Julia Wells has devoted her entire professional career to covering her Island community. After moving to Martha’s Vineyard fresh out of Wells College, she joined the New Bedford Standard Times’ two-person bureau in 1973, then worked for the Cape Cod Times when that newspaper eclipsed the Standard Times as the Vineyard’s preferred mainland paper. In 1984, she joined the Vineyard Gazette, where she served as senior reporter for many years before being named editor in 2004. Over more than four decades, Julia has chronicled the Vineyard’s evolution from a quiet backwater where artists and writers mixed easily with farmers and fishermen to an elite resort and vacation getaway for Presidents Clinton and Obama. A fearless reporter, graceful writer and skillful editor, Julia is also a demanding leader who holds herself as much as her staff to the highest standards. A guardian of the public’s right to know and a mentor to many young journalists, Julia Wells is a shining example of a consummate news professional.
Julia Wells
John Dennis Harrigan
John Dennis Harrigan has been an important part of New Hampshire journalism and newspapering, both daily and weekly, for more than a half century and counting. He is the quintessential newsman. He has done it all in various media, often appearing on public television and radio, but most of his world has revolved around newspapers. He is probably best known for working full time for several years at the New Hampshire Sunday News, and he kept writing his column, “Woods, Water & Wildlife,” even long after he left the paper’s employ, continuing the column for a 37-year run, one of the longest-running columns in the state. As publisher of the Coos County Democrat, he founded the weekly direct-mail tabloid, the Northern Beacon. He also purchased and ran a four-unit Goss press producing his newspaper and the newspaper long published by his father, the late Judge Fred Harrigan. His informed, respectful, and often humorous columns have introduced and educated generations of readers to New Hampshire’s outdoor vistas and wildlife.
Vermont Law School Seeks Journalists for 2022 Summer Media Fellowships in Environmental Law and Animal Law
Vermont Law School (VLS), home to one of the top-ranked environmental law programs in the United States, seeks applications from qualified journalists for its 2022 Summer Media Fellowships.
As fellows, selected journalists will participate in the 2022 Summer Session, taught by internationally recognized scholars and leaders in environmental and animal law and policy in Randolph, Vermont.
The position includes a stipend, books, a tuition waiver, and an incredible stay in a vacation home situated near the campus. This is a great opportunity for journalists looking to enhance their journalism skills and deepen their understanding of environmental or animal law and policy.
Every summer since 2002, Vermont Law School has invited journalists to participate in the program. Last year’s media fellows were Claire Brown of The Counter, Lisa Held of Civil Eats, Pamela King of E&E News, and freelance journalist Jessica Scott-Reid.
“During their visit to Vermont Law School, Summer Media Fellows learn to ‘think like lawyers’ while they report like journalists,” said Associate Dean Jennifer Rushlow, director of the Environmental Law Center. “They interact with experts in environmental law and animal law from around the world, forming connections that provide sources for stories and often evolve into years-long professional relationships.”
The program also provides an opportunity for members of the VLS community to interact with respected journalists reporting on the frontlines of animal and environmental protection issues.
Fellows, audit one Summer Session course and have access to VLS’s distinguished faculty and visiting policy leaders. Fellows receive a stipend, free housing and books, and a tuition waiver. In addition to attending class, they present on a topic of their choice as part of the Summer Session’s “Hot Topics” series on current issues.
VLS is seeking four fellows for 2022: two journalists focused on environmental law, and two focused on animal law.
Environmental Law Media Fellowships are open to full-time journalists who cover issues related to the environment. Each fellow will choose to audit one two-week course from a wide selection of topics, from Global Energy Law and Policy to Environmental Crimes. A full schedule of 2022 Summer Session courses is available here or at vermontlaw.edu/summer-session. Environmental law media fellowships have been made possible since 2002 by a grant from the Johnson Family Foundation and major donors. Fellows are selected based on work history and samples, commitment to covering environmental law, and their potential for increasing understanding of environmental law and policy issues nationwide.
