Media Nation

Editorials aren’t the only way for local news outlets to engage with their communities

*Outside the Seattle Daily Star, c. 1900. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.*

Ken Paulson, the former editor-in-chief of USA Today, has written a lament for the decline of newspaper editorials. Now the director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, Paulson argues in The Conversation that editorials are a key part of civic engagement. He bolsters his case by quoting the renowned Kansas publisher William Allen White:

The editorial is the soul of the newspaper. Maybe the heart and the soul. And on a good newspaper that knows and understands and loves its hometown, or its home country, the editorial is the heart of the town, or nation as well.

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But though Paulson correctly identifies the rise of corporate newspaper ownership as a key factor in the decline of editorials, he misses something less malign and equally important: the rise of nonprofit local news organizations. Under the law, nonprofits can’t endorse political candidates or take positions on ballot questions lest they lose their tax exemption. In practice, the vast majority of nonprofits have eschewed editorials altogether.

Continue reading “Editorials aren’t the only way for local news outlets to engage with their communities”

On the new ‘Beat the Press,’ we take on Trump’s subpoenas of New York Times journalists

*Click here or on image to watch on Contrarian Boston.*

On the latest edition of “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney,” we take a look at the Trump regime’s decision to subpoena New York Times journalists in an attempt to find out who told the paper about security problems on the new Air Force One, a corrupt gift from the Qatari government.

As we note, the Constitution does not protect journalists from having to identify their confidential sources if they are ordered to do so by a court. But the White House is running roughshod over long-established standards regarding how such demands ought to be handled.

We also examine how news organizations decided whether or not to carry Trump’s lie-infested speech about election security, and his threat to challenge the broadcast licenses of outlets that took a pass; and how the World Cup turned out to be a huge success in Greater Boston despite predictions by many in the media that we were headed for a disastrous confluence of chaos and gridlock. Plus, our panel’s Rants & Raves.

Emily is in the moderator’s seat, joined by our host, Scott Van Voorhis of Contrarian Boston; Lylah Alphonse of The Boston Globe, and me. Our producer extraordinaire is Tonia Magras of Hull Bay Productions.

Talking about local news with ‘The Codcast,’ CommonWealth Beacon’s video podcast

I had an opportunity to take part recently in “The Codcast,” a video podcast that’s part of CommonWealth Beacon. The other panelists were Sophie Culpepper, who covers local news for Nieman Lab, and Javier Marin, executive chairman of El Planeta, Boston’s Spanish-language newspaper. Moderating was CommonWealth’s editor, Laura Colarusso.

We had a good conversation that covered some important topics including trust, business models and the possibility of government assistance to local news outlets. At a time when nonprofit news seems to be where the growth is, Marin made some cogent points about why we need a vibrant for-profit news sector as well.

You can watch the video version on YouTube or download the audio wherever you get your podcasts.

Bob Dylan and his band turn in a sterling Boston performance of mostly newer material

*Bob Dylan in “Shadow Kingdom,” a concert film he recorded in 2021.*

After my last Bob Dylan concert in 2006, I figured that was it. After all, he was in his mid-60s even then, and his voice wasn’t getting any better. But recordings of his current tour are making the rounds, and I was impressed with how good he and his band sounded. Not only was he killing it on electric piano, but his singing had somehow improved.

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So on Thursday, my son, Tim, and I headed to the Leader Bank Pavilion for what turned out to be an outstanding performance. Dylan, now 85, is if anything even quirkier than he used to be. He’s been wearing a raincoat with a hood on stage lately, he had the stage video monitors turned off, and he said not one word, simply segueing from one song to another without a break for an hour and 20 minutes.

Continue reading “Bob Dylan and his band turn in a sterling Boston performance of mostly newer material”

In 2024, Trump killed a federal shield law. Now he’s exploiting that to harass The New York Times.

*One of several planes that have been used as Air Force One. Photo (cc) 2015 by Gage Skidmore.*

In the waning days of the last Congress in December 2024, a Republican senator killed efforts to pass a federal shield law that would have protected journalists from being forced to identify their anonymous sources or turn over confidential documents.

The so-called PRESS Act, which had passed the House unanimously, died when Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas — acting at the behest of Donald Trump, who’d just been re-elected — objected to an attempt to pass it by unanimous consent. Cotton said that passage would turn senators “into the active accomplice of deep-state leakers, traitors and criminals, along with the America-hating and fame-hungry journalists who help them out.”

Now we see the consequences of Cotton’s recklessness. Michael M. Grynbaum reports in The New York Times that three of the five Times journalists who exposed security problems on the new Air Force One — a corrupt gift to Trump from the Qatari government — received subpoenas ordering them to reveal their sources.

