Local news is in crisis everywhere, but the challenge is more daunting in rural areas than it is in cities or affluent suburbs.

Consider the Storm Lake Times Pilot, which serves a farming community in Iowa. As co-founder Art Cullen explains in the 2021 documentary “Storm Lake,” the rise of agribusiness wiped out much of the local advertising that had once sustained the paper while the spreading tentacles of social media grabbed another large chunk. When Cullen appeared that same year on the podcast that Ellen Clegg and I host, “What Works: The Future of Local News,” he told us that both he and his brother, John Cullen, were living on Social Security rather than take a salary out of their precarious newspaper revenues.

The Storm Lake Times Pilot is emblematic of a national phenomenon. In 2025, the Local News Initiative at Northwestern’s Medill School found that 213 U.S. counties lacked a local news outlet, and that nearly 80% of those counties were in rural areas.

This depressing state of affairs is the focus of Nick Mathews’ new book, “Deserted: Life Without Local News in Rural America.”

Read the rest at The Arts Fuse.

Mystified by that inscrutable guide to this fall’s ballot questions sent out by the secretary of state’s office? You’ll want to check out “The Massachusetts Ballot Questions, Explained,” a special project published by CommonWealth Beacon in partnership with The Bay State Banner and El Planeta.

The digital version was posted Tuesday by CommonWealth, but there’s more to come, including a print version and explainer videos on social. (Note: I’m a member of CommonWealth’s editorial advisory board.)

Voters could find the ballot especially confusing this year because there are nine questions they will be asked to sift through, including public records reform, a switch to all-party primaries and the repeal of marijuana legalization. The project comprises an overview, explainers, data visualizations, pro and con mini-essays and links to past coverage.

Like all of CommonWealth’s journalism, the ballot-questions project is freely available for republication either in print or online. Or local news outlets could just link to it in a prominent place on their homepages.

Government by ballot question isn’t ideal, but legislative inaction has made it an increasingly important outlet for voter frustration. Don’t go into the ballot booth without knowing what you’re voting for.

“60 Minutes” made its fall debut on Sunday, and so did “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney.” We watched to see what clues we could discern over how executive producer Nick Bilton and CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss would remake the venerable newsmagazine program, which first slipped into view 58 years ago.

I don’t want to speak for my fellow panelists, but I thought it was solid if unspectacular. The first segment, on the secretive rescue of an American pilot from Iran, couldn’t have happened without the active cooperation of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. But since when have the networks not engaged in access journalism? The story, hosted by Norah O’Donnell, was harrowing, even if my friend Danny Schechter would have derided it as “militainment” if he were still with us.

After that came a report on the Trump administration’s pay-to-play pardon scandal, reported by Lesley Stahl. The story may have surprised skeptics who believed the new leadership at CBS would demand that its journalists go easy on Trump. Though more could have been done to tie Trump directly to the payments (which fall into the category of “if not illegal then they should be”), it was, overall, a fine piece of accountability journalism — even with the unnecessary and gratuitous hidden camera.

The third piece was a gushy profile of the coach of the Los Angeles Rams. I fell into a catatonic stupor, and I’m too lazy to look up his name. Fortunately, I woke up in time to see a truly weird closing segment with former New York Times columnist Ross Douthat. He brought up AI, and I thought, oh, good, some comments on AI during a week when everyone is freaking out about it. But no, he didn’t do that; instead, he told us to stay tuned, because “60 Minutes” will be looking at AI in the coming weeks.

It will, of course, be interesting to see what the ratings are. For all the Sturm und Drang over Weiss’ wilding spree last spring, marked by resignations and the firing of outspoken correspondent Scott Pelley, “60 Minutes” had a successful year in 2025-26. Sunday’s remade show looked an awful lot like its predecessor. It would be a shame of Weiss and her overlords, David and Larry Ellison, tanked the ratings over so little.

