The announcement last week of the $600,000 grant from the Barr Foundation to the Boston Globe was presented as a public spirited philanthropy offering the Globe the means to research our education system’s failures and report back on how to fix them. It is not. It is the dawn of philanthro-interest group journalism. That’s a…
Month: June 2019
Globe Editors Phone It In on OML Proposal
The recent Boston Globe editorial endorsing the repeal of the state legislature’s statutory exemption from the requirements of the Open Meeting Law is, to put it mildly, neither well-argued nor persuasive. It was interesting to me that the least reasonable claims in the editorial were offered via quotes from Mary Connaughton, the “director of government…
Masslive Misfires on Editorial on Massachusetts Parents United of Arkansas
Back on June 10 Masslive.com ran an editorial titled Meet the Newest Education Union: Parents which turned out not to be about education or unions at all but about the WalMart-heir front Massachusetts Parents United of Arkansas. Helpful as always I sent an op-ed to Masslive setting the record straight but they paid no attention….
This Week in Philanthropies as Interest Groups
One thing we don’t see often enough in political coverage is the forthright identification of philanthropic non-profits as interest groups. There were some positive signs this week. First, the Boston Globe’s Rhode Island coverage featured Dan McGowan’s story The Providence Mayor Raised Thousands of Dollars for a Nonprofit with Ties to His Campaign, Then he…