newspaper

President Donald Trump’s razing of the White House’s East Wing to build a ballroom has put some news organizations following the story in an awkward position, with corporate owners among the contributors to the project — and their reporters covering it vigorously.

Comcast, which owns NBC News and MSNBC, has faced on-air criticism from some of the liberal cable channel’s personalities for its donation. Amazon, whose founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, is another donor. The newspaper editorialized in favor of Trump’s project, pointing out the Bezos connection a day later after critics noted its omission.

It’s not the first time since Trump regained the presidency that interests of journalists at outlets that are a small part of a corporate titan’s portfolio have clashed with owners. Both the Walt Disney Co. and Paramount have settled lawsuits with Trump rather than defend ABC News and CBS News in court.

“This is Trump’s Washington,” said Chuck Todd, former NBC “Meet the Press” host. “None of this helps the reputations of the news organizations that these companies own, because it compromises everybody.”

Companies haven’t said how much they donated, or why

None of the individuals and corporations identified by the White House as donors has publicly said how much was given, although a $22 million Google donation was revealed in a court filing. Comcast would not say Friday why it gave, although some MSNBC commentators have sought to fill in the blanks.

MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle said the donations should be a concern to Americans, “because there ain’t no company out there writing a check just for good will.”

“Those public-facing companies should know that there’s a cost in terms of their reputations with the American people,” Rachel Maddow said on her show this week, specifically citing Comcast. “There may be a cost to their bottom line when they do things against American values, against the public interest because they want to please Trump or buy him off or profit somehow from his authoritarian overthrow of our democracy.”

NBC’s “Nightly News” led its Oct. 22 broadcast with a story on the East Wing demolition, which reporter Gabe Gutierrez said was paid for by private donors, “among them Comcast, NBC’s parent company.”

“Nightly News” spent a total of five minutes on the story that week, half the time of ABC’s “World News Tonight,” though NBC pre-empted its Tuesday newscast for NBA coverage, said Andrew Tyndall, head of ADT Research. There’s no evidence that Comcast tried to influence NBC’s coverage in any way; Todd said the corporation’s leaders have no history of doing that. A Comcast spokeswoman had no comment.

Todd spoke out against his bosses at NBC News in the past, but said he doubted he would have done so in this case, in part because Comcast hasn’t said why the contribution was made. “You could make the defense that it is contributing to the United States” by renovating the White House, he said.

More troubling, he said, is the perception that Comcast CEO Brian Roberts had to do it to curry favor with the Trump administration. Trump, in a Truth Social post in April, called Comcast and Roberts “a disgrace to the integrity of Broadcasting!!!” The president cited the company’s ownership of MSNBC and NBC News.

Roberts may need their help. Stories this week suggested Comcast might be interested in buying all or part of Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal that would require government approval.

White House cannot be ‘a museum to the past’

The Post’s editorial last weekend was eye-opening, even for a section that has taken a conservative turn following Bezos’ direction that it concentrate on defending personal liberties and the free market. The Oct. 25 editorial was unsigned, which indicates that it is the newspaper’s official position, and was titled “In Defense of the White House ballroom.”

The Post said the ballroom is a necessary addition and although Trump is pursuing it “in the most jarring manner possible,” it would not have gotten done in his term if he went through a traditional approval process.

“The White House cannot simply be a museum to the past,” the Post wrote. “Like America, it must evolve with the times to maintain its greatness. Strong leaders reject calcification. In that way, Trump’s undertaking is a shot across the bow at NIMBYs everywhere.”

In sharing a copy of the editorial on social media, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote that it was the “first dose of common sense I’ve seen from the legacy media on this story.”

The New York Times, by contrast, has not taken an editorial stand either for or against the project. It has run a handful of opinion columns: Ross Douthat called Trump’s move necessary considering potential red tape, while Maureen Dowd said it was an “unsanctioned, ahistoric, abominable destruction of the East Wing.”

In a social media post later Saturday, Columbia University journalism professor Bill Grueskin noted the absence of any mention of Bezos in the Post editorial” and said he wrote to a Post spokeswoman about it. In a “stealth edit” that Grueskin said didn’t include any explanation, a paragraph was added the next day about the private donors, including Amazon. “Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post,” the newspaper said.

The Post had no comment on the issue, spokeswoman Olivia Petersen said on Sunday.

In a story this past week, NPR reported that the ballroom editorial was one of three that the Post had written in the previous two weeks on a matter in which Bezos had a financial or corporate interest without noting his personal stakes.

In a public appearance last December, Bezos acknowledged that he was a “terrible owner” for the Post from the point of view of appearances of conflict. “A pure newspaper owner who only owned a newspaper and did nothing else would probably be, from that point of view, a much better owner,” the Amazon founder said.

Grueskin, in an interview, said Bezos had every right as an owner to influence the Post’s editorial policy. But he said it was important for readers to know his involvement in the East Wing story. They may reject the editorial because of the conflict, he said, or conclude that “the editorial is so well-argued, I put a lot of credibility into what I just read.”

