Skip to content

editorial

EDITORIAL: STRATEGIC RETREAT

Image by freeGraphicToday. CC0.
Image by freeGraphicToday. CC0.

 

DigBoston to move away from Facebook, help build democratic social media alternatives

 

March 21, 2018

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

 

A decade back it seemed only natural for news publications like DigBoston to stake out turf on Facebook. After all, it provided an easy way for us to reach our audience on a regular basis—via a social media platform that was well on its way to becoming the ubiquitous global behemoth it is today.

 

But now it seems like a particularly good moment to discuss this publication’s evolving thinking on our use of corporate social media. In the wake of the huge and growing Cambridge Analytica scandal that cost Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg $6 billion of his net worth after that story broke last week, according to Fortune.

 

Because Facebook is not working for us anymore—as individuals and as the staff of a metro news weekly.

 

What was once a fun way to keep in touch with friends and co-workers has turned into a huge drag. Every moment of our time on the social network is completely controlled by Zuckerberg’s minions. Who work to make it ever more addictive. To keep users like us on Facebook for more and more of our time—thus spending less and less of our time on any possible competitor’s network.

 

Yet the company also carefully limits users’ access to our own connections. And it continues to make repeated changes to its “algorithm” (the code that governs, among other things, what content users see) and other structural changes that are seriously damaging individuals’—and to our point, news outlets’—ability to reach our own audiences.

 

It is now no more possible for individuals to communicate with even a fraction of their connections on the platform than it is for DigBoston to reach more than a handful of our 24,000 followers. Even if we pay a bunch of money for the privilege, which page managers like us are forced to do. On our two branded pages that Facebook refuses to let us merge… because one page has a blue check mark and one page has a gray check mark, you see. And blue check mark pages may not be merged with gray check mark pages. Facebook “help desk” has spoken. And once Facebook makes a pronouncement, however cryptically and episodically, it cannot be challenged. By conventional means, at least.

 

Not that we’re surprised that Facebook has its own agenda. Like many reasonably technologically savvy journalists, we understand how the company works. Digital marketer Mitch Joel explained it succinctly in a helpful Maclean’s piece on the Cambridge Analytica affair: “Facebook’s business model is not based on content, marketing or advertising. You—the consumer—are the product and the money that Facebook generates is based on how well they can monetize your data and target you to their brand partners.”

 

The problem is that we understand all too well that Facebook does what’s best for Facebook—first, last, and always. And my DigBoston colleagues and I have had enough.

 

Like the staff of tens of thousands of other news organizations around the planet, we know that we have been complicit in Facebook’s rise to power.

 

We have posted all our content to Facebook. Which has provided free high-quality information that helped attract our existing audience and many others besides to Facebook’s “walled garden” social network. The vast conglomerate then monetized that audience as described above. Used the vast array of personal data at their command to steal the entire news industry’s digital advertising base away—including ours. And has the temerity to charge us to reach the audience we helped bring to them.

 

Adding insult to injury, according to the Guardian, companies like Cambridge Analytica have found ways to acquire and weaponize that personal data at the behest of operatives like Steve Bannon. Who then use it to help throw elections like the 2016 presidential contest to the political faction of their choice. To name but one of a myriad number of ways that rich and powerful interests—including Facebook itself—are using this “surveillance capitalism,” as it has come to be called, to attempt to control the behavior of entire populations for their own gain.

 

Given that state of affairs, DigBoston has no choice but to start to move away from Facebook. As our editor-in-chief Chris Faraone so colorfully put it in a related context a couple of months back, “… fuck Facebook. With a big, blue middle finger.”

 

But move away to what? All the major social networks are owned by big companies doing basically the same thing Facebook is doing. Though none have its reach and market share. Some, like Instagram, are even owned by Facebook.

 

In the short term, we’re starting to focus more on Twitter—a social media giant that’s slightly less mercenary and slightly more responsive to public pressure. The Lyft to Facebook’s Uber, if you will.

