Media Nation

Globe editor Brian McGrory makes it official: He won’t be returning to Boston University

*BU’s College of Communication. Photo (cc) 2012 by mikebtrinh.*

Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory will not be returning to Boston University. McGrory, who took a two-year leave of absence as chair of BU’s journalism department in December 2025, told the Globe’s staff earlier this morning that he has resigned from academia.

McGrory was the Globe’s editor from 2012 to 2023 and was replaced by Nancy Barnes, a veteran news executive who’d worked in high-level jobs at NPR, the Houston Chronicle and other stops. Barnes left abruptly in late 2025, paving the way for McGrory’s return. Although McGrory’s second stint as editor was initially described as temporary, it soon became apparent that he was back for an extended stay.

Here’s the text of his note to the newsroom, forwarded to me by people I trust.

Hey all,

In the spirit of transparency, I’m sharing with you that I resigned this week from the faculty of Boston University, which obviously ends my leave of absence there. BU administrators had kindly granted me a two-year leave, with one very reasonable requirement. They asked that I let them know this September whether I planned to return in January, 2028.

I truly valued my time at BU, so much that I don’t want to commit to a return date that I may not be able to keep. I also don’t want to continue our work at the Globe with an immovable deadline hanging over my head. After discussions with Dhiraj [Nayar, president of Boston Globe Media], Linda [Henry, Globe Media’s CEO], and Mariette DiChristina, the dean at BU, this seemed to be the right thing to do.

It feels to me, and I hope to many of you, that we are making tremendous progress, consistently, sometimes relentlessly, putting out truly interesting and important journalism. I couldn’t be more delighted to be a part of it all.

None of this should signal that I’m looking to overstay my welcome. In terms of how long I’ll be in this role, I’m aiming for the day before you start wondering why I’m still here.

I’m happy to answer any questions that you have. Just drop by.

Union employees at USA Today Co. protest a deal with ICE-enabling AI surveillance firm Palantir

*ICE agents on the streets of Los Angeles in 2025. Public domain photo by DHSgov.*

For USA Today Co., our largest newspaper chain, there is no bottom. Formerly known as Gannett, the publicly traded company is reviled in communities across the country for slashing its newsrooms. Now the chain is embarking on a venture that is sleazy even by its own low standards: a deal with Palantir, the infamous AI surveillance firm.

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As Frank Landymore wrote recently at Futurism:

The optics of partnering with Palantir — a company that provides military targeting software and wields a vast surveillance panopticon — are undeniably touchy. It’s worked hand in hand with ICE, secretly providing the agency a tool that scours citizen’s Medicaid and other government data to create a map of people it could potentially deport. It also supplies the Israeli military with an AI battlefield decision-making tool that can analyze enemy targets for elimination.

Now USAT’s employees are fighting back. Natalie Korach, reporting for the media-news site Status, notes that workers (sub. req.) at the company’s 31 unionized publications have signed a statement urging executives to “immediately end its partnership with the company,” citing Palantir’s work with the federal government. As Jon Schleuss, president of The NewsGuild-Communication Workers of America, told Korach, “It’s a company that is actively involved in highly sensitive matters that journalists are covering. Having that company now on the inside of the systems that the journalists use to then write about that company, I think is where the problem is.”

On top of that, Korach reports that USAT is embarking on yet another round of layoffs and buyouts.

From perusing the coverage, I’m not entirely sure exactly what Palantir will be doing for USAT. Korach writes that Schleuss says readers don’t want AI news content, but that doesn’t seem to be what this is about. Rather, chair and CEO Mike Reed told investors that Palantir will build an “intelligence layer” to “strengthen how we collect, connect and activate audience data to drive more effective and faster monetization across our platform,” according to an account in Nieman Lab.

Then again, as Darren Zullo reported for Boston.com last year, USAT is already using AI to generate stories. Because of course it is.

The ties between the Lindsay Clancy mistrial and a famous 290-year-old press-freedom case

If you’re wondering why a lone juror who may have ignored the law about reasonable doubt could lead to a mistrial in the case of Lindsay Clancy, a landmark verdict that advanced press freedom 290 years ago provides some important background.

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Sue O’Connell of NBC 10 Boston interviewed three jurors after a mistrial was declared. The foreperson, Roni Carlson, said the holdout “admitted he had reasonable doubt” but told his fellow jurors, “I’m still not going to say that she’s not guilty by reason of insanity.”

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Friends don’t let friends watch cable news. So why is the fate of CNN vital to democracy?

Labor Day is behind us, summer is starting to wane and it’s time to start thinking about what media news will keep us up at night this fall. From the standpoint of my research interests and my personal passions, the ongoing crisis in local journalism looms as the most important storyline.

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In terms of immediate threats and what it means for our democracy, though, I would identify the possibility (if not the likelihood) that Paramount will absorb CNN into its empire as the story we need to keep the closest eye on.

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California may soon offer tax credits for local news. Could this be the goad that Massachusetts needs?

*The California Statehouse in Sacramento. Photo (cc) 2008 by Tszeiler1.*

Earlier this year, it looked like California might be the place where government efforts to revive local news went to their grave. As I wrote for Poynter Online, a widely touted partnership between Google and the state that would have provided $250 million for community journalism over five years was scaled back drastically, the victim of budget pressures and political infighting.