Bauder writes for the Associated Press.

Tension between Indiana University and its student newspaper flared last week with the elimination of the outlet’s print editions and the firing of a faculty advisor who refused an order to keep news stories out of a homecoming edition.

Administrators may have been hoping to minimize distractions during its homecoming weekend as the school prepared to celebrate a Hoosiers football team with its highest-ever national ranking. Instead, the controversy has entangled the school in questions about censorship and student journalists’ 1st Amendment rights.

Advocates for student media, Indiana Daily Student alumni and high-profile supporters including billionaire Mark Cuban have excoriated the university for stepping on the outlet’s independence.

The Daily Student is routinely honored among the best collegiate publications in the country. It receives about $250,000 annually in subsidies from the university’s Media School to help make up for dwindling ad revenue.

On Tuesday, the university fired the paper’s advisor, Jim Rodenbush, after he refused an order to force student editors to ensure that no news stories ran in the print edition tied to the homecoming celebrations.

“I had to make the decision that was going to allow me to live with myself,” Rodenbush said. “I don’t have any regrets whatsoever. In the current environment we’re in, somebody has to stand up.”

Student journalists still call the shots

A university spokesperson referred an Associated Press reporter to a statement issued Tuesday, which said the campus wants to shift resources from print media to digital platforms both for students’ educational experience and to address the paper’s financial problems.

Chancellor David Reingold issued a separate statement Wednesday saying the school is “firmly committed to the free expression and editorial independence of student media. The university has not and will not interfere with their editorial judgment.”

It was late last year when university officials announced they were scaling back the cash-strapped newspaper’s print edition from a weekly to seven special editions per semester, tied to campus events.

The paper published three print editions this fall, inserting special event sections, Rodenbush said. Last month, Media School officials started asking why the special editions still contained news, he said.

Rodenbush said IU Media School Dean David Tolchinsky told him this month that the expectation was print editions would contain no news. Tolchinsky argued that Rodenbush was essentially the paper’s publisher and could decide what to run, Rodenbush said. He told the dean that publishing decisions were the students’ alone, he said.

Tolchinsky fired him Tuesday, two days before the homecoming print edition was set to be published, and announced the end of all Indiana Daily Student print publications.

“Your lack of leadership and ability to work in alignment with the University’s direction for the Student Media Plan is unacceptable,” Tolchinsky wrote in Rodenbush’s termination letter.

The newspaper was allowed to continue publishing stories on its website.

Student journalists see a ‘scare tactic’

Andrew Miller, the Indiana Daily Student’s co-editor in chief, said in a statement that Rodenbush “did the right thing by refusing to censor our print edition” and called the termination a “deliberate scare tactic toward journalists and faculty.”

“IU has no legal right to dictate what we can and cannot print in our paper,” Miller said.

Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center, said 1st Amendment case law going back 60 years shows student editors at public universities determine content. Advisors such as Rodenbush can’t interfere, Hiestand said.

“It’s open and shut, and it’s just so bizarre that this is coming out of Indiana University,” Hiestand said. “If this was coming out of a community college that doesn’t know any better, that would be one thing. But this is coming out of a place that absolutely should know better.”

Rodenbush said that he wasn’t aware of any single story the newspaper has published that may have provoked administrators. But he speculated the moves may be part of a “general progression” of administrators trying to protect the university from any negative publicity.

Blocked from publishing a print edition, the paper last week posted a number of sharp-edged stories online, including coverage of the opening of a new film critical of arrests of pro-Palestinian demonstrators last year, a tally of campus sexual assaults and an FBI raid on the home of a former professor suspected of stealing federal funds.

The paper also has covered allegations that IU President Pamela Whitten plagiarized parts of her dissertation, with the most recent story running in September.

Richmond writes for the Associated Press.

This article contains spoilers from the first season of “The Paper.”

The journey to spin off the U.S. version of “The Office” has, until now, been long and slow. (That’s what she said.)

While the unconventional workplace comedy about a humdrum band of paper company employees, adapted from a beloved British series of the same name, famously got off to a sluggish start on NBC with a low-rated six-episode first season, it became a rare case study of how a risky gamble can become a pop culture phenomenon and one of the most popular sitcoms in TV history. Talks of expanding “The Office” universe began as early as Season 3, when another office branch was introduced. “Parks and Recreation” was initially conceived as a spinoff but morphed into a standalone series. Another centered on socially awkward Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) would get dropped. The series eventually ended its nine-season run in 2013 with no offshoot. But it still managed to have an afterlife without one, as fans obsessively continued to watch it in syndication or on streaming platforms.

Once “The Office” began making headlines in 2020 for the being the most streamed show in America, Greg Daniels, who captained the U.S. adaptation and was initially concerned about tarnishing its legacy with offshoots, was coming around to the idea that it was safely insulated enough to withstand any attempt to find a way to build out its kooky world.

Finally, more than a decade after “The Office” went off the air, Peacock is hoping the spinoff series “The Paper” can recycle some of that show’s success while finding its own path.

