Media Nation

A year after the public media apocalypse, Boston’s two major outlets are holding their own

*GBH headquarters in Brighton, Mass. Photo (cc) 2011 by Commonist.*

There are some new details today on how Boston’s two news-focused public media stations, GBH and WBUR, are faring a year after Donald Trump and the Republican Congress zeroed out all public funding.

Recently I wrote that GBH chief executive Susan Goldberg had sent a memo to her staff touting new levels of fundraising success, including more than 50,000 new donors and members as well as 3% raises for everyone. Now The Boston Globe’s Aidan Ryan expands on that (sub. req.), reporting, among other things, that GBH has begun a new statewide radio show in collaboration with New England Public Media of Massachusetts, with which it recently merged, and with its Cape Cod operation, CAI. (NEPM had technically been part of GBH since 2019.)

The weekly program, “In Common,” debuted on July 4 and will be broadcast on Saturdays at 2 p.m. It’s also available as a podcast, which is a good thing given that time slot.

As Mike Deehan first reported in Axios, GBH will also receive $500,000 in state money during the next fiscal year, which is a first for public media in Massachusetts. The money comes from the millionaires’ tax, which is restricted to education and transportation. Ryan reports that the money will be spent on children’s television programs.

Fundraising and revenue from events are up at WBUR as well, Ryan writes, noting that WBUR and GBH are fundamentally two different types of entities — although both are committed to digital, GBH has a massive television operation in addition to a local radio station, whereas ’BUR is primarily a radio station. It’s in radio that the two operations compete on local news coverage.

Last August I wrote for CommonWealth Beacon on plans Goldberg and WBUR chief executive Margaret Low were making to negotiate the post-federal-funding era. At a webinar sponsored by the New England chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, they said they planned to emphasize trust and community.

That approach seems to be working so far, with the public responding to the harm done by Trump and his legislative lemmings. The question is whether public media outlets across the country can hang on until January 2029, when the political tides may shift in the White House and in one or both branches of Congress.

Frederick Douglass’ landmark Fourth of July speech reminds us of the promise of America

*Frederick Douglass. Photo via the Milwaukee Independent.*

An excerpt from Frederick Douglass’ 1852 speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” It is also well worth reading in full. At a time when racism is on the rise and voting rights are under assault, Douglass speaks to the true meaning of America’s promise.

Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

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The Boston Globe celebrates 1776 with a 250th commemorative edition

This is what the top of The Boston Globe’s homepage looks like today. When I checked out the e-paper, I saw that the first two pages are given over to 1776. If you’re a home delivery subscriber, I’d be curious to know exactly what it looks like in print. Is it the front page, or is it tucked inside somewhere?

More: My wife picked up a print edition at Wegmans. Nicely done!

Why did the Celtics dump Jaylen Brown for pretty much nothing?

*Jaylen Brown in Jakarta, Indonesia. 2018 public domain photo by State Dept. / Budi Sudarmo.*

I usually reserve my semi-informed sports musings for Facebook. But that Celtics trade, with Jaylen Brown going to the 76ers for a few draft picks and a 36-year-old guy who’s hurt all the time, is just mind-boggling. How did we get from “We’ll trade Brown reluctantly if it gives us a chance to win a championship” to “We must dump Brown at any cost”?

The best-case scenario is that Brad Stevens is clearing the decks for a blockbuster move. The worst-case scenario? New owner Bill Chisholm comes from the world of private equity, and the one thing these guys know how to do is strip their businesses of assets before selling them off and moving on.

Sports journalist Howard Bryant put it this way on Threads: “Are the Celtics entering the John Y. Brown era of ownership?”

Stevens has proved to be bold and creative in recent years, so he deserves some time to show us what’s next. But if that’s all there is, the Celtics just gave away their second-best player, who also happens to be an interesting person and a leader in the Black community, for — nothing.

On second thought. Less than two weeks ago, the Celtics were willing to trade Brown for Giannis Antetokounmpo. It didn’t work out because of other players and draft picks, but you can’t say it would have been a contract dump. So I guess we should be willing to wait and see what Stevens might have up his sleeve.

The 2026 New England Muzzle Awards: Spotlighting the enemies of free speech and expression

For First Amendment and civil liberties fans, it’s the most wonderful time of the year. It’s time for the New England Muzzle Awards, that Fourth of July tradition in which I highlight outrages against the First Amendment that took place in the six-state region during the previous 12 months.

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It’s something I started doing in 1998 for The Boston Phoenix and then later moved to GBH News after the Phoenix folded in 2013. (Here’s the complete archive.) After leaving GBH, I skipped 2023, but since then have been writing up individual Muzzles throughout the year rather than waiting for an annual roundup. So welcome to the 27th annual edition.

