Washington Post – Media Nation

How The Baltimore Banner’s embrace of DC sports fits with its editor’s civic-minded mission

*The Washington Nationals will soon be covered by The Baltimore Banner. Photo (cc) 2022 by All-Pro Reels / Joe Glorioso.*

The gutting of The Washington Post may prove to be an opportunity for The Baltimore Banner. According to an announcement, the Banner, a digital nonprofit startup, will cover Washington teams, including beat coverage of the Nationals baseball team and the Commanders football team. The Banner’s editor-in-chief, Audrey Cooper, is quoted as saying:

This decision is part of our unwavering commitment to serve Maryland with honest, independent journalism. It builds on last week’s announcement that we are expanding our news coverage into Prince George’s County and represents another step in strengthening our statewide reach.

At a time when so much pulls communities apart, sports bring us together. The Washington Post’s decision to eliminate its sports section creates an opportunity for us to serve more Marylanders with The Banner’s distinctive mix of fearless accountability reporting, engaging storytelling and sharp analysis.

I found Cooper’s comments about sports bringing people together to be especially interesting because they parallel something she told Mike Blinder recently on the Editor & Publisher vodcast:

America is having a hard time having civil, civic conversations right now and I think the reason behind that is because of the shrinking local news ecosystem. If we spent more time worrying about whether our kids are being educated, whether our roads are paved, whether our water is safe to drink, and less time about these national culture fights that, to be honest, don’t affect our day-to-day lives, I think there’s a chance that local news has to re-teach Americans how to have civic conversations.

To me, saving the great American experiment means saving local news. And I think it’s difficult to find a place in America right now where that’s not, where Baltimore is like second to none. I mean, I think what’s happening here and what the Banner is doing is the most interesting experiment in local news, and I wanted to be a part of it.

This echoes a theme that Ellen Clegg and I explore in our book, “What Works in Community News,” and on our podcast. The nationalization of everything has a lot to do with why we are so polarized. We live in communities, in neighborhoods, but the phony controversies that are ginned up in the national media — especially on Fox News — gain more resonance than they should when we lack reliable sources of local news to inform us about what really matters.

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The Jeff Bezos-owned Post’s decision to eliminate its sports staff and cut back on metro coverage was mind-boggling. As Poynter media columnist Tom Jones observed (second item), the Post’s sports section was “legendary,” and it “was once known for having some of the best sportswriters in the business with the likes of Shirley Povich, Tony Kornheiser, Michael Wilbon, Sally Jenkins and Thomas Boswell, just to name a few. And the sports department of today — well, of last week — also had a deep talent pool with brilliant journalists including Chuck Culpepper, Dave Sheinin and columnists Candace Buckner and Barry Svrluga.”

The Banner’s move follows a bid by Washington City Paper to purchase the Post’s sports and metro sections. Tina Nguyen reported in The Verge that though soon-to-depart publisher Will Lewis was receptive, the talks went nowhere, and the paper went ahead with massive cuts — initially reported as 300 of the paper’s 800 journalists, but which is now being revealed as even worse than that. (Former Post reporter Paul Farhi, writing for Washingtonian, places the number at 350 to 375 positions eliminated out of a total headcount of 790.)

If the Banner’s embrace of Washington sports and coverage of Prince George’s County is successful (previously the Banner started covering another Washington suburb in Maryland, Montgomery County), I hope it might lead to more — maybe even a Washington Banner. The Post is supposedly going to continue covering national politics. But when Bezos bought the paper in 2013 from the legendary Graham family, the Post was primarily a regional paper that had more in common with The Boston Globe or The Philadelphia Inquirer than it did with The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal.

Perhaps the Banner, City Paper, Washingtonian and others can make up for that local news gap. It would also be nice if one or more of them amped up their book coverage, as the Post’s standalone book section was a casualty of the bloodletting. (And the entire photo staff. Good Lord.)