In “The Paper,” Domhnall Gleeson, left, stars as editor in chief Ned Sampson, and Tim Key plays executive Ken Davies.

(Aaron Epstein / Peacock)

This series shifts its focus to the staff at the Toledo Truth Teller, a struggling local newspaper in Ohio, which is being filmed by the same documentary crew that followed bumbling boss Michael Scott (Steve Carell) and his Scranton, Pa.-based Dunder Mifflin employees. (It’s a believable documentary subject when you consider the U.S. has lost more than one-third of its newspapers since 2005.) Daniels created the series with Michael Koman (“Nathan For You,” “How to With John Wilson”).

All 10 episodes of the first season were released Thursday on Peacock, and the show has been picked up for a second season. Daniels and Koman visited The Times earlier this month — and spoke in follow-up video calls — to discuss the comedy potential of a beleaguered industry, why Oscar is the obvious choice to be the crossover character in the spinoff and whether they plan to reference the president’s comments about the press. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

The series was originally going to launch with four episodes, then switch to a weekly drop. But it was recently announced that the full season is dropping at once. What happened? And do you have strong feelings about release models?

Daniels: Every company is different. I do know that they’re [NBCUniversal] being incredibly supportive and there’s a giant team gaming out every move. I trust that they have the best of intentions and have a lot of good strategy. My inclination was always to sneak on the air without any fanfare whatsoever, and then maybe advertise after — that is very naive, apparently. One possible nice thing about it being handled this way is our superfans will be able to watch at their own convenience, and maybe before they’ve seen too many promos. I’ve always felt like the show was cut to be the introduction to the show itself. And the more you know jokes you see from later in the seasons, the more you’re coming at it with an unintended awareness of what’s to come. It may play better, just clean for all the superfans. Actually, I thought at first, the pace-out model would be good because that was how “The Office” was on NBC. But they did point out to me that probably the majority of “The Office” fans have watched it on streaming, where they could binge the whole thing.

Koman: It’s not really my area, but that’s how I like to watch things. I’m always happy when it’s up to me — I can make my own schedule, and I tend to watch things quickly.

The crisis facing local journalism doesn’t feel like an obvious backdrop for comedy — and if you’re in it, it’s more of a can’t-help-but-laugh–to-keep-from-crying vibe. How did you arrive at a newsroom as your backdrop and what was the pitch?

Daniels: You wouldn’t think that selling stationary was a particularly hilarious or glamorous place to set a show. I think that there are some intentional differences with this show, and in the sense that we didn’t want to repeat aspects of “The Office.” For me, I was incredibly protective of the original show and the cast. I just waited a long time to do something like this. The original “Office” cast was very supportive by the time it came about. Since it’s a documentary, if you’re going to really commit to that device, you have to think all the time about [how] there’s really camerapeople in the room; they’re trying to cover something; they wouldn’t be there to just cover what they thought was a funny workplace. They’re there to cover an actual story. And the hollowing out of local newspapers is an interesting story that you could imagine a documentary crew from PBS being like, “Oh, this is a good story.” Of course, since it’s a comedy show, the stuff that’s happening in the background is really the point of the show — all the funny interactions with people as they try to do stuff. Another way that we wanted it to be different was the whole interaction between Michael Scott and his staff — he was not a very inspirational boss, and Ned Sampson, played by Domhnall Gleeson, comes in and he does manage to inspire the people working there. And the question is more: Is he biting off way more than he can chew and his staff can chew? Or should they be right and believing in him?

Koman: I just think reality always makes the best backdrop. And it’s good if your characters are facing a challenge and you have something to root for.

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1. Clockwise from top left: Rainn Wilson as Dwight Schrute, Jenna Fischer as Pam Beesly, John Krasinksi as Jim Halpert, BJ Novak as Ryan Howard and Steve Carell as Michael Scott in “The Office.” 2. Carell, Krasinksi and Wilson in a scene from the NBC comedy. (Justin Lubin / NBC Universal)

How did you land on Toledo?

Daniels: That was really about the alliteration of the Toledo Truth Teller. There’s something about the Cleveland Plain Dealer that I think is a super interesting thing. The name of it, I thought, has always been very intriguing. It kind of reminds you of the independence of these big Midwestern newspapers, which is different from now. It really feels like the big newspapers are L.A., New York, Washington, Dallas. I know the Cleveland Plain Dealer is still quite healthy, which is great. But there is something about the Midwest that feels nostalgic.

Koman: If I think of the heyday of print journalism, Ohio is just a place that comes to mind. They had so many really important newspapers and great journalists that came out of there, so it just seemed like … if somebody was going to try to revive something, that’s a state, and Toledo itself, is a place where you can see it happening.

Daniels: Toledo also has a certain “Office-y,” Scranton thing to it. There was a time where we were looking at where the other locations that Dunder Mifflin has offices. And the list is very funny. It’s like Yonkers and Nashua, New Hampshire. It’s all these words that are just kind of fun to roll off your tongue.