In other “Beat the Press” topics, we take a look at the latest on Karen Attiah, a Washington Post columnist who was fired over a few provocative Bluesky posts after the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, and who was recently ordered reinstated. Will she go back, or is she just saying she will as a way of forcing the Post to pay a higher settlement? If she does return, will she be free to express herself as she sees fit?

We also consider the departure of Fox News talk-show host Maria Bartiromo from Fox News. She says she wasn’t fired, but she sure is off the air. Her long reign of error was brought to a close recently after she reportedly shared with Donald Trump lieutenant Peter Navarro an internal memo ordering on-air personalities not to talk about a falsehood-filled speech by Trump about election fraud. Fox executives, you may recall, have 787.5 million reasons to stay silent.

As always, we close with our panel’s Rants & Raves. Emily is in the moderator’s seat, joined by our host, Scott Van Voorhis of Contrarian Boston; Lylah Alphonse of The Boston Globe, and me. Our producer extraordinaire is Tonia Magras of Hull Bay Productions.

There’s nothing in the story that hasn’t been previously reported, but it’s all here — from Trump’s bogus lawsuits against ABC and CBS to his Justice Department’s failed attempt to subpoena Times reporters; from an FBI raid on the home of a Washington Post reporter to FCC chair Brendan Carr’s threats against broadcast networks. Rutenberg and Haberman write:

Almost 20 months into Mr. Trump’s second term, his long-running media clashes have grown into a sweeping campaign to control speech in America that stands out for applying so many levers, so fast, all at once.

Although First Amendment protections remain reasonably strong, there are soft spots, and Trump is exploiting them. For instance, the right of journalists to protect confidential sources is extremely limited, especially in the federal courts, and hauling reporters into court sends a message. It’s nearly impossible to win a frivolous libel suit, but Trump has used such suits to extract settlements from media corporations that need favors. Broadcast may be in its death throes, but it remains the one part of the media that is subject to government regulation, thus opening it up to Carr’s depredations.

The Times roundup is a must-read for anyone who cares about the role of a free and independent press in a democratic society. And know this: If Democrats take back one or both branches of Congress this November, Trump’s behavior is only going to become more unhinged and authoritarian.

Hi Dan –

I saw your piece published yesterday regarding USA TODAY Co.’s relationship with Palantir and wanted to reach out. Was there a reason you chose not to contact us for comment before publication?

In particular, I noticed the line: “From perusing the coverage, I’m not entirely sure exactly what Palantir will be doing for USAT.” Given that uncertainty, I was surprised that no effort was made to seek clarification from the company directly.

This initiative supports our broader strategy to strengthen audience relationships and create greater value across our business. In this work with Palantir, we’re leveraging AI to create a unified intelligence layer to serve our expansive audience better, deepen engagement, and drive growth across subscriptions, advertising, and e-commerce.

Our editorial decisions remain independent and are guided by our longstanding journalistic standards and ethics policies.

Please note, USA TODAY Co. complies with applicable data protection and privacy laws and maintains strong standards for data security and governance. We require this of our vendors and partners as well, reflecting our belief that safeguarding protected personal information is essential to our business and the audiences we serve.

Sharing a quote below addressing the open letter from the Guild/unionized employees which you can attribute to Amy Garrard, Vice President of Labor Relations, USA TODAY Co.:

“We respect that employees have a range of perspectives. Our agreement with Palantir is a business decision focused on strengthening how we connect and better serve audiences, advertisers, and subscribers. Our data remains protected under our existing privacy commitments, contractual safeguards, and applicable laws. As always, our journalism remains fully independent.”

Twenty-five years ago today, I stayed up most of the night writing a long essay for The Boston Phoenix called “The End of Decadence,” a first reaction to the terrorist attacks that had just taken place. I recalled what that was like for GBH News on the 20th anniversary. Below is my original Phoenix piece, brought to you by the Northeastern University Library, which now holds the copyright.

