Sunday Fact Fest, Episode 04: Robin's right. Some Louisville (and SoIN) restaurants are not taking the COVID-19 pandemic as seriously as they should."

The link:

Robin Garr’s Taj Palace review at LEO: Great food and pandemic precautions, by me at Food & Dining Magazine.

My Saturday morning post at Food & Dining Magazine came about because Robin Garr did something that writers should strive always to do. His words at LEO Weekly stood me up, slapped me down, and said to me what needed to be said.

Restaurant and bar owners who aren't tasking the pandemic seriously are helping to put others at risk.

The majority of media mavens covering the restaurant and bar industry aren't holding them accountable, including me. Maybe it's time for this to change; I'm not sure it even matters given the culture of abject denial hereabouts, but what I know is that denial can only make it worse. What I can do about it as just one person isn't yet clear to me. In the meantime, it makes me even more grateful to work for people who GET IT.

My words:

 ... Billy Joel was right; honesty is such a lonely word, inside or outside “the business.” Speaking as one who owned a restaurant and brewery for 25 years, your peers function as a professional family. We stay together, and we take care of our own. There are times when some of one’s brothers and sisters err, and the understandable instinct is to keep it in the family. I’ve done so in the past, and on some occasions, I’ve come to regret it. Telling the truth might have forestalled subsequent, larger problems for everyone.

Little white lies, fudging, averting the gaze, looking the other way? They’re incompatible with the duties of journalists, analysts and reviewers, for whom credibility is dependent on being truthful. It doesn’t mean click bait, cultivating confrontation or trolling, although there might be occasional heated discussions with the folks who sell advertising.

That’s where experience comes to the fore; been there, seen that, able to synthesize information, and capable of saying what needs to be said – factually, sans hyperbole. It’s neither calling out, nor cancel culture. It’s very much about rewarding the positive performers, not the negative deniers.

I’ll shut up now. Kudos to Taj Palace, a restaurant I’ve yet to patronize but intend to visit soon for carryout, now that Robin has explained to me exactly what I need to know: “Taj Palace takes tasty Indian fare and pandemic safety seriously.”

Robin's words:

There’s no way to put this but bluntly: I don’t think some Louisville restaurants are taking the COVID-19 pandemic as seriously as they should. Why the worry?

You probably saw the news item about 11 Louisville businesses that got inspection blasts from Metro Public Health & Wellness over the Fourth of July weekend for failing to follow COVID-19 safety guidelines.

This matters: When I’m deciding where to dine during this pandemic, I want to have confidence that the restaurant’s management doesn’t slack off on health and safety.

Anthony Bourdain would have been 64 today. Let's remember him as a journalist.

I've laid out this one at Food & Dining Magazine, where I recommend you read it.

"Anthony Bourdain's genius was not in the kitchen. His genius was in knowing which side he was on"

There is little doubt, at least in my mind, where Bourdain would be standing this year if he had not left us.

He's baack.

For the record, welcome back. I'm sure we'll spar as in times of old, but who knows? Maybe not this time.

SUDDEATH COLUMN: It's me again, by Daniel Suddeath (once again) of the News and Tribune

Hello Southern Indiana, how have you been?

Almost five years ago, I transferred from my post with the News and Tribune to serve as editor of the Glasgow Daily Times in Glasgow, Kentucky. It was a wonderful experience, but I was thrilled to be offered the opportunity to return here after spending eight years in New Albany previously as a reporter.

I’ll be reporting once again, and I’ll also be taking photos, helping with Southern Indiana Business, and doing whatever else I can to help bring you the news that matters.

The newspaper's Chris Morris: "A great opportunity came to me a few weeks ago and I grabbed it."

I became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information.
-- Christopher Hitchens

I don't think that my kind of journalism has ever been universally popular. It's lonely out here.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

Officialdom is hostile to inquiring outsiders.
-- Martha Gellhorn

Two months shy of his 35th anniversary at the News and Tribune (formerly the New Albany Tribune), Chris Morris has departed the newspaper. He's not retiring, but taking a new job, which the Green Mouse believes is at the hospital.

Here are his parting words. 

MORRIS COLUMN: This long and winding road comes to an end, by Chris Morris (News and Tribune)

It’s been a little strange being in the office in recent weeks. It’s mainly dark with little human life around, except for me. Thanks to the coronavirus, I have been flying solo at 318 Pearl St. for six weeks now as reporters work from home.

The walls have been good listeners, though, and the page designers in Anderson have provided some company, but the last few weeks have been spent in solitude.

In some ways maybe that is the way it is suppose to be. It’s helped me think about what I was going to say in my farewell column. It’s allowed me to reminisce about all the co-workers and friends I have made thanks to my 34 years working here.

I knew this day would come, either voluntarily or by being told to leave. Many of you have said they would have to carry me out of here, that I would die at my desk.

There have been days when I thought I might.

But thankfully I am leaving on my own terms. A great opportunity came to me a few weeks ago and I grabbed it. And thankfully, I don’t have to move, so I will still be around town. That is a good thing because what has kept me here all these years are the great people who reside in Southern Indiana. I never wanted to move from my hometown.

It would be impossible to name all the people who have helped me along the way. There are just too many folks to thank after 34 years ...

Daniel Suddeath is returning to the News and Tribune.

