Hard times for the Times

In my latest for The Guardian, I take a look at Mark Bowden's exceedingly tough Vanity Fair profile of New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Bowden may be right in arguing that Sulzberger is not up to the job. But given the implosion of the newspaper business, would better leadership have made all that much difference?

Matt Storin is tweeting

How weird is this? On the same day that someone pretending to be Boston Globe editor Marty Baron popped up on Twitter, I heard from Baron's predecessor — the real Matt Storin — on Twitter as well. You can follow Storin here.

From unemployed to entrepreneur

Jenn Lord Paluzzi, laid off recently by GateHouse Media's MetroWest Daily News, is now the editor of a new community Web site called GraftonTimes.com. The publisher is Jack Schofield, a Grafton resident who specializes in online advertising.

Layoffs hit the Globe

I'm on deadline for The Guardian, so I will defer to Adam Reilly on the Boston Globe layoff story. He's got the latest — including comments from a mighty unhappy-sounding Michele McDonald, an outstanding photographer whose job was eliminated because she's a part-timer.

What's wrong with CNN

CNN has fallen to third place in prime time. It's an easy way out to argue that it's because CNN is doing news while Fox and MSNBC are doing talk. But it seems to me that CNN has three problems of its own making:

• It's given up on the 8 p.m. slot, where Campbell Brown is caught between Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann. Has anyone ever watched Brown's show? She certainly isn't compelling enough as part of "The Best Political Team on Television" (or at least the largest) to make me want to check her out.
  
• Larry King at 9 p.m. — you can't live with him, you can't live without him. CNN's fortunes have been tied up with King for so many years that no one dares to mess with his show. But it's not what it used to be. I'd move it to 8 and try to come up with something else at 9. An intelligent political talk show, perhaps? If that's not too oxymoronic?
  
• At 10 p.m., CNN ought to clean up. Its best anchor, Anderson Cooper, is up against Greta Van Susteren and the Olbermann rerun. Trouble is, Cooper's newscast lacks a distinct identity. And because it's two hours long, he spends way too much time flogging stuff that will be coming up after 11, when people are either in bed or watching Jon Stewart. I'd cut it to an hour and make it a consistent, signature newscast. Then again, that's what Aaron Brown was doing in that time slot, and I would have kept him and deployed Cooper elsewhere.

Problem solved. Next?

Marty Baron is not tweeting

So what did I find in my inbox this morning? A message from someone named Marty Baron, letting me know that he was following me on Twitter. Well, I started following him and sent him a private note to make sure it was really him.

As it turns out, it's not Boston Globe editor Marty Baron, but someone pretending to be him. "It's not me," Baron told me by e-mail. Such gamesmanship is far from unusual on Twitter, though it looks like the normally savvy Adam Gaffin was taken in.

Why can't everyone be as honest as Fake Rahm Emanuel?

Shorter Freeman Dyson

He doesn't deny global warming. He likes global warming. From Nicholas Dawidoff's profile in the New York Times Magazine:

Dyson agrees with the prevailing view that there are rapidly rising carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere caused by human activity. To the planet, he suggests, the rising carbon may well be a MacGuffin, a striking yet ultimately benign occurrence in what Dyson says is still "a relatively cool period in the earth’s history." The warming, he says, is not global but local, "making cold places warmer rather than making hot places hotter." Far from expecting any drastic harmful consequences from these increased temperatures, he says the carbon may well be salubrious — a sign that "the climate is actually improving rather than getting worse," because carbon acts as an ideal fertilizer promoting forest growth and crop yields. "Most of the evolution of life occurred on a planet substantially warmer than it is now," he contends, "and substantially richer in carbon dioxide." Dyson calls ocean acidification, which many scientists say is destroying the saltwater food chain, a genuine but probably exaggerated problem. Sea levels, he says, are rising steadily, but why this is and what dangers it might portend "cannot be predicted until we know much more about its causes."

Given that Dyson accepts the basic science of global warming, how — despite all his brilliance — is his opinion on the effects of warming worth any more than anyone else's?

The Weather Underground again (II)

As it turned out, it really didn't take me that long to skim the 1976 FBI history of the Weather Underground.

At 420 pages, it is a comprehensive overview of whom the FBI considered to be associated with the Weather Underground and what activities they engaged in. And there is not one solitary mention of Katherine Ann Power, Susan Saxe or the 1970 murder of Boston police officer Walter Schroeder.

As I wrote earlier, the section in the index where Power's name might have appeared has been blacked out (or, to be more accurate, whited out). But from actually scanning through the document, it is clear that she's nowhere to be found. Whoever's name has been whited out, it's safe to say, isn't Power's.

In another part of the document (PDF) is a section titled "WUO [Weather Underground Organization] Communiques and Bombings 1970-1976." The section comprises a long list of terrorist acts for which the Weather Underground took credit — everything from bombing New York City police headquarters and the U.S. Capitol to helping Timothy Leary escape to Algeria. Again, there is no mention of the bank robbery in which Officer Schroeder was killed.

The only FBI reference to Power's alleged membership in the Weather Underground is a photo caption on a Web page that links to the 1976 report. Based on what I've found so far, I think someone in the FBI communications department made a mistake.

Moving right along: Over at Google Books, I was able to search "The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground," by Ron Jacobs (1997). There are no references whatsoever to Power, Saxe or the Schroeder case.

Using Amazon.com's "Search Inside" feature, I also peeked at William Ayers' memoir, "Fugitive Days." Again, no reference to Power, Saxe or Schroeder.

I also consulted stories from the New York Times and the Associated Press published at the time of Schroeder's murder. Both reported the FBI's belief that the suspects were involved in "revolutionary" activities. Neither story made any mention of the Weather Underground.

I see no reason to back down from asserting that Katherine Ann Power had no connection to the Weather Underground.

The Weather Underground again

Proving a negative can be damn near impossible. So consider this a first, halting effort to refute Michael Graham's claim that Katherine Ann Power was a member of the Weather Underground.

Power, as you may recall, is a convicted murder — a former student radical who was one of five people responsible for killing Boston police officer Walter Schroeder in a 1970 bank robbery. Last year, Michele McPhee, like Graham a talk-show host on WTKK Radio (96.9 FM), repeatedly claimed that Schroeder was killed by the Weather Underground; that because William Ayers, a former leader of the Weather Underground, knows Barack Obama, it must therefore follow that Obama was being disrespectful to the Schroeder family or something.

Now Ayers has been invited and disinvited to speak at Boston College, which occasions Graham's missive.

Graham's evidence is a link to an FBI Web page in which Power is identified as a member of the Weather Underground. Yet it is an odd document to which Graham refers — there is nothing in it about the Schroeder murder or Power. There are, however, photos of Bernardine Dohrn (Ayers' wife, and indeed a former member of the Weather Underground) and Power. No further information is provided.

There is also a link to an FBI document, in multiple parts and hundreds of pages long, that is a 1976 internal history of the Weather Underground. However, it is unsearchable, as it is in the form of a PDF image file. It would take me many hours to read through it. I don't have the time, but if anyone would like to try, be my guest. I'd like to know what's in it.

More interesting is another link Graham provides — to a long article in National Review, published in 1993, not long after Power's arrest. In it, one of her former Brandeis professors, Jacob Cohen, goes into deep, fascinating detail about Power and her classmate and co-murderer Susan Saxe. Cohen makes it clear that Power and Saxe were consumed by the radical insanity of the time. But Cohen, who knew them well, offers no indication that either of them was a member of the Weather Underground. It just doesn't come up.