Animal Law Media Fellowships are open to full-time journalists covering issues related to animal law and policy. Fellows will choose to audit a course from VLS’s summer animal law courses, which include Animal Welfare Law, Animal Ethics and Conservation, and Undercover Investigations of Animal Operations (view the course catalog for more information). One applicant will be selected for a weekend-long fellowship, and one applicant will be selected for a two-week fellowship. Animal law media fellowships have been made possible since 2021 thanks to a grant from the ASPCA® (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals®). Fellows are selected based on work history and samples, commitment to covering animal issues, and their potential for increasing understanding of animal law and policy issues nationwide.
“Animal law is a rapidly growing field, with many facets and implications for our daily lives and relationships with the other beings we live alongside,” noted professor Delci Winders, director of VLS’s Animal Law and Policy Institute. “Animal Law Media Fellows get to learn about these issues from leading animal law scholars and practitioners, and to build relationships with these experts.”
“The ASPCA is thrilled to fund Animal Law Media Fellowships at Vermont Law School for the second year to increase much-needed dialogue around the lack of legal protections for farm animals and related policy issues nationwide,” said Kara Shannon, director of farm animal welfare policy at the ASPCA. “The suffering that billions of cows, pigs, and chickens experience on factory farms intersects with a multitude of social justice issues in agriculture, and journalists are doing critical work to bring these intersections to light. These fellowships will encourage greater transparency and public awareness to promote a more humane, sustainable, and just food system.”
The application deadline for both fellowships is Friday, March 11, 2022.
Prospective fellows may submit applications via email to Molly Russell at mrussell@vermontlaw.edu. Please specify either “environmental law media fellowship” or “animal law media fellowship” in the subject line. In the body of the email, please list your top three summer course choices. Include a CV or LinkedIn profile, a link to your online portfolio or links to at least two recently published articles, and a short cover letter explaining your interests in, and qualifications for, the fellowship. For more information, visit vermontlaw.edu/media-fellowships.
January Obituaries 2022
CONNECTICUT
Allan H. Berman
Orlando F. Busino
William F. Jankovsky Jr.
Mike Jensen
Eleanor Kelman
Cindy Kopitar
Thomas A. Markowski
Walter James St. Onge Jr.
MASSACHUSETTS
William F. Biswanger
Conrado R. Bondoc
Frances B. Book
Garry P. Brown
Lisa M. Buckley
Maria Catania
George Harden
Robin Herman
Elizabeth Jane Lovett
Raymond A. Magner
Edward Burgess Powell
Douglas H. Reed
Henry Shahnamian
Robert Hatcher Weiss
MAINE
None Reported
NEW HAMPSHIRE
William Gnade
Charles Joseph McCarthy
Richard Wakefield
RHODE ISLAND
None Reported
VERMONT
None Reported
Now Accepting Applications For 2022 Bob Wallack Intern Stipends
Editors at New England Newspaper & Press Association member publications are invited and encouraged to apply for a $500 stipend for one of their 2022 summer interns.
There are two stipends available this year and they are awarded to aspiring community journalists in honor of former New England Press Association Executive Director Bob Wallack.
If you would like NENPA to consider your intern for this special award, please submit a letter that briefly outlines:
- Your intern’s background and aspirations
- The type of experience you’ll be providing for him/her in the coming months
- The level of contribution that you expect the intern to make at your newspaper this summer
- Why you believe this intern merits this special compensation. (In other words, will the money be well spent on this student?)
Please submit your nomination by Friday, May 27, 2022, to Linda Conway, l.conway@nenpa.com, using the subject line Summer Intern Stipend.
About the Bob Wallack Community Journalism Fund
Longtime New England journalist and former New England Press Association Executive Director Bob Wallack died in January 2014 after a brief illness at the age of 63.
Bob’s career in community journalism spanned over four decades and took him to three different New England states. He worked for a variety of daily and weekly community newspapers in positions ranging from reporter, general manager, and publisher. He also served as Executive Director of the New England Press Association during the 1990s.
Former colleagues of Bob’s have launched a fund in his memory that will support both community journalism and young people in our industry — two of Bob’s lifelong passions. In addition to this stipend for interns, NENPA bestows an annual Bob Wallack Community Journalism Award, recognizing a New England newspaper man or woman for exemplary community journalism. Previous recipients include Steve Damish of The Enterprise in Brockton, Mass.; Thor Jourgensen of The Daily Item in Lynn, Mass.; Stanley Moulton of the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Mass.; Ray Duckler of the Concord (NH) Monitor; John Flowers of the Addison Independent in Middlebury, VT, Edward W. Forry of the Dorchester Reporter, Dorchester, MA and James D Haggerty III of the Daily Times Chronicle, Woburn, MA.
