For the Record

Ellsberg Announces Terminal Cancer Diagnosis:

Political activist Daniel Ellsberg has announced that he was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer in mid-February, potentially leaving him with months to live. "Since my diagnosis, I've done several interviews and webinars on Ukraine, nuclear weapons, and First Amendment issues, and I have more scheduled," the economist said in an open letter posted to his Twitter account. "As I just told my son Robert: he's long known (as my editor) that I work better under a deadline. It turns out that I live better under a deadline! I feel lucky and grateful that I've had a wonderful life far beyond the proverbial three-score years and ten. (I'll be ninety-two on April 7th.) I feel the very same way about having a few months more to enjoy life with my wife and family, and in which to continue to pursue the urgent goal of working with others to avert nuclear war in Ukraine or Taiwan (or anywhere else)." Ellsberg will eschew chemotherapy and "[has] great hospice care when needed." He added that he is "not in any physical pain" and has abandoned a salt-restricted diet following the acquiescence of his cardiologist. Educated at Harvard and Cambridge, Ellsberg initially pursued a career in Cold War-era defense research at the RAND Corporation, where he worked alongside such epochal figures as foreign policy strategist Andrew Marshall, futurist Herman Kahn and fellow economist James Schlesinger (who held several Cabinet and Cabinet-level appointments in the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations). Following several years in Vietnam under the aegis of the State and Defense Departments (where he was assigned to work with such operators as retired Air Force Major General Edward Lansdale and Agency for International Development official John Paul Vann, who became a close friend), Ellsberg returned to RAND in 1968. As he worked on a top-secret study of the failure of the Vietnam War amid the collapse of his first marriage, Ellsberg began to explore the nascent American counterculture in the context of his personal life; by 1969, he openly attended anti-war rallies and conferred with such figures as Indian peace activist Janaki Tschannerl. The commitment of pacifist and draft resister Randy Kehler inspired Ellsberg and RAND colleague Anthony Russo to disseminate photocopies of the aforementioned study (colloqually known as the Pentagon Papers) to New York Times correspondent Neil Sheehan and the staff of the Washington Post in 1971, leading to the former publication receiving the 1972 Public Service Prize amid lodestar First Amendment litigation. Although Ellsberg was charged with espionage, theft and conspiracy in early 1973 (carrying a potential maximum prison sentence of 115 years), governmental misconduct related to the Watergate scandal precipitated the dismissal of all charges later that year. Since that time, he has primarily worked as an activist and public speaker in addition to publishing several books.

Tow Center Analyzes Meta Journalism Funding:

The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University "has tallied data about all known Meta Journalism Project initiatives publicly announced since 2018 that were both aimed at US local news organizations and had a direct funding component," according to a Monday report by Associate Research Scholar/Senior Reporting Fellow Gabby Miller published in the Columbia Journalism Review. "Through this endeavor we have traced 564 news organizations that shared $29.4 million of direct funding through 17 MJP programs. This data has been centralized into a database" that is now available in the report. The data "can account for $29,416,913 distributed to 564 different news organizations between 2018 and 2022," Miller continued. "Of these recipients, 133 received more than one grant. The most grants any individual outlet received was five. Five news orgs received five separate grants in total—the AFRO, Bridge (based in Michigan), Detour Detroit, the Salt Lake Tribune, and Washington City Paper." However, the "vast majority of publications only received one grant," with only 89 publications receiving two grants and 13 receiving four grants. Miller added: "The total amounts received from Meta ranged from $5,000 to the $390,000 received by the Boston Globe. The median amount received was $25,000, but 239 outlets received just $5,000. Among the bigger beneficiaries, 118 outlets received at least $100,000, 34 got at least $200,000 and 11 received over $300,000 of Meta funding." Publications with significant funding encompassed several notable metropolitan newspapers, including The Boston Globe ($390,000 over three grants), suburban New York's Newsday ($375,000 over four grants), the Omaha World Herald ($350,000 over three grants), The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ($350,000 over two grants) and The Dallas Morning News ($350,000 over two grants). Tow Center research "found Meta funding was distributed through 17 domestic and global grant programs," including accelerators, community network programs and COVID programs. Miller continued: "The Tow Center built this database so journalists and researchers can see how part of the money allocated for journalism moved directly between Meta and US local newsrooms. At a time when policymakers around the world are legislating in ways that both restrict technology platforms and occasionally benefit local news industries, we intend our research to be useful in assessing the scale of recent programs. This is especially relevant as platforms—particularly Meta and Google—lobby against Canada’s Online News Act, or Bill C-18, which might force platforms to enter into agreements with Canadian news publishers regarding news content made available on social feeds. Just last week, in response to the bill, Google announced it was temporarily limiting access to news content for less that four percent of its users in Canada. Meta's global policy director Kevin Chan made similar threats before the house of commons last October. (The Tow Center has previously reported on this bill, both with a timeline and overview of its progress. It looks likely to pass this spring.) If Australia's News Media Bargaining Code, a similar bill passed in 2021, is any indication of what’s to come in Canada, tens of millions of platform dollars could be up for grabs. Many have suggested, both to Tow and others, that the Meta Journalism Project and Google News Initiative were, at least partially, PR exercises designed to generate goodwill from influential publishers as the companies lobby against similar bills globally. It is unclear how effective that strategy has been as threats continue to mount."