(Monday morning update: Multiple sources have since confirmed that Chris Morris is leaving the News and Tribune to take a job in public relations at the hospital. Schools and health care are the two great magnets attracting journalists in search of greater employment stability. We wish Morris well.)

Roughly four and a half years after leaving the News and Tribune to become editor at the Glasgow Daily Times, Daniel Suddeath disclosed in a column on Friday that he is leaving Glasgow and returning to ... New Albany?

"On May 4, I’ll return to the News and Tribune in New Albany, Indiana."

That's interesting. Since the merger in 2011, the newspaper's primary base of operations has been at the former Evening News offices in downtown Jeff. What remains of the New Albany basically is Chris Morris and perhaps one or two others.

At the same time as Suddeath was penning his goodbye, the News and Tribune's publisher Bill Hanson was revealing a curtailment of daily issues owing to a bottoming-out of revenues.

The newspaper shrinks -- but let's leave psychiatrists out of it, okay Bill?

It's hard to imagine the financially challenged local newspaper taking on new payroll -- so who's leaving?

In any event, let's welcome Daniel back to town.

SUDDEATH: Thank you, Glasgow, by Daniel Suddeath (Glasgow Daily Times)

Glasgow, where do I even begin?

I started as editor of the Glasgow Daily Times on Sept. 29, 2015, and I can’t describe how proud I’ve been to hold this post during the past five years. The experiences belong in a book, as sometimes they’re hard for even me to believe when I begin discussing them aloud with friends and family. We’ve been through so much, and I just know the best is yet to come for this community and hopefully, this newspaper.

But it’s time for me to move on, and next week will be my last with the Daily Times. On May 4, I’ll return to the News and Tribune in New Albany, Indiana. I’ll be privileged to work alongside some talented and dedicated professionals there, continuing to do what I love — report the news and keep the public informed.

The newspaper shrinks -- but let's leave psychiatrists out of it, okay Bill?

Just the other day the topic of journalism versus newspapers was raised. I'm thinking Bill Hanson didn't read it.

Tell me more: "Bail Out Journalists. Let Newspaper Chains Die."

... The advertising business that has sustained the local newspapers — the car dealers, retailers and movie theaters that for generations filled their pages with ads — has gone from slow decline to free fall.

So the leaders trying to get the local news industry through this economic shock need to confront reality. The revenue from print advertising and aging print subscribers was already going away. When this crisis is over, it is unlikely to come back ...

It is unsurprising, then, that the local chain newspaper finds itself at this juncture.

Effective next week, the News and Tribune will begin a five-day-a-week publishing schedule by discontinuing the Monday newspaper. We will continue publication and delivery to subscribers and newsstands Tuesday through Saturday.

Earlier today Hanson prefaced a rant by denying a rant was about to occur. I feel badly for the staff writers and other personnel who do actual work. I feel nothing whatever for Hanson.

HANSON COLUMN: The right and the wrong of it

In my younger days, I would have slung my sports coat across the room, sat down at my computer and started pounding out a rant on my keyboard.

Why not? It still works for me.

I have been refreshed by the kind comments from subscribers of the News and Tribune to our day-reduction announcement. They have buoyed the spirits of an understandably deflated staff. Unfortunately, the snarky, ill-prepared and just plain mean-spirited comments outnumber the good ones. Those comments are neither fair nor productive to healthy relationships between a newspaper and its readers.

When social media warriors state that there is nothing in the newspaper, they are wrong. During the week of April 13-18 alone, the News and Tribune carried 118 general news stories about the men, women and children of Clark and Floyd counties. Nearly all of that content was generated by reporters of the News and Tribune. That count doesn’t include any obituaries — just stories. Clearly there’s content in the newspaper.

Did you catch that? Healthy relationships aren't possible unless you agree with Hanson. And "social media warriors" is the stuff of an ill-tempered rant, is it not?

I reckon this is an opinion but I’d say you’re wrong if you believe the News and Tribune content isn’t worth its cost. If you value a Big Gulp more than being informed about your community, I may be wrong. If you’d rather stock up on cigarettes than information, I stand corrected. If cable TV shows are more informational to you than your hometown newspaper, I can’t get through to you. All three of these items are more expensive than a copy of your News and Tribune and none of them informs you about your friends and neighbors.

While you're at it, Bill, can you tell us the annual value in advertising dollars of those City of New Albany ads with the mayor's name splashed all over them -- you know, the de facto campaign ads disguised as tourism touts, which you lap up like mother's milk?

See, the city won't tell us, and neither will you -- but isn't it the newspaper's job to tell us what the city won't?

Or am I being too rational for you? Still won't share this info with us? I'd buy a damn subscription if you chose to do so.

You won't so I'm falling asleep ...

Tell me more: "Bail Out Journalists. Let Newspaper Chains Die."

I'm listening. Any port in a storm; any revolution after a pandemic?

Bail Out Journalists. Let Newspaper Chains Die, by Ben Smith (NYT)

The coronavirus is likely to hasten the end of advertising-driven media, our columnist writes. And government should not rescue it.

 ... It’s a moment of deep crisis for the local news business, which could have been blown over by a light breeze and is now facing a hurricane. But it’s also a moment of great promise for a new generation of largely nonprofit local publications.

The time is now to make a painful but necessary shift: Abandon most for-profit local newspapers, whose business model no longer works, and move as fast as possible to a national network of nimble new online newsrooms. That way, we can rescue the only thing worth saving about America’s gutted, largely mismanaged local newspaper companies — the journalists.