Greg, you had been resistant to the idea of expanding “The Office” universe. “Parks and Recreation” was originally meant to be a spinoff, but it eventually evolved away from that. Why now? What changed?

Daniels: There’s two questions. One is, why now? And part of that is that “Upload” [Daniels’ Prime Video series] is wrapping up. When we first started discussing it, I didn’t know what was going to happen with “Upload.” I had sold it and I was committed to being the showrunner and it kept getting picked up, so I kept having to put off thinking about any kind of [“The Office”] spinoff. But [the final season of] “Upload” is dropping Aug. 25. The other part of your your question — over the years, since the finale, the show had this enormous blow-up on Netflix. It just felt like this show is pretty bulletproof at this point. Even if we did a s— job with a spinoff, it’s not going to go back in time and mess up “The Office,” which was my concern. “The Office” was such a beautiful and rare confluence of the cast and the time and the format and the writers and everything — it seemed very arrogant to think you could pull that off again. But then after a while, it’s like, “Well, you got to try.” You can’t be intimidated out of ever doing anything.

Greg Daniels says the staff of a struggling newspaper is as relatable as their Dunder Mifflin predecessors: “That quality of morale being low is very ‘Office’-like. The tone is intended to be similar without having the characters be similar.”

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

How did you arrive at former Dunder Mifflin accountant Oscar Martinez (Oscar Núñez) being the connecting character between the two shows?

Daniels: When you look at the finale of “The Office,” everybody was going off in their own direction that had a lot of, in my view, meaningful wrap-up of their story. Jim and Pam were moving to Boston with Darrell; Toby was in England. But Oscar didn’t really have a big arc. He was pretty much Oscar the whole way through, and it didn’t feel like it was going to undo anything with “The Office” to keep Oscar involved.

Koman: It made sense, just on a business level, that if one company was acquired by another, that some people would move over into that company. He was the one person who, I think, would have stayed.

Daniels: He was maybe the most self-possessed. He had the most dignity, I think, of most of the characters. The idea that the crew has found him again just seemed appropriate. He did run for elective office at the end of “The Office,” so I feel like he is susceptible to being inspired and do something for his community, so he seems like a person who could buy into what Ned is selling.

Koman: Also, he has kind of a cosmopolitan personality. The city is like a third larger than Scranton.

Greg, you gave us one of the great will–they/won’t–they relationships in TV history with Jim and Pam. There are a couple of office romances brewing on “The Paper.” The season ends with Ned and Mare (Chelsea Frei) kissing. Is there a specific challenge with crafting a slow burn in the streaming era? How did you want to approach things this time around?

Daniels: You need to have stakes in stories. If you’re going to be very realistic and relatable, the stakes in people’s stories are mostly romantic because most people don’t battle aliens to save the world or whatever. So, the highest stakes a normal person usually has is who they’re going to marry or who they’re seeing, or what drama they’re in in their personal lives. There’s a column the New York Times does about people who are getting married, how-they-met kind of thing, which I love, and you realize that there’s hundreds and hundreds of stories of how people meet. It’s not all Sam and Diane or Pam and Jim. My aim would be to not have the audience be like, “Who’s the next Pam and Jim? Is that Pam and Jim?” That’s their relationship. Those two actors were brilliant. You can’t replicate it, but it doesn’t mean that other characters aren’t going to be romantically interested in each other.

Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) and Jim Halpert (John Kraskinski), the friends-to-lovers duo affectionately known as JAM, in a scene from “The Office.” (Paul Drinkwater/NBC)

“The Paper” features characters like interim managing editor Esmeralda (Sabrina Impacciatore), compositor turned reporter Mare (Chelsea Frei) and new boss Ned (Domhnall Gleeson). Mare and Ned have a will-they/won’t-they dynamic in the sitcom. (Aaron Epstein/Peacock)

We had a sense, at least through Kelly Kapoor and her pop culture references, that “The Office” took place in our shared reality, but it didn’t directly comment on real world matters. But considering the show’s setting and Ned’s idealism about the profession, with President Trump’s ongoing remarks about the press, can you see a day where those remarks or ideas are more directly referenced in some form? Or do you want to stay clear of that?

Daniels: I think there’s so many voices that [are] constantly talking about that, just from a comedy standpoint; I’m very tired of it. There’s also so many opinions that are so strong. My inclination is to do the fundamentals — it’s a character comedy. These are characters. They’re in a world of journalism [and it] has a lot of bumping between human beings and ethics, and to tell those stories is valuable. No matter what side you’re on, you can look at it and, hopefully, if there’s truth in what’s being presented, you can take something valuable away.

Koman: It’s important to think of this as a local paper. Their struggle is to credibly tell local stories, which is what I think the city needs, more than anything — a voice to just tell people what’s going on. Beyond that, I think the way that a culture will seep into a show like this — you should always have a sense of reality and that this is taking place in the present. I think of their minds as being focused on: How can we be a good news source for Toledo?