The Banner is quite a story. Earlier this week I wrote an article for The Conversation about five large regional newspapers that have achieved sustainability of a sort. Four of them are either owned by billionaires or owe their current success to billionaires. I could have mentioned the Banner as well. Hotel magnate Stewart Bainum founded and endowed the Banner after he was spurned in his bid to purchase The Baltimore Sun and then all of Tribune Publishing from the hedge fund Alden Global Capital.

The Banner launched in 2022 and, according to Cooper in her interview with Blinder, has 75,000 paid subscribers. As of last September, the newsroom staff comprised nearly 100 people. It’s won a Pulitzer Prize, and — Boston trivia alert — Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory serves on its board of directors.

As Jeff Bezos dismantles The Washington Post, five regional papers chart a course for survival

Portrait of Jeff Bezos (cc) 2017 by thierry ehrmann.

If The Washington Post’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, ever decides he wants to take journalism seriously again, then he might take a look at a handful of large regional papers that have charted a route to sustainability against the strong headwinds that continue to buffet the news business.

Perhaps the most important difference between these papers and the Post — and the hundreds of other shrinking media outlets owned by corporate chains and hedge funds — is that they are rooted in the communities they cover. Whether owned by wealthy people or run by nonprofits, they place service to their city and region above extracting the last smidgen of revenue they can squeeze out.

Although I could add a few to this list, I am mentioning five large regional newspapers as examples of how it’s possible to succeed despite the long-term decline in the economics of journalism.

Read the rest at The Conversation.

On the new ‘Beat the Press,’ we look at the week in media, starting with Don Lemon’s arrest

*Don Lemon reporting from Cities Church in St. Paul, Minn.*

On the new “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney,” we look at Don Lemon’s arrest, when journalists should (and shouldn’t) use the word “murder,” looming cuts at The Washington Post, and transitions for Scot Lehigh, who’s retiring from The Boston Globe, and David Brooks, who’s moving from The New York Times to The Atlantic. With Emily, Scott Van Voorhis and me — plus a big assist from producer Tonia Magras.

By raiding a reporter’s home, Trump and his thugs have escalated their attacks on a free press

Barack Obama’s administration threatened reporters with jail if they refused to turn over their confidential sources. But he didn’t order raids on reporters’ homes. Photo (cc) 2024 by Gage Skidmore.

Back in 2012, I wrote an opinion piece for The Huffington Post (now just HuffPost) that I headlined “Obama’s War on Journalism.” The premise was that Barack Obama, like George W. Bush and other presidents before him, was disrespecting the First Amendment’s protection of independent journalism by taking reporters to court and theatening them with jail if they didn’t reveal the identities of White House sources leaking to them.

At least Obama, Bush et al. were following a legal process. As The Associated Press reports, Donald Trump’s FBI, headed by the buffoonish but dangerous Kash Patel, raided the home of a Washington Post journalist to grab what they claimed were classified documents provided by a Pentagon contractor.

Continue reading “By raiding a reporter’s home, Trump and his thugs have escalated their attacks on a free press”

New York Times editor says his paper did not hold back on reporting that the U.S. would attack Venezuela

Semafor reported on Jan. 3 that The New York Times and The Washington Post learned of the pending U.S. raid on Venezuela shortly before it began but held off reporting on it “to avoid endangering US troops.”

Now Times executive editor Joe Kahn says it’s not true, at least with regard to his paper. He chose an unusually low-key forum in which to push back — in a response to a reader question in The Morning Newsletter. Here’s the relevant part of his answer (sub. req.). The boldface is mine, not his.

We reported on U.S. missions targeting Venezuela, including boat strikes and preparation for land-based military action, in considerable detail for several months. Our Pentagon, national-security and intelligence-agency beat reporters talked repeatedly with their sources about heightened preparations for bolder action against the Venezuelan leadership. Contrary to some claims, however, The Times did not have verified details about the pending operation to capture Maduro or a story prepared, nor did we withhold publication at the request of the Trump administration….

While not relevant in this case, The Times does consult with the military when there are concerns that exposure of specific operational information could risk the lives of American troops. We take those concerns seriously, and have at times delayed publication or withheld details if they might lead to direct threats to members of the military. But in all such cases, we make our editorial decisions independently. And we have often published accountability and investigative stories about military and intelligence operations and national-security decision making that government officials pressed us to withhold.