The thing is, Power's story is well-known. She and Saxe, while students at Brandeis, hooked up with three ex-convicts and robbed a bank so that they could raise money for the Black Panthers. It sounds crazy, and it was. The crime they committed was unspeakable. But with the sole exception of that FBI page, I don't think you will find anything anywhere suggesting that they were tied to the Weather Underground.

Here is how the New York Times described it following Power's 1993 arrest:

The bank robbery came in a year when the anti-war movement had splintered, with some groups going underground and turning to violence. That March, three members of the Weathermen, a radical group, blew themselves up in the Greenwich Village town house where they were trying to build bombs.

Then the United States invaded Cambodia. Four days later in early May, four Kent State University students were shot to death by the National Guard during a protest of the invasion. The next day Kathy Power was one of thousands of students who walked out of classes in protest.

A national committee to coordinate student strikes was set up at Brandeis and it included Ms. Power, Susan Saxe and a state prison inmate on a college furlough program, Stanley Bond. All three took part in the bank robbery.

I am trying to find out more. Given the FBI statement, I am treading carefully. But, so far, I have seen no facts that would challenge the public record: that Power and Saxe had nothing to do with the Weather Underground.

Instant update: I just had a flash of inspiration and looked at the index of Weather Underground members in that FBI report (PDF). The place where Power's name would be (if it's there) has been blacked out. Saxe is not mentioned at all.

Still more: I see that Graham has referred to me as "some moron who claims to teach at Northeastern University." We shall see who's the moron by the time this has been resolved.

Blogging the death of newspapers

This post is unfair to its intended targets, but it's hilarious nevertheless. Paul Dailing writes at the Huffington Post:

I'll join the ranks of Jeff Jarvis, Paul Gillin, Jay Rosen and Clay Shirky in competing to see who can use the most jargon to describe something everyone knows is happening. Apparently, it's very simple.

The more you self-reference, pick feuds and talk about the failure of TimesSelect, the better you're doing. If you make it sound like you're the one who figured out newspapers are dying, you win.

I have to admit — there are times when this comes pretty close to the actual discourse. I'll try to imagine Dailing whispering in my ear the next time I write my own death-of-newspapers post.

Next steps for the shrinking Globe

Working harder isn't going to do it once the Boston Globe has finished with its current round of 50 reductions to the newsroom staff. Once that process has been completed, the news staff will have shrunk from about 550 full-time journalists (or their equivalent) in 2000 to roughly 330. That means the Globe will, of necessity, be a fundamentally different paper.

This Friday, I'm going to be talking about the future of local news on "Radio Boston," on WBUR (90.9 FM), from 1 to 2 p.m., along with El Planeta managing editor Marcela García, Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub and Globe regional editor David Dahl. I've been thinking about these ideas for a while, and this seems like as good a time as any to put them out there. (The Globe cuts will also be discussed on "Beat the Press," on WGBH-TV/Channel 2, on Friday at 7 p.m.)

As the newspaper business has shrunk over the past few years, Globe executives have made some tough decisions about priorities. There are no more international bureaus. There is little national coverage outside of Washington. The Washington bureau has stayed, in part because Boston remains a politically minded town, in part because the Globe's Washington coverage is picked up by a lot of news Web sites around the country. Essentially, though, the Globe has become a local and regional paper.

Now, though, it would appear that the Globe won't even be able to cover local news as thoroughly without fundamentally rethinking how it should go about its business.

Like just about every news junkie, I have some thoughts — nothing original, and nothing, I'm sure, that editor Marty Baron, Boston.com editor David Beard, Globe managing editor Caleb Solomon, publisher Steve Ainsley and company haven't already considered. The crisis is ongoing, and it won't be solved by cutting 50 positions.

The question of whether the Globe is worth $20 million or $200 million, and if it is among the 10 most likely papers to close or drop its print edition (see Douglas McIntyre's latest), is irrelevant. The survival of every large regional paper in the country is at stake right now.

1. Re-define Boston.com as the Globe's principal news vehicle. This is tricky. With 5.2 million unique visitors a month, Boston.com has more readers than any online regional newspaper, far outperforming its print edition in the national rankings. So, yes, first, do no harm. But Boston.com needs to be branded as the umbrella for all of the Globe's readers — the only platform that reaches what we used to call a mass audience.

Nevertheless, there's a visual dichotomy between Boston.com and the Globe's own online presence that helps neither entity. It goes back to the earliest days of the Web, when Boston.com had a number of partners, including Boston magazine, Banker & Tradesman and New England Cable News. These days, Boston.com is like Yugoslavia — a former federation now consisting of just one country, the Globe.

The problem with Boston.com is that you enter it not quite knowing whether you are going to encounter all of the Globe's content. Despite several redesigns over the years, it remains too easy to get lost, too. Because of efforts to establish Boston.com as being separate from the Globe, it has a feel that might charitably be described as lite. I would redo the site so that it is clearly stamped as the Globe's 24/7 news operation, very much along the lines of the New York Times and Washington Post Web sites.

Next, I would take it a step further than most newspaper sites have been willing to do. Though I would include all (or most — see next item) of the Globe's content on Boston.com, I would drop the "Today's Paper" feature. It's fine and probably necessary to post the Globe's content on its free Web site. Recent proposals by the likes of Walter Isaacson, Steven Brill and Alan Mutter to charge for online content are well-intentioned but deeply flawed.

But that doesn't mean Boston.com ought to offer the Globe in a form that's organized exactly the same way as the print edition. Why should the Globe — or the Times or the Post or anyone else — offer a perfect substitute? The Boston Herald, by the way, is already doing this, running a 24/7 news site that is entirely unconnected to its print edition.

Last fall I had a chance to interview John Yemma, the editor of the Christian Science Monitor (and a former Globe staff member). As you no doubt know, next month the Monitor will end its daily print edition. [Update: In fact, it has already printed its final edition.] Instead, it will supplement its own 24/7 Web site with a weekly magazine. All of the magazine's content will be posted on the Web site — but it will be distributed among different content and subject areas. The magazine itself will not be posted as a separate and distinct entity.

"We're going to disaggregate the print edition and feed it to the appropriate places," Yemma said.

Not a bad idea.

2. Charge a lot more for the print edition. The Globe still sells almost 325,000 papers on weekdays and 500,000 on Sundays. That's a lot of papers, even though it's a far cry from the more than 500,000 it used to sell on weekdays and the 800,000-plus it sold on Sundays.

If the advertising market hadn't changed so completely, the picture wouldn't be nearly so dire. But it's simply a fact of life that Craigslist has devastated the classified market, formerly the most lucrative part of the Globe.

OK, now take a deep breath. I would charge $2 for the daily edition (up from 75 cents) and $5 on Sunday (up from $2.50). What effect would such an increase have on circulation? A rather large one, I suspect. But given that the print edition of any newspaper is a break-even proposition (at best) because of the cost of paper, ink, distribution and the like, it makes sense to extract some serious revenue out of readers who really want a print edition in the morning.

Customers willing to pay such a price would be an elite audience especially attractive to advertisers. (The danger that editors would have to avoid is the temptation to tailor their coverage accordingly.) And the Globe would actually be making money from its print edition.

The problem with such an idea, of course, is that you'd be asking people to pay a lot more money at a time when the paper is thinner than it's ever been. The challenge is to offer extra value. I don't have any good answers to that. Perhaps there is some content that would be reserved exclusively for print readers.

The metro columnists? Probably not. How about a really well-edited, analytical daily briefing on world, national and local news that would take up all of an ad-free pages two and three? It would have to be sufficiently meaty that it would take 10 or 15 minutes to get through it, and leave readers feeling as though they didn't absolutely have to read the rest of the paper. That would be a real service to time-starved folks who are serious about news.