Michael Koman, who previously worked on docu-comedies “Nathan For You” and “How To With John Wilson,” on capturing the state of journalism realistically in “The Paper”: “What makes newspapers different than other businesses or other jobs is that people do arrive with a sense of enthusiasm for what they’re going to do. It seemed important that many of these people could have started their jobs like this, but now we’re meeting them at a point where that’s been tamped down enormously.”

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

The impulse when you hear about a spin-off or a reboot is to compare and to see who fits into what archetypes. Tell me about the types of characters you wanted to fill out in this newsroom.

Daniels: We tried to avoid that. What’s the point of doing something where everybody can go, “Oh, that’s the new Dwight”? They’re working in journalism and they have a very romantic, idealistic boss. He’s extremely interested in getting to the bottom of stories and being super rigorous and ethical, but he’s come in and replaced the temporary managing editor, Esmeralda, played by Sabrina Impacciatore, who has a very different view. She doesn’t really drill down that hard. She’s more about getting eyeballs.

Koman: What makes newspapers different than other businesses or other jobs is that people do arrive with a sense of enthusiasm for what they’re going to do. It seemed important that many of these people could have started their jobs like this, but now we’re meeting them at a point where that’s been tamped down enormously. Morale is low. In terms of who this group of people was, you could feel like that’s been dampened enormously and somebody new can come in who, either out of naivety or just optimism, thinks that he can revive it.

Daniels: That quality of morale being low is very “Office”-like. The tone is intended to be similar without having the characters be similar.

The title sequence is a montage of the various ways people make use of newspapers — rather than reading it. How would you describe your relationship to print journalism?

Daniels: When I first moved out here, I had a subscription to the L.A. Times, and the volume of papers was so gigantic, and it would come with these white ties to hold it all together. I built furniture in my apartment out of stacks of L.A. Times because they were so big. So it’d be like two weeks of them, I could make a stool and make a table with a full week’s worth stacked up.

Koman: Yes, I would say that digital media is all well and good until you need to pack glasses, then you hunt for a newspaper.

Daniels: One of my earliest memories is my parents trying to read the newspaper on their bed, and I wanted their attention, so I would roll onto the newspapers and look up at them, which would really irritate them. They were a big newspaper household.

Much like the news media, your industry is confronting budget constraints and technological disruption that is forcing changes to business models and programming strategies. What are your concerns about your industry right now?

Daniels: One of the big themes is the return to advertising. The streamers have all added ad tiers and that naturally is going to change the programming a bit. I don’t think, necessarily, [that] it’s bad. When you look at the heyday of Netflix, a lot of their biggest stuff had been developed under the old advertising model. I sometimes think about the French movie business, where it seems like they don’t care if something makes money or not. It’s just, if you’re in the club, you get to make movies over and over again. I’ve always felt like that there’s something more democratic about: You actually have to get people to watch your thing somehow.

Koman: The strangest thing about this industry is that it might change a lot, [but] the thing you’re making is a timeless product. You’re telling a story. There’s the part of it that is like, “Well, this will eventually be finished and will be presented somewhere” — and you have no control over how that’s going to change. But what you’re actually trying to make would have to hold up under any conditions.

West Sonatala, Bangladesh – An ordinary day for Andharmanik, a small community newspaper, begins in a crowded fish market.

Walking down the steps from the road to the fish landing point in Mohipur, a town in the district of Patuakhali bordering the Bay of Bengal, the smell of salt and fish hangs heavy in the air. Next to the main landing platform, colourful fishing boats, painted in faded reds, blues and greens, are moored.

At this busy market in late July, larger fishing depots and much smaller shanty-style stalls stand side by side. At one of the small, tin-roofed stalls, Hasan Parvez, 44, with black cotton trousers rolled up to his knees, shovels ice into plastic crates piled high with silvery hilsa – Bangladesh’s prized national fish – which is transported each day to cities including the capital Dhaka and Barisal.

Hasan works surrounded by plastic barrels and crates glistening with the fresh catch of the day, and there is a constant background thrum of diesel-powered trawlers humming as boats pull in and out of the dock.

“It’s a busy morning, and it is a fish market with all the chaos,” Hasan says with a smile.

He works there as a daily wage labourer sorting, weighing and packing fish into white thermocol boxes during the monsoon season. In the dry season, he works at a nearby brick kiln, and over the winter months, around December and January, he works at a market selling sun-dried fish known as “shutki”.

Hasan’s day at Mohipur market starts early – around 4am – with the fajr prayer and a cup of tea without milk, and earns him about 600 taka ($5) per day.

Today, as usual, he is impatient to finish because, besides this job, which he needs to provide for his family, Hasan has another occupation to get back to. He is the editor-in-chief of a handwritten community newspaper called Andharmanik (“jewel from the darkness” in Bengali, and also the name of the nearby river), which features stories from his village of West Sonatala. He publishes it every two months from his home in the coastal village about an hour by road from the fish market and more than eight hours from Dhaka.