Columbia Acquires Tania León Archive:

Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library has acquired 2021 Music winner Tania León's archive, according to a recent news release. Born in Havana in 1943 to a Cuban family of mixed French, Spanish, Chinese and African heritage, León has been based in the New York metropolitan area since emigrating to the United States in 1965, earning two degrees from New York University before ultimately teaching as a distinguished professor at Brooklyn College. Alongside her academic career, León served as a founding member and the first musical director of Arthur Mitchell's Dance Theater of Harlem from 1969 to 1980. "It seems too much of a cliché to say that Tania León’s archive is unique, but it is that and much more: it is an inspiration," the release added. "This is her time. Her compositions are being performed all over the world. Even during the pandemic of the past few years, her works have been performed live by Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Leon Botstein and the Bard College Orchestra Now. During a New York Philharmonic trivia quiz, it was revealed that she is still the only woman of color to have EVER conducted the New York Philharmonic." Biographer Alejandro L. Madrid wrote: "I have no doubt that Tania León is one of the most important and accomplished composers of her generation. Her music has influenced several cohorts of composers in the U.S., Latin America, and Europe, while also serving as a bridge to positively acknowledge and accept the music and culture from Latinx composers as a serious interlocutor in European and American concert halls. At the same time, her advocacy and commitment to the advancement of marginalized communities of people of color has led to her pioneering work as a musical activist."

Wikipedia Unblocked in Pakistan Following Governmental Intervention:

Pakistan "has unblocked Wikipedia in the South Asian market, three days after the online encyclopedia was censored in the nation over noncompliance with removing what the local regulator deemed as 'sacrilegious' content," Manish Singh of TechCrunch reported Monday. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif (pictured) personally issued the unblocking order, asserting that the ban was "not a suitable measure [...] The unintended consequences of this blanket ban [...] outweigh its benefits." Sharif also has "constituted a cabinet committee that will include ministers for IT and Telecom, Law and Justices, Information and Broadcasting, Commerce and Communications on matters related to Wikipedia and other online content, including exploring and recommending alternative technical measures for removal or blocking access to objectionable content." Last Wednesday, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority announced that it had "'degraded' Wikipedia in the country for 48 hours for not removing 'sacrilegious contents,'" prompting a full ban two days later amid allegations that the website had failed to comply with court orders from the regulator. Although the Authority did not cite specific content underpinning the ban (which coincided with the Sunday death of former President Pervez Musharraf in Dubai), the country "briefly blocked TikTok in 2021 over 'immoral and objectionable content,'" paralleling similar measures undertaken by the Indian government in recent years. On Saturday, the Wikimedia Foundation (which administers the encyclopedia) defended its practices in a statement that called for the restoration of service: "The Wikimedia Foundation does not make decisions around what content is included on Wikipedia or how that content is maintained. This is by design to ensure that articles are the result of many people coming together to determine what information should be presented on the site, resulting in richer, more neutral articles. We respect and support the editorial decisions made by the community of editors around the world." According to Wikimedia, the English Wikipedia receives more than 50 million page views from Pakistan each month.