Continue reading “In 2024, Trump killed a federal shield law. Now he’s exploiting that to harass The New York Times.”

Tara Henley’s ‘The Trust Cycle’ is a provocative but flawed look at what’s wrong with the media

*Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunt discredited the just-the-facts model of journalistic objectivity. Photo via the Encyclopedia Britannica.*

On Nov. 21, 1954, Palmer Hoyt strode to the podium at the University of Arizona to accept the John Peter Zenger Freedom of the Press Award. Hoyt, the editor and publisher of The Denver Post, was being honored for his courage in standing up to Joseph McCarthy and his anti-communist witch hunt — a notable exception to the timidity shown by much of the press in tangling with the Republican senator from Wisconsin.

Hoyt used the occasion to call out publishers who had enabled McCarthy’s campaign of lies and character assassination. As quoted in Bill Hosokawa’s 1976 book, “Thunder in the Rockies,” an authorized history of the Post, Hoyt told his audience, “It is true that the number of newspapers critical of McCarthy has grown during the last year or two. But there are still many of them who are his supporters, his apologists, even his devotees.” Moreover, he denounced McCarthy’s journalistic toadies for being “as short-sighted as they are self-destructive.”

The larger target of Hoyt’s disdain was the notion of journalistic objectivity, or at least a certain definition of that much-used and much-abused term.

Read the rest at The Arts Fuse.

The Boston Globe goes all in on covering the fatal ICE shooting in Maine and its aftermath

Protesters outside an ICE facility in Scarborough, Maine. Photo (cc) 2026) by Eesha Pendharkar / Maine Morning Star.

Monday’s fatal shooting of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero at the hands of an ICE agent in Biddeford, Maine, is a national story, with The New York Times, NPR, CNN and others all offering plenty of coverage. And as I wrote on Tuesday, the Maine-based media are following this closely as well, especially the Portland Press Herald and the Bangor Daily News.

Today I want to focus on The Boston Globe, which occupies sort of a middle ground — not national, not regional in terms of covering Maine, but nevertheless close enough that Biddeford could be considered an exurb of Boston.

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How Maine’s news outlets are covering yet another killing at the hands of ICE

*Protesters on Monday in Biddeford, Maine. Photo (cc) 2026 by Emma Davis / Maine Morning Star.*

For the second time in a week, an ICE agent has shot and killed a man, this time in Biddeford, Maine, southeast of Portland.

The circumstances are murky. The Trump regime claims that the victim of Monday’s shooting, a Colombian named Joan Sebastian Guerrero, was endangering public safety as he attempted to drive away. There’s no evidence for that, and given the official lies that were told about the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti earlier this year, we have every reason to be skeptical. It’s notable, too, that Guerrero was reportedly not even the person ICE was looking for.

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Mitch McConnell resurfaces, sparking ludicrous conspiracy theories and AI-generated fakes

Earlier today, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office put out a photo and a statement saying that he’s sick, not dead or comatose. The conspiracy theories started immediately. I’ll begin with a straight-news post on Bluesky from Phil Lewis, an editor at HuffPost:

Social media users started questioning when the newspaper he’s holding had been published. I’ve seen suggestions that it’s from April. Well, no. In fact, it’s the front page today’s Washington Post sports section. (And minor props to McConnell for grabbing the sports pages.)

Even more ridiculous: You can see in the top photo that McConnell has the requisite four fingers and a thumb on his left hand. Almost immediately, though, an image started circulating showing McConnell with five fingers, thus “proving” that the photo is an AI fake. If you hadn’t seen the original, you might even believe it. mfa08 is an anonymous Bluesky account with 1,000 followers.

Think before you post.

From the Trump regime to a rogue judge in New Jersey, the First Amendment is under assault

*New Jersey Superior Court Judge Thomas McCloskey. Official photo via the New Jersey Globe.*

It’s not a good day for the First Amendment, as four New York Times journalists have been subpoenaed in connection with their report (sub. req.) that Donald Trump’s new Air Force One plane — a gift that he corruptly accepted from the Qatari government — lacks important security features.

The journalists have been called to testify before a federal grand jury on Wednesday. Although the exact nature of the inquiry hasn’t been revealed, it’s probably an attempt by the Trump regime to determine who leaked the information to the Times.

This morning, though, I want to call your attention to a more blatant violation of the First Amendment: a judge’s demand that a New Jersey newspaper remove school security footage from its YouTube channel and refrain even from writing about it. On Thursday, the judge softened his order slightly but then extended it to all news outlets.

Continue reading “From the Trump regime to a rogue judge in New Jersey, the First Amendment is under assault”