Since Hasan and his team of reporters don’t own or use computers, the newspaper is handwritten and then photocopied. But they also believe writing stories by hand, in a place where newspapers weren’t available before Andharmanik began, makes the paper feel more intimate and brings their community closer together.

Finally, at around 11am, when the last boxes of fish have been loaded onto carts and the shop floor has been cleaned, Hasan prepares to head home.

He hops onto a van-gari – a battery-driven, three-wheeled bicycle with a large wooden platform at the rear of the vehicle where passengers sit – to get home.

As Hasan climbs into the vehicle, he explains that the three-room home he shares with his wife, Salma Begum, whom he married in 2013, and three daughters, is also the editorial headquarters for Andharmanik. It is where he meets with the team once or twice in each publication cycle.

‘My village’

On the bumpy, broken road to his home, past paddy fields and scattered houses, a few two-wheelers and electric rickshaws passing by in the opposite direction, Hasan explains what drove him to start a newspaper.

“I used to write a lot of poems in my childhood,” he says, speaking loudly over the noisy van-gari engine. “Reading and writing always attracted me.”

He would read works by the Indian Nobel prize-winning poet, Rabindranath Tagore, and self-help books. But despite his love of reading and learning, he wasn’t able to finish school. When he was 14, Hasan, the eldest of two brothers and two sisters, had to drop out to work as a day labourer to support his family. “I was supposed to pass my secondary school certification (SSC) exam back in 1996, but I couldn’t do it because of money problems,” he explains.

He didn’t complete his SSC examination (10th grade) until the age of 35 in 2015. Two years later, he finished high school. In 2021, he enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts degree at a college in Kalapara, about 10km (6.2 miles) away. Having to juggle supporting his family with the newspaper and his studies, he is just now in his second semester. This has been an important journey because the future of the newspaper hinges on it, he says.

Hasan wants to register the newspaper in the district as an official media organisation, as he believes this would help protect it from political volatility. “For that, the rules are that the publisher has to be a graduate,” he says.

The idea for the paper arose in June 2016 when Hasan met Rafiqul Montu, a Dhaka-based environmental journalist who was visiting the area. Montu covers the impact of the climate crisis in Bangladesh’s coastal areas and travels the region throughout the year for his work. One day, Hasan saw him taking pictures of the Andharmanik River. Curious, he went to talk to him.

As they spoke, Hasan shared some of his poems and other writings. In those, he talked about his village’s problems – like the cyclones that afflict them or worsening climate conditions for farmers. No newspaper covered these stories, and with the local government often slow to help, people felt neglected.

Montu, impressed by what he heard, encouraged him to turn these stories into a newspaper.

“He wanted to do something for his community,” Montu explains. “I told him he could publish a newspaper and cover local news. I said he should focus on spreading good faith and hope in his community.”

He suggested naming the paper after the river where they spoke and taught Hasan how to write a story, craft headlines and take photos with his mobile phone.

“Montu bhai (brother) is my ustaad (mentor),” Hasan says. “He inspired me to write stories about my village and people’s lives – both problems and solutions. I had never thought of becoming a newspaper publisher since I can’t afford to be one. But it’s been six years that Andharmanik has been coming out.”

As a tribute to the working-class community of West Sonatala, the paper’s first issue was published in 2019 on May 1, Labour Day.

Forgotten by the world

Around noon, and under a light drizzle, Hasan nears his village in the quiet countryside. Green rice fields spread out from both sides of the road, and the trees lining it are wet from the rain.

Ducks swim in a few ponds along the roadside. The van-gari bounces over the last stretch of broken road until it finally runs out altogether. This is as far as the driver can go.

From there, it is a 10-minute walk along muddy paths to reach Hasan’s house.

“Officially, the road comes up to my house,” he says, “but this is what it looks like.”

A narrow strip of slushy mud is all there is to walk on, and the monsoon has made conditions worse. Villagers have no choice but to walk barefoot, holding their shoes or sandals.

“Wearing shoes isn’t practical as they can get stuck in the mud and cause someone to slip and fall,” Hasan says as he hurries to meet his team, who will arrive for a 1pm meeting to discuss ideas for the August edition. The newspaper started with 10 contributors and has grown to a team of 17 reporters who contribute stories and photos voluntarily.

“In our meetings, we share story ideas, but also talk about our own lives and families. Most times my wife gives us tea and muri (puffed rice),” he adds.

West Sonatala is home to 618 families – mostly farmers, fishermen and daily wage labourers. Electricity only arrived a few years ago.

“There’s one community clinic in the village with no doctors. People who fall sick in the village are taken to hospitals in Kalapara, a small sub-district town which is an hour-long drive,” Hasan says.

“No national or regional newspapers come to the village, and most homes don’t have a TV. Those with smartphones watch the news there, but the internet is so patchy, even that’s difficult,” he adds, gesturing at his mobile phone, which shows no network connection.

“Our area is so remote and cut off from basic information that we feel forgotten by the mainstream world,” he says. “This feeling of being left behind was what drove me to start Andharmanik. It’s our community newspaper to tell our own stories.”