This year I thought I would try something different. Rather than simply listing the Muzzles I’ve awarded since July 2025 (although I’m still doing that), I asked Claude AI for some additional candidates. I did not ask Claude to write them for me, and I’m relying on citations from reliable news sources. I simply used Claude as a more sophisticated way of searching than what DuckDuckGo or Google offers these days. So I’ll start with a few that I’m presenting here for the first time.

Kudos, as always, to my friends Harvey Silverglate, who conceived of this annual feature all these years ago, and Peter Kadzis, who edited all 25 editions that appeared in the Phoenix and at GBH News. They were inspired by the Jefferson Muzzles, which no longer are awarded. Here in New England, though, their spirit lives on.

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For the second time in a week, federal agents threaten critics of the Trump regime in upstate NY

*Federal agents looking for David Streever at his home in Rochester, N.Y. Photo via Syracuse.com.*

Here we go again. Last week Michelle Breidenbach of Syracuse.com reported that a poll worker in Syracuse, New York, had been handed a threatening letter by two federal agents.

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The letter, which claimed she had endangered ICE personnel, was almost certainly the result of her having written an Instagram post calling on Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Minneapolis protester Renee Good, to be indicted. Ross had already been publicly identified in the press. (The Syracuse incident was the subject of my newsletter last week for paid supporters, which I’m now offering for free.)

Now we learn that two federal agents showed up at a home in Rochester, New York, last Tuesday to deliver a warning about an email that David Streever had sent to Todd Lyons last February. At that time Lyons was the interim director of ICE; he’s since left that post. Breidenbach reports that Streever was on vacation in Finland with his 7-year-old daughter, so the letter was left with his wife, Hilary Brandt Streever, an Episcopal priest.

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Why the Prairieland case is more about disproportionate justice than it is the First Amendment

*Prairieland Detention Facility. Photo via the Texas Immigration Law Council.*

Draconian sentences handed down against protesters at an ICE facility in the Dallas-Fort Worth area are being characterized as an abridgment of their First Amendment rights. The reason: Among the bill of particulars used against them in court were anarchist zines in their possession that they tried to hide from authorities.

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But though the case raises serious questions about the proportionality of their sentences, it’s also a lot more complicated than that given that a police officer who responded to the scene was shot in the neck by one of the protesters. Benjamin Song, who was convicted of attempted murder, was sentenced to 100 years in prison. The officer recovered.

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Emily Sweeney tells us how she uses social video to help The Boston Globe reach new audiences

This video about a break-in at a mansion in Beverly, Mass., helped launch Emily Sweeney to stardom.

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Emily Sweeney of The Boston Globe. As the Globe’s first social video journalist, Emily has broken through the clutter on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram with her Dorchester accent and her collection of track suits. Not to mention her skills as a reporter.

There’s a Northeastern connection as well: Sweeney played on NU’s championship-winning Division 1 women’s ice hockey team.

I’ve got a Quick Take about NJ Spotlight News, a website and a newscast that covers politics and public policy in New Jersey. It’s also featured in our book, “What Works in Community News.” Spotlight was in danger of being seriously downsized after Donald Trump and the Republican Congress zeroed out funding for public media. The state of New Jersey, facing a budget crisis, cut its public media subsidy as well. Now, though, it looks like there’s good news to report.

Ellen’s Quick Take is on a comprehensive investigation into a Trump donor named Tim Barnard. Barnard Construction has received billions in taxpayer dollars to build the border wall in the Southwest. The story was reported by the nonprofit High Country News in Colorado and republished by another nonprofit news site, AZ Luminaria in Arizona. It’s a strong example of how a national story can be localized and, in doing so, pack a real punch.

You can listen to our conversation here, or you can subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

Finally, a programming note: The podcast will be on mute for the summer, returning in late August or September. So behave yourselves.

A bookstore starts publishing reviews — but that’s not the only way book journalism is being kept alive

As Sophie Culpepper correctly observes at Nieman Lab, book reviews in the mainstream press are fading away, with The Washington Post folding its standalone books section and The Associated Press getting rid of reviews.

Now Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has taken matters into its own hands. Culpepper reports that co-owner Josh Cook has launched something called the Porter Square Review of Books, which is publishing one review every week or so. Cook tells Culpepper:

A lot of bookselling is the first couple steps of writing a book review anyway. You assess it to see if you like it, you figure out how you’re going to describe it to other people, you decide whether you’re going to finish it … We already are part of the way there. Why not just see if we could do it?

It’s a positive step, but it’s hardly the only innovative attempt at keeping book reviews alive. So let me remind you of a couple that I’ve mentioned during the past several years.