Last week I wrote about the parallels between Venezuela and the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, noting that the Times was accused of withholding key details. I cited research I did as a Boston University graduate student in the 1980s that showed the Times actually published what it knew and held back only on aspects of the story it couldn’t verify. The parallels between then and now may be even closer than I realized.

I don’t believe that the Post has responded to the Semafor story, which has not been corrected or amended.

Why the Times’ and Post’s decision not to publish calls to mind the Bay of Pigs myth of 1961

*Front and center: The New York Times reports on the imminent invasion of Cuba on April 7, 1961.*

The New York Times and The Washington Post learned about U.S. plans to attack Venezuela shortly before the raid began, according to Max Tani and Shelby Talcott of Semafor. But they declined to run with the story “to avoid endangering US troops, two people familiar with the communications between the administration and the news organizations said.”

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The decision was reminiscent of the legend over how the Times reported on an imminent U.S.-backed invasion of Cuba in 1962, which I’ll get to in a few moments.

But first, regarding the Venezuela decision: Right call or wrong call? As the Semafor story notes, the decision was “in keeping with longstanding American journalistic traditions.” Independent media commentator Margaret Sullivan writes that she’s torn and asks her readers to weigh in. At the Columbia Journalism Review, Jem Bartholomew leans toward yes they should have on the grounds that the Times and the Post knew the raid would violate international law.

Continue reading “Why the Times’ and Post’s decision not to publish calls to mind the Bay of Pigs myth of 1961”

‘Things happen’ — and for one brief moment, The Washington Post rediscovers its soul

Jamal Khashoggi. Photo (cc) 2018 by POMED.

The Washington Post’s increasingly Trump-friendly editorial page has rediscovered its soul, however briefly.

In a piece published Tuesday afternoon, the Post tears into Donald Trump for his friendly White House get-together with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who, according to a CIA intelligence assessment, was behind the 2018 murder of Saudi dissident (and Post columnist) Jamal Khashoggi.

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The editorial is unsigned, which means that it represents the institutional voice of the newspaper, including its owner, Jeff Bezos. Better still, The New York Times reports that Bezos was not among the tech moguls who attended Trump’s dinner for bin Salman, even though others were there — including Apple’s Tim Cook, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Dell’s Michael Dell, Cisco’s Chuck Robbins, Elon Musk and others.

Continue reading “‘Things happen’ — and for one brief moment, The Washington Post rediscovers its soul”

The Washington Post runs three editorials failing to disclose Jeff Bezos’ conflicts of interest

*Jeff Bezos. Illustration (cc) 2017 by thierry ehrmann.*

When Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013, there were fears that he would position its editorial pages to boost his various business interests and amplify his quirky political philosophy.

Consider, for example, Shel Kaphan, an engineer who was Amazon’s first employee and later had a falling-out with Bezos. “It makes me feel quite nauseous,” Kaphan told the Post immediately after the purchase was announced. “I’d hate to see the newspaper converted into a corporate libertarian mouthpiece.”

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Contrary to Kaphan’s fears, Bezos proved to be an exemplary owner for 10 years. Then, in late 2023 he hired the ethically challenged Fleet Street veteran Will Lewis as his publisher, and it’s been all downhill since then.

Particularly damaging has been Bezos’ assault on the Post’s opinion section, which began with his decision to kill an endorsement of Kamala Harris just before the 2024 presidential election. That was followed by the exodus of key employees, Bezos’ pronouncement that the opinion section would be reoriented to emphasize “free markets and personal liberties,” and the hiring of the conservative journalist Adam O’Neal to be opinion editor.

Now comes yet another disturbing development in the Post opinion section’s race to the bottom. NPR media reporter David Folkenflik writes that, on three occasions in recent weeks, the Post has editorialized in favor of Bezos’ business interests without making any disclosure — a violation of basic journalistic ethics. As Folkenflik observes:

For the newspaper’s owner to have outside business holdings or activities that might intersect with coverage or commentary is conventionally seen to present at the least a perception of a conflict of interest. Newspapers typically manage the perception with transparency.