“We need to accept that what local news is today is already dying,” said Ms. Green, 35.

She had that realization 12 years ago when she was a local education reporter. Her newspaper, The New York Sun, went under, and she created a new nonprofit organization to stay on the beat she loved. Now, her vision has expanded. She has co-founded the American Journalism Project, which aims to create a huge network of nonprofit outlets, some organized around subjects like education or criminal justice, others focused on covering a town, a city or a state. She wants to replace the hundreds of local newspapers now owned by hedge funds that are slowly being bled dry ...

"This is Europe," a commitment by The Guardian "to reporting on every aspect of Europe."

As the Manchester newspaper lately is making clear: Britain is leaving Europe. The Guardian is not.

The result is a series called "This is Europe," and accordingly, since I've just cancelled our subscription to The New York Times (no David Brooks or Thomas Friedman, ever again -- the dipshits), I plan to up the yearly tithe to The Guardian.

First things first. This pictorial was exhilarating and depressing in equal measure. Surely one of these 27 countries will take us in as refugees from American "exceptionalism." Looking at these views and contemplating these places makes me yearn.

Our Europe: 27 things we love about the continent

To celebrate Europe, writers in all 27 EU countries share a favourite place that evokes the spirit of their nation.

Somehow the photo of Mystra, Greece was omitted, so I found one and posted it here. I've been to all these countries save on (Cyprus), and if time permits, it would be fun to offer my own choice of favorite places experienced during the past 35 years of traveling.+

Here's an excerpt from The Guardian editor Katharine Viner's introduction to the series of articles about Europe.

Today we are making a renewed and deeper commitment to reporting on every aspect of Europe – the continent, its people, its politics, institutions, economy and culture.

The Guardian is a European news organisation with a close relationship with our large and committed audience in Europe. And we believe readers, from Paris to Porto, Madrid to Munich, want journalism that tries to understand our continent better and to explore hopeful solutions to the crises and challenges facing it. At this critical moment in history, where many are turning to disengagement, introspection and national self-interest, we will stay open to shared perspectives and the public sphere.
We will interview and challenge European leaders. We will tease out trends and dig into the data that tells us why life is different in Copenhagen, Cardiff and Cádiz. We will focus on the things that unite us as Europeans: culture, food, business, the arts, sport, books, science, health, ideas.

From now on, European voices, issues and people will be more visible and present across everything we publish, from our news pages to opinion, to culture to fashion and beyond ...

... From Monday we will launch a dedicated space on our digital front page with news from, and about, European issues – take a look at theguardian.com. We are relaunching our curated This is Europe newsletter, covering all things European, which will now be weekly – readers can sign up here. And in future we will also host live events in Europe to bring our readers and supporters together.

In Europe today, crises and challenges – migration, the environment, populism, the digital revolution, contagious diseases – almost always transcend national borders. But so does the Guardian, as a genuinely transnational publisher. As Britain moves further from the EU in political terms, we know many of our readers both in the UK and across Europe remain as interested as ever in common themes and common ground, in all that we share. We will meet that need by informing Britain about Europe, Europe about Britain, and

Europeans about each other.

"I’d love, in other words, some journalism."

"I have my own theories. Primarily that this is a delayed reaction to the financial crash of 2007, which showed so many Americans that the system was rigged against them. When nobody in power paid a price, they lost faith. The election of 2016, and now 2020, is the outraged response, a decade in the making."

The one way Sanders is the new Trump, by Kyle Pope (Columbia Journalism Review)

THE WEDNESDAY MORNING AFTER THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, I wrote a piece for CJR criticizing the American press for its coverage of the rise of Trump, which I argued would “stand among journalism’s great failures.”

In the second paragraph, I wrote:

Reporters’ eagerness first to ridicule Trump and his supporters, then dismiss them, and finally to actively lobby and argue for their defeat have led us to a moment when the entire journalistic enterprise needs to be rethought and rebuilt. In terms of bellwether moments, this is our anti-Watergate.

Thought exercise: substitute “Sanders” for “Trump” in that first sentence. Here’s another paragraph:

Too often, the views of Trump’s followers … were dismissed entirely by an establishment media whose worldview is so different, and so counter, to theirs that it became chic to belittle them and wave them off. Reporters’ personal views got in the way of their ability to hear what was happening around them.

It is now obvious that we as an industry have learned nothing from the fundamental failures that led to the election of 2016. It is so apparent in the coverage of Trump, and has been from the beginning of his presidency, that it almost needn’t be said again: The hyper-partisanship, especially on cable news. The lack of follow-through from one outrage to the next. The willingness to let Trump, and his surrogates, set the news agenda again and again. The lack of creativity in covering a president who brings a destructive new imagination to the running of the country.

I am resigned to these shortcomings when it comes to Trump. A journalistic reckoning I hoped would materialize never did; Twitter, outrage, and a million arbitrarily urgent news cycles got in the way. My hope, more recently, has been that the 2020 Democratic primaries could help atone for journalism’s political sins.

It is not going well, as the recent coverage of Bernie Sanders shows ...

“The current business model for local newspapers is broken and beyond repair,” so the Salt Lake Tribune is now a 501(c)(3).

