at the hyperlocal level. Readers looked to their community weeklies and dailies for coverage of day-to-day life in their cities and towns. What the Globe could provide, she said, was regional coverage of issues that affected everyone — which is pretty much the mission statement for the paper in general.

As she also pointed out, the Globe now has a digital Rhode Island section, which is in keeping with the regional focus, and covers Newton through a partnership with Boston University. But could the paper do more?

Now that corporate-owned chains have decimated most of the once-strong community papers that circle Boston, I wonder if the Globe might be able to play more of a role. One idea would be to revive the YourTown websites that were unveiled during the last few years of New York Times Co. ownership. YourTown covered not just the Boston suburbs but neighborhoods within the city as well, which remains a crucial need. That was back in the days of the free web, and it proved impossible to sell ads for the sites. Now that everything is subscription-driven, though, would it be possible to try again?

There’s no substitute for independently owned community media, but a greater presence by the Globe — which itself is independently owned — might be the next best thing.

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