Sadly, what stands out in rereading this is that the media did not fulfill our hopes that they would hold the powerful to account. It was Chris Matthews, of all people, who was the most prescient in the moment, telling his viewers, “The problem with retaliation is that you play into your enemy’s hands. You radicalize your enemies. Retaliation is part of the terrorism.” Within a year, news organizations were cheering on George W. Bush and Dick Cheney as they built their recklessly flawed case for going to war in Iraq, a foreign-policy disaster we are living with to this day.

The end of decadence

Can the media — and the rest of us — adjust to a frightening new world?

By Dan Kennedy | The Boston Phoenix | Sept. 13, 2001

It’s over. The easiest, sleaziest, richest, most meaningless decade we’ve yet known has come to an end, buried beneath the rubble and ashes and dust of the World Trade Center.

Officially, the 1990s died at 8:45 a.m. on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north tower — thereby setting off a day of horror unlike anything we have seen before. In truth, though, the patient had been sick for some time.

Almost precisely 10 years ago, the fall of the Soviet Union ushered in an unprecedented period of social and cultural frivolity. With the threat of nuclear annihilation diminished and the need for military spending reduced, the ’90s were a time of wealth, fun, and disengagement from public life.

No institution was more affected by this new decadence than the media, which — to oversimplify — devolved from the heroism of Vietnam and Watergate to the hedonism of celebrity scandal. From O.J. to Princess Diana, from JonBenét Ramsey to Monica Lewinsky, the media elevated the trivial over the serious, exalting pop culture to the detriment of the public interest. Our national symbol was Bill Clinton, who may have been a policy wonk at heart, but whose wandering penis was always more interesting than his tedious 10-point proposals. Yes, there were terrible moments, such as the Oklahoma City bombing and the various school shootings. Yet even these were subsumed by the media beast. They came to seem more like made-for-television dramas than like actual events.

But you could tell that the ’90s — which no doubt will be remembered as a wondrous interlude — were running out of steam when the media horde closed in on Gary Condit. There was something old, tired, perfunctory about it. It’s not that Condit was caught up in something more awful and therefore less entertaining than the deeds that had ensnared his media predecessors. After all, no matter what may have happened to Chandra Levy, it was surely no worse than the fate that befell Nicole Brown Simpson. Rather, it was that the cultural moment had passed, even if we hadn’t yet realized it.

We realized it this week, when the ’90s finally, emphatically, sickeningly came to a close. And we entered, blindly, a terrifying new century.

***

It is impossible to describe the experience of watching it all unfold Tuesday except to say this: there has never been a day like it. As television events go, neither the assassination of John F. Kennedy nor the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan comes close. Nor does the Oklahoma City bombing, which was similar in nature, but — hard as it is to believe — much smaller in scale.

In historical terms, the comparisons are mind-boggling. Tuesday’s terrorist attacks were the first significant foreign incursions on American soil since the British burned down the Capitol in the War of 1812. Senator Chuck Hagel, echoing the thoughts of many others, compared the attacks to Pearl Harbor; yet what happened this week dwarfs what took place on December 7, 1941.

CNN’s Jeff Greenfield at one point observed that the 22,000 Americans who died at Antietam, during the Civil War, constituted the worst single-day death toll in the nation’s history — and that Tuesday’s casualty list could end up exceeding that.

We heard and saw things we’ve never heard or seen before. Think about this: a good chunk of the Pentagon was blown up by an airliner commandeered by foreign terrorists. As I write this, the networks are reporting that some 800 people may have died. And it’s being treated as the sidebar, because the attack on Manhattan was so much bigger and more deadly. Yet if the Pentagon attack were all that had happened on Tuesday, it would have qualified by itself as the worst act of terrorism in the country’s history.

Or consider the air shuttle on which George W. Bush embarked. For the first time ever (a phrase that can’t help but be used over and over again), the president of the United States was deliberately kept away from the White House because of fear for his safety. During the afternoon, there was a surreal moment when CNN’s John King, who was traveling with the president, actually declined to reveal where he was, citing national-security concerns. And when Bush finally did decide to return, government officials reportedly refused to confirm it, or even to reveal what time he would speak to the nation, until still more time had passed.