There probably isn't a comparison with the late Insider Louisville, which also went non-profit but died. IL was an internet start-up, and the newspaper in Salt Lake City is a "legacy daily" with almost a century and a half behind it.

“We’re beholden to everybody whether or not they come to [the Tribune], read it, care about it, know it exists,” she said. “If we’re doing our job, their life is better. And it’s better because we’re holding the powerful accountable.”

Holding the powerful accountable? Our local chain newspaper accepts cash (ad revenue) from the powerful and keeps journalism almost entirely out of the equation.

But those 'Bama pensioners love it.

In historic shift, The Salt Lake Tribune gets IRS approval to become a nonprofit, by Matt Canham (Salt Lake Tribune)

The Salt Lake Tribune is now a nonprofit, an unprecedented transformation for a legacy U.S. daily that is intended to bolster its financial prospects during a troubling time for journalism nationwide.

The IRS approved the shift in a letter dated Oct. 29, deeming The Tribune a 501(c)(3) public charity. That means supporters can start making tax deductible donations now.

The move from a for-profit model was spurred by Tribune owner Paul Huntsman, who, in agreeing to turn Utah’s largest paper into a nonprofit, is giving up his sole ownership.

“The current business model for local newspapers is broken and beyond repair,” said Huntsman, who also serves as The Tribune’s publisher. “We needed to find a way to sustain this vital community institution well beyond my ownership, and nonprofit status will help us do that. This is truly excellent news for all Utah residents and for local news organizations across the country” ...

Insider Louisville signs off.

Among the theories I've heard to explain IL's demise is that the organization was too liberal.

Another? It was too conservative.

At any rate, it's gone. I'm running this one in its entirety.

---

Commentary: Business model lessons from Insider Louisville, by David Jones Jr. (Insider Louisville)

I am sad that this is Insider Louisville’s last day. I’m proud of the work that the organization produced and gratified that more than 100,000 Louisvillians per day got news about our city from this publication.

Other people – Insider Louisville’s fine staff – did the good work of digging for, reporting and editing the news. My role was to identify a path to fund a sustainable newsroom producing all the local news that Louisville citizens need.

We failed to find this path. Insider Louisville failed as a business, and on Wednesday closes its doors as a nonprofit corporation.

David Jones Jr.
David Jones Jr.
When Insider Louisville converted to a nonprofit in late 2017, I explained to readers what the publication’s shareholders had learned over four years of investment: “You can’t make money publishing real local news” in a city of Louisville’s size.

The big tech companies dominate the competition for local advertising dollars, and the pennies content providers receive from Google and Facebook when someone clicks on their work are too small to cover reporters’ modest salaries.

Real local news costs more than cat videos and trolls – a lesson Gannett apparently accepted earlier this week as it agreed to sell the CJ and its other publications into a synergy-driven merger.

Insider Louisville joined a “growing movement toward citizen-supported, community-owned, nonprofit local news” and sought voluntary donations from readers, businesses and foundations.

We had some success. Individuals signed up as members in the numbers we expected, and small donors contributed in line with our business plan; the national Institute for Nonprofit News (backed by the Knight Foundation, among others) matched some of these gifts; local foundations including James Graham Brown and Gheens made generous grants to help us expand our newsroom; and a few individuals made larger gifts.

And we proved that Louisvillians continue to hunger for real local news. Readership persisted and grew as we expanded our reporting to cover serious beats including education and health care. Readers are highly educated, high earning and (compared to any other local news publication) include far more readers under 40. Our readers care about Louisville.

But we also proved that Louisville won’t pay for local civic news. In this, we’re no different from most American cities, where a collapse of local journalism has already left some 1,300 communities without local coverage of any sort. Nonprofit civic journalism has not been Louisville’s answer.

Does this matter? Lincoln spoke of “the perpetuation of our political institutions” as a challenge for every generation. How will today’s Louisvillians rise to this challenge if we have no impartial reporting on what local government, schools and other institutions are up to?

Perhaps we just don’t care today. Perhaps the catatonia of social feeds will soothe us, and paid but nontransparent digital “influencers” will satisfy a craving to be in the know and part of the show. Democracy is hard work, and there’s no guarantee that successive generations will want to do it.

But I’m an optimist. Insider Louisville and its many unsuccessful peers nationally have made tactical mistakes from which next-generation entrepreneurs can learn. We also built a monthly audience of 200,000 Louisvillians hungering to know what’s really going on.

That hunger will still be there tomorrow.

David A. Jones Jr. was chair of the board of Insider Media Group Inc., the nonprofit corporation that has published Insider Louisville since December 2017. A longtime investor in media businesses and donor to nonprofit media endeavors, he was the largest investor in IMG’s predecessor corporation and the largest donor to the nonprofit corporation. He will join leaders of other publications for a Louisville Forum talk on civic journalism on Aug. 14.

Shoulda had cooking school: "In Youngstown, an American city loses its only daily newspaper — and it won’t be the last."

Apart from the newspaper angle, there's a graph herein showing that Youngstown, Ohio's population hovered around 168,000 from the 1930s through the 1960s. Now it's 68,000 -- although the metropolitan area is around a half-million. That's stunning.

Don't ask me what it means for us, with the Jeffersonville News and Tribune increasingly functioning as a for-pay political propaganda disseminator. But the fact is that New Albany and Floyd County currently don't have a functional newspaper. Sorry if that hurts, but it's true.