‘A collective’

In Hasan’s living room is a wall covered with framed newspaper clippings and a few bookshelves packed with Bengali books. A long, wooden table sits in the centre where Hasan’s reporters gather, arriving one by one along the muddy paths. Three have braved the heavy rain to make it there today. Abdul Latif is the first to arrive, followed by Russiah Begum, then Nazrul Islam Bilal. They enter the room with smiles on their faces, asking about each other’s wellbeing by saying, “Kemon asen?” (“How are you?” in Bengali).

The group is small, but diverse, and they all live near each other within a cluster of villages. Abdul, 42, dressed in a crisp, white checkered shirt, is an English teacher in high school. Nazrul, 31, is an electrician. Russiah, 43, is one of three women on the team, and runs a tailoring business from her home in West Sonatala.

The two other members of the core team who have been prevented by the rain from attending the meeting are Sahana Begum, 55, who walks with a limp in her right leg due to polio. Sahana, who is also a seamstress, lives in West Sonatala and writes about women’s issues. There is also 29-year-old Ashish Garami, the only Hindu member of the team. He belongs to a minority group in Bangladesh, which in recent years has reportedly faced discrimination.

Other contributors work as e-rickshaw drivers and farmers, while some are unemployed.

“We work as a collective. Our newspaper focuses on local news, community events, and what happens in West Sonatala and sometimes nearby villages,” says Abdul, who joined Andharmanik in 2021. “In this edition, I am going to write about the bad road conditions,” he adds. “I’ll show how people are suffering because of it during the monsoon.”

The school where he teaches is three kilometres (1.9 miles) from his home, and he has to cross the Andharmanik River by boat each day to reach it.

“Crisis is the reason Andharmanik is published. The way Hasan pointed out the problems of our village through his writings inspired me to join the team,” he says.

‘Something beautiful happened’

Russiah has been with Hasan’s team since the beginning. She explains that she finished 10th grade before marrying a farmer from the village. To help support her family, she started a tailoring business, which became a window into the village’s hidden struggles. “When women come to me to stitch their clothes, they open their hearts,” she says. “I hear about problems that never make it to the outside world – especially the pain that women and children carry in silence.”

One of her stories was about a woman named Abejaan Begum from Rehmatpur village, a few kilometres from West Sonatala. Abejaan had lost her house to devastating floods in 2023 and had been forced to decamp to a makeshift hut made of plastic sheets.

“My story was shared by Hasan on his Facebook page,” Begum says. “Then something beautiful happened – help started pouring in from Bangladeshis living abroad. In total, she received 60,000 taka ($420) to build a new house and buy a few goats.” Today, Abejaan is living with dignity again in a three-room house, Russiah says.

Their stories have helped others. For one edition, Hasan wrote a poem about a child in his village named Rubina who lived in a broken mud hut with her grandmother and mother, who had mental health problems and was kept in chains. Because they were so poor, Rubina was forced to beg for food. After Hasan published the poem, it was widely read and caught the attention of local government officials, who decided to give Rubina and her family some land and a house.

Hasan and his team often focus on stories about how people are affected by the climate crisis. The coastal areas of Bangladesh are particularly vulnerable to flooding, heatwaves, rising sea levels and saltwater intrusion. Bilal owns a small rice field, and he feels connected to other farmers in the area, particularly as he sees his harvest get smaller every year due to the erratic rainfall.

“In the next issue, I’ll write about the struggles of local day labourers during the monsoon,” he says.

Hasan’s reporters submit their stories on sheets from notebooks. “Our contributors send me their stories in handwritten notes. I make the final decision on what goes in the paper and edit the language,” he says. He then writes out the stories with a fountain pen on A3-size paper and has these photocopied at a copy shop in Kalapara.

Each newspaper is four pages long and bound together using colourful plastic tape. Hasan makes 300 copies – each of which costs him approximately 10 taka ($0.08) to publish. The process is labour-intensive and the final handwriting, printing and binding takes about a week.

Once published, Hasan and his team distribute the paper in West Sonatala and the nearby villages of Tungibari, Chandpara, Rehmatpur and Fatehpur. They have no newspaper stall or subscription system, relying solely on local demand. They give it away for free or, where they can, sell it at cost. “People are poor in our village, so it’s mostly given free. Honestly, I don’t make any money out of it. This is not my goal,” Hasan says.

A loyal reader

Azizur Rehman Khan, 84, a resident of West Sonatala, is one of the newspaper’s most loyal readers and Hasan’s neighbour. He has read every issue for the past two years and happily pays for each issue, which is delivered to him personally by Hasan.

“I have seen Parvez since his childhood days,” Azizur says. “I love his passion and motivation to tell stories of happiness and sadness of our villagers. When the rest of the world forgot us, it is Andharmanik that shares our story to the world.”

The former tax officer says he understands the financial insecurity that Hasan shoulders in order to publish the newspaper. However, he adds, “I pray to Allah that there will be a day when everything will fall into place and this paper will be published fortnightly.”

