Newton TAB Editor Andy Levin has resigned from his position at GateHouse Media.
Levin began as Newton editor in October of 2014, with a staff that included one full-time and one part-time reporter. He leaves following multiple internal reorganizations (i.e. staff reductions) at GateHouse, which resulted in him overseeing not just Newton but Brookline, Needham, Wellseley, West Roxbury, Roslindale and Allston-Brighton (a workload that’s impossible for me as a former GateHouser to fathom) and only one full-time Newton reporter (while West Roxbury. Rosindale and Allston-Brighton have no reporters).
I’m grateful to Andy for his commitment and passion and for keeping the lights on at this essential community institution and –whether you agreed with him or not — you should be too.
For those wondering, Levin told GateHouse he was resigning on Monday, which was before the anti-school protest that evening about an alleged anti-Israeli bias in Newton’s schools. I criticized the TAB’s reporting of that event here on Tuesday and some participants took it a step further and called for Levin to resign. But all of that — including the publication of that article — happened after he had resigned.
Interesting that this came before Monday’s events. Wonder what was the catalyst and where he’s going next.
I often think about what will become of the TAB. I used to look forward to reading their articles (even though I mostly read it online) but now I can’t even remember the last time I looked at their website and the one that appears on my doorstep every week always gets tossed unopened. Now I only go and look at articles if it’s linked from here on V14.
Then Patch was pretty good under the direction of Melanie Graham. They did a much better job on breaking news than the TAB and they had a few good columns like Green Newton and the one highlighting kids doing interesting things in town. But then Patch took a sharp decline, too. It’s gotten a little better over the last year, but it’s a shell of what it was when it first came about.
At this point, my sources for Newton news are V14 and the Newton Parents Facebook group.
Andy, I want to thank you for the job you did. I thought you did a great job during tough times and I hope you succeed in whatever you have planned for your future. I hope you stay in touch with us.
That is absolutely terrible news. His arrival was a shot in the arm for the Newton Tab. Sometimes I agreed with him, sometimes I didn’t, but I was always sure that he was fully engaged in Newton which was no small thing in today’s world of” local” newspapers.
Best of luck Andy with your next chapter …. and thank you.
First, I want to reiterate what Greg said in his comment about my decision to leave the TAB as it relates to the coverage of the demonstration outside the Ed Center Monday night and subsequent calls by a couple folks on this blog for me to step down or be terminated. My decision to leave The TAB, which comes with a very heavy heart, was something I had been thinking about for some time and was finalized this past weekend.
The past three-and-a-half years has been the pinnacle of my professional life to date and a great honor. I am very appreciative of Gatehouse Media for giving me the opportunity and my immediate supervisors have been extraordinarily supportive of me during what is a challenging time for everyone in this business.
It is just time for a change, to move on, to perhaps reinvent myself.
I realized early on that most TAB readers were a heck of a lot smarter and better educated than I am, especially many that frequent this blog. So my approach was to be honest, opinionated and give all voices in the community a chance to be heard (even though some readers were annoyed by contrarian views expressed by folks such as Tom Mountain, Charles Jacobs or even the Newton Villages Alliance). In other words, I tried to keep things interesting.
Yes, staffing became a challenge the past couple years, but I’m still proud of the work my reporters accomplished over the years: Thank you Jenna Fisher, Laura Lovett and, of course, Jonathan Dame. Any success I had at the TAB was in large part due to you.
I never worked at the NYT or even the Globe. And you know what? I wouldn’t have traded that for the time I’ve had at the Newton TAB. I was blessed with good fortune to be able to return to the community I grew up in… the Garden City that I love very much. To the handful of mean-spirited types on this blog who have not been members of the Andy Levin Fan Club: I wish you well. To the many, many people who have phoned or emailed to thank me, or approached me at the supermarket with encouragement: Your kindness has been greatly appreciated.
Noooooo say it ain’t so! So sorry to hear of Andy Levin’s resignation. I can’t imagine how difficult it was to juggle so many media/news balls in the air at once without much staff. Personally I appreciated his coverage of the Newton arts scene and the WSYMCA and so many other small events that help build community here in Newton.
Best of luck Andy! I wish you well in your next chapter and may each new page bring you much success and some laughs along the way.
Thanks for your comment Andy. Classy as always.
Jenna Fisher from Newton Patch interviewed Andy Levin here.
I will miss you Andy. You are such a great guy who always swiftly drilled down to the route of any issue. You don’t give yourself enough credit. I hope whatever you does in the future, you will choose to stay in Newton. I wish you the best and give me a call if you would like to to network and brainstorm about your next chapter.
Councilor, the Levins will remain residents of Ward 8! Thank you!
I would like to thank Andy for his support of the arts and culture scene, and of non-profits, in general. The “word on the street” amongst non-profits had always been that the TAB was not supportive and was even dismissive of any attempts at community building. Andy Levin changed that. I wish you the best in your next “edition.”
Thanks Andy for doing s great job. I fear that Gatehouse lacks the resources needed to keep the Tab at the level it should be.
Andy, it has been a pleasure. Although I did not always agree with your editorials, I know they came from a good place, and your love of Newton. And I can totally empathize with your decision to retire. Best of luck in whatever endeavors you decide to pursue.
I’m very sorry to hear this. Andy is likely the last editor we’re going to see at the Newton TAB who actually cares about the community. He might even be the last editor we’re going to see at the TAB. Very sad.
Good luck to you Andy. You gave your heart to this community. We’ll miss you.
I must be one of the “mean spirited types on this blog” according to Andy Levin. I don’t agree with his description but it seemed I rarely agreed with his editorials. I do stand by what I said about the radical