In Youngstown, an American city loses its only daily newspaper — and it won’t be the last, by Joshua Benton (NiemanLab)

That a local daily was having trouble making money isn’t news. But that the national chains weren’t willing to buy it on the cheap is.

A declining newspaper is better than no newspaper. A rundown newspaper is better than no newspaper. A bad newspaper is better than no newspaper.

Some people will disagree with me there. There are those in the local digital news world who argue that it’ll take the final shutdown of a city’s daily to trigger the changes that can make vibrant local online news workable — and, by extension, that any help given to those declining dailies is just postponing that glorious transition. Maybe. But my strong suspicion is that, whenever a local newspaper closes, whatever evolves next is unlikely to replace whatever journalistic firepower has been lost.

Apparently, we’ll soon get a chance to find out ...

"Bourdain was simply a journalist. And journalists can’t recognize him because they can’t recognize what real journalism is anymore."

"How suicide prevention is becoming
part of Anthony Bourdain's legacy."

So much to learn.

His politics bubble up in Kitchen Confidential when he tells aspiring chefs to learn Spanish, to learn “the distinct cultures, histories and geographies of Mexico, El Salvador, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic,” to eat their food, and to show respect. Years later, he confronted Americans with their hypocrisy for depending on Mexican workers and loving Mexican food, Mexican beverages, “Mexican music, Mexican beaches, Mexican architecture, interior design, Mexican films,” but not Mexico itself.

So little time.

Anthony Bourdain (1956–2018), by Arun Gupta (Jacobin)

Anthony Bourdain’s genius was not in the kitchen. His genius was in knowing which side he was on.

Anthony Bourdain’s genius was not in the kitchen. His genius was in never mincing words and knowing which side he was on. Asked what he would serve at a summit between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump, Bourdain said, “Hemlock.” He told David Duke, “I’d be happy to rearrange your knee or other extremities.” After visiting Cambodia, Bourdain wrote of Henry Kissinger — “that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag” — “you’ll never stop wanting to beat [him] to death with your bare hands.”

Journalists are not supposed to talk like this, at least ones hoping to retain a coveted network show like Parts Unknown. That CNN series nabbed Bourdain four of his five Emmys, and the sixty-one-year-old chef and author was in France filming an episode for the twelfth season when he hung himself June 7.

The obituaries and reminiscences about Bourdain miss who he was. He was more than a celebrity chef, a Hunter S. Thompson of the kitchen, a roguish culinary adventurer, or part Epicurean, part everyman. Bourdain was simply a journalist. And journalists can’t recognize him because they can’t recognize what real journalism is anymore. Bourdain was a chronicler of societies, of cultures, of people, of stories, of emotions. Food was his reporter’s notepad and pen.

This is a fine segue for an encore.

Anthony Bourdain was right, and it's never too late to track down and prosecute war criminals like Henry Kissinger.

“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević. While Henry continues to nibble nori rolls and remaki at A-list parties, Cambodia, the neutral nation he secretly and illegally bombed, invaded, undermined, and then threw to the dogs, is still trying to raise itself up on its one remaining leg.”

― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

Paging Bill Hanson: It's called Report for America ... in part, addressing that pesky bit about holding elected officials accountable.

Not trying to bug you or anything, Bill. Maybe you can leave the cheerleaders be, check out Report for America and imagine the possibilities?

The crisis in journalism has become a crisis for our democracy.

Our mission: To strengthen our communities and our democracy through local journalism that is truthful, fearless, fair and smart.

Local coverage has been decimated. Residents no longer get the information they need to understand the critical issues facing their community, to make good decisions for their family, and hold elected officials accountable.

We need a new model — one that calls an emerging generation of journalists to service, reporting in under-covered corners of America.

Think City Year, Teach for America or Code for America for journalists — a public service program we call Report for America. The initiative deploys outstanding emerging journalists into newsrooms around the country to report on under-covered topics and communities. The model draws on successes of national and community service movements, as well as recent innovations in local news. An initiative of the nonprofit media organization, The GroundTruth Project, it is structured to harness the skill and idealism of an emerging group of journalists plus the creative spirit of local news organizations. RFA is NOT government funded. Rather, its unique structure and funding formula will dramatically expand the base of donors supporting local journalism.

The Espionage Act: Indicting journalists in a war against freedom of the press.

Then Donald Trump takes power and immediately begins using the playbook refined and sharpened by his predecessor, President Obama.

This isn't a Trump thing or an Obama thing. It's a top-down government power thing, and the unsurprising province of a two-party system power-sharing arrangement.

THE ESPIONAGE AXE: DONALD TRUMP AND THE WAR AGAINST A FREE PRESS (The Intercept)

...Mark Ruffalo [reading Eugene Debs’ speech]: For in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism or religion or both to deceive and overawe the people.

Jeremy Scahill: On June 16, 1918, the prominent Socialist labor leader Eugene Debs delivered a speech in Canton, Ohio. In the speech, Debs argued against U.S. involvement in World War I and he praised activists who had been organizing against the military draft or had been convicted of sedition. At the time, Debs was one of the most prominent socialists in the United States and his speech came on the heels of the Russian Revolution and the rise of global socialist and communist movements. Eugene Debs had run for president four times as of the day of that speech. Here is actor Mark Ruffalo reading part of that speech.