The extra value doesn't have to be only related to content. Subscribers would receive a Globe card, just like a public television contributor card. Cooperating businesses could offer discounts to cardholders. Free admission could be offered to certain Globe-sponsored events. This would represent an expansion of current efforts rather than something entirely new.

3. Blog what you can't cover. As Jeff Jarvis likes to say, "Cover what you do best. Link to the rest." Given that there are going to be fewer local reporters on the Globe's staff, I would hire about a half-dozen bloggers to offer intelligent aggregation of local blogs covering politics, food, sports, city life — what have you. You could then take the highlights and reverse-publish them in the print edition.

I want to draw a distinction between the bloggers you'd hire, who would be paid, and the bloggers whose work would be aggregated, who wouldn't be paid. Some of the aggregatees wouldn't want to be included, which is fine. Most would be thrilled. I'm always happy to see Media Nation featured on Boston.com or in the VoxOp column on the op-ed page.

And by the way, I'm talking about paid bloggers who would offer judgment, commentary and context — not the automated aggregation of local content that got the Globe into trouble earlier this year. It wouldn't be as cheap, but it would be a crucial investment in the future.

4. Do something about the Metro dilemma. Why on earth did the Globe's corporate parent, the New York Times Co., buy 49 percent of Metro Boston a few years ago? It was just enough deny it the control that it needs.

I would do everything I could to capture a controlling interest in Metro — or, failing that, start a competitor. I'd keep it as a freebie tabloid and continue aiming it at younger readers and subway and bus riders. Then I would fill it exclusively with shorter versions of Globe stories and use it relentlessly to promote Boston.com and the full-scale print edition.

There's money to be made in free newspapers. In fact, let's keep going with that idea.

5. Develop a variety of free, advertiser-supported publications. Last year the Globe repackaged all of its arts, entertainment and lifestyle coverage in a daily tabloid called g. Whether you like g or not (departing literary-beat reporter David Mehegan gives it a thumbs-down), it does present the Globe with an opportunity to do something different — give it away in places where people who are looking for something to do would be likely to pick it up.

The Globe folded its paid sports magazine, OT, in a matter of months. It should have tried free distribution at sporting events. As with g, I think advertisers would have been attracted to such a publication if the Globe had found a way to get it into the hands of sports fans.

I have no idea whether it's considered a success, but the Globe is already doing something like this with Lola, a giveaway aimed at women. Snicker if you like. But in an era when there is no longer any such thing as a mass audience, a newspaper must target many different audiences.

Would these ideas save the Globe? I don't know, but I think they're worth trying. The other ideas that are floating around — going online-only, or putting out a print edition just three or four days a week — are a lot more drastic, and would represent a continuing downward spiral rather than a new beginning.

Not to sound old-fashioned, but I believe that a healthy Globe is vital to the civic life of the community. You often hear people ask whether Boston will remain "a two-newspaper town," a reference to the Globe and the Herald. I think that's looking at it the wrong way.

The fact is that the Globe, even in its shrunken state, remains the dominant regional media organization. There are a number of other important news outlets — not just the Herald, but the Boston Phoenix, WBUR, New England Cable News, local television stations and community papers. In other words, there's the Globe, and there's everyone else.

The Globe and other large metropolitan dailies will never be restored. They can, I hope, be reconceived.

As always, I invite your comments.

Keeping tabs on the Globe's downsizing

Adam Reilly of the Boston Phoenix is keeping on top of the buyouts at the Boston Globe. I really haven't been, so please take a look at what Adam has been writing here, here and here.

Among those leaving thus far: Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic Gail Caldwell; literary-beat reporter David Mehegan; managing editor for administration Mary Jane Wilkinson; business reporter Jeffrey Krasner; and education reporter Linda Wertheimer.

Good quotes from Mehegan and Wilkinson. Mehegan is especially pointed, telling Reilly:

There's no Living/Arts section. I used to write these great profiles that were combined with great art and design, and now the section's gone. In many ways, I feel as if the paper I used to write for has already departed. We can't do the stories we used to do, and we don' t have freedom to write in the way we used to; everything has to be shorter and tighter. I don't know what they're going to do with my old beat, but I do know it's one people are intensely interested in.

I think [Globe editor] Marty Baron's done a wonderful job under very difficult circumstances. I have a lot of respect for him. But the old business model's broken, and it's not coming back.

Tough times not just at 135 Morrissey Blvd., but for readers of the Globe, too.

Daring to be dull

In my latest for The Guardian, I argue that media coverage of last night's news conference represents the normalization of the Obama presidency. By daring to be boring, Barack Obama hopes to lower expectations for himself, if not necessarily for what he wants to accomplish.

Power Line's new math

At Power Line, John Hinderaker says a chart on budget deficits put out by the Congressional Budget Office shows President Obama's claim that he'll reduce deficit spending is "a bald-faced lie."

Really? Hinderaker reproduces the chart, so have a look. What I see is that the deficit hits a mind-boggling $1.8 trillion or so during the current fiscal year, 2009, which ends on Sept. 30. We already knew that, and we know the reason: it's the government's response to the current economic emergency — the stimulus package, bailouts, etc., etc.

After that, though, both the White House and the CBO agree the deficit will shrink quite rapidly until around fiscal 2012 or '13. Then the two sets of figures start to diverge. But that's not really of much importance, is it? As Obama observed last night, adjustments will be made along the way.

Forced to choose between Hinderaker's interpretation and my own lying eyes, I'll go with the latter.

This may or may not be really awful

Perhaps the worst lede on a political column you'll read this week comes from Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal:

He is willowy when people yearn for solid, reed-like where they hope for substantial, a bright older brother when they want Papa, cool where they probably prefer warmth. All of which may or may not hurt Barack Obama in time. Lincoln was rawboned, prone to the blues and freakishly tall, with a new-grown beard that refused to become an assertion and remained, for four years, a mere and constant follicular attempt. And he did OK.

Media Nation is no Peggy Noonan-basher. I often found her insights during the presidential campaign to be valuable. But what you submit to your editor is supposed to be what you write after you're done clearing your throat.

Live-blogging Obama's news conference

I'll be live-blogging President Obama's news conference tonight. If you like multi-tasking, please drop by a few minutes before 8 p.m.

8:00: Bill Bennett, on CNN, says independents now favor Republicans. But Real Clear Politics average on Obama's job-approval rating shows the president at 61.2 percent favorable, 30.5 percent unfavorable. Who are these independents?

8:04: Cites Geithner's bank plan. Good timing for news conference — Geithner finally got off the mat yesterday.

8:06: "I'm as angry as anybody about those bonuses" but "we're all in this together."

8:07: Much shorter opening statement this time.

8:11: Chuck Todd: Why haven't you asked the American people to sacrifice, given that some (who?) have compared the economic crisis to war? But Chuck — the crisis is eased when people spend.

8:15: Still thinking about Todd's question. What does it even mean? Savings rate is higher than it's been in many years — and that's a big part of the problem.

8:19: Chip Reid of CBS News another economic ignoramus: Isn't that debt what you were referring to when you said we didn't want to pass it on to next generation?

8:20: Obama: I inherited a huge deficit from Republicans. My budget will drive it down.

8:26: The questions show a fundamental lack of understanding that, in the midst of an economic crisis, the best approach for the federal government to take is to spend in order to offset at least part of the lack of spending by the private sector. If anything, as Krugman keeps pointing out, Obama isn't doing enough.

8:27: Mexican reporter asks about drug violence in her country and spillover effect on the border. Who let her in? Serious, substantive questions not allowed.

8:31: Obama's lost in the weeds responding to a question from Stars and Stripes on military spending. Or, to be more accurate, he's led us into the weeds and now we're lost.