Victor S. Navasky (1932-2023):

Longtime journalist and past Pulitzer juror Victor Navasky died Monday at a hospital in Manhattan from complications of pneumonia, according to Joseph Berger of The New York Times. He was 90 and resided on the Upper West Side and in Hillsdale, N.Y. Known primarily for his editorship of The Nation (where he "introduced a droll sensibility that leavened the magazine's sometimes too-earnest prose"), he championed such "idiosyncratic writers [as] Alexander Cockburn, Christopher Hitchens and Calvin Trillin, who in his 'Uncivil Liberties' column referred to his boss as 'the wily and parsimonious Victor S. Navasky.'" He also "provided a forum for feminist voices, like those of Katha Pollitt and Katrina vanden Heuvel, who succeeded him as editor in 1995 when he led a group of investors in buying the magazine and became its publisher"; vanden Heuvel subsequently became publisher when he stepped down from the magazine a decade later. A lifelong New Yorker (where his parents operated a clothing manufacturing business), Navasky was a 1954 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Swarthmore College and attended Yale Law School on the G.I. Bill, receiving his LL.B. in 1958. While at the latter institution, he co-founded Monocle, a satirical magazine published irregularly until the mid-1960s; contributors included such future luminaries as Nora Ephron, 1982 Criticism finalist Marvin Kitman and media theorist Neil Postman. Following its closure, he "turned to writing well-reported and thoughtful, often provocative magazine articles" for such publications as The New York Times Magazine, where he profiled former Supreme Court Associate Justice Abe Fortas and defense attorney William Kunstler. Berger added: "He wrote pieces defending Alger Hiss, a high State Department official in the 1930s, against charges that he had been a Soviet spy, and assailing the government's handling of the prosecution and sentencing of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were also charged with spying for the Soviets and were executed. As new revelations over the decades seemed to back up charges in both cases, [...] Navasky questioned the reliability of the evidence, and at his death the guilt of Alger Hiss and, at least, Ethel Rosenberg was still open to question." His books included "Kennedy Justice" (1971), an acclaimed history of the Justice Department under Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy; the National Book Award-winning "Naming Names" (1980), a history of the Hollywood blacklist; and "The Art of Controversy: Political Cartoons and Their Enduring Power" (2013), a monograph on the medium. From the turn of the century until the mid-2010s, he taught at Columbia University, retiring as the George T. Delacorte Professor Emeritus of Professional Practice in Magazine Journalism. In 2002, he reflected upon his career in an interview with the Brooklyn Rail. "I think it was Walter Cronkite who used to end his nightly newscasts by saying, 'That’s the way it is,'" he said. "Well, I wanted to put out a magazine which would say: 'That's not the way it is at all. Let’s take another look.'" 

Vox Media Lays Off 7% of Workforce:

Vox Media "is laying off 7% of its workforce across departments, resulting in the elimination of about 130 jobs," Todd Spangler of Variety reported Friday. The media firm's brands range from its eponymous news and opinion site to New York Magazine and The Verge. In a memo to staff, CEO Jim Bankoff cited "the challenging economic environment impacting our business and industry" as the impetus for the involuntary terminations. "Unfortunately, in this economic climate, we’re not able to sustain projects and areas of the business that have not performed as anticipated, are less core to where we see the biggest opportunities in the coming years, or where we don't have enough rationale to support ongoing investment in what could be a prolonged downturn," he wrote. "In spite of the dedication of the many talented people involved in these initiatives, we need to scale back." The cuts follow a round of 39 layoffs in the summer of 2022, corresponding to 2% of its contemporaneous workforce. In a Twitter post, a WGA East-affiliated bargaining unit representing Vox Media editorial and video employees condemned the action: "We're furious at the way the company has approached these layoffs, and are currently discussing how to best serve those who just lost their jobs." In December 2021, Vox Media "merged with Group Nine Media, a digital media roll-up venture whose backers had included Discovery." Other brands in their portfolio include Curbed, The Cut, The Dodo, Eater, Grub Street, Intelligencer, NowThis, Polygon, Popsugar, Recode, SB Nation, Seeker, The Strategist, Thrillist and Vulture.

Minouche Shafik Named 20th President of Columbia University:

Economist Nemat "Minouche" Shafik will succeed Lee C. Bollinger as the 20th president of Columbia University on July 1, 2023, the institution's Board of Trustees announced Wednesday. In a letter to the University community, In a letter to the community, Board of Trustees Chair Jonathan Lavine called Shafik "the perfect candidate: a brilliant and able global leader, a community builder, and a preeminent economist who understands the academy and the world beyond it." He continued: "What set Minouche apart as a candidate is her unshakable confidence in the vital role institutions of higher education can and must play in solving the world’s most complex problems. Like all of us in the Columbia community, she believes that in order to bring about meaningful change, we have a collective obligation to combine our distinctive intellectual capacities with groups and organizations beyond the academy." The 16th director of the London School of Economics, Shafik was born in Alexandria, Egypt and partially raised in Savannah, Georgia. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst before earning an  M.Sc. in economics from the University of London and a doctorate in the discipline from St Antony's College, Oxford. Shafik held a variety of appointments at such institutions as the World Bank, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the British government's Department for International Development before serving as deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund from April 2011 until March 2014, where she oversaw the Fund's work in Europe and the Middle East. Following more than two years as a deputy governor (Markets of the Bank of England, she joined LSE in September 2017. She was created Baroness Shafik, of Camden in the London Borough of Camden and of Alexandria in the Arab Republic of Egypt, in the 2020 Political Honours and currently serves in the House of Lords as a crossbencher. "I feel like, if I had looked all over the world for the best person to next lead Columbia, I would have chosen Minouche Shafik," said Bollinger. "Her expertise, her experiences—both personal and professional—and her general outlook on academic and public life make her an inspired appointment. I offer her my warmest congratulations and very best wishes as she takes on what I believe to be the best job in the world." The president of Columbia University serves as a permanent voting member of the Pulitzer Board for the duration of his, her or their term.

Study: Whistleblower Trust in Journalism Fades:

A recent study by University of Georgia journalism professor Karin Assmann in Journalism Practice (a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Routledge) explores the effects of the current media milieu on the relationships between journalists and whistleblowers, which often "[require] significant trust in both the journalist individually and the professional standards and impact of the news media more generally," Mark Coddington and Seth Lewis of NiemanLab reported Tuesday. As part of her work, Assmann "interviewed 16 American whistleblowers who contacted journalists between the 1970s and 2010s," including such notable figures as former RAND Corporation economist Daniel Ellsberg (who released the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times and other newspapers, leading to the former publication receiving the 1972 Public Service Prize) and former Brown & Williamson biochemist Jeffrey Wigand (who exposed how the defunct tobacco company suffused its products with ammonia and other additives in a 1996 interview with "60 Minutes"). Analyzing these interviews "through the lens of institutional logics, the set of practices, assumptions, and values that govern a particular social sphere," Assmann "found that whistleblowers were drawn to journalists because of the overlap between their own motives and their perception of journalists’ motives — keeping the powerful in check and advocating for the public interest," Coddington and Lewis continued. "Their goal was to produce social change, so the name recognition and status of the journalist they approached played an outsized role in their criteria for trust." The whistleblowers also identified "a commitment to protect their identity and substantial subject matter expertise" as key collaborative criteria. However, "many of them — about half — now see the news media as antagonistic and much less likely to fulfill the role they had hoped for when they blew the whistle," according to Coddington and Lewis, who added: "Many of the whistleblowers said they would attempt to circumvent the news media when releasing similar information today, given the ease of self-publishing and their perception of declining specialized expertise among journalists. Yet they were wary of this strategy too, citing the sophistication of government surveillance tools (especially in cases like that of Reality Winner)" and the possibility of censorship on social media platforms. "These whistleblowers have heavily bought into the institutional logic of journalism, with its self-regard for its watchdog role and strong professional standards," Assmann concluded. "But even as they continue to reach out to the news media, their trust in journalists to hold up those standards has eroded. [...] They variously described the news media as 'corrupt, biased, politicized, self-serving, beholden to the government and neglectful of their sources.'"