Khan lives a couple of kilometres from the Andharmanik River. He explains the meaning behind the name, which comes from two Bengali words – “andhar” meaning dark and “manik” meaning jewel.

Looking out at the dark, rain-heavy sky beyond the doorway of his house, he quietly adds, “Hasan is our ‘Andharmanik’ – the shining jewel in our darkness.”

ORLANDO, Fla. — Florida’s child welfare agency sent a letter to a Florida newspaper telling it to “cease and desist” its reporting on foster families for a story about a nonprofit associated with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ wife that is the subject of an investigation.

The Orlando Sentinel received the letter on Friday from the state Department of Children and Families, whose top official is appointed by the governor. The letter claimed that the newspaper’s Tallahassee reporter had used threats to coerce foster families into making negative statements about the Hope Florida Foundation when he contacted them about the welfare nonprofit behind the signature initiative of Casey DeSantis, Florida’s first lady.

“Cease and desist the above-described intimidation of these families,” the DCF letter said.

Orlando Sentinel Executive Editor Roger Simmons said the agency’s characterization of the reporter’s conduct was “completely false.” The yet-to-be-published story was looking into grants distributed by Hope Florida to organizations, families and individuals, according to the Sentinel.

“We stand by our stories and reject the state’s attempt to chill free speech and encroach on our First Amendment right to report on an important issue,” Simmons said in an email.

DCF on Monday didn’t provide an immediate response to an inquiry about the letter. DCF posted the cease-and-desist letter on social media Friday, saying Hope Florida had supported foster families with donations to repair their homes following last year’s hurricanes.

The letter is attempting to intimidate the Sentinel from publishing what may be unflattering news about Hope Florida in what is known as prior restraint, and prior restraint efforts typically are unconstitutional, said Clay Calvert, a law professor emeritus at the University of Florida and nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

If he were the Sentinel’s attorney, Calvert said, he would tell the agency “to go pound sand.”

“DCF can send all the cease and desist letters it wants, but the Sentinel isn’t obligated to follow any of them,” he said. “This is really trying to silence any negative coverage before it comes out.”

Prosecutors in Tallahassee have opened an investigation related to the Hope Florida Foundation. A public records custodian in the office of Second Judicial Circuit State Attorney Jack Campbell confirmed the existence of “an open, on-going investigation” last month in response to a records request from The Associated Press. The investigation was first reported by the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times.

Republican state lawmakers in DeSantis’ own party have been scrutinizing Hope Florida and its nonprofit foundation, which gave $10 million from a state Medicaid settlement to two nonprofits. Those groups in turn gave millions to a political committee, chaired by DeSantis’ then-chief of staff, that campaigned against a failed referendum on recreational marijuana.

In April, Republican state Rep. Alex Andrade wrapped up the investigation he had been spearheading into Hope Florida, saying he would leave the rest of the inquiry to “the FBI and Department of Justice,” though there is no public evidence that either is doing so. Andrade has alleged that the flow of funds from the foundation to the nonprofits and on to the political committees amounts to “conspiracy to commit money laundering and wire fraud.”

The governor has dismissed the investigation of Hope Florida as a politically motivated smear against his wife, whom he’s floated as his potential successor when he terms out in 2026.

Schneider writes for the Associated Press.

Abu Dhabi’s IMI will take a minority stake in the company of no more than 15 percent.

A consortium led by US investment firm RedBird Capital Partners has agreed to buy the publisher of the United Kingdom’s 170-year-old Daily Telegraph newspaper for about $674m (500 million pounds).

Redbird said it has reached an agreement in principle to become controlling owner of the Telegraph Media Group, ending a lengthy takeover saga for the conservative-leaning newspaper on Friday.

Gerry Cardinale, founder and managing partner of RedBird, said the sale “marks the start of a new era for The Telegraph as we look to grow the brand in the UK and internationally, invest in its technology and expand its subscriber base”.

The Telegraph group, previously owned by the UK’s Barclay family, was put up for sale two years ago to help pay off the family’s debts. It publishes the Daily and Sunday Telegraph newspapers and weekly newsmagazine The Spectator, which all are closely allied to the UK’s Conservative Party.

In 2023, there was an offer to buy the publications from RedBird IMI, a consortium backed by RedBird Capital Partners and Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of Abu Dhabi’s royal family and the vice president of the United Arab Emirates.

But the consortium pulled out last year following strong opposition from the UK government, which launched legislation to block foreign state ownership of the British press.

Under the deal, Abu Dhabi’s IMI will take a minority stake of not more than 15 percent in the Telegraph as a member of the consortium. The sale must be approved by British regulators.

RedBird has investments in football team AC Milan, the parent company of Liverpool football club and film production company Skydance.

Telegraph Media Group chief executive Anna Jones said that “RedBird Capital Partners have exciting growth plans that build on our success — and will unlock our full potential across the breadth of our business.”

The Spectator was sold in September to British hedge fund investor Paul Marshall.