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But now California is on the verge of passing an ambitious bill to assist struggling news outlets. As Gretchen A. Peck reports for Editor & Publisher, the Community NEWS Act would provide significant tax credits for hiring and retaining journalists over a five-year period: $20,000 a year for retaining up to five full-time journalists; $15,000 for each additional full-timer; $7,500 for part-timers; and $15,000 for each full-timer hired to a new position.

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Why Moulton’s reckless attempt to tie Markey to Jeffrey Epstein doomed his hopes of a late surge

Sen. Ed Markey takes in a Worcester Red Sox game on Aug. 13. Photo (cc) 2026 by Dan Kennedy.

Even though the polls showed U.S. Sen. Ed Markey beating his Democratic challenger, U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, by 30 points or more, I figured the final tally would be closer — like maybe on the order of 18 points. That in itself would have been a drubbing, and given that Moulton is a standard-issue moderate liberal, I thought it unlikely that he’d fall any lower.

As it turned out, the polls were right. Markey won by just a shade under 30 points (64.9% to 35.1%), which suggests that Moulton had alienated a large proportion of the Democratic base.

Moulton ran a terrible campaign, but if I had to point to one factor that stood out, it was his false, sleazy accusation that Markey had some sort of tie to Jeffrey Epstein. In a low-turnout primary dominated by highly motivated, well-informed voters, that destroyed any chance Moulton might have had of a late comeback.

I’d be curious to know the thought process that led Moulton to go scorched-earth in a campaign in which he was always the longest of longshots. I suspect he’s done enormous damage to his future prospects for electoral office, although I suppose he could always run for president again.

AI commentaries are an abomination. But are they really any worse than ghostwritten op-eds?

This is not a defense of using AI to write. Rather, it’s a critique of the slipshod standards that have long pervaded the op-ed pages of our major newspapers. As University of Maine media historian Michael Socolow has written, the op-ed page, unveiled by The New York Times more than half a century ago, was originally conceived as a way of giving a voice to various members of the community.

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That function survives, but the voice, in all too many cases, belongs not to the ostensible author — in many cases an elected official, a business executive or a nonprofit leader — but, rather, to a ghostwriter who’s either a staff member or an outside consultant. Yes, the actual writer talks with the person whose byline will deceptively grace the piece, and yes, that person will also have final approval. But many op-eds are no more the work of the bylined “author” than a major political speech is the original rhetoric of the person delivering it.

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Threat or menace? Police abuses of Flock’s spycams renew a simmering debate over their use.

A little more than a year ago, I wrote about an independent journalist who exposed a secretive contract with Flock Safety, a surveillance company that has been all over the news in recent weeks.

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Town officials in the wealthy suburb of Scarsdale, New York, had signed a $2.1 million contract that placed the community under surveillance in the name of public safety. Protests by local activists, along with dogged reporting by Joanne Wallenstein of the digital news outlet Scarsdale 10583, led to the cancellation of the contract just months after it had gone into effect.

But you can’t keep a bad idea down. As Yogev Toby reported in The Boston Globe last Friday, police officers in Lynn, Stow and New Bedford have been placed on leave or fired after they were caught using the streetside cameras to stalk ex-girlfriends and engage in other outrageous behavior. There’s now a database where you can enter your license plate to see if you’ve been spied on.

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Public figures, private figures and why the difference matters in The New York Times libel defeat

The New York Times lost a libel case Thursday for the first time in more than 60 years. Ironically, both defeats played out in Alabama.

The earlier loss, in 1960, led to the landmark Times v. Sullivan ruling of 1964, in which the Supreme Court decided that it wasn’t enough for a public official to show that a offensive statement was false and defamatory. The official also had to show that it was published despite the knowledge that it was false, or made with reckless disregard for whether it was true or false.

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The second loss seems unlikely to lead to a similarly favorable outcome for the Times. Kai Spears, a former University of Alabama basketball player, won a $9.25 million judgment after the Times falsely reported that he was at the scene of a fatal shooting. Ryan Phillips, who covered the U.S. District Court trial for Patch, observes that $7.5 million of that was for punitive damages, which the Times will almost certainly appeal.

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A shaky allegation that the Globe had a conflict in its Seth Moulton endorsement

*Seth Moulton, left, and Ed Markey at Thursday’s Senate debate, sponsored by WCVB-TV, The Boston Globe and WBUR. Photo via YouTube.*

As I wrote on Wednesday, The Boston Globe’s endorsement of U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton over incumbent Ed Markey in the Democratic Senate primary was a bit of a surprise, although it fits within a tradition of counterintuitive endorsements dating back through several different ownership groups.

Now, though, longtime Democratic political figure George Bachrach is claiming that Globe owners John and Linda Henry may have been motivated by an undisclosed conflict of interest: Since September 2023, Seth Moulton’s wife, Elizabeth Moulton, has been the chief talent and people officer at Elevate, a sports and entertainment consulting firm. In April 2024, Elevate acquired Fenway Sports Management’s Consulting Group. John Henry is the principal owner of FSM as well as the Boston Red Sox.

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