Diller Explores Daily Beast Sale:

Barry Diller's IAC holding company "has hired the advisory firm Whisper Advisors to explore the sale of The Daily Beast," Benjamin Mullin of The New York Times reported Friday. Co-founded by the media executive and former Vanity Fair/New Yorker editor Tina Brown amid digital journalism's incipience in 2008, the publication (characterized by former Editor-in-Chief Noah Shachtman as a "high-end tabloid") "has had journalistic successes, churning out scoops on the media industry and political and national security issues over the years," Mullin continued. However, the news organization has struggled to match "the financial success of some of [...] Diller's other investments," such as the travel fare aggregator-oriented Expedia Group and dating app Tinder. "Like other digital-media companies, The Daily Beast has turned to digital subscriptions to grow its business in recent years," Mullin added, with the site retaining as many as 15 million monthly visitors as of November 2022. "The company charges $4.99 a month for unlimited access to its coverage, while offering an advertising-supported crossword puzzle five times a week." The potential sale coincides with a potentially "inopportune" time for media investments as "skittish investors [grow] wary of the advertising and video-streaming businesses," while a lawsuit from Gawker's former editorial director remains pending. Known for mentoring such business and media luminaries as former Disney Chairman Michael Eisner, DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and the late film producer Don Simpson, Diller "strongly denied" allegations that he engaged in insider trading while making "large bets on Activision stock in January just days before that video game maker said it had agreed to be bought by Microsoft in a $68.7 billion deal," prompting investigations by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission as of March 2022. Following ensuing scrutiny from Nevada regulators, he received a limiting gaming license in the state as a shareholder of MGM Resorts International in May.

Guardian Confirms December Ransomware Attack:

The Guardian "has confirmed it was hit by a ransomware attack in December and that the personal data of UK staff members [have] been accessed in the incident," according to a Wednesday report by Dan Milmo, the newspaper's global technology editor. In an email to staff, Guardian Media Group CEO Anna Bateson and Editor-in-Chief Katharine Viner characterized the incident as a “highly sophisticated cyber-attack involving unauthorized third-party access to parts of our network” that likely stemmed from malware inadvertently downloaded in a phishing attempt. The publication "said it had no reason to believe the personal data of readers and subscribers had been accessed," while Guardian US and Guardian Australia staff data appear to have remained uncompromised. Milmo added that the attack was detected on December 20 and "affected parts of the company’s technology infrastructure [...] Staff, most of whom have been working from home since the attack, have been able to maintain production of a daily newspaper, while online publishing has been unaffected." Bateson and Viner emphasized that the incident appears to have been a "criminal ransomware attack" as opposed to the "specific targeting" of The Guardian as a news organization. "These attacks have become more frequent and sophisticated in the past three years, against organizations of all sizes, and kinds, in all countries," they continued. "We have seen no evidence that any data has been exposed online thus far and we continue to monitor this very closely." The newspaper expects that certain systems will be restored over the next two weeks, with a full office return envisaged for early February as IT staffers "focus on network and system restoration." A government report published last year asserted that 40% of UK businesses faced cybersecurity "breaches or attacks" in the previous 12 months.