Ex-Globe reporter recounts
his travels with John Kerry

By Jesse Goodman
Bulletin Correspondent

Glen Johnson was a reporter for The Sun of Lowell, Mass., when he first met John Kerry, then a Democratic U.S. senator from Massachusetts. That brief interaction happened in the Sun newsroom while Kerry was being interviewed by another reporter, but it would be the first of many interactions between Johnson and Kerry. More than 20 years after they first met, Johnson began working for Kerry, who was then U.S. secretary of state.

“If I was sitting in your seat, I know I’d be wondering what this was like because I stepped through a barrier that changes careers,” Johnson said.

At  New England Newspaper Conference in the Crowne Plaza hotel in Natick, Mass., Oct. 12, Johnson gave a talk

on his transition from a political columnist to the four years he spent by Kerry’s side as deputy assistant secretary for strategic communication.

Johnson had always had an interest in politics, beginning with his first coverage of a presidential candidate, when he followed the bid for the Democratic nomination of Paul Tsongas, a former U.S. senator from Lowell. Johnson covered Kerry’s bid for the presidency in 2004.

During the race, Johnson asked Kerry whether he was sick. Kerry said no. It was revealed a day later that Kerry had prostate cancer and needed to have an operation immediately. Johnson thought that Kerry might not be a huge fan of him after that incident, fearing that he had pushed Kerry’s buttons when pressing him about his health. That led to Johnson being even more surprised when he got the call.

“He told me I was his ‘first-round pick’ for the position,” Johnson said.

Johnson and his family agreed that it was an opportunity that he couldn’t pass up. He was working for The Boston Globe at the time. Johnson had doubts; he said resigning from the Globe was one of the hardest things he has ever had to do, professionally and personally. He was also worried that the editor of the Globe, Brian McGrory, would be resentful toward him. But instead, McGrory told Johnson to pursue the opportunity.

“He said, ‘If you told me you were going to work for the Massachusetts Democratic Party, I’d say you’re making a big mistake, but this is a once in a lifetime opportunity’,” Johnson said.

After passing background checks, Johnson was officially working for Kerry, and was put to work right away.

“It was more grueling than expected. I worked my tail off as a reporter, but I worked harder as a government official,” Johnson said. “My schedule was too unpredictable while traveling around with the State Department; I had no idea where I’d be.”

Johnson’s main responsibility was planning when and where Kerry would be, but he also ended up taking on more responsibility. He wasn’t happy with the quality of the photos being taken of Kerry, and ended up taking on those photography duties himself. Johnson took more than 100,000 photos during his travels with Kerry.

Johnson also was in charge of crisis communications. One such occasion arose in France, when Kerry broke his leg while riding a bike. Johnson had to help get him to

Geneva, Switzerland, then to Germany, where he got a medical evacuation back to Boston. Johnson made sure that the first photo released of Kerry post-surgery showed him doing well.

All in all, Johnson spent an aggregate 120 days in the air, visited 91 countries, and traveled 1.4 million miles. Johnson was with Kerry when he tried to negotiate a deal between Israel and Palestine, when he was meeting with the former

prime minister of Australia, Tony Abbott, and when Kerry went to the South Pole to see glaciers receding, among plenty of different diplomatic ventures both abroad and at home.

While Johnson’s time working for Kerry has come and gone, and his time at the Globe ended years ago, Johnson still misses being in the newsroom.

“It was a very sad thing for me to stop reporting. It’s been very uplifting for me to be back with this audience and see some familiar faces,” Johnson said. “I knew I always missed reporting, but to see people getting awards makes me so proud to have been part of that fraternity for so long. I hope someday I can get back into reporting of some sort.”

Johnson is writing a book about his time as an aide to Kerry. He hopes for it to be out before the 2018 elections.

Members of the audience at Glen Johnson’s talk listen intently

The four panelists at the discussion on using analytics in news decisions, from left: Tom Zuppa, David Colantuono, Jason Tuohey and Carlos Virgen.

Panelists: Analytics alter approaches to how news is covered, presented

By Daniel McLoone
Bulletin Correspondent

A successful newspaper today is a product of combining modern analytics with conventional journalistic thinking, according to Jason Tuohey, deputy managing editor of The Boston Globe.