8:33: Ed Henry of CNN: Why is Andrew Cuomo getting better results going after AIG than you and Geithner? Good question. Then, before Obama can answer, he follows it up with another dumb budget question. Not surprisingly, Obama chooses to answer the dumb budget question.

8:36: Obama on why he waited to express anger at AIG: "It took us a couple of days because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak."

8:40: Mike Allen of Politico: Are you reconsidering tax deduction for health care and charity? Do you wish you hadn't made that promise? Obama: We would return to the Reagan percentages, and it would only affect one percent of the American people. If you're rich, you'd be able to write off 28 percent of charitable deductions, not 39 percent.

8:43: Allen: Charities say this will hurt giving. Obama: No, it won't. What really hurts charities is an economy that isn't working.

8:46: Ann Compton of ABC News: How is race affecting your presidency? Obama: I've been focused on the economy. Racial significance of inauguration "lasted about a day." "Are we taking the steps to improve liquidity in the financial markets, create jobs, get businesses to reopen, keep America safe."

8:48: Washington Times guy: How much did you wrestle with your conscience over embryonic-stem-cell research? Half a nanosecond is my guess as to what would be a truthful answer.

8:52: Agence France-Presse guy: How are you going to bring peace to the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation given Israel's new anti-Palestinian government? Funny — no mention of Hamas' terrorism against Israel. Obama: Former enemies in Ireland celebrated in the White House on St. Patrick's Day. "What that tells me is that if you stick to it, if you are persistent, then these problems can be dealt with.... I'm a big believer in persistence."

8:56: "We're moving in the right direction." Geithner now has a plan. We've reached out to Iran, but that will take time. We haven't eliminated the influence of lobbyists immediately, nor have we eliminated pork-barrel spending. The idea is to keep moving forward. "This is a big ocean liner, it's not a speedboat. It doesn't turn around immediately." But after four years, I hope people will see we've moved in the right direction.

8:57: And that was that.

9:03: Bill O'Reilly: He was boring! Karl Rove: "I think he's sort of an arrogant guy." Now they are sharing their deep knowledge of economics.

9:06: O'Reilly: When I interviewed Obama, man, I was so great.

Final word: I'll be wrapping up morning commentary for The Guardian tomorrow. But it strikes me that what we saw tonight was the normalization of the Obama presidency. This was no big deal, very much unlike his last prime-time news conference. Obama seemed to feel free to deflect stupid questions. It helped that Geithner's having a nice little two-day run.

People should pay attention to Obama's closing, in which he talked about persistence and the long run. It's how he got elected. And it seems to be how he approaches politics, and life.

Gitell on Jewish war veterans

Friend of Media Nation Seth Gitell hasn't had to give up all his writing since becoming House Speaker Robert DeLeo's spokesman. Recently he wrote a fascinating piece about about Jewish veterans of the Vietnam War, pegged to a book by Col. Jack Jacobs and Douglas Century titled "If Not Now, When?"

In the course of exploring Jacobs' book, Gitell discusses his father, Gerald Gitell, himself a member of the Green Berets. The elder Gitell — who helped discover Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler, whose "Ballad of the Green Berets" was an unlikely hit in 1966 — was an uncredited source of mine when I wrote about the 2001 revelation that former senator Bob Kerrey had committed war crimes in Vietnam. (Pay no attention to the date at the top of the page; it's merely a script that displays today's date.)

Seth writes:

Back in the late 1960s, American Jews weren't exactly renowned for their fighting skills. Jewish service in World War II (such as my grandfather's) had been taken for granted as part of the total war effort America waged against the Axis Powers. But Jews as fighting men still hadn’t entered the general consciousness.

Indeed, as Seth notes, Jewish antiwar radicals such as Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were far better known during the Vietnam years than any Jewish military officers. In that respect, Jacobs' book is something of a forgotten history.

Tweaking Media Nation's appearance

I've made some minor changes to the look and feel of Media Nation, mainly to accommodate the newish, extreme-vertical ad that takes up the top of the right-hand column.

I'm also thinking about switching to WordPress.org so that I can have a little more control as well as multiple static pages. But this should do for the time being.

A no-class comment

As the father of a son who recently earned his Eagle award and a daughter who just got her Silver, I'm appalled at a comment from a spokeswoman for the Boy Scouts of America that appears in today's Boston Globe. Renee Fairrer tells reporter Irene Sege:

The Girl Scouts, pretty much they're known for the Girl Scout cookies. When people think of Boy Scouts, they think of Eagle awards. They think of service.

Girl Scouts have to put in a tremendous number of service hours for their awards. The requirements can't be directly compared, but the Silver award, for girls 11 to 14 years old, specifies that a girl put in 40 hours. The Gold, for girls up to the age of 18, requires 65 hours, according to a workbook my daughter has.

The Eagle, which a boy can earn up until he turns 18, does not specify a minimum number of hours for a service project, though such projects usually run about 100 cumulative hours from everyone who participates. In practical terms, that means the scout himself generally puts in fewer than 40 hours of his own time.

Too bad Fairrer didn't understand that before she opened her mouth and inserted her foot.

Pundits on Patrick: Not a pretty picture

Gov. Deval Patrick's politically clueless performance of recent days has brought out some sharp commentary from local pundits. A quick round-up — not meant to be comprehensive, just stuff that caught my eye:

• Joan Vennochi, Boston Globe: "The Massachusetts governor is presiding over a local version of the larger, national disaster that is chipping away at confidence in government and the economy. But Patrick's instincts for the symbols that enrage taxpayers are poor, and so, apparently, are the instincts of those who report to him." Comment: Vennochi pretty much nails it. But it's not just Patrick's inept handling of political symbolism — it's the lack of substance, too.
• Jon Keller, WBZ: "It's been a dismaying, demoralizing turn of events, coming at the worst possible time for the only thing that really matters, the ability of our state to deal with our crises in a way that protects and provides opportunity to the working classes. Things are bad out here, and no one wants to hear Deval Patrick whining about what a drag his chosen profession has turned out to be." Comment: Keller's pretty rough on everyone. Nevertheless, there's a difference in tone here that suggests Keller thinks the governor has reached the point of no return.
  
• The Outraged Liberal: "Patrick came to this job from the world of business, where executives got what they wanted by the sheer force of their will and personality. Some learn that politics is not the same environment and that accommodation is required.... But the biggest loser will be Patrick, who tried to strong arm the process and failed. In spectacular fashion." Comment: Outside of Blue Mass. Group, Patrick has had no better friend in the local blogosphere than Mr. O.L. Very ominous.
  
• Jay Fitzgerald, Hub Blog and Boston Herald: "Gov. Patrick's 'trivial' comment is perhaps the single most stupid political remark I've heard muttered by a state or national pol in the face of genuine public outrage. It will stick with him for the rest of his years in the corner office." Comment: I think Jay's right.
• David Kravitz, Blue Mass. Group: "It's more than passing strange for this particular crowd to be so clueless about why stuff like this matters. No, the money at issue in the AIG bonuses, or Carol Aloisi's job, or Marian Walsh's special election, will not make or break the state or the country. But the damage these kinds of things do is, while less tangible, no less real." Comment: If Patrick is losing one of the BMG co-editors, then he's pretty much down to family and childhood friends.
• Paul Flannery, Boston Daily: "Patrick has never bothered to take care of the little things — the car, the drapes, the chopper, the book deal while the casino bill went down in flames — and now the big things are slipping out of his grasp." Comment: Call it the "broken windows" theory of politics.

We are now past the half-way point of Patrick's four-year term. It's pretty sobering — and discouraging — to realize that, without a major turnaround, we're looking at yet another disappointment in the governor's office.

