By Alison Berstein, Bulletin Staff
‘My hope is that we see agencies responding to the law.’
— Maura Healey, Massachusetts Attorney General
‘I support any effort from this industry. We’re a resource for you and your teams covering these events. We need informed leaders.’
–Maura Healey
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey told the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association annual meeting that she sees promise in the public records reform law enacted in Massachusetts this year.
Healey discussed the public records reform, which takes effect Jan. 1, at the MNPA annual meeting Friday, Dec. 2. The law is designed to enable more efficient public access to government records.
“The heart of it is making sure that the public feels like they know what’s going on,” she said.
The reform aims at protecting the rights of requesters when agencies wrongfully deny them records. In the case of such denials, courts may award lawyers’ fees. The law also calls for agencies and municipalities to make electronic documents accessible in electronic form, and for state agencies to post commonly requested public records online.
“My hope is that we see agencies responding to the law,” she said.
“Government accountability and transparency is as important as it’s ever been,” Healey said. “People may agree or disagree, but never for lack of integrity.”
Healey was the keynote speaker at the meeting, which took place at Bastille Kitchen in Boston and was attended by about 50 publishers and others.
Healey said she recognizes the need for journalism, especially after an historic election. She noted the importance of journalists “telling everyday stories in the communities.”
“It’s been a challenging month and time for our country,” Healey said. “We’re in the midst of trying to sort through the issues.
“I support any effort from this industry,” she said. “We’re a resource for you and your teams covering these events. We need informed leaders.”
Leadership also comes from the public, she said.
“We need to pay attention to the people we have the honor of serving,” she said.
The government and the public working together is pivotal, Healey said.
“Our job is to represent the Commonwealth, that we defend laws when they are challenged, but we also wear a dual hat of representing the public interest,” she said.
“I pledged to be the people’s lawyer,” she said. “I have enjoyed the opportunity to work with you and your teams, and I appreciate the advocacy for transparency in government.”
Healey called for the community to work together.
“I know what I signed up for in the attorney general’s office,” she said. “I’m going to continue to be somebody who takes things as they come.
“Now more than ever, the work of the attorney general becomes more important,” she said. “I look forward to doing it every day. There is a lot of work across state agencies and government, and we can do it well.”
Free press future: back to the basics, but in a new way
Gene Policinski, inside the First Amendment
Gene Policinski is chief operating officer of the Newseum Institute and senior vice president of the Institute’s First Amendment Center. He can be reached at gpolicinski@newseum.org.
Follow him on Twitter:
@genefac
There’s no one “key” to why so many believe that journalists missed the rise and election of Donald Trump as president — and that’s a good thing to keep in mind for the future.
There’s no easy answer to why so many Americans are so critical of the press, so distrustful of news reports and so convinced — particularly post-election — that journalists are out of step and out of touch.
And yet, a fair amount of speculation in print and on television — including great gobs of gassy talk show speculation — seems focused around ideas that it was Facebook foolishness, retweets of “fake news” or even “the death of facts” that were responsible for Trump’s rise from pre-primary punch line to being president-elect.
Some post-election retrospectives did provide valuable critiques of at least the top-level network and national newspaper performance during the 2016 campaign. Common threads: Too many paid too much attention to too many meaningless polls, a fixation on personality over substance, and too little reporting on the issues that mattered.
But still, the search for “the” reason goes on. The Washington Post even gave up serious real estate on its pages to a purveyor of blatantly false stories, including one claiming that the Pope had endorsed Trump. When asked the vacuous question “Did you personally help elect Donald Trump,” even this admitted faker had to say, “I don’t know. I don’t know if I did or not. I don’t know.” Neither would anyone reading the item.
And then there is the flap over “Hamilton,” in which Trump tweeted a criticism of a cast member’s on-stage, post-performance lecture on diversity aimed at departing Vice President-elect Michael Pence. Recalls another play, of another time: “Much Ado About Nothing.”
Nearly a week later, far too much print, TV and web space continues to chatter on about it, diverting public attention and scarce resources and time from the actual news of the day around the incoming administration: Cabinet selections, domestic and foreign policy positioning, and more around the transition from Obama to Trump.
So, if not chasing down spurious claims of how the election was won, or rehashing an unscripted “Hamilton” moment, what’s a journalist — and those who own the means of journalism — to do?
A few thoughts:
Step away from the screen and deal with an obsessive interest in tweets, bleats and social media nonsense. Give readers and viewers and listeners and users some real news to resend to friends, about things that matter: jobs, education, health and faith, as starters.
For those who constitute a free press, recognize that your strength and your appeal rest in representing those who support your work through subscriptions, fees or contributions. Recognize that such fluff and trivia are not the stuff of lasting relationships with consumers, to be lost in the glare of the next shiny bright thing.
Lest this seem too much like a call to return to post, one final bit of advice: Innovate. Really innovate. In its newest edition, the industry publication Editor & Publisher offers a glimpse into the fast-changing newsroom of The Washington Post, now rife with online tools and methods of reaching news consumers that include a “lightning-fast” mobile website, and programs such as “Bandito, a home-grown tool that lets editors publish articles with as many as five different headlines and photos to figure out which is the most engaging to readers.”
The Post, propelled by the investment of owner Jeff Bezos, who also owns Amazon, is not ignoring the bottom line while pursuing the future. As Editor & Publisher reports, “Then there’s Arc, the Post’s home-made content management system which they have begun licensing out to other news organizations,” in what could be a $100 million-a-year business.
Surely such new tools as video and gaming technology — and innovative ways of revising the basic structure of news outlets, from a return to local owners who can accept profit margins that chill Wall Street investors to publicly supported, collaborative newsgathering — can bring credible information to a public that needs it.
There also is the new and pervasive presence of information sources such as Google News — which can bring amazing amounts of core information in partnership with existing and yet-to-come news providers.
Yes, there’s no one “key” to a return to a thriving news industry — and to dealing quickly with the loss of thousands of talented, experienced journalists by disruption of their industry’s financial model.
But to focus on or be distracted by the trivial is to self-define in the same terms. It’s also to break faith with the nation’s founders, who accepted and protected an opinionated, partisan — often, even opposition — press because the role and those views were rooted in discussion of the serious matters of self-governance.