Government assistance for journalism exists along a continuum. Media scholars such as Paul Starr and Victor Pickard have observed that the American press got an enormous boost starting in Colonial …
Every Thursday I post a newsletter that’s exclusively for supporters of Media Nation. I’m especially proud of the new one — a look at how critics of Jeff Bezos’ stewardship of The…
As I noted previously, the Massachusetts legislature is taking another crack at forming a local news commission after its first attempt disappeared into the ether several years ago. On Wednesday, I…
On Saturday afternoon, The Philadelphia Inquirer published an editorial headlined “To serve his country, Donald Trump should leave the race.” It was intended as a rebuke to The New York…
Right now we’re all waiting to see how President Biden does in his interview with George Stephanopoulos. Obviously Biden has to come off as coherent, and even then it’s not going to sto…
I took one of my favorite rides Saturday — from Danvers Center along the rail trail and then east and north to Wenham, Hamilton and Bradley Palmer State Park, south to Route 97 and back along the r…
You may have heard that CNN’s chief executive and president, Mark Thompson, has plans. As the network’s media reporter, Oliver Darcy, wrote on Wednesday, Thompson is laying off about 10…
If we’ve learned anything about news publishing in recent years, it’s that the giant tech platforms are not our friends. Google is embracing artificial intelligence, which means that se…
In his obituary of Boston businessman and philanthropist Jack Connors, who died Tuesday at 82, Boston Globe reporter Bryan Marquard reminds us that Connors was part of several failed attempts to bu…
Former CNN anchor Aaron Brown died on Sunday. His passing recalls what might be called a golden era in cable news. Brown, who worked for CNN from 2001 to ’05, hosted a prime-time newscast, competin…