When Media Nation met Suldog

This past Saturday, I had the honor of introducing the 2005 film "Good Night, and Good Luck," about the life of Edward R. Murrow, at the Boston Athenaeum, part of a "Civic Discourse" series it's running along with Suffolk University.

I also had a chance to meet Jim Sullivan, who writes the excellent local blog Suldog, as well as Mrs. Suldog. Jim has got some interesting things to say about Murrow and the how the media landscape has changed since the 1950s, when Murrow's CBS program "See It Now" played a major role in ending the witch-hunting career of Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

First Circuit rejects libel appeal

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston has refused to overturn a ruling (PDF) that statements made in matters of private concern may be found libelous even if true.

The court has also declined to accept (PDF) an amicus curiae brief filed by several dozen of the largest and most influential media organizations in the country, citing a conflict of interest that would be created if it were to do so. Apparently one of the judges has a tie to a media organization, which would force a recusal.

No word on what comes next. Is it possible that the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on this? The idea that a statement must be defamatory and false in order to be held libelous is so fundamental to our notion of a free press that it's hard to imagine the ruling will stand, even if it pertains only to Massachusetts, based as it is on a 1902 state law.

From the time I reported on this case for The Guardian, I've heard a low buzz suggesting that the ruling may not matter all that much, given that it pertains to private parties — and that, in fact, private persons deserve more protection under the libel laws than public officials and public figures.

My answer to that is that they already do, but that private figures — according to all the libel law that we understand — still have to prove falsehood.

I think the most telling case is that of Gertz v. Robert Welch, a 1974 Supreme Court decision about a libel suit brought by a lawyer who had been falsely defamed by a John Birch Society publication. The court ruled that the lawyer, Elmer Gertz, was a private figure, and would thus not to have to prove "actual malice" as defined by Times v. Sullivan (1964) — that is, he would not have to prove that the Birchers had published defamatory material knowing it was false, or with reckless disregard for the truth. Instead, the court ruled that, henceforth, private figures would have to show negligence at the very least, with the states free to adopt more stringent language if they chose.

Reading the Gertz decision, you can't help but be struck how the notion of falsehood is raised over and over. The phrase "defamatory falsehood" is used repeatedly. The most famous section of the majority decision, written by Justice Lewis Powell, is built around the principle that libel is a false and defamatory statement of fact:

We begin with the common ground. Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea. However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries but on the competition of other ideas. But there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact. Neither the intentional lie nor the careless error materially advances society's interest in "uninhibited, robust, and wide-open" debate on public issues. They belong to that category of utterances which "are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality."

Remember, Gertz was a private figure. Powell was writing quite specifically about the libel standards that should prevail when a private citizen brings a libel suit, yet he made it absolutely clear that falsehood and defamation are the two key elements of libel.

It's hard to imagine what the First Circuit is thinking.

Imus' judgment

No, Don Imus shouldn't have said he'd "shoot" Jay Severin — but, based on Jessica Heslam's account, it sounds like no one ever would have known about it if the Severin camp hadn't started blabbing. And come on — does Severin actually believe Imus was going to pull out a gun and blow him away if he refused to get off the stage?

The shooting remark aside, you can't argue with Imus' judgment.

The trouble with the new Facebook

Matt explains. I'm steaming because I just discovered that Facebook's new, improved Links feature no longer lets you eliminate the photo or edit the text. Unless I'm missing something.

The ties between journalism and community

In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that a new survey showing that people don't make much of a connection between their local newspaper and civic life gets it exactly backwards. In fact, folks have lost interest in journalism because they've lost interest in democracy. For newspapers and Web sites to succeed, they're first going to have to re-establish a sense of community.

Gmail and its discontents (II)

Problem solved, although not the way I would have liked. I'm now using Apple Mail to pull in my Northeastern mail (via POP) and Gmail (via IMAP) separately. I'm able to use Northeastern's SMTP server off-campus as well as on. So all of my outgoing NU mail contains official-looking header information, and will thus not be intercepted by anyone's spam filter.

Oh, well. Apple Mail's not so bad, I suppose.

The Seattle experiment

Let's begin with the obvious. It's a damn shame that about 145 newsroom folks are losing their jobs, as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer becomes the largest newspaper in the country to move to an online-only platform. Only about 20 people will cover the news at seattlepi.com.

That said, I think 20 people could do a lot of useful damage if they're focused on the right things — covering local news that really matters and offering intelligent aggregation of other content, including local bloggers. Given that the Post-Intelligencer was the number-two paper in Seattle, I can think of no better place to try such an experiment. Too bad the dominant paper, the Seattle Times, is in such tough shape, too. But that's the case pretty much everywhere.

I was interested in see in Ken Doctor's analysis that Lincoln Millstein, the head of Hearst News Digital, will have an indirect hand in the Seattle experiment. Way back when, Millstein was editor of what was then the Boston Globe's Living/Arts section, and a good one.

That said, I'm skeptical of the online-only model. Maybe if seattlepi.com enjoys some initial success, the Hearst folks might consider a free daily tabloid consisting of the best of what's online. As long as advertising remains more lucrative in print than on the Web, that might be the way to go.

Some sort of print presence would also help to distinguish it from Crosscut, a non-profit community news site that serves the Seattle area.

Dylan goes Tex-Mex

I'm very excited about this. After Bob Dylan wrapped up his comeback trilogy in 2006 with "Modern Times," I figured that would be just about it. He's 67 now, and he's more than proved his point.

Except that Dylan apparently never thought of it as a trilogy. He's got a new album of original material, "Together Through Life," coming out next month, supposedly with a Tex-Mex flavor. (I'll assume he's not going to revisit the hilarious accent he unveiled on "Romance in Durango.") Zimmy says he's aiming for something different this time:

I think we milked it all we could on that last record and then some. We squeezed the cow dry. All the "Modern Times" songs were written and performed in the widest range possible so they had a little bit of everything. These new songs have more of a romantic edge.

Joel Brown pointed me to this Rolling Stone piece, which describes "Together Through Life" as having "the live-in-the-studio feel of Dylan's last two studio records, 2001's 'Love and Theft' and 2006's 'Modern Times,' but with a seductive border-cafe feel (courtesy of the accordion on every track) and an emphasis on struggling-love songs."

I can't wait.

Last night I was listening to "Tell Tale Signs," Dylan's recent collection of outtakes, mainly from the trilogy and 1989's "Oh Mercy." It strikes me that Dylan's so-called comeback is now 20 years old — that, contrary to the conventional wisdom that he staggered around for decades, he actually rediscovered his gift in his late 40s, and has been kicking ass pretty much ever since, with just one turkey ("Under the Red Sky," 1990) in all those years.

Yes, "Time Out of Mind" (1998), as good as anything he's ever done, signaled to the wider public that he was back. But if you look at his actual output, you'd have to say that he's been on top of his game for a long time.

Gmail and its discontents

It must be the season of technical difficulties.

I use Gmail for everything. I've set it up to pull in my Northeastern e-mail, and I have an alias that allows me to send mail via Gmail as if it were coming from my Northeastern address. Gmail isn't perfect, but it's better than anything else.

Today, though, I sent an e-mail to a colleague at Northeastern. It never arrived. I tried again. No luck. Finally, I sent the same message using my Gmail address. Bingo — she got it immediately.

What I had run into, I strongly suspect, was a hyperactive spam filter at her end. The filter saw that my incoming e-mail address did not match the underlying Gmail information in the header and flagged it as spam. (The theory is that I must have been faking my outgoing e-mail address, and so therefore was up to no good.) I've run into this very occasionally before, but not quite so directly.

Now, of course, I'm wondering how many other e-mails I've sent to people at Northeastern that never arrived. I've contacted the IT folks to see if there might be a solution that doesn't force me either to stop using my NU address (unprofessional) or abandon Gmail for NU business (undesirable). But I'm not holding out a whole lot of hope.