Looking for a summer or fall intern?
Do you have a summer or fall internship position that you are looking to fill?
Send the details to info@nenpa.com and we’ll publish them on our internship page and promote it to journalism students across the region.
NENPA member publications are also invited and encouraged to apply for a $500 Bob Wallack Summer Intern Stipend for one of their 2022 summer interns.
This stipend will be awarded to two aspiring community journalists in honor of former New England Press Association Executive Director Bob Wallack.
If you would like NENPA to consider your intern for this special award, please click here for details.
New NENPA member benefit for job postings
The New England Newspaper and Press Association job page is a great resource for finding newspaper and journalism jobs throughout New England and for media companies to place job listings to recruit qualified candidates. Job listings are updated regularly and often include open positions for journalists, editors, publishers, photojournalists, newspaper and digital ad sales, and more.
NENPA members can post journalism and newspaper job openings for FREE as a member benefit. We have recently expanded this member benefit through a partnership with The Media Job Board. NENPA members can now also receive a complimentary 30-day job listing on The Media Job Board ($149 value, 1 per year) when posting a job listing on the NENPA job page.
Non-NENPA members may post job openings for $275 per listing on the NENPA job page (not eligible for a free listing on The Media Job Board).
The Media Job Board was launched as a partnership between Editor & Publisher, The Poynter Institute, and America’s Newspapers. The Media Job Board is a complete, comprehensive recruitment vertical offering the latest technology to help you find the best candidate match.
For those interested in expanding their search beyond New England. Visit our partner Mediajobboard.com, where job seekers have access to national media job search functionality, and employers have access to a large database of qualified candidates.
For more information and to submit a job posting email info@nenpa.com.
Our-Hometown to host interview with the lawyers behind the Google/Facebook Anti-Trust Lawsuit
Our-Hometown announced that they will be hosting a live interview with Paul Farrell Jr. of Farrell & Fuller, LLC and Bob Fitzsimmons of Fitzsimmons Law Firm PLLC, two of the legal professionals leading the anti-trust lawsuit against Google and Facebook on behalf of newspapers across the country.
News publishers are invited to join this free live interview on February 24th at 12:00 pm EST.
Attendees will receive an update on the ongoing efforts against the powerful duopoly of Google & Facebook. At the conclusion of the interview, publishers in attendance will have the opportunity to ask questions about the case and what it means for the future of digital advertising.
In case you missed it, the lawsuit is centered around allegations that Google and Facebook have monopolized the digital advertising market and conspired to manipulate online ad auctions under an agreement known as “Jedi Blue.”
“The freedom of the press is not at stake,” the suit says. “The press itself is at stake.” A free and diverse press is essential to a vibrant democracy. That is being threatened by Google and Facebook’s unlawful conduct, as alleged in the complaint.
An Editor and Publisher article published last January sheds some more light on the complaint.
The outcome of this lawsuit could be incredibly important to the future of newspapers. We hope you’ll take the opportunity to attend this interview to learn a little more about what is at stake and show your support.
Apply For Widening the Pipeline 2022 Fellowship By Feb. 6
Many newsrooms have tackled urgent social issues with majority white staff—some more successfully than others. The National Press Foundation intends to do its part to address this problem through a “Widening the Pipeline” Fellowship designed to help confront the common lament that “it’s hard to find qualified journalists of color.”
This is an all-expenses-paid fellowship, from March 2022 to February 2023. Apply by Feb. 6, 2022.
Beginning in March 2022, the once-monthly training sessions will include two in-person gatherings in Washington, D.C. (unless COVID-19 guidelines mandate that all sessions be virtual). Participants must be fully vaccinated to attend the in-person training. NPF will pay for fellows’ airfare, hotel, and most meals for the two in-person training’s. The estimated time commitment for virtual training, including prep and homework, is five hours per month.
The 2022 program will build on NPF’s Paul Miller Washington Reporting and Accountability fellowships, existing partnerships, influential alumni and volunteers to support the growth of these public service-minded reporters. The application is here.