Surely it was the first time that giving a speech from the Oval Office amounted to an act of presidential courage.

***

In an increasingly fragmented culture, television can still be a unifying force in times of crisis. Around 11 p.m., ABC’s Peter Jennings, wiped out and semi-coherent, called television “the national campfire.” He was right, even if stress and overwork were taking their toll.

Overall, the media did a solid, respectable job under incredibly difficult circumstances. After the initial attacks, very little information was getting out, leaving commentators to speculate — always a dangerous proposition. Yet even though international terrorist Osama bin Laden’s organization emerged early as a logical suspect, the talking heads were careful to note that there was no way of knowing for sure.

No doubt they had learned from Oklahoma City, when the early coverage focused almost exclusively on the possibility that the attack had been carried out by Middle Eastern terrorists. A particularly ironic moment on Tuesday occurred on the Fox News Channel, when an unusually subdued Bill O’Reilly asked terrorism expert Steven Emerson whether he suspected bin Laden. “I’m not convinced. It’s too premature,” responded Emerson, who — as O’Reilly undoubtedly knew — had been especially vehement six years ago in blaming Oklahoma City on a Middle Eastern group. Of course, it turned out that the attack was actually carried out by domestic terrorists.

MSNBC has rightly been sneered at for its emphasis on young, attractive personalities and elaborate sets — epitomized by Ashleigh Banfield, the smiling blonde with the famous titanium glasses, who rose to prominence during the Florida recount. But Banfield proved on Tuesday that she can be more than just another pretty face. She set up shop on a sidewalk in Lower Manhattan early in the day and stuck around well into the night, even after the late-afternoon implosion of a third tower threatened to sweep her away. She was back on duty early Wednesday morning, looking only slightly less disheveled and sooty than she had the night before.

And the always-odd Dan Rather was oddly reassuring, cautioning his CBS viewers, “Nobody knows who’s responsible for this.” When his colleague Bob Schieffer began talking about the “rage” being expressed on the streets of Washington, Rather retorted, “It’s one thing to have that rage. It’s another to know where to direct that rage.”

If anything, the most inflammatory comments were delivered not by anyone in the media but by veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who popped up on several outlets virtually daring the White House to go after Afghanistan, whose Taliban government harbors bin Laden. Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard and a veteran Republican strategist, appearing on PBS’s The NewsHour, urged Bush to consider a declaration of war, even though Kristol inconveniently did not appear to have a particular target in mind.

It was actually the bombastic Chris Matthews, on MSNBC, who sounded a welcome note of caution, reminding anchor Brian Williams that we are no more likely to be successful fighting terrorism than Israel has been. “The problem with retaliation is that you play into your enemy’s hands. You radicalize your enemies,” Matthews said. “Retaliation is part of the terrorism.”

***

Ten years ago, the fall of communism was preceded by another major news event: the Gulf War, which put CNN on the map and which, arguably, set off the 24/7 culture that the news media have become.

The war was something of a triumph for the media, but it also marked a big step on its journey from attack dog to lapdog. News executives, with few complaints, went along with onerous logistical restrictions, allowing US forces to carry out the ground campaign virtually unobserved. Yet it was the military, not the media, that won the approval of the public. A memorable Saturday Night Live skit even mocked news organizations by depicting clueless reporters asking officers to tell them exactly where American troops were located, thus opening them up to Iraqi attack.

The danger now, as the media shift their focus from the silly to the serious, is that the public won’t get the tough scrutiny of government that it needs and deserves. This is, after all, an emotional moment: we’ve been attacked by foreign forces, and we want our leaders to do something about it. Who needs pesky reporters getting in the way?

“You can’t be too dispassionate about this, at least as far as I’m concerned,” says Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, at Harvard’s Kennedy School. “This is a moment of war, and I’ve got a feeling that’s where we’re headed.” Still, Jones believes it’s essential for the media to counter the “hysteria” that’s bound to break out in the coming weeks, and not to get caught up in antidemocratic rhetoric to justify measures that erode privacy and free-speech rights.

Adds Bob Steele, a media-ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, via e-mail: “News organizations must honor the principle of independence during these difficult times. We should not be swept up in the patriotism nor the criticism. We should be professional and dispassionate in our reporting even when we have strong personal feelings.”

Paul McMasters, First Amendment ombudsman for the Freedom Forum, is worried that the battle against terrorism will be used as an excuse to erode the media’s constitutional protections.

“There no doubt will be some serious discussion about limiting civil liberties, including speech and press,” he said in an e-mail. “Already, we’re hearing some rumblings about leaks and aggressive/sloppy coverage of national-defense issues by the press as aiding and abetting terrorists. ” (McMasters, by the way, came close to getting killed on Tuesday: he was sitting in the Pentagon parking lot, listening to a radio account of the World Trade Center attacks, when the Pentagon itself was wiped out.)

***

In a sad and eloquent essay in Slate on Tuesday, New Yorker drama critic John Lahr, writing from London, compared the Tuesday attacks with Pearl Harbor, the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, the Vietnam War, and even the death, at birth, of his twin sons, in the “existential sense that life can change on a dime.”

He added: “I feel now like I did then — something has instantly and inexorably changed in American life. And there is no going back. What is being lost … is — not an innocence (that’s long-lost) — but a sense of containment and invincibility. Fear will now be our daily bread; and hatred has been given new license. I fear the hysteria and the distortion and the violence which will soon be acted out in all quarters.”

The ’90s are over. Welcome to a new decade. Welcome to a new century. The era of disengagement and decadence has ended.

Can the media — accustomed as they have become to celebrity trials and semen-stained dresses — return to the infinitely more difficult task of providing the information a self-governing people need? After years of sex and scandal, of shuttered foreign bureaus, of downsizing and profit-mongering, it’s not going to be easy.

Yet this is a time of crisis, and that crisis is not going to be solved next week, next month, or even next year. We require a media that can report on our frightening new world accurately and thoroughly, neither playing into public hysteria nor serving as a conveyor belt for government propaganda.

In other words, the media, like the rest of us, are going to have to change.

Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory will not be returning to Boston University. McGrory, who took a two-year leave of absence as chair of BU’s journalism department in December 2025, told the Globe’s staff earlier this morning that he has resigned from academia.

McGrory was the Globe’s editor from 2012 to 2023 and was replaced by Nancy Barnes, a veteran news executive who’d worked in high-level jobs at NPR, the Houston Chronicle and other stops. Barnes left abruptly in late 2025, paving the way for McGrory’s return. Although McGrory’s second stint as editor was initially described as temporary, it soon became apparent that he was back for an extended stay.

Here’s the text of his note to the newsroom, forwarded to me by people I trust.

Hey all,

In the spirit of transparency, I’m sharing with you that I resigned this week from the faculty of Boston University, which obviously ends my leave of absence there. BU administrators had kindly granted me a two-year leave, with one very reasonable requirement. They asked that I let them know this September whether I planned to return in January, 2028.

I truly valued my time at BU, so much that I don’t want to commit to a return date that I may not be able to keep. I also don’t want to continue our work at the Globe with an immovable deadline hanging over my head. After discussions with Dhiraj [Nayar, president of Boston Globe Media], Linda [Henry, Globe Media’s CEO], and Mariette DiChristina, the dean at BU, this seemed to be the right thing to do.

It feels to me, and I hope to many of you, that we are making tremendous progress, consistently, sometimes relentlessly, putting out truly interesting and important journalism. I couldn’t be more delighted to be a part of it all.

None of this should signal that I’m looking to overstay my welcome. In terms of how long I’ll be in this role, I’m aiming for the day before you start wondering why I’m still here.

I’m happy to answer any questions that you have. Just drop by.

For USA Today Co., our largest newspaper chain, there is no bottom. Formerly known as Gannett, the publicly traded company is reviled in communities across the country for slashing its newsrooms. Now the chain is embarking on a venture that is sleazy even by its own low standards: a deal with Palantir, the infamous AI surveillance firm.

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As Frank Landymore wrote recently at Futurism:

The optics of partnering with Palantir — a company that provides military targeting software and wields a vast surveillance panopticon — are undeniably touchy. It’s worked hand in hand with ICE, secretly providing the agency a tool that scours citizen’s Medicaid and other government data to create a map of people it could potentially deport. It also supplies the Israeli military with an AI battlefield decision-making tool that can analyze enemy targets for elimination.

Now USAT’s employees are fighting back. Natalie Korach, reporting for the media-news site Status, notes that workers (sub. req.) at the company’s 31 unionized publications have signed a statement urging executives to “immediately end its partnership with the company,” citing Palantir’s work with the federal government. As Jon Schleuss, president of The NewsGuild-Communication Workers of America, told Korach, “It’s a company that is actively involved in highly sensitive matters that journalists are covering. Having that company now on the inside of the systems that the journalists use to then write about that company, I think is where the problem is.”

On top of that, Korach reports that USAT is embarking on yet another round of layoffs and buyouts.

From perusing the coverage, I’m not entirely sure exactly what Palantir will be doing for USAT. Korach writes that Schleuss says readers don’t want AI news content, but that doesn’t seem to be what this is about. Rather, chair and CEO Mike Reed told investors that Palantir will build an “intelligence layer” to “strengthen how we collect, connect and activate audience data to drive more effective and faster monetization across our platform,” according to an account in Nieman Lab.

Then again, as Darren Zullo reported for Boston.com last year, USAT is already using AI to generate stories. Because of course it is.

Update: USA Today Co. has responded to this post.

If you’re wondering why a lone juror who may have ignored the law about reasonable doubt could lead to a mistrial in the case of Lindsay Clancy, a landmark verdict that advanced press freedom 290 years ago provides some important background.

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Sue O’Connell of NBC 10 Boston interviewed three jurors after a mistrial was declared. The foreperson, Roni Carlson, said the holdout “admitted he had reasonable doubt” but told his fellow jurors, “I’m still not going to say that she’s not guilty by reason of insanity.”

That direct contradiction of the law led Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, to appeal to the state Supreme Judicial Court, claiming “evidence of juror malfeasance.” A single justice of the SJC declined to intervene, leading to a mistrial even though 11 jurors believed Clancy should not be held criminally responsible for strangling her three children.

The outcome has led many to wonder why a single holdout could derail a not-guilty verdict given that he ignored the law, which required that the prosecution prove its murder case against Clancy beyond a reasonable doubt. In fact, though, jurors are free in nearly all circumstances to do whatever they like, including ignore the law, the facts or both. This is known as jury nullification, although usually it refers to a refusal to convict rather than a refusal to acquit.

An early example of this was the trial of John Peter Zenger in 1736. Zenger was a German immigrant whose print shop took on the job of publishing the New-York Weekly Journal on behalf of enemies of New York’s royal governor, William Cosby. Although Zenger was merely the printer, he was arrested and charged with seditious libel because of articles the Journal ran that were critical of Cosby.

Under the law at that time, truth was no defense in a libel claim, and the crime of seditious libel was nothing more than criticism of the government. Thus in order for Zenger to be acquitted, his lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, would have to show that Zenger did not print the articles in question — an impossible task, which led to Hamilton’s admitting in court that yes, his client had printed the articles.

That put the judge, Cosby ally James DeLancey, in an enviable position. Since Zenger had admitted guilt, DeLancey was prepared to instruct the jurors to deliberate on what the sentence should be. Lunch loomed. But Hamilton wasn’t quite ready to concede. Instead, he appealed directly to the jury that it should acquit Zenger on the grounds that what he had printed about Cosby was true, a direct contradiction of the law regarding seditious libel.

Hamilton’s argument was grounded in the first stirrings of liberty that were beginning to awaken both in Britain and in its colonies. The Journal had already reprinted Cato’s letter on libel, which favored truth as a defense: “The exposing therefore of public wickedness, as it is a duty which every man owes to truth and his country, can never be a libel in the nature of things.”

But Judge DeLancey forbade Hamilton from making such a statement to the jury, saying, “The law is clear that you cannot justify a libel. The jury may find that Zenger printed and published those papers, and leave to the Court to judge whether they are libelous.” Hamilton, though, plowed ahead, and in a brilliant summation argued:

The question before the Court and you, Gentlemen of the jury, is not of small or private concern. It is not the cause of one poor printer, nor of New York alone, which you are now trying. No! It may in its consequence affect every free man that lives under a British government on the main of America. It is the best cause. It is the cause of liberty.

The jurors did as Hamilton urged them, returning a verdict of not guilty. The case set no precedent, as the jury had blatantly ignored the law. Gradually, though, the idea that truth should be a defense in libel cases took hold. And in 1771, when the Massachusetts Spy attacked the royal governor, Thomas Hutchinson, as a “usurper” and a “monster,” the Spy’s printer, Isaiah Thomas, defended himself against a charge of seditious libel brought by the governor’s council by invoking the “venerable, great and good” Andrew Hamilton.

A grand jury of ordinary citizens refused to indict Thomas.

Say what you will about the holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy case, but his act of protest may have a salutary effect. District Attorney Timothy Cruz should not have charged Clancy with first-degree murder. If he had opted for second-degree murder, the trial could have been heard in front of a judge, without a jury, thus avoiding the circus atmosphere that surrounded this tragedy.

And the Zenger case is among the reasons that a single juror was able to upend the verdict his fellow jurors had agreed on. Even though I think the majority got it right and the holdout was wrong, there’s a certain rough justice in Cruz’s comeuppance.

A note on sourcing: Much of this is taken from a lecture I’ve been giving for a number of years. It would have taken me hours to track down all of my source material, but this essay by the Historical Society of the New York Courts offers a solid overview.

Labor Day is behind us, summer is starting to wane and it’s time to start thinking about what media news will keep us up at night this fall. From the standpoint of my research interests and my personal passions, the ongoing crisis in local journalism looms as the most important storyline.

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In terms of immediate threats and what it means for our democracy, though, I would identify the possibility (if not the likelihood) that Paramount will absorb CNN into its empire as the story we need to keep the closest eye on.

I’m not going to regurgitate the whole backstory. The key facts are that Paramount, which now owns CBS, is run by Trump ally David Ellison, who in turn is backed financially by his father, Larry Ellison, another Trumper. CBS’s news division is sinking into pathetic irrelevance under the leadership of Bari Weiss, an anti-anti-Trump contrarian who has taken a wrecking ball to “60 Minutes” and is presiding over laughably low ratings for the evening newscast.

There’s a real danger that Weiss will be put in charge of CNN as well. Now, say what you want about CNN, but it employs some great journalists and has international reach. What its executives choose to put on the air during primetime can be frustrating, even maddening. But as long as it stays out of the Ellisons’ clutches, there’s a chance it can be redeemed. CEO Mark Thompson turned The New York Times into a business dynamo during his time there, and he’s a better bet to save CNN while doing actual journalism than any Ellison-backed successor would be.

At the moment, Paramount’s bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, the media company whose holdings include CNN, has been stymied by a lawsuit brought by 12 state attorneys general, including Andrea Campbell of Massachusetts. The hope is that an agreement can be worked out that will allow the acquisition to move ahead without CNN, which, in terms of what entertainment moguls think about, really isn’t all that important.

I like to joke that friends don’t let friends watch cable news, especially during prime time, when CNN, MS NOW and Fox News all feature talk shows aimed at keeping you angry, upset and watching. Yes, Fox News wallows in MAGA falsehoods, but all three follow the same business model.

But CNN, unlike its competitors, is also a great journalistic enterprise, able to bring live coverage to natural disasters, war and other big stories around the world. We can’t lose that. If anything, we need a reboot so that CNN leans into that kind of reporting. If it falls into the Ellisons’ clutches, though, there won’t be any chance of that happening.