Any thoughts?

Dissecting the news in Brookline

Friend of Media Nation Danny Schechter will be speaking and screening a new film next Monday, March 23, at 7 p.m. in Brookline. His appearance will benefit Brookline Access Television. Here's Danny's announcement:

I may no longer live in Boston, but Boston lives in me.

Danny Schechter, your News Dissector here, inviting you to an event I am being saluted at on Monday evening, March 23, at 7 p.m. at the Coolidge Corner Theatre on Harvard Street in Brookline.

It is a benefit for Brookline Access Television, a vital community TV station.

I will be screening a "self-dissection," a film called "WORK IN PROGRESS: Putting the ME Back In MEDia," a hour retrospective on my work including my years at WBCN, WGBH, WCVB, the Harvard Nieman Journalism Fellowship, etc.

Produced by Marie Sullivan, it is a fast-paced romp through my media career from the '60s to 60 and beyond, with many fun moments and serious ideas. I did it because media folks rarely scrutinize their own work or try to draw lessons for younger people enchanted with the media world. Folks who have seen it say they were surprised that it is not self-promotional. (Well, maybe just a little!)

In my career I have told many stories — including my most recent, still-unreleased film on the Barack Obama campaign — so why not tell my own?

I would be pleased if you can come, support a good cause — people's TV — and see what I have been up to in the years before and after I lived in Boston. (Incidentally, Ijust learned that the year after I left, Obama moved into an apartment around the corner from our house in Somerville. Smile.) Another connection of interest — this event takes place at the very cool Coolidge Corner, a great theater that my brother Bill, who lives nearby, helped save year back. I am proud that he did that.

Disclosure: They are looking for a $10 donation. Thanks to BATV for the invite and for organizing it. For more information: Peter Zawadzki, who can be reached at peter {at} batv {dot} org.

Until then,

Danny Schechter

For more on what our company, Globalvision, is up to these days, go to globalvision.org.

Photo of Schechter with another Boston media legend, Sarah Ann Shaw, is (cc) 2006 by the Boston chapter of the Action Coalition for Media Education and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

A new paradigm in foreign correspondence

Good story in the New York Times on Sunday about the new paradigm in foreign reporting. It wasn't that long ago that a reporter for, say, the Times understood that few of the people he was covering would ever see what he wrote — and that it would trickle back slowly.

Now, because of the Internet, writes Anand Giridharadas, Western media outlets are available everywhere — so much so that the majority of Google searches for Indian and Chinese news in the Times comes from those countries.

Business as usual in the governor's office

There's been plenty of outrage over Gov. Deval Patrick's appointment of state Sen. Marian Walsh to a transparently unnecessary $175,000-a-year job. Both the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald have editorialized against it.

But I'm especially struck by mild-mannered CommonWealth magazine pundit Michael Jonas' post on CW Unbound, which ties together a number of loose threads in order to demonstrate precisely what a business-as-usual governor Patrick has become. Jonas frankly describes the Walsh appointment as an "outrage" and writes:

It's hard not to see that as the trajectory Gov. Deval Patrick is on after the latest slap in the face to those expecting more from an administration that pledged to sweep out the culture of patronage and cronyism on Beacon Hill.

Jonas connects the Walsh appointment to Patrick's high-handed, Big Dig-tainted transportation secretary, Jim Aloisi, and his pension-abusing stimulus czar, Jeffrey Simon, as well as to the goodies Sal DiMasi handed out as he was leaving Beacon Hill.

Well, DiMasi's gone. Patrick is still here, and he's got to persuade the public that it should put up with some pretty draconian budget cuts and tax hikes in the months ahead. Good luck with that, Governor.

Media heavyweights seek libel relief

Q: What do the Boston Globe, the Boston Phoenix and the Boston Herald agree on? A: The dangerous precedent that would be set if a ruling that undermines truth as a defense in libel cases is allowed to stand.

Earlier this week, according to the Boston Globe's Jonathan Saltzman, noted First Amendment lawyer Robert Bertsche filed an amicus curiae brief (PDF) asking that the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit overturn a decision reached recently by a three-judge panel of that court. The brief is signed by a host of media giants, including the New York Times Co. (which owns the Globe), GateHouse Media (which owns more than 100 newspapers in Eastern Massachusetts), ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, the Washington Post, Time Inc., WGBH and many, many others.

As I reported in the Guardian on Feb. 17, the decision, written by Judge Juan Torruella, allowed a libel suit to move ahead on the grounds that the offending speech (an e-mail to some 1,500 Staples employees about a sales director who'd been fired for violating the company's expense-report policies), though true, might be held libelous on the grounds that it was made with "actual malice."

In making that ruling, Torruella relied on the meaning of malice as it existed in 1902, when the Massachusetts law at issue went into effect — a meaning that Torruella defined as "ill will" or "malevolent intent." In Times v. Sullivan (1964), the U.S. Supreme Court redefined "actual malice" as a defamatory statement made even though it was known to be false, made with "reckless disregard" as to its truth or falsity.

The Torruella decision applies only to private persons, whereas the Times v. Sullivan and its progeny pertain to public officials and public figures. Nevertheless, in other decisions — most famously Gertz v. Robert Welch (1974) — the Supreme Court made it clear that even a libel suit brought by a private person must be based on a statement that was false and negligently made.

The amicus brief argues that if Torruella's ruling is allowed to stand, plaintiffs will be able to win libel suits if they are merely able to prove that the defendant was "out to get them." The brief continues:

In some quarters, it may even have the chilling effect of discouraging reporting and commentary on some of the most pressing issues of the day, such as the internal affairs of businesses coping with severe economic challenges, for fear that such matters might mistakenly be deemed to be of only "private concern."

This is a case of enormous importance to the beleaguered news media and, more important, to the public, which depends on tough, fair, truthful reporting. Let's hope the full court does the right thing.

A low whine from the Naked City (II)

Alan Mutter, one of the best newspaper analysts in the blogosphere, shares Adam Reilly's and my skepticism about Douglas McIntyre's list of doomed newspapers. Mutter calls McIntyre "a friend," but adds that there is "no hard data or deep analysis to support his findings." He continues:

Although some of the papers one day may succumb to anemic readership and revenues, there is not enough information or analysis underlying the scary list to support the proposition that the publications are more or less doomed than any of 10, 20 or 30 other papers that might have been named, instead.

What Mutter's got to say about Boston is especially interesting:

Even though weak economies are hardest on the No. 2 papers in two-newspaper towns, Doug predicts the demise of the print edition of the Boston Globe while saying nothing of the apparently fragile financial status of the far smaller Boston Herald.

Over at the Phoenix, Reilly responds to the Inside Track's criticism.

Update: Paul McMorrow nails it.

NewsTrust J-hunt: The final five

My stint as host of NewsTrust's journalism topic area comes to an end today. Here are five stories I submitted this morning:

• For The New York Times, the digital future is now by Daniel Terdiman, CNET News
• TV Paparazzi Turn Cameras to Corporate Titans by Brian Stelter, The New York Times
• About that newspaper "doomsday" list by Alan D. Mutter, Reflections of a Newsosaur
• How Newspapers Must Change to Survive by Michael S. Malone, ABC News
• Brawl Street: Get Read to Buy Low! And Sell Die by Jon Stewart, "The Daily Show"

I could write an entire post on the last item, but I'll just say this: Stewart is perhaps the best and most important media critic we've had since A.J. Liebling.

His dissection of CNBC's Jim Cramer last night — as well as his two eight-minute pieces lampooning the so-called experts of CNBC (here and here) — will have, I predict, a major and well-deserved negative effect on the network.