“We try to have analytics sprinkled throughout everything we do,” said Tuohey, who focuses on digital platforms and audience engagement at the Globe. “Some of it is based on what readers will like … Some of it is old school realizing that a story is good, and if we go at it and tell it the way we want to tell it, then readers will respond.”

Tuohey was a member of a panel invited to talk about the growing use of analytics in the newsroom. The panel discussion, “Using analytics to drive newsroom decisions,” took place during the New England Society of News Editors Journalism Conference portion of the New England Newspaper Conference Oct. 12 at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Natick, Mass.

The panel also featured Carlos Virgen, digital news director of The Day of New London, Conn.; Tom Zuppa, managing editor of The Sun of Lowell; and David Colantuono, audience development and mobile specialist for GateHouse Media New England, the chain that includes more than 100 newspapers in five of the six New England states. The panel was moderated by Tim Cotter, managing editor of the Day.

Most of the panelists discussed how pageviews and social interactions on stories dictate the way that newsrooms have changed how they cover local news.

Zuppa said the key to that is identifying the target audience of the online platform.

“Twenty-five to 45 is the (age) group of readers we’ve been looking at, so we want to find ways to draw those readers in,” he said.

The Sun now devotes more coverage to restaurants and social events because they were favored by readers in the Sun’s analytics, Zuppa said.

The long-followed formula of covering local events such as elections and town hall meetings with a traditional story is not as successful, Zuppa said. The Sun’s first story on the results of the Lowell elections this past year peaked that day at 297th on the paper’s online traffic list. Finding solutions to keep readers interested and still getting important facts across is a new challenge, he said.

Colantuono discussed changing the approach to certain beats that are suffering from lower readership.

As an example, he said: “Bullet points on what the reader needs to know work” as summaries of meeting action within a narrative.

 Virgen said using analytics is changing the approach to reposting stories on social media.

Zuppa said: “Maybe you take a more conversational tone in the post instead of (copying and pasting) the lead.”

He also recommended reducing the number of posts with story links on social media.

“We’re down from 20 to five to seven posts a day, and we’re seeing much more engagement, Zuppa said.

If 20 stories are posted on the Sun website on a given day, only the top five to seven are posted on Twitter and Facebook posts.

The Sun has cut down on social media posts so as not to overwhelm readers with such posts. With fewer posts, readers regard those as more worthy of attention and therefore those posts get more interaction. Fewer social media posts also cut down on the number of readers who might become annoyed with too many or too frequent posts, Zuppa said.

Colantuono acknowledged the difficulty of getting both a newsroom and audiences to accept changes to formats they are used to.

“It’s like moving a battleship trying to get people to think differently,” he said. “ … I think we’re slow in adopting new technology, and then we keep them around for a long time.”

Tuohey said the difficulty of changing the system should not dissuade papers from trying new things.

“You should always be experimenting,” he said. “I think the key is when something isn’t working, you don’t cling to it.”

Panelists recommended different approaches such as photo albums, podcasts, slideshows, personal pieces, and moving around stories on the front page to drive traffic to social media and the main Web pages of newspapers.

Bouknight elected NESNE president

Paula Bouknight, assistant managing editor for hiring and development at The Boston Globe, was elected president of the New England Society of News Editors at the society’s annual business meeting during its Journalism Conference, part of the New England Newspaper Conference Oct. 12 at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Natick, Mass.

“I’m honored to accept this promotion,” said Bouknight, who had been vice president. “I have some great ideas for NESNE.”

Bouknight replaces Richard Lodge, managing editor of The Daily News of Newburyport, who served as NESNE’s president for the past two years. Emily Sweeney, a staff reporter for The Boston Globe, was elected vice president. Charles St. Amand, a member of the society’s board of governors and former editor of the Sentinel & Enterprise of Fitchburg, Mass., was elected to the vacant position of secretary-treasurer.

By Alison Berstein
Bulletin Correspondent

David Woronoff has some simple advice about the newspaper industry:

“If you break it down, ‘news’ is a lot more important than ‘paper.’ We’ve got to get these folks connected to us.”

Woronoff was a featured speaker at the New England Newspaper Conference Oct. 12 at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Natick, Mass.