 

In the longer term, we see no ideal alternative on the horizon.

 

So we’ve resolved to help create that alternative.

 

Think this through with us: DigBoston, like legions of other news outlets, has to find a social media solution that meets our need to control and monetize our own data in a platform that our audience is willing to use on a regular basis. Our audience needs a social network that won’t exploit them.

 

There have been numerous attempts to start standalone “less evil” social media platforms in opposition to Facebook et al—Diaspora, Ello, and Minds to name but three. None of them have succeeded. Why? Because no one knows exactly what causes people to abandon existing social networks for new ones. Sometimes people just bail. Friendster, Orkut, and MySpace were once hot, and now are not. So every prediction of Facebook’s demise at the hands of a new entrant over the last many years has proved to be premature. And every claim to have the magic solution that will cause millions of users to jump ship from Facebook and other major social media has proved to be a pipe dream.

 

It is true that Facebook’s audience growth is slowing. Usage in the key US and Canadian markets is dropping, according to the LA Times. And the current scandal has already caused the company to lose more than 6 percent of its value on Monday—over $35 billion—according to Fortune. Yet it could easily bounce back. It remains an immensely powerful multinational. And if it convinces its shareholders to stay the course, it can weather almost any conceivable political storm.

 

What will it take to essentially pull the rug out from under Facebook and companies like it? Returning to the promise of the early internet to democratize global communication, and giving more control over the means of that communication to individuals and the full array of human institutions alike.

 

There are interesting experiments going on in new grassroots social networks that DigBoston is keeping an eye on. Decentralized federated microblogging systems (think an agglomeration of Twitter-like networks that talk to each other) like Mastodon. Fully decentralized social media projects like IndieWeb—a network of “creators” who have developed tools that allow the owners of independent personal websites to interact with each other. Like a Facebook without the Facebook. Without a central control hub of any kind, really.

 

Projects like these are great ideas. But they rely on volunteers, and sometimes a handful of low-paid staff, to function. Meaning they can achieve an initial burst of success, only to suffer a long decline to irrelevance as their evangelists move on to other ventures. Plus you typically need to be someone in or around the tech scene and affiliated subcultures to know about their existence. And they tend to require a fair amount of technical expertise to use.

 

Which is to say that these carefully thought out super democratic social media experiments are not likely to provide the alternative DigBoston and like-minded folks the world over are seeking to build. Not anytime soon. Mastodon had just over a million users last month, according to Mastodon User Count—largely due its community deploying functioning phone apps like the nifty Amaroq for iOS. But that’s obviously a drop in the bucket compared to the 1.4 billion active daily users that Facebook reported in Q4 of 2017. Even allowing for the fact that a nonzero percentage of those accounts are fake, according to Yahoo Finance. And not including many more inactive accounts.

 

Still, we can but soldier on. For our part, we’re calling a meeting of journalists and techies later this year. Specifically, editors and publishers of Boston area news outlets and high-level coders associated with thoughtful social media projects like Mastodon and IndieWeb. We’re going to compare notes and see if we can start working together to provide better communications solutions for our news organizations and our audiences that will go at least some small fraction of the way to providing a democratic alternative to Facebook and other corporate networks.

 

We’ll definitely let you all know how that meeting goes. But those of you who think you need to be there, drop me a line at execeditor@digboston.com and tell me why.

 

Jason Pramas is executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. His sad and lonely Mastodon account is @jasonpramas@mastodon.social. Sign up for a free account at mastodon.social and say hi.

EDITORIAL: FEEDBACK REQUESTED

 

DigBoston asks readers to chime in about our coverage, digital presence, and events

 

February 28, 2018

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

 

Frequent readers know that my colleagues and I on the new DigBoston staff like to hear from people from all the varied communities that make up our audience, talk with them, and hang out with them. So, it should come as no surprise that we’re very open to suggestions about what we do as a news organization and how we do it.