A low whine from the Naked City

Is this what the Boston Herald calls a correction?

The Herald's Inside Track chides the Phoenix's Adam Reilly and Media Nation today for questioning a blog post by financial analyst Douglas McIntyre placing the Boston Globe on a list of 10 newspapers that may go out of business or go online-only by the end of the year.

What's really amusing, though, is the way the Track quietly corrects an error made earlier this week on Jessica Heslam's Messenger Blog. The error — which had Time magazine predicting the Globe's demise — remains uncorrected.

As Media Nation was the first to report, Time, like several other media outlets, was merely running the feed from McIntyre's 24/7 Wall St. blog on its Web site. Naturally, the Track takes Reilly and me to task for not doing any "reporting," which it conveniently defines as not calling the Globe in order to get a "no comment."

Finally, the Track manages the neat trick of lampooning Reilly's and my skepticism over McIntyre's claim that the Globe is worth only $20 million while simultaneously acknowledging that the paper's real estate and other assets are probably worth more than $100 million.

The plain fact is that the most recent analysis anyone has seen is one put out by Barclays Capital analyst Craig Huber, who estimates the paper's value at $192.8 million.

The newspaper business is in unimaginably bad shape, and the Globe is as vulnerable as any paper. If being cautiously optimistic about the future of the Globe makes me hopelessly naive, then I offer my deepest apologies.

Then again, I'm also one of the few media-watchers I know who predicts that the Herald will also survive. I suppose I could be wrong about that, too.

More: WBZ Radio (AM 1030) still has a Tuesday report up on its Web site wrongly attributing McIntyre's item to Time magazine. Come on, folks. This isn't that hard.

Nice guys finish first

Paul Levy, president and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, is one of the Boston area's great managers and leaders of the past generation. So I'm not surprised — as Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen reports — that he earned a standing ovation when he suggested that high-paid people at the hospital sacrifice in order to save low-paid jobs.

On and on the NewsTrust J-hunt goes

But it all ends tomorrow! Today's five six picks:

• Many Would Shrug if Their Local Newspaper Closed by Andrew Kohut, Pew Research Center
  
• Iraqi who threw shoes at Bush jailed for 3 years by Hamza Hendawi, The Associated Press
• Life, online, after the Rocky Mountain News by Robert Niles, Online Journalism Review
• Google News Archive Search Shows Promise for News Organizations by Amy Gahran, Poynter.org
• Newspaper failures are old news. It’s time to focus on solutions. by Tom Regan, Christian Science Monitor
• The MinnPost Model: Is it sustainable? by Matt Snyders, City Pages

Here, once again, is NewsTrust's journalism topic page. Please consider taking part.

The M-word makes an ugly appearance

It's hard to believe, after all these years, that the word "midget" would pop up in a front-page story in today's New York Times. David Segal writes:

After the Depression, Congress formed what became known as the Pecora Commission, which grilled top financiers. But the point was mostly to embarrass them, and the upshot was to set the stage for stricter regulations. The most indelible image of the commission's hearings was a photo of J. P. Morgan Jr. with a midget who had been plopped in his lap by an opportunistic publicist.

The American Heritage Dictionary makes it clear that the M-word is "offensive." In my book, "Little People," I trace the history of this unfortunate word, possibly coined in the 1860s by Harriet Beecher Stowe and inextricably tied up in the idea of putting someone on public display.

Douglas McIntyre checks in

Adam Reilly hears from 24/7 Wall Street blogger Douglas McIntyre, the guy who listed the Boston Globe as one of 10 newspapers that might fold or go online-only in 2009.

NewsTrust: The J-hunt continues

Five more stories on journalism for your perusal:

• APIs: The new distribution by Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine
• Defogging the Economic Crisis by Jamie McIntyre, American Journalism Review
• Why is Jim Cramer shouting at me? by Gabriel Winant, Salon
• CPJ calls for Iranian president's intervention in Saberi case by the Committee to Protect Journalists
• Behind the Incredibly Shrinking Media by Paul Armstrong, Business Week

If you'd like to join in the fun, sign up for NewsTrust and visit the journalism topic page.

More on the Globe's not-so-imminent demise

Greg Wayland of NECN talks with Steve Burgard, director of Northeastern's School of Journalism, and me about the 24/7 Wall Street prediction that the Boston Globe may go under or go online-only before the year is out.

Whole Foods in a time of recession

In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at Whole Foods' settlement with the Federal Trade Commission — a nostalgic artifact from a time when we could actually afford to worry about one high-priced natural-food store gobbling up another.

Five more for NewsTrust's journalism hunt

Here are five more pieces about journalism that I've posted to NewsTrust.

• Get Off the Bus: The Future of Pro-Am Journalism by Amanda Michel, Columbia Journalism Review
• Preaching Ethics, D.C. Pol Threatens to Squash Tiny Paper by Marc Fisher, The Washington Post
• Four Types of Online Aggregation by Howard Owens, HowardOwens.com
• Journalism Goes Local with Times, Patch, New Start-ups by Michael Learmonth, Advertising Age
• Want to save your local paper? Read this first. by Alan D. Mutter, Reflections of a Newsosaur

Again, I invite you to register with NewsTrust, review stories and submit some that you find as well.

Time is not predicting the Globe's demise

First of all, let's dispense with the fiction that Time magazine is predicting the Boston Globe may go out of business or cease publishing its print edition sometime this year. Universal Hub and Jessica Heslam wrongly attribute the prediction to Time. Bostonist almost gets it right, but is unclear enough that readers might still think this is coming from Time.

In fact, the source of this rather startling prediction is Douglas McIntyre, a blogger for 24/7 Wall Street — not exactly the ghost of Henry Luce. Time just happens to run the feed on its Web site. (Here's a look at the site's syndication service.) I've interviewed McIntyre. He's a smart, knowledgeable guy, but it's fair to say that he likes to be a provocateur.

You will notice, too, that McIntyre repeats that bit about the Globe's being worth only $20 million. In fact, as the Boston Business Journal reported recently, a more logical number is a shade under $200 million — far short of the $1.1 billion that the New York Times Co. paid for it (in 1993 dollars, no less), but a lot more than $20 million. I know of no one who ever thought the $20 million figure was credible.

The Globe is struggling mightily, but its Web site, Boston.com, attracts more than 5 million unique visitors a month, and its paid print circulation — about 325,000 on weekdays and 500,000 on Sundays — is, though far short of the glory days, plenty enough to attract a decent amount of advertising if we weren't in the midst of a brutal recession.

So can we please get real?

A visit with CT News Junkie editor Christine Stuart

Find more videos like this on Wired Journalists


I spent last Wednesday with Christine Stuart, the editor of CT News Junkie, which covers Connecticut politics. Stuart, who's based at the Statehouse in Hartford, posts two to four times a day, often covering hearings on important but secondary stories that the mainstream media ignore.

CT News Junkie is a media partner with the New Haven Independent, one of the more interesting experiments in non-profit, Web-based community journalism. Projects such as these are crucial as we seek to grope our way forward through the economic crisis that has befallen the news business. (CT News Junkie is technically a for-profit company, but Stuart is looking into ways of taking it non-profit.)

I visited Stuart as part of a long-range project. But while I was there, I shot some video and put together a six-minute documentary. I hope you'll take a few moments and have a look.

Some technical notes. After spending about an hour trying to edit my video with iMovie '08, I gave up and used iMovie 6 instead. The lack of precision for coordinating audio and B-roll with iMovie '08 is a source of constant frustration, and I've finally given up. I can't believe I subjected my students to it last semester. Maybe iMovie '09 will be a better solution.

