Extinction Rebellion urges the Boston Globe to declare climate emergency For society to undergo the drastic, transformational change required to save our species, respected media like the Boston Globe should lead in communicating the existential risks of climate damage. The Extinction Rebellion is an international mobilization whose first demand is that governments and […]
NONPROFIT MODEL NOT A PANACEA FOR AMERICAN NEWS MEDIA
Would-be reformers need to keep that in mind A couple of weeks ago I wrote a column about a bill (S. 80) filed with the Mass legislature by Rep. Lori Ehrlich (D – Marblehead) and Sen. Brendan Crighton (D – Lynn) that aims to start a volunteer commission to assess the state of local […]
PROPOSED STATE JOURNALISM COMMISSION NEEDS BROADER MEMBERSHIP
More working journalists, less elite institutes Chris Faraone,* John Loftus,** and I spend a lot of time thinking about how to rebuild American journalism. Pretty much from the ground up, since so many news outlets and jobs in the field have been destroyed in the last quarter century. And a growing number of […]
SOMERVILLE COMMUNITY SUMMIT: CONVENING A CITY TO IMPROVE ITS NEWS MEDIA
EDITORIAL Last Saturday, DigBoston, our nonprofit wing Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism (BINJ), and our frequent partner the community access television station Somerville Media Center (SMC) turned out over 100 Somerville residents to the ONCE ballroom on Highland Ave to talk to 15 area journalists about local issues and happenings that they thought […]
PUBLIC BAD. PRIVATE GOOD? BOSTON HERALD’S ATTACK ON MASSHOUSING HIGHLIGHTS DOUBLE STANDARD IN AMERICAN JOURNALISM
Over the last several days, the Boston Herald has had its knives out in no less than three articles and two editorials against MassHousing—an independent, quasi-public agency created in 1966 and charged with providing financing for affordable housing in Massachusetts. Readers can be forgiven for assuming that such lavish attention from a publication […]
WHY GATEHOUSE’S BOSTON ‘MEGACLUSTER’ IS A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY
No corporation should own most newspapers in a region In last week’s Apparent Horizon, “GateHouse Editorial Flacks for Mass Retailers,” I dissected an editorial, “The benefits of a teen minimum wage,” calling for a subminimum wage for Bay State teenage workers that turned out to have run in over two dozen eastern Mass […]
A WINDOW INTO THE STATE HOUSE
Rep. Mike Connolly’s blog offers a critical look behind the curtain of Mass politics The Massachusetts State House is not a bastion of democracy. I think a growing number of people in the Commonwealth are pretty clear on that fact. Dominated for decades by a series of imperial House speakers, and to a […]
2019: WE HAVE 11 YEARS TO DO THE IMPOSSIBLE
In last week’s column looking back at “2018: The Year in Global Warming,” I reviewed the dire threat posed to humanity and our environment by climate change, and concluded with the following: The big question for Bostonians and anyone else reading this: How do we go from this grim state of affairs to […]
2018: THE YEAR IN GLOBAL WARMING
“We are the first generation to fully understand climate change and the last generation to be able to do something about it.” —Petteri Taalas, secretary-general, World Meteorological Organization Given all the developments I could review from the year that’s now drawing to a close—and given that I primarily write for a Greater Boston […]
FAIR HOUSING WHACKED: TUFTS STUDENTS FIGHT ADMIN PROPOSAL TO ESTABLISH “CLASSIST” DORM SYSTEM
More than 200 Tufts University students, faculty, and allies from surrounding communities held a march and demonstration last week to protest a new campus housing policy, according to the Boston Herald. Over the summer, the Tufts administration announced that its annual lottery system for on-campus housing during each academic year would be heavily modified […]