 

Nevertheless, we believe it’s important that we periodically extend a formal invitation to our audience—our extended community—to give us such feedback. To demonstrate that we’re not only amenable to two-way communication as journalists, but that we actively encourage it. And that, as we’ve said in the past, we think it’s impossible to be good journalists without it.

 

After running this paper for eight months, we can use specific input in three areas: our coverage, our digital presence, and our public events. We’d really appreciate it if respondents put some serious thought into their suggestions, and fill out the fast response form at the bottom of this page.

 

Coverage

The heart of any news publication is obviously its content. DigBoston has a number of regular sections, including News, Music, Theater, Film, Visual Arts, Comedy, and Comics. In addition, we run Chris Faraone’s “Dear Reader” editorial weekly, a number of columns, opinion pieces when we have them, and my occasional editorials (like this one). Increasingly we also have big special features that dive deep into important issues of the day. And nice photos and artwork scattered throughout our publication and featured on the front page of our print edition.

 

In terms of feedback on our coverage, we’d like to hear: a) what people like and want to see more of, b) what people don’t like and want to see less of, and c) what areas readers think we don’t cover but should.

 

General responses are appreciated, but specific responses are always more useful to us.

 

Digital

In this era, it’s expected that a print newspaper like DigBoston will have a robust online presence. We do our best with limited resources, but we know that we still have a ways to go before we’re up to speed on this front.

 

The core of a good digital news operation remains a website. But now that more and more people are getting their news from phones, tablets, and traditional computers alike, websites have to be upgraded to display properly on a variety of screen sizes.

 

At least once a week these days, one or more readers will hit us up to complain about our digboston.com website not being mobile-friendly. And we definitely hear them loud and clear. So this spring we’re building a new website that will look good on any device.

 

Still, since we’re just about to start work on that site, it’s a great time for folks to let us know what kind of other features they’d find useful on it.

 

We’d also like advice on a couple of innovations we’re planning to introduce on digboston.com. Namely, we’re thinking about eliminating ads from the site entirely, and about doing a pop-up on every web article that will take up the bottom third of the reader’s screen (like theguardian.com) and invite them to become sustainers (in exchange for invites to special events, etc.) to help make sure that we’re able to keep providing you all with the kind of hard-hitting news coverage and fun arts and entertainment articles that you can’t find anywhere else in our region. Any advice on those moves would be super helpful.

 

Also, you can find every Dig article on no less than six social media platforms. We post to them pretty much every day. Here they are:

 

 

You can also subscribe to DigBoston content for free on the following news aggregators: Apple News, Google Play Newsstand, and soon Flipboard.

 

We even make the pdf of our print edition available on issuu.com/digboston. And help manage the recently-reactivated /r/bostonjournalism subreddit at reddit.com/r/bostonjournalism/.

 

While that seems like a broad digital presence, there are new social media platforms and news aggregators starting up all the time. So we’d like to know if there are any we should be on, but aren’t. And are we using the platforms and aggregators in question in the best way? If digital mavens have any tips and tricks to share with us, please do.

 

Events

We organize public events all the time, and participate in the events of other organizations as well. We do talks, workshops, courses, concerts, conferences, fairs, and festivals. We now also do a discrete amount of direct political activism by working for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

 

Are you with an organization—particularly a group rooted in one of the many Boston-area communities we cover on a regular basis? Do you like what we do at DigBoston? Are you running an event you’d like us to participate in? Or would you like to propose organizing an event with us? Then drop us a line.

 

And readers in general, are there events we’ve done that you have some input on? Are there events you’d like to see us do? Let us know.

 

Anything else I didn’t mention about DigBoston that you’d like to comment on? Then, again, please fill out the fast response form at the bottom of this page.

 

Look forward to hearing from you all.


 

Jason Pramas is executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston.