He is publisher of The Pilot, a twice-a-week newspaper in Southern Pines, N.C.

One way to get connected with an audience is to staff a publication with its target audience, Woronoff said.

“If you’re creating something for 28-year-old guys, you have to staff it with 28-year-old guys,” he said.

“We were trying to create a product for 20-somethings and we had one 20-something on our team,” he said. “I got the 20-something gal and told her ‘Go get every other 20-something’ (to help create the product).”

Connecting with the audience means taking into consideration the needs of that particular audience, Woronoff said.

He used a Pilot product — The Sway, a digital newsletter in the Pinehurst and Southern Pines area of North Carolina – as an example of a local publication that is engaged in its community and its readership.

“What we try to do is think about what our readers want,” he said, noting different demographics such as new mothers or single women looking for a partner.

Each demographic has unique needs, he said.

“We’re trying to come up with products and ideas around those tasks,” he said. “If you want to serve your market, you have to figure out how to get the news into their hands.”

Woronoff encouraged audience members to embrace digital platforms such as Facebook as part of their marketing strategy.

“The Pilot is 97 years old. For 95 of those years, we were blessed with geographic isolation. Now the world changed: We’ve got Facebook, Google, Yelp, Amazon,” he said.

“Social media is a big part of your marketing and your way to disseminate. Facebook and Instagram are the two social medias that we use most,” he said. “This is the best way for us to get our information out there.”

Woronoff has long since tried to convince his two daughters – now in their early twenties – to read the newspaper. When they went off to college, they told him that they received their news from The Skimm, a daily digital newsletter that, with its punchy style, seemed to be getting the job done in communicating the news to millennials.

And so The Sway: Your Insider’s Guide to the Pines – a free twice-weekly email newsletter – was born.

“We created The Sway as a way to get digital people to hang their hat on,” Woronoff said of the publication, which is known as a “survival guide” to The Pines of North Carolina. “We do have one banner ad at the bottom of the newsletter; the rest is sponsored content to get our advertisers in the game.

“If you haven’t started a digital agency, I highly recommend it,” he said. “It’s a way for us to sell sponsored content and have a conversation with our advertisers that we would never have before.”

The Sway has more than 6,600 subscribers, and Woronoff said he wants to reach out to each one.

“That’s 7,000 people, and a lot of them don’t read the paper,” Woronoff said. “It’s a way for us to get in and talk to them.”

Woronoff showed a video made by The Sway team and shot in the style of “The Office,” about the company culture of The Sway. The video depicted witty and hearty comments about the making and operations of the newsletter.

That lighthearted style reflects the culture at the Pilot, Woronoff said.

“Fun is one of our core values at the Pilot,” said Woronoff, who refers to The Sway as a “sassy” publication. “It’s a way to demonstrate that while most of our products are print, we can do video.”

When asked by an audience member whether readers will take a publication like The Sway seriously, Woronoff said the newsletter balances legitimate news stories with less charged content.

“The news comes from the newspaper,” he said. “We have real news on there as well as silly stuff. We don’t run all of the stories on the website. We just pick the ones we think are going to be of interest to those folks.”

Woronoff is a proud resident of Pinehurst, N.C. – golf capital of America, he said – and sees potential in his town as a budding audience, he said.

“We’re an old town that became a new town with young folks. I want to aggregate all these young folks,” he said.

“We believe we exist to serve our community, not the other way around,” he said.

Woronoff invited publications to “start with simple things” to interact with their communities in ways that newspapers traditionally have not done.

“Start a book club. As soon as we did, the local hospital said, ‘Can we pick a book about cancer for your book club?’ We have 40 to 50 women in our bookshop per month buying a book. They show up and have a great time,” he said.

Woronoff is optimistic about a publication garnering an audience if that publication is invested in its audience.

“We want to create products that will make our community proud,” he said. “If that’s your guidepost, you’ll be successful.”

He also was optimistic about the potential of those in the audience at the conference.

“I can’t reiterate enough that if we can do it, you can do it better than us,” he said. “There’s no secret formula. I don’t know anything that you don’t know.”

‘We’re an old town that became a new town with young folks. I want to aggregate all these young folks.’   — David Woronoff