MR [reading Eugene Debs’ speech]: The working class who fight all the battles, the working calls who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish their corpses had never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. Yours not to reason why. Yours but to do and die. That is their motto.

JS: Soon after that speech, Eugene Debs was arrested and he was charged under a new law in the U.S. that had passed just a year earlier. It was called The Espionage Act. Debs and his lawyers argued that his anti-war speech was protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. And they lost. And Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison. The case eventually went to the U.S. Supreme Court where the justices voted unanimously to uphold the conviction of Eugene Debs. “I believe in free speech, in war as well as in peace,” Debs told the jury during his trial. “If the Espionage Law stands, then the Constitution of the United States is dead.”

From his prison cell, Debs ran for a 5th time for president of the United States on the Socialist Party ticket. He got nearly a million votes, almost three and a half percent — the most ever won by a Socialist at that time. In 1921, President Warren Harding commuted Eugene Debs sentence, but he did not pardon him. Though he did invite Debs to meet him at the White House.

Congress ultimately amended parts of the Espionage Act, but the thrust of the law has remained in effect to this day. Anarchist Emma Goldman was also prosecuted under the act. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed after being convicted under the law ...

This isn't a Trump thing or an Obama thing, either one. It's a power thing, and the province of a two-party system power-sharing arrangement.

Indicting a journalist? What the new charges against Julian Assange mean for free speech, by Julian Borger (The Guardian)

By bringing new charges against the WikiLeaks founder, the Trump administration has challenged the first amendment

By indicting Julian Assange under the Espionage Act, the Trump administration has crossed a line that every other US administration has shied away from: challenging the first amendment in defence of government secrets.

The only reason the 102-year-old act does not criminalise national security journalism is because no administration has sought to put it to the test. The law bans the publication of government secrets and offers no explicit protections to the press under the amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech.

Until now, most legal observers have argued that the law would not survive scrutiny by the supreme court if it were ever used against journalists.

The Obama administration debated whether it could be used against Assange after his organisation, WikiLeaks, published military communications from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as a huge trove of diplomatic cables. But Obama’s team ultimately decided against taking that step.

Matthew Miller, who was a justice department spokesman at the time, recalled: “The justice department in the Obama administration thought it would be very dangerous to charge Assange with publication, as the Espionage Act doesn’t make any distinction between journalists and non-journalists.

“The second reason – which we never got to – was that no one was sure if it would withstand constitutional scrutiny. It probably wouldn’t,” Miller said. “That said, the supreme court has changed significantly since then, and maybe the DoJ [department of justice] has made that calculation” ...

Blaming the victim in car crashes: "Journalists need to scrutinize driver’s actions as much, if not more, than the behavior of pedestrians or cyclists."

Hello ... THUMP THUMP ... is this thing on?

Bill, Susan, Jason, Chris, et al ... this is the Columbia Journalism Review speaking, not some foaming-at-the-mouth Baylorite radical anarchist trying to take your cars away from you.

When covering car crashes, be careful not to blame the victim, by Meg Dalton

Please feel free to click through and peruse the entire piece ... and then can you explain what you're doing to cure this bias at the News and Tribune?

PEDESTRIAN (AND CYCLIST) BLAME is the predominant framework in a lot of news coverage, according to Angie Schmitt, an editor of Streetsblog, a news site about transportation reform. Journalists will report that the victim “darted” into traffic, a verb you see almost exclusively in stories about traffic deaths. Or they’ll emphasize that the victim was jaywalking, texting while crossing the street, or not wearing a helmet.

“The helmet fixation redirects attention away from the overarching problem of vehicular violence, assisting in its denial,” according to a report released last month by the University of Heidelberg. Even in cases when a helmet would not have prevented death, the absence of one is usually noted, as in The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s 2009 coverage of the death of a young cyclist, Sylvia Bingham. Wearing a helmet would not have made a difference in the outcome of the crash, according to Bingham’s doctor. But the reporter, in the paragraph immediately following that statement, noted Bingham wasn’t wearing a helmet and included two additional incidents in which cyclists lacked them.

Journalists need to scrutinize driver’s actions as much, if not more, than the behavior of pedestrians or cyclists.

Whether it’s speeding, running a red light, texting, or just a general lack of attentiveness, journalists need to scrutinize driver’s actions as much, if not more, than the behavior of pedestrians or cyclists in these situations. These oversights can be startling. For instance, local television station KTSM solely focused on the victim following a fatal 2016 crash in El Paso, Texas. Eduardo Dill attempted to cross a street in his neighborhood in his electric wheelchair when a driver struck him. The police cited Dill’s “failure to yield the right of way” as the contributing factor in the crash, and so did the station’s story.

In reporters’ defense, Schmitt says, crash information usually comes from flawed police reports, which inform the news coverage. Those reports tend to reflect a survivor’s bias since, in crashes with fatal outcomes, the pedestrian or cyclist is not around to share their side of the story. Instead, the reports are usually based on a single eyewitness—the driver.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: R.I.P. All About Beer magazine.

First issue, 1979.

I'd yet to taste my first Guinness or Pilsner Urquell in 1979. In fact, having consumed a fair amount of lesser beer the previous years, I'd failed to attain legal age in 1979. Two long years of rampant lawlessness remained ahead of me.

At some point in the 1990s, Daniel Bradford and I had a tremendous dust-up about something. I'd tell you more, but it's probably a testament to the many beers I've enjoyed since 1979 that I have no recollection of the dispute.