NPF is committed to leveraging its resources and decades of training experience to help grow the pipeline of diverse journalists who will rise to positions of influence in America’s newsrooms.
Specifically, NPF will:
- Recruit up to 25 young journalists for a 12-month fellowship in the leadership, in-depth reporting, data, and multimedia skills they need to hold governments and corporations accountable and to advance in their newsrooms.
- Provide each fellow with individual coaching and mentoring.
- Bring fellows to Washington for training, mentoring, and networking sessions with editors.
- Survey fellows on promotion, retention, and job satisfaction.
Fist Five Perspective: What if the nation’s founders had been able to tweet?
The nation’s founders didn’t have access to today’s social media – but what if they had?
Of course, they took good advantage of the media that they did have, from letters to printed newspapers and journals. They spoke loudly to their fellow citizens, using crowds on the village green instead of speaking through the “village screen” now available worldwide.
Not everything was different. They faced what we might call “colonial terms of service,” rules like those imposed today by social media platforms that govern what can be said and how we can say it. For example, you could not say anything bad about the king, whether it was true or false.
One big difference: Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton and others faced government regulations and sanctions for what they said or wrote through any medium because the First Amendment was not ratified until 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights.
Today we agree to terms of service rules to use social media platforms, an agreement outside the First Amendment’s free speech protection. Social media companies are private entities and have their own rights under the First Amendment, which prevents – for now, at least – government control or censorship over content on their sites.
There’s no imagination needed in some cases to take the work of the Founders right into today’s social media structure. Patrick Henry’s 1775 declaration “Give me liberty or give me death” works as effectively today as a tweet as it did nearly 250 years ago in rousing Virginians to send troops to support the American revolution.
Consider the impact in any medium of the Declaration of Independence’s statement that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Of course, in today’s post, that same phrase might look like this: “👨 and 👩are =, endowed with the right to 🧬,🗽and the pursuit of 😊.”
There’s great debate today across the political spectrum on whether the government should step in to regulate social media. Some would block platforms from banning anyone or provide special protections for political candidates or elected officeholders. Others would mandate increased efforts to combat misinformation or make social media companies financially liable for any harm caused by what others post.
If such rules and regulations were in effect for the Founders, would Twitter have blocked – perhaps only temporarily – two future presidents for the bitter exchanges between the campaigns of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson during the 1796 presidential election?
One report has it that Adams was labeled “a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant,” while others called him “a syphilitic, royalist bastard.” Jefferson was called “a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward,” with some critics describing him as a “half-breed.” One account says that “even Martha Washington succumbed … telling a clergyman that Jefferson was ‘one of the most detestable of mankind.”
While Twitter’s terms of service do provide wide scope for personal comments, Adams or Jefferson today might have filed a complaint about “long-term harassment,” something the social media giant says might trigger a ban on future posts.
They also could sue for defamation, but the courts generally consider even the most spiteful or vulgar opinion — particularly when it’s political speech — to be protected by the First Amendment.
TAKING “ONLINE” THREATS OFFLINE
A less-judicious way — and illegal in most states, even then — of settling such “online” disputes would be how Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton settled their personal attacks: pistols at dawn. But let’s remember how badly that option turned out: Hamilton was mortally wounded in the duel and Burr’s reputation was damaged beyond repair.
And what of Jefferson’s words in a letter endorsing the American revolution: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants”? As a tweet today, perhaps around the Jan. 6 insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol, would that call to action run afoul of Silicon Valley rules – and perhaps lead to an FBI knock on a Monticello door? Such a phrase, depending on the context, could be judged a “true threat” and not protected speech.
The First Amendment provides us with great protection from government interference for what we say and write, particularly on political issues or matters of public interest. As we deal with the societal impact of social media — still a relatively new way of speaking — we should remember that the nation’s founders created those protections to allow for what the U.S. Supreme Court has called “robust and vigorous” debate. In 2002, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.”
We ought to think about those words – and why the Founders and the nation ratified the First Amendment’s five freedoms during a period of great division and debate not unlike today – in considering how and if to further regulate social media and other means of communication.
As Benjamin Franklin said (and would no doubt have posted): “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”