The Post has resolutely revealed such entanglements to readers of news coverage or commentary in the past, whether the Graham family’s holdings, which included the Stanley Kaplan educational company and Slate magazine, or, since 2013, those of Bezos, who founded Amazon and Blue Origin. Even now, the newspaper’s reporters do so as a matter of routine.

The three undisclosed conflicts, by the way, involved a rousing endorsement of Donald Trump’s hideous ballroom, for which Amazon was a major corporate donor; support for the military’s bid to build nuclear reactors, which could bolster another Amazon investment; and a piece urging local officials in Washington to approve self-driving cars. Amazon’s autonomous car company, Zoox, had just announced that it would be moving into the nation’s capital.

Folkenflik noted that in the case of the ballroom to replace the now-demolished East Wing, the Post added a disclosure after its initial publication — but only after being called on it by Columbia Journalism School professor Bill Grueskin.

It’s not at all unusual for media moguls to have a variety of entangling business interests. The solution, without exception, is to disclose those conflicts whenever they are being reported on or editorialized about. The Boston Globe, for instance, rarely fails to disclose John and Linda Henry’s ownership of the Red Sox and their other sports-related interests when reporting on them as business enterprises.

To borrow Shel Kaphan’s description, it is nauseating to watch Bezos destroy his legacy as a first-rate newspaper owner by turning the Post’s opinion section into a pathetic joke. It has cost the Post tens of thousands of readers, and media reporter Natalie Korach of Status reports writes the staff is preparing for a painful round of cuts just before the holidays.

But Bezos doesn’t care. His interests are elsewhere. I just wish the world’s fourth-richest person would donate the Post to a nonprofit foundation so that he can cease being, as he’s put it, “not an ideal owner” of one of our great newspapers.

MAGA media threats call to mind previous episodes during the Nixon and Bush eras

*George W. Bush in 2001. Public domain photo via the U.S. National Archives.*

FCC chair Brendan Carr’s thuggish threat to crack down on media companies following late-night comedy host Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue about Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk differed from past instances only in that he said it out loud.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said in an appearance on a right-wing podcaster’s show. And Disney, Nexstar and Sinclair, all of which have significant regulatory issues before the FCC, wasted no time in making sure that Kimmel was banished from ABC’s airwaves.

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Trump himself put it even more bluntly, saying that broadcasters who are “against me” should lose their licenses, reported Zoë Richards of NBC News.

The first comparison that comes to mind, naturally, is Richard Nixon’s threat in 1973 to take away the licenses of two Florida television stations owned by The Washington Post amid the paper’s dogged reporting on the Watergate scandal. “The difference here is that Nixon talked about the scheme only privately,” the Post’s Aaron Blake wrote about the scheme many years later.

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Renée Graham quits Globe editorial board over Charlie Kirk editorial but will remain as a columnist

*Globe Opinion’s original headline. It was later changed to “Charlie Kirk murder: America needs dialogue, not bullets” online and “An attack on democracy” in print.*

Boston Globe columnist Renée Graham has quit the paper’s editorial board in protest over last week’s editorial (sub. req.) praising the slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s commitment to free speech — an editorial that was widely derided by critics who objected to Kirk’s often hateful rhetoric. Graham will remain as a columnist and will continue to write her Globe newsletter, Outtakes.

Graham confirmed those developments in an email exchange but would not offer any further comment.

A Globe spokesperson said of Graham’s decision: “We are grateful to Renée Graham for her valuable contributions to our team and to the editorial board. We respect her decision to resign from the board and are pleased that she will continue in her role as a Globe Opinion associate editor, columnist, and newsletter writer.”

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Kirk was murdered during an appearance at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10. It’s been the top story in the news ever since given the public nature of his death (including a graphic video), the devotion of his millions of followers (Donald Trump and JD Vance among them), and his comments targeting Black women, members of the LGBTQ community, immigrants and others.

Continue reading “Renée Graham quits Globe editorial board over Charlie Kirk editorial but will remain as a columnist”