I also was unable to post the result to YouTube, even though the format (MP4), the length (well under 10 minutes) and the file size (under 100 MB) all meet YouTube's guidlines. Vimeo didn't work, either. I finally posted it successfully to Wired Journalists, which uses the Ning platform designed by Netscape founder Marc Andreesen.

If anyone out there has some thoughts as to why this proved to be YouTube-unfriendly, please drop me a line or post a comment. I'd still like to get this up on YouTube.

Journalism about journalism on NewsTrust

My reading and blogging habits will be substantially different this week, as I am hosting the journalism topic area for NewsTrust.

NewsTrust is a social-networking tool that enables community members to submit and rate news stories on qualities such as fairness, sourcing and importance. If you've never tried it before, I encourage you to sign up and give it a whirl. I'll keep you posted on what I'm submitting this week in the hopes that you'll pitch in.

Here is what I submitted this morning. The links will take you not directly to the story but, rather, to a NewsTrust review page. From there you can go to the story and review it for yourself.

• Ex-WaPo Editor Jim Brady to News Sites: Experiment More, Now by Steve Myers, Poynter.org
• Paid Content: You Can't Tell the Players Without a Scorecard by Ken Doctor, Content Bridges
• The Future of The New Republic by Paul Waldman, The Daily Beast
• United, Newspapers May Stand by David Carr, The New York Times
• Where Were the Media as Wall Street Imploded? by David Folkenflik, National Public Radio

Hope you'll consider taking part.

Self-referential post of the day

I just noticed that the banner ad at the top of Media Nation is promoting a screening of "Good Night, and Good Luck," the 2005 film about Edward R. Murrow, which will be shown this Saturday at the Boston Athenaeum in conjunction with Suffolk University. (You might have to hit "reset.")

As it turns out, I'll be introducing the film. Hope to see you there.

The Globe's Kennedy book makes a splash

"Last Lion," the book version of the Boston Globe's series on Ted Kennedy, edited by Washington bureau chief Peter Canellos, will be number seven on the New York Times' bestseller list next week. I never cease to be amazed at how much appetite there is out there for material about the Kennedy family.

The Globe's OT is O-U-T

The Boston Globe's sports weekly, OT, might have had a chance if it had been given away at sporting events. A good-quality sports tabloid would have been attractive to advertisers if it could have actually been put into the hands of sports fans.

Instead, the Globe decided to charge 50 cents — a trivial amount, but it made distribution a hassle. (I think I've seen it once.) OT never attained lift-off, and, as David Scott reports, it's now been canceled.

Success would have been difficult under any circumstances, but this was an opportunity lost. (Via Universal Hub.)

An outrage against free speech

When politicians and good-government types talk about campaign-finance reform, what they often mean is censorship. Of course, they'll say they oppose censorship because censorship is bad, and what they propose is good. But it's censorship nonetheless.

As a purely symbolic protest, Media Nation today presents the trailer for "Hillary: The Movie," a right-wing, hateful documentary about Hillary Clinton that was making the rounds last year.

As Adam Liptak reports in the New York Times, the film was banned from television — banned! — because it ran afoul of the campaign-finance laws promulgated a few years ago by Sen. John McCain, Sen. Russell Feingold and former congressmen Marty Meehan and Chris Shays.

The Reports Committee for Freedom of the Press recently filed an amicus brief urging that the U.S. Supreme Court overturn the ban, instituted by the Federal Elections Commission and upheld by a lower court.

The First Amendment says in part, "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." What part of "no law" don't these people understand?

David Brooks' reality-based conservatism

I think this column speaks incredibly well of both Team Obama and David Brooks.

Earlier in the week, Brooks went off on President Obama, characterizing his budget and spending priorities as "a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs," and calling for an alliance between moderate conservatives (such as himself) and moderate liberals to stop Obama's runaway ambitions.

The White House responded to Brooks by laying out its case, arguing that the president hasn't abandoned his preference for a cautious, incremental approach to problem-solving, but had to respond to an unprecedented financial crisis. Given a few years and a little luck, Obama's aides say, and things will be back on track.

Brooks writes:

I didn't finish these conversations feeling chastened exactly....

Nonetheless, the White House made a case that was sophisticated and fact-based. These people know how to lead a discussion and set a tone of friendly cooperation.

I'm guessing that Brooks doesn't think Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party. Or, if he does, he's horrified.

Opening the spam door a crack

The spambots usually attack at night. Since I'm going to be on the road, I'll remove moderation for the day and see what happens.

On the road again

I'm heading to Hartford, Conn., later this morning to interview and follow around Christine Stuart, the editor of CT News Junkie, which covers the Connecticut politics at a time when mainstream news organizations are cutting back. Her site is affiliated with a better-known community site, the New Haven Independent.

Stuart is not waiting for a new business model — she's just doing it.

George Will's errors and arrogance

In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at George Will's error-riddled column on global warming — and at how his arrogance, combined with the Washington Post's defensiveness, succeeded in turning a one-day story into a two-week (and counting) siege.

Attack of the comment spam

I have turned on comment moderation, as Media Nation was hit with comment spam overnight. Unfortunately, I'm going to be offline a good part of the day. Will try to approve comments later, as well as take down the spam.

Sustainability and the role of smaller cities

Friend of Media Nation Catherine Tumber, with whom I worked at the Boston Phoenix, recently published an important essay in the Boston Review on how revitalizing smaller cities — think New Bedford, Lowell, Lawrence, Holyoke — could help lead to a more sustainable future. She writes:

When it comes to the urban-rural divide, small-to-intermediate-size cities may offer the best of both worlds. For all the rural romanticism of the '70s-era homesteading movement — or for that matter, the vaunted folksiness of "small-town values," — urban life has its allure. Smaller cities are large enough to offer the diversity, anonymity, and vibrancy of urban culture, as well as levels of density that offer efficiencies of scale. They are also small enough to maintain proximity to sustainable food production and renewable energy resources.

Well worth reading in full.

The wonderfulness of "Astral Weeks"

I was excited about the new live version of Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks" until I saw this video of him mumbling through "Sweet Thing" at the Hollywood Bowl. The huge band he's assembled is terrific. Morrison, not so much. Nor does this New York Times review hold out much hope.

Though I'm not a big Morrison fan and have never seen him live, I love "Astral Weeks." As I suspect is the case with many people, I came to it well into adulthood — it was never on the radio, either then or now, and Morrison's numerous top-40 hits didn't appeal to me all that much. When I finally decided to find out why critics had been raving about it for all those years, I was mesmerized.

Last Friday I listened to it straight through while driving home, the first time I'd done that in a while. What a strange, wonderful piece of work. Morrison is at his peak, both in his singing and his writing. Is it possible that he was just 23 when he recorded it? I'd listen to it just for Richard Davis' otherworldly bass-playing. Pressed to name a favorite song (not that these are really songs), I'd probably say "Cypress Avenue." But that's subject to change.

Trouble is, Morrison has had a reputation for years — maybe decades? — of indifference when it comes to performing live. Don Imus scored a rare interview with Morrison last week, but didn't succeed in drawing him out of his shell. Far better is this NPR piece, broadcast on Saturday, on the significance of "Astral Weeks."

Bob Dylan is often lumped with Morrison in delivering uninspired, even belligerently awful live performances. But when Dylan's engaged, he is as compelling as he's ever been. If you don't believe me, check out this riveting video of Bob and the boys performing the Sam Cooke classic "A Change Is Gonna Come." (Steve Greenlee will have to take my word for it, I guess.)

Does Morrison ever rise to such heights anymore? I don't know the answer to that. What I do know is that if you don't have "Astral Weeks" in your collection, you should rectify that as quickly as possible. You will be entranced and amazed.

Dexter prefers the print edition

But he refuses to pay for content.