Julie Johnson was part of the beer writing symposium organized by Jeff Rice at the University of Kentucky a few years ago, and we chatted. She was delightful, and so was her magazine.

At this precise moment, thousands of beer fans believe they're getting the minimum daily requirement of knowledge from the ephemera at beer ratings aggregators. They're sadly mistaken. There is far more to loving beer than crowd-sourced numbers on an app and the ability to memorize images. Monkeys can be trained to do that.

I've always understood that my own skills as a writer come nowhere close to the caliber of those contributing to magazine like All About Beer. In compensation, I've always tried to push attention their way. Granted, it's still possible to read the words written by the pros, as published at various web sites and blogs, but one must prioritize finding these writers, and perusing their efforts past the opening paragraph.

It's one thing to have a score of 95 out of 100. It's another to explain whether this is correct, and why it matters. The herd simply can't do that, hence the job description of the shepherd.

And, by extension, the reason to regret the passing of All About Beer magazine. Too many sheep, not enough shepherds; it's an imbalance impacting wool, lamb chops ... and beer appreciation.

AFTER 39 YEARS, ALL ABOUT BEER MAGAZINE IS DEAD, by Jeff Alworth (Beervana)

No one likes to talk when things end badly.

Two weeks ago, on October 2nd, I received a tip that the venerable All About Beer magazine—which remarkably preceded the craft beer renaissance—was effectively defunct. I’ve spent the intervening time trying to confirm the news, but those close to the situation didn’t want to speak on the record. Yesterday, however, editor Daniel Hartis emailed to confirm he was no longer at the magazine and that he had been one of the last employees on staff. The “staff” page at allaboutbeer.com would seem to confirm that—the sole name listed is publisher Christopher Rice’s.

THERE BEFORE THE BEGINNING

Founded in 1979 by Mike and Bunny Bosack, All About Beer was the first magazine devoted to beer. It was a strange time in American brewing. Consumption and sales were at their peak, but consolidation had reduced competition and diversity to all-time lows. There were fewer than a hundred breweries in the country and beer culture, such as it was, had become as mass-market and homogenized as the beer itself. The early issues of the magazine reflected this situation. Julie Johnson, who along with Daniel Bradford took over the magazine and brought it in line with the burgeoning craft beer market, wrote in 2015: “Features on imported beer, beer can collecting or homebrew techniques were interspersed with articles about chili cook-offs, football, barroom lore and other topics apparently tailored for a male audience.”

Despite the desultory launch, AAB had one thing going for it: timing ...

The value of experience, or how the "Sherman Minton Renewal brings fears of congestion, economic pressure on poor neighborhoods."

Kudos to writer Michael L. Jones and Insider Louisville for digging deeper.

Sherman Minton Renewal brings fears of congestion, economic pressure on poor neighborhoods

Social justice advocate Cathy Hinko said she believes the Sherman Minton Renewal, slated to begin in 2021, will have a negative impact on low-income residents in Louisville and Southern Indiana.

The Sherman Minton Renewal could take up to three years to complete and will cost more than $90 million. The Indiana Department of Transportation and Kentucky Transportation Cabinet hosted two public feedback sessions this week, one on Tuesday in New Albany and another on Thursday at the Chestnut Street Family YMCA where Hinko raised her concerns.

“The neighborhoods in west Louisville are extremely segregated, as a result, deprived of easy access to retail and to grocery stores. Frequently, they pop over to New Albany for that access. So, what’s going to happen when the Sherman Minton is closed is those neighborhoods are going to be even more isolated from shops, food and entertainment,” said Cathy Hinko, executive director of the Metropolitan Housing Coalition, citing expected lane closures and shutdowns of the Interstate 64 bridge associated with the renewal project.

Part of the reason such extensive repairs are needed, Hinko said, is because Kentucky and Indiana transportation officials underestimated the impact that the $2.3 billion Ohio River Bridges Project would have on the 56-year old Sherman Minton and the 89-year old George Rogers Clark Memorial bridges, which remain the only two non-tolled bridges in the area ...

... David Coyte, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Regional Transportation, said he thinks the dollars being invested in bridge construction and repairs would be better spent on a light rail system that crossed the river.

Balance and insight from a veteran journalist.

For more:

Possible Sherman Minton closure concerns residents, by Brooke McAfee (Tom May Anthology)

NEW ALBANY — New Albany resident Maura Murphy said she is concerned about how the planned construction on the Sherman Minton Bridge will affect her daily commute to work in Louisville.

"All facts are not equal. The fact is, people do not really know what a fact is."

We're almost six full months into 2018, and this is my favorite lead paragraph to date.

My late friend Christopher Hitchens once told me that his American friends often expressed surprise at the number of articles and books he was able to produce. He said that there was a simple reason for his high productivity, which was: “I never watch television.”

So very, very true.

All Facts Are Not Equal: Inside Claud Cockburn’s MI5 File, by Patrick Cockburn (CounterPunch)

 ... People have always had an exaggerated respect for facts and, thanks to the internet, these are now easily accessible in far greater quantities than ever before. There is a tedious debate about “fake facts”, but this is not really the problem. The fact is, people do not really know what a fact is.

My father Claud Cockburn, a journalist formerly on The Times, once did some damage to his reputation by explaining that facts were not “like pieces of gold ore in the Yukon”, waiting for the prospector to dig them out and give them to the world.