DIGBOSTON JOINS MOVEMENT TO ABOLISH NUCLEAR WEAPONS

nuclear fireball

 

News weekly feels the threat of cataclysmic war is grave enough to warrant direct action

 

January 30, 2018

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

 

DigBoston—and this should be obvious, but it bears stating plainly—is against the US or any nation, organization, or individual having nuclear weapons. Because the longer anyone has them, the more likely it is that they will be used. And if one is used, there is a very significant chance that many or even all of the nukes will be used. Lest we forget that when the US had the first two atomic bombs in existence, and used one, it was very quick to use the second.

 

That’s why last week, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a journal founded in 1945 by Manhattan Project scientists who “could not remain aloof to the consequences of their work,” moved the hands of its famed “Doomsday Clock” up from “two and a half minutes to midnight” to “two minutes to midnight.” The clock has not been so close to “midnight”—meaning nuclear war—since 1953. Shortly after both the US and the former Soviet Union tested their first outrageously destructive hydrogen bombs at the height of the Cold War.

 

The journal’s reasons for taking this alarming step are many, and can be read on its website, thebulletin.org. But at base, it is dangerous changes to US nuclear policy under Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump that threaten to overturn treaties that have led to decades of reductions to the global stockpile of nuclear warheads—from over 65,000 in 1986 to about 15,000 today—coupled with Trump’s escalating war of words with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un that led to the clock being dialed forward.

 

Behind the bluster is the world’s largest military: America’s. Which for the last few months has been positioning conventional and nuclear forces within easy striking distance of North Korea. So when, according to the Wall Street Journal, some of the less sane Trump administration figures like National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster support the idea of giving the growing North Korean nuclear weapons program “a bloody nose” with a military strike using “small,” “tactical” nuclear weapons, the world takes notice. And the Doomsday Clock continues its unnerving march toward midnight.

 

Lest readers think such concern is overstated, Business Insider just reported that the US has deployed B-2 stealth bombers to Guam—joining B-52 bombers already stationed there. Both planes are capable of delivering nuclear weapons. Including the new B61-12 gravity bombs that, while not slated to be deployed until 2019, are supposedly able to take out deep bunkers with a minimum of damage and fallout. Which, together with their adjustable yield setting down to a fraction of the Hiroshima bomb, makes them more likely to be used, according to peace activists and defense officials alike. And a fraction of a bomb that destroyed and irradiated an entire city is still much more dangerous than the largest US conventional weapons. Not to mention the Pandora’s box problem. Since once the US opens that figurative box by using nukes in battle, there’s nothing to stop other countries from doing the same. Least of all North Korea.

 

Russia and China have been frantically trying to get the US to pursue a diplomatic path to peace with North Korea, but to no avail. At a time when the US no longer has any nuclear disarmament negotiations in progress with Russia, a nation with 7,000 nuclear warheads—the most of any nation—and tensions are rising with China, which has 270 warheads, that is most disturbing news indeed.

 

Because the path from the “bloody nose” of a few “smaller” nukes like the B61-12 dropped on North Korean nuclear weapons sites—or sites that Pentagon planners assume are nuclear weapons sites despite having been wrong before due to poor intelligence on North Korea—to a global conflagration is crystal clear. Since the ironically named “Demilitarized Zone” between North and South Korea is the most heavily fortified place in the world. And 35 miles south of the zone is Seoul, the capital of South Korea.

 

If the US nukes North Korea, then Kim Jong Un would have every reason to nuke American targets that North Korean missiles are probably capable of reaching in the Pacific basin—and even Seoul itself in retaliation. Followed by other nuclear strikes, using precisely the same “use ’em or lose ’em” strategy that the US has followed since the dawn of the Atomic Age, according to Daniel Ellsberg—who recently released a book about his decade as a senior American nuclear strategist prior to his leaking the Pentagon Papers and helping end the Vietnam War.