📚 Midbrow, originally the Independent Review Crew, is a nonprofit project launched by New Haven Independent founder Paul Bass in 2023. Midbrow’s mission is to revive arts and culture reviewing across all genres — including books — in the spirit of the old alternative press. (Bass himself wrote about politics for the now-defunct New Haven Advocate for many years.)

Midbrow’s content is published on its own website and in eight cities that have correspondents. Boston is not among them at the moment, although in the past there was a local writer whose work was republished by Universal Hub. Bass talked about Midrow with Ellen Clegg and me on our podcast, “What Works: The Future of Local News,” around the time of its launch.

📚 The Arts Fuse, begun in 2007, offers high-brow arts criticism — again, including books — in the spirit of the late, great Boston Phoenix, where founder Bill Marx was a longtime critic and where I worked for many years as the media columnist. I’m an occasional contributor to The Arts Fuse, and in fact I’m working on a book review for Marx right now. The nonprofit, according to its website, is “a curated, independent online arts magazine dedicated to publishing in-depth criticism, along with high quality previews, interviews, and commentaries.”

📚 Marx is also a co-founder of Viva la Book Review, a nonprofit project aimed at fostering “thoughtful, well-crafted book criticism in community news media across the country,” as Ellen and I put it in our introduction to Marx’s appearance on “What Works” in 2025. We had a great conversation about how book reviewing intersects with local news.

📚 Finally, another former Phoenix colleague of mine, acclaimed author Nina MacLaughlin, started an email newsletter after The Boston Globe short-sightedly dropped her Sunday column about local book news. MacLaughlin now writes essentially the same column on her own. She doesn’t write reviews; rather, she rounds up news about literary happenings in Boston and across the region. It’s called New England Literary News, and yes, you should subscribe.

Raises for everyone, Susan Goldberg tells GBH employees in an upbeat end-of-the-fiscal-year message

A trusted source just sent along an unexpectedly upbeat message to the staff from Susan Goldberg, CEO of GBH, one of Boston’s two major news-focused public media outlets.

GBH has been cutting local programming since before Donald Trump and the Republican Congress zeroed out funding for public media. It’s also added some back, and it recently completed a merger with New England Public Media in Western Massachusetts. But it was only in March that Goldberg told Boston Globe media reporter Aidan Ryan that she was interested in merging (sub. req.) with GBH’s main rival, WBUR — something that the latter’s general manager, Margaret Low, sounded distinctly uninterested in.

Anyway, Goldberg emphasizes the positive in her missive to employees, writing that GBH has broken fundraising records, added 50,000 members and supporters, and created news business models, especially on YouTube. And she puts the operation’s money where her mouth is, annoucing 3% across-the-board raises. Her full message follows.

Folks,

It was just over 11 months ago that Congress clawed back $1.1 billion from public media — a vote that ultimately cost GBH alone some $20 million a year. And that doesn’t count the millions of dollars we also lost when a different federal program that paid for children’s programming was suspended.

Without a doubt, it was a big hit.

Today, a week away from the close of FY26, we officially can celebrate what has turned out to be a remarkable and enormously successful year. Despite that rocky start — and because of your hard work, ingenuity, and determination — we:

— Broke fundraising records across the board, at every giving level, age range, geography, and platform.

— Added more than 50,000 new members and supporters (with half signing up as sustainers), bringing total membership among GBH, NEPM, and CAI to more than 250,000.

— Gained efficiencies and synergies by breaking down silos, including the new documentary unit (especially with digital strategies), and the merger with NEPM, which will allow true collaborations statewide on everything from news to development to marketing.

— Began in earnest to create new business models, including an advertising strategy on YouTube, a broader footprint for sponsorship across platforms, and the formation of a brand studio.

— Kept a tight rein on expenses and hiring, operating nimbly across the organization. Keep it up!

— Expanded our excellent, relevant, and, at times, revelatory storytelling, with new programs and dramas designed to make a difference — and attract audiences and attention.

We are delighted to be able to acknowledge these financial and creative successes with across-the-board raises of 3% — approved by our Board of Trustees at their June meeting — and, additionally, bonuses tied to individual performance.

We are proud of what we have accomplished, and thrilled a year that started in a trough ended in a triumph. None of it would have happened without you.

As we turn our attention to FY27, we have the opportunity to be proactive — rather than just reactive — about our goals. The last year gives us an incredible foundation on which to build, and there is much exciting work ahead to cement and multiply these gains.

This year should remind us that people of all ages and stages believe in our mission, and that they’ll take direct action to keep it, helping us expand our work on every platform — for kids, communities, news junkies, music buffs, documentary watchers, social media followers, and more.

As I think about the last 12 months, I feel inspired by where we’ve been — and energized about where we’re going. I hope you feel the same way.

Thank you again for all you did to make it possible, and congratulations.

Susan