Unlike gold nuggets waiting to be excavated, there are an infinite number of facts in the universe, but these only gain significance and have a meaning because somebody – a journalist, a policeman – decides that they matter, so every fact in the media is the result of the point of view of the person who chose to report them and related them to other facts.

This theory, which became known as the “heresy of the facts”, earned my father some abuse from people who thought he was admitting, as they had long suspected, that journalists make things up.

But many years after he had written about it, I requested his file from MI5, and a year later 26 bulky folders were deposited in the National Archives at Kew. They very much bore out his belief that what mattered most was not the collection of facts, so much as the choice made about which of these were significant and true ...

The Economist on the WHCD, Michelle Wolf and snowflaking: "In the age of Trump, calls for civility are calls for servility."

As we debated the idiotic White House event,
"Ten journalists among 36 killed in Afghanistan attacks."

At Medium, writer John Zeratsky explains "Why I ignore the daily news and read The Economist instead (and how you can too)."

For anyone who’s weary of the frantic daily news cycle, The Economist is a breath of fresh air. It’s a London-based weekly magazine (although they call themselves a newspaper) covering global political, social, economic, and business news. They are moderate, quirky, and unconventional.

Zeratsky's analysis almost perfectly mirrors my own, except that I've been reading The Economist since 1988, and subscribing during all but a handful of these years.

A few years back, The Economist explained itself.

Is The Economist left- or right-wing? Neither. We consider ourselves to be in the "radical centre."

I offer these two preludes as preparation to consume the main course, which is Michelle Wolf, and what we're to make of her monologue at a dinner which shouldn't even take place -- and the fact that while this is the main point, it's being missed in the usual hyped-up furor over showflaking.

The Economist's take is spot on, so here it is, in its entirety, with the important passages highlighted.

---

The Wolf at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, by J.F. (The Economist)

In the age of Trump, calls for civility are calls for servility

FULL disclosure: I have never been to a White House Correspondents’ Dinner; I will never go to a White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The American political press already has a bias toward reverence and access preservation; journalists yukking it up with powerful people whom they are supposed to cover impartially is unseemly. Partly for this reason, The Economist has for several years not sent anyone along. Usually the dinner passes in a flurry of photos and articles about who wore what, which celebrity sat at which publication’s table and a recounting of the hokey jokes told by whichever safe comedian they wangled into hosting. But occasionally something more interesting happens.

Over the past two days Washington has worked itself into a tizzy over Michelle Wolf’s unusually scathing monologue. She mocked everyone: Donald Trump (“the one pussy you’re not allowed to grab”), Kellyanne Conway (“If a tree falls in the woods, how do we get Kellyanne under that tree”), Ivanka Trump (“about as helpful to women as an empty box of tampons”), Sarah Huckabee Sanders (“She burns facts and then uses the ashes to create a perfect smoky eye”), and the press (“[Mr Trump] helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV. You helped create this monster, and now you’re profiting off him.”).

Matt Schlapp, a conservative lobbyist and the husband of Mercedes Schlapp, a White House communications director, tweeted that he and his wife “walked out early from the wh correspondents dinner. Enough of elites mocking all of us”—though precisely what definition of “elite” includes a stand-up comic but excludes high-ranking White House officials remains unclear. Several people, liberals as well as conservatives, demanded that Ms Wolf apologise for mocking Mrs Sanders’s appearance—though of course Mr Trump has made juvenile derision of people’s looks his stock-in-trade.

Margaret Talev, the head of the White House Correspondents’ Association, tut-tutted that Ms Wolf’s monologue “was not in the spirit of [our] mission,” which was “to offer a unifying message about our common commitment to a vigorous and free press while honouring civility [and] great reporting…not to divide people.”

Among those who failed to receive that message, apparently, was Mr Trump, who in a nifty bit of counterprogramming held a rally in Washington, Michigan during the correspondents’ dinner. He skipped the event for the second straight year. Mr Trump accused the media—whom he has previously called “the enemy of the American people”—of making up sources and hating his supporters who attended the rally. One worked-up attendee at the rally screamed at reporters, whom he called “degenerate filth”, to leave the country.

After the speech, Mr Trump’s people pressed their advantage. Mrs Schlapp told a reporter that “journalists should not be the ones to say that the president or his spokesman is lying.”

This raises an obvious question—if not journalists, then whom?—with an equally obvious answer: nobody. Mr Trump’s communication staff would prefer it if nobody pointed out when he and his media team lie.

Ms Talev invited Mrs Sanders to sit at the head table because she “thought it sent an important decision about…government and the press being able to work together.” But of course, that is precisely what should never happen, particularly with an administration as ambivalent about the First Amendment—among other norms and laws—as this one. (The Justice Department recently removed a section entitled “Need for Free Press and Public Trial” from its internal manual for federal prosecutors.)

Calls for press-corps civility are in fact calls for servility, and should be received with contempt. Some might argue that insults do not deserve the same protection as investigative journalism, but that is a distinction without a difference. Anyone who wants to outlaw or apologise for the former will end up too timid to do the latter.

In open societies, self-censorship—in the name of civility, careerism or access preservation—is a much greater threat to the media than outright repression. The only person owed an apology here is Ms Wolf, for being scolded by the very people who invited her to speak, and who purport to defend a “vigorous and free press.”