 

Once nukes are flying, therefore, there’s nowhere to go but down. North Korea has somewhere between 10 and 60 warheads—depending on whether you believe the lower estimates by peace groups like the Nobel Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons or the higher estimates by US government sources—and its quest to figure out how to miniaturize nukes to fit on its short-, medium-, and now long-range missiles has been a precipitating factor in the current crisis. The US, for its part, has about 6,800 warheads overall. About 1,800 of which are deployed, according to 2017 data from the Federation of American Scientists.  

 

The American military would be dropping nukes on direct orders from a president with all the powers of his predecessors to use them at will with no check from any other branch of government. The weapons would strike a very small country that shares borders with Russia and China—two rival superpowers with huge armies and thousands more nuclear weapons between them. A couple of miscalculations involving unexpected fallout yield or an errant strike due to a jammed guidance system or any number of other unforeseen occurrences with incredibly dangerous nukes and it’s bye-bye Vladivostok and adieu Yanbian.

 

An unauthorized US flyover of Russia or China or the entry of a US fleet to their territorial waters during attacks on North Korea could also result in a nuclear response from either country—especially should the US lower the bar and start using nukes in combat again. And North Korea, with nuclear weapons that are hardly the most accurate or stable, could easily make mistakes that would draw Russia or China into a shooting war. Even though North Korea has stated that it is “only” targeting the US with nukes, according to Newsweek. The possibilities for error are endless in a conventional war, let alone one involving nuclear exchanges. So it’s easy to see how any use of horrific weapons of mass destruction can quickly put the entire world on the fast track to Armageddon.

 

For these reasons, and many more besides, DigBoston cannot stand on the sidelines and remain silent while the threat of a war that would exterminate the human race rises by the day. To do so would be an abrogation of our moral and ethical responsibilities—not only as journalists, but as human beings.

 

And if the planet is destroyed, journalists like us aren’t going to be able to report the news anymore, now are we? Nor will our audience have any use for it in the hereafter.

 

As such, this publication is joining the swiftly reviving movement to abolish nuclear weapons.

 

We plan to participate in the following ways:

 

  1. Open our pages wide to opinion articles calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons, as we continue to editorialize about same.
  2. Produce an ongoing series of columns, features, and investigative reports in the public interest exposing Massachusetts institutions involved in developing, producing, and/or profiting from nuclear weapons.
  3. Work directly on campaigns to abolish nuclear weapons with local, national, and international peace organizations—adding the name of our publication to the growing list of civic, social, religious, professional, and business organizations in tandem with the 56 nations that have already signed the new UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in saying that the only sane nuclear weapons policy is to mandate a world without such weapons.
  4. Help organize our colleagues in the news industry to join us in the fight to abolish nuclear weapons.

 

We’ll talk about more specifics over the coming months, but anyone with questions about our stance is welcome to email us at editorial@digboston.com.

 

Jason Pramas is executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston.

DON’T TAKE JOURNALISM LYING DOWN

DON’T TAKE JOURNALISM LYING DOWN

 

If a DigBoston article inspires you, take action to right wrongs

 

January 3, 2018

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

 

As each new year arrives, DigBoston staff—and journalists in general—like to offer some thoughts for the 12 months to come. These missives often take the shape of admonitions, wish lists, or resolutions, and the subjects covered can be literally anything that comes to our minds. So they’re typically fun to write. But now that I help run a metro weekly newspaper, I find myself thinking a lot about the mechanics of how news media works, how it’s used by our audience, and the role it plays in our troubled democracy.

 

And I feel that this year it’s worth saying something that may seem obvious at first glance, but isn’t: Good journalism isn’t meant to be passively consumed. It’s meant to be acted upon.

 

As a journalist, I spend a lot of my time writing articles about social and political ills affecting area communities—as do many of my colleagues at DigBoston in one way or another. We do this not because we expect someone to stick gold stars on our foreheads, but because we sincerely hope to inspire our readers to take notice of the real-life problems Bostonians face day to day… and take action to resolve them. We think that this is precisely the role that journalists must play in a democracy, if we’re serious.

