Civic Journalism

Gateway Cities are home to nearly 2 million residents, which gives them substantial representation on Beacon Hill. However, the drawing of legislative districts is an important factor in determining how well the Gateway Cities delegation can speak for these voters with a unified voice. Legislators that represent both Gateway Cities and suburban communities may have constituencies with vastly different needs.

By Dorie Clark

I don’t need to rule the whole planet—just the Globe. The Boston Globe, that is. As a former journalist, it’s a favorite parlor game among my media-savvy friends: What would we do to stop the freefall and inject a little mojo back into New England’s paper of record? Purging myself of sentimentality and whipping out the green eyeshades, here are my solutions:

By Colman M. Herman

Letting its ads creep into its content, the Boston Globe is trying to build a revenue stream from the comments its readers submit about online stories.

By Bruce Mohl

As of Monday afternoon, 90 comments had been posted on Boston.com about the Boston Globe’s story about Don Chiofaro’s clash with Mayor Thomas Menino, and they seemed split fairly evenly between opponents of the controversial developer and opponents of the mayor.

By Bruce Mohl

The reader comments at the end of online newspaper stories are apparently becoming a battle ground in the fight over a proposed high-rise tower along the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway.

By Bruce Mohl

The Boston Globe and the Herald cover the same city, but sometimes you’d never know if from reading the respective newspapers.

By Dorie Clark

For business leaders, being quoted frequently in the media is money in the bank: it builds credibility and shows that objective, outsider observers value what they have to say.

By Jack Sullivan

It’s not always the titans of media that carry the fight for the First Amendment. Often, some of the most principled defenders of free speech are those whose names we may never hear or remember.

By Jack Sullivan

In the media, we like to think there’s a bright line between the advertising and news sides, sort of a “church and state and never the twain shall meet” wall.

By Bruce Mohl

Howie Carr and Jim Braude are about as far apart on the political spectrum as you can get, but both of them are singing the same song about the state’s probation service.

By Jim Borghesani

If former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney runs for president again, maybe he should just avoid all contact with African-Americans, for these encounters rarely turn out well for him. 

By Matt Storin

In the midst of a painful strike at the Daily News in 1990, we in management launched an afternoon edition to try to boost sales in the city, while we battled distribution and retail sales problems. 

By Jack Sullivan

Sometimes it’s worthwhile to pull the curtain back on the struggles reporters go through in trying to get information one would normally assume would and should be public.

By Bruce Mohl

Americans get their news from a variety of sources, and the internet is now the third most popular source, behind local and national television news and ahead of local and national newspapers and radio, according to a new study released today by the Pew Research Center.

By Gabrielle Gurley

Nearly one year after the newspaper presses stopped rolling at The Christian Science Monitor, editor John Yemma continues to fine-tune the 102-year-old international news outlet’s transformation from a daily into what he calls a “web-first” publication.

By Matthew Storin

From the Knight Digital Media Center last week came this report on a number of news-gathering web operations that have sprouted in Chicago.

By Bruce Mohl

No one, it appears, is policing public officials to make sure they comply with the state’s Open Meeting Law.

By Jack Sullivan

The Boston Redevelopment Authority responded to our post about the exorbitant costs of a public records request.

By Jack Sullivan

The Public Records Law could become its own stimulus package, saving public jobs and generating a healthy revenue stream for cash-strapped government agencies by charging thousands of dollars to fulfill information requests.

By Jack Sullivan

The highly respected Center for Public Integrity discovered what local reporters have learned about the high cost of public records in Massachusetts. The Center this week released the results of its nearly two-year investigation in conjunction with the Center for Investigative Reporting into state and local spending of Homeland Security funds.

By Ralph Whitehead Jr.

It is now widely recognized that daily newspapers, amid the upheaval that is occurring in the journalism business, have been cutting back on the origination of serious news coverage.

By Bruce Mohl

Advertising revenue slid a combined 27.6 percent last year at The Boston Globe and Worcester Telegram, while price increases boosted circulation revenue by nearly 9 percent.

By Bruce Mohl

 A new computer system at The Boston Herald is being sold internally as a concrete symbol of publisher Patrick Purcell’s long-term commitment to the newspaper.

By Colman Herman

The Bay State Banner, an African-American newspaper in Boston, has turned from watchdog to lapdog when it comes to Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino

By Matt Storin

I had no intention of buying a Kindle (honest). I feared its impact on bookstores. I felt there might still be kinks to work out.  And I figured the price would come down.  But just before Christmas I suddenly owned one. It was a birthday gift from my spouse. Two weeks later I canceled my weekday subscription to The New York Times.

By Bruce Mohl

It’s great to have Brian McGrory back writing for The Boston Globe, but sometimes I wonder whether he forgets he’s writing a metro column and not a novel featuring his intrepid Boston newspaper reporter Jack Flynn.

By Gabrielle Gurley

Faced with declining profits and defections of their once-loyal audiences, Massachusetts-based news media organizations are experimenting with new ways of creating and presenting their content, everything from shifting to Web-only publications to reporting collaborations with nonprofit groups and universities.

By Bruce Mohl

David Guarino, in a blog post on MS&L Boston’s PR Finish Line, praises the Boston Redevelopment Authority for releasing what he calls a pre-buttal to last week’s investigative reports on the agency by CommonWealth magazine and Fox 25 Undercover. 

The reports focused on an unusual fee imposed by the agency on certain real estate sales and the overrepresentation of city employees in a BRA affordable housing program. To see the reports, go here and here.

By Jim Borghesani

So many websites…what’s a PR pro to do? 

One thing to do is never forget the formula that has been driving news stories since, oh, forever. Get it into print. 

By Dorie Clark

When I started running media operations for Bay State and national campaigns a decade ago, reporters usually didn’t stick around for long. Sure, there were the stalwarts—Frank Phillips will always rule the roost at the State House—but, in general, tenures were short and talented reporters would hopscotch up the career ladder, moving from one outlet to another.

 By Eileen McNamara

Martha Coakley was not the only loser in the special election for the US Senate seat left vacant by the death of Edward M. Kennedy. The media got mauled, too.

From The Boston Globe poll putting Coakley 15 points ahead of Scott Brown days before he hammered her to the press corps that wrote off his candidacy from the outset, too many journalists made clear that reliance on political insiders and conventional wisdom is their chief reporting tool.

 An Interview with Martin Baron

Martin Baron, the Boston Globe’s editor, sat down in his office with CommonWealth magazine editor Bruce Mohl (a former Globe reporter) to talk about the paper’s financial situation and its digital transition. This second installment of the interview is only slightly condensed.

An interview with Martin Baron

Between layoffs, pay cuts, and the threat of closure, the The Boston Globe had a painful year last year, but Martin Baron, the paper’s editor since 2001, sounds like he’s looking forward to the challenges ahead. He sat down in his office with CommonWealth magazine editor Bruce Mohl (a former Globe reporter) to talk about the paper’s digital transition, its market opportunities, and the tough financial decisions ahead. The interview, only slighted edited, will appear in two parts.

By Matt Storin

The New Republic is heralding a well-reported piece on problems at The Washington Post.  Get used to pieces like this.  As newspapers continue to struggle with declining or disappeared profits, the blame game will resemble a convention of political operatives from the Coakley campaign.