 

What journalists cannot do—as I put it to a critic of one of my recent pieces—is, having led the proverbial horses of our readership to the water of knowledge, shove their heads into the trough and make them drink to the point of wanting to effect social change.

 

So it’s up to the public—you, reading this newspaper or consuming any news media of any type—to either act upon what journalists say, or not.

 

Just remember that without readers getting active on issues journalists raise, nothing much happens in a political economic system that’s spiraling downward toward oligarchy. Especially in this era of information overload.

 

Which is why I’d like to encourage DigBoston readers to do the following three things with our journalism—be it our news features, columns, investigative reporting, or critical arts and entertainment articles—going forward:

 

1) Learn More

After first reading an article that’s trying to redress a societal grievance, process it awhile. Then, if you decide that it’s really speaking to you, return to it again. Note the issues at stake, go online (if you’re not already), find other articles that relate to those issues, and read them for more background. Advanced readers may also look for related academic articles and books for a really deep dive.

 

2) Survey the Field

Once you have a better handle on the issues, look up the people mentioned in Dig articles and/or the organizations they work with, and determine who seems to be trying to right whatever wrongs are under discussion. Find their websites and social media presences. If you go to our digboston.com website, we’ll often provide links; so you can just click and easily find the information you need. But if we don’t, just google the people and institutions that look to be on the side of the angels. After that, don’t forget to take a look at any “bad guys” mentioned too. Maybe you’ll decide that there’s no harm, and therefore no foul. And that will be that. But if you agree there is a problem that needs fixing, and think that you’re just the person who should help fix it, then proceed to the final step.

 

3) Act

If you decide to get involved in a fight we write about in DigBoston, you’ll typically have two options. Either find an advocacy organization (or sometimes a public figure) that is mentioned in the article you’re reading, contact them (any good organizer will make it easy to do so), and ask them how you can plug in. Or, and this is the tougher route, if you’re really inspired to get active on an issue mentioned in one of our articles, and no one seems to be working on it yet, consider starting your own advocacy organization. Even if the group is a simple neighborhood committee consisting of family members and neighbors, that’s a great start. Particularly if the issue of concern affects you directly at the local level. If that seems like more than you can handle, then do whatever you can do out of the gate. Write an outraged email. Call up some big bad you read about, try to get them on the phone, and give them a piece of your mind. Donate to an advocacy group you think is doing good work. Vote for a politician that you think is a champion on your issue, and decent overall.

 

Once you’ve taken that action step, you might find it gives you a sense of accomplishment. If so, take another one. And another. And soon enough, you won’t just be reading the news… you’ll be making it. Which would please all of us at DigBoston to no end. Because then we’ll really know that we’ve done our job by turning a passive spectator into an active participant in the revival of our democracy. And we’ll know that 2018 will be a good year for our brand of community journalism in the public interest.

 

Jason Pramas is executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston.

 

THE YEAR IN DIGBOSTON

THE YEAR IN DIGBOSTON

 

Let them call us rebels, and welcome…

 

December 27, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

 

If you had asked me 14 months ago if I thought that I’d have a shot at taking over the management of DigBoston with my partners Chris Faraone, John Loftus, and Marc Sneider, I would have said “nah.” Yet six months ago we did just that, after effectively running the paper for the previous six months. We now have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to publish the only remaining alt newsweekly in a major American city. In a difficult period when the fate of our democracy is at stake.


 So my year in review piece has to be a look at what we’ve done with that chance—aside from completing the obvious task of producing 52 issues of hard-hitting locally focused journalism this year.


 For starters, we know that DigBoston can only succeed as a collective effort. And as a first order of business, we set about contacting dozens of folks who had already worked with the paper in the past to tell them that we were ready to set Dig to rights, stabilize our operation, and begin expanding. These things we have done.


Second, we carried on the tradition we had from working on the nonprofit Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism of building alliances with other publications. Which is why you’ll note we’re running articles simultaneously with those allies on a regular basis. Journalism in the 21st century is not going to succeed with news outlets that view themselves as isolated islands. We believe the only way to move forward is to stop being territorial, build bridges of mutual aid and solidarity between like-minded media enterprises, and figure out ways to work more closely together over the long haul. The better to expand all of our reach and scope.


 Third, we began recruiting new talent. We even put out a call for interested native working-class Bostonians to join our reporter pool—whether they are trained journalists or not—and will shortly begin training up untrained applicants who answered that first of what will be an ongoing series of calls. Because we do not think it’s possible to cover local news properly without fielding a solid number of journalists who were born and raised in and around Boston. And if there aren’t enough trained journalists that meet those criteria, then it’s our responsibility to teach them.


Fourth, we are not interested in the recent fad of “engagement” in journalism circles. It’s artificial and doomed to fail like all the other initiatives coming out of what some correctly dub the “foundation-industrial complex” and the academic centers it lavishes money on apropos of nothing. We are part of the communities we cover and believe that we cannot be good journalists if we’re not in constant communication with those communities. So you’ll see us at more and more public events, and notice us cooking up different schemes to be helpful to our audience in more concrete ways with every passing month. Such practices also have the salutary effect of helping us meet more talented folks from all over the city. Ensuring that our organization becomes more and more diverse by every metric—a specific goal of ours—organically over time, rather than in some forced, scripted, and ultimately ineffective fashion cribbed from the pages of some disingenuous HR manual somewhere. As with certain governments and corporations we could (and often do) name.


 Fifth, we are pioneering a hybrid news model linking our nonprofit and for-profit wings that is helping us solve the difficult problem of how smaller community news outlets like DigBoston can afford to produce expensive but vitally important investigative news reporting. With more punch and élan than the remaining major news outlets are generally capable of in this era. Our concept is straightforward. We simply continue to run the aforementioned Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism that we launched two years prior to taking over this newspaper—raising donations to pay directly to our growing army of highly experienced talent to produce long-form investigative features and series. And publish them in DigBoston, which couldn’t pay for as much journalism without that arrangement. BINJ syndicates those stories free of charge to other news outlets in our network. We’re also working to spread this hybrid model around the country. In the interest of doing our bit to stop and ultimately reverse the rolling collapse of the American news industry… due in part to lack of ready money for news production.

 

Sixth, we remain fiercely independent. We are not beholden to the powerful interests that appear to be doing their best to run American democracy into the ground. And we don’t think it’s possible for honest journalists to approach our work in any other way.

 

Seventh, we continue the alternative journalism tradition of seeking to be fair and accurate in all our reporting. But we join other American alt weeklies in criticizing “objectivity”—the idea that journalists can somehow remove our opinions, and therefore ourselves, from our articles. Because we don’t believe that it’s possible or desirable to do so.

 

Finally, I think we’re doing our best to run DigBoston like a big, riotous, but deeply caring family. My partners and I certainly wouldn’t have it any other way, but neither would the incredibly talented staff we’re assembling from all walks of Boston area life. And it is they who make this whole mad, yet utterly necessary enterprise in the service of a democratic society possible. So here’s to them! And here’s to DigBoston! And here’s wishing all of our growing crew—and all of you—a very happy new year! Up the rebels!

 

Jason Pramas is executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston.

A NOTE OF APPRECIATION TO OUR GOOD FRIENDS AT THE NEW YORK TIMES…

“The New York Times” by aldwinumali is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0,
“The New York Times” by aldwinumali is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. 

 

November 28, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

 

The timing couldn’t have been better. No sooner did this publication release last week’s editorial announcing our “unnaming” policy of refusing to print the names of ultra-right wing leaders and organizations, than the Gray Lady provided the best possible example of the type of reporting we think American news organizations need to stop producing immediately.

 

The New York Times article in question offered a warm and fuzzy portrait of a midwestern nazi family. The reporter, Richard Fausset, didn’t press his subjects about their politics in any meaningful way and essentially humanized them for no good reason at all. The result of this misstep was a huge and immediate backlash from the public. And Atlantic magazine swiftly retorted with a devastating parody of the piece called “Nazis Are Just Like You and Me, Except They’re Nazis… despite what you may have read in The New York Times.” A must read, if ever there was one.

 

What Fausset and his editors did was valorize an ultra-right winger and his small but growing political party. They provided publicity where none was called for. In doing so, they violated their ethical mandate as journalists to “minimize harm” in their reporting. Since the article will doubtless help recruitment for its subject’s organization while making nazi ideology seem like a totally ok belief system that anyone might have.

 

So, for readers wondering why DigBoston has taken our stand of refusing to publicize the ultra right, this episode should provide clarity. Nothing good comes of news organizations helping nazis, fascists, and white supremacists spread their ideas. We’re not doing it going forward, and we continue to encourage our colleagues around the country to join us in our stand.

 

Jason Pramas is the executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston.

DIGBOSTON SEEKS LOCAL TALENT

Photos of Boston by Olivia Falcigno for DigBoston
Photos of Boston by Olivia Falcigno for DigBoston

 

Boston townies, take your best shot!

 

November 6, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

 

Good journalists typically have four attributes: an ability to communicate information about the world around them to other people, training in the conventions of journalism, compassion for their fellow human beings, and deep knowledge of the areas they specialize in (which we call “beats” in the journalism trade). DigBoston, like any news outlet, obviously needs good journalists. And we’re constantly recruiting new talent. Yet as a city newspaper with a mission to provide the people of Boston’s many neighborhoods with useful information about their hometown, we need more than that. We need native Bostonians working for us.

 

More to the point, we need working-class native Bostonians. People with deep knowledge of the streets they grew up on. Because we’re very serious about our mission to cover ALL of Boston’s neighborhoods—not just the rich ones. But there’s a problem: Most of the people who want to work for us as reporters—and who know enough to think that there’s even a possibility of them doing so—have just three of the four attributes we’re looking for. They can communicate well, they are compassionate at some level, and they have journalism training. What they don’t have is deep local knowledge. Nor do they necessarily care much about all of Boston’s neighborhoods. Only the ones they hang out in.

 

These people who apply in droves to work at publications like DigBoston—and indeed all area news outlets that can pay something—are generally middle- or upper-middle-class folks in their 20s from outside of Boston that got degrees in journalism (or communications or literature or business or art and design) at one of our many area colleges. And that’s fine. They have every right to do so, and some of them end up working for us and doing a great job. But only after, and this is key, we help them learn more about the city they’re covering.

 

If we’re willing to work with people who have three of four qualities that make a good journalist out of the gate, then it’s only fair that we should go the extra mile and recruit local talent that has the other combination of three attributes: ability to communicate, compassion, and deep local knowledge. Because those candidates can definitely be trained in the conventions of journalism.

 

Readers may not realize it, but journalists did not traditionally go to college to learn their trade until recent decades. Journalists learned journalism by doing it. By becoming, essentially, apprentices to experienced journalists. Which worked well since journalism is many things, but it is not rocket science. It’s a way of collecting and presenting information. Once you learn its conventions, then you can be a working journalist.

 

So, are you a smart, compassionate, talkative person from one of Boston’s working-class neighborhoods? Can you put words in rows, and maybe take some pictures on your phone? Do you want to learn to be a journalist? Do you want to tell the world about the place you grew up? About its problems and its successes? About its corruption and its virtue? Its shame and its glory?

 

Then drop me a line at execeditor@digboston.com. Let’s talk. You, too, could make shit money and help save the world.

 

Jason Pramas is executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. He’s a townie, and his training in journalism was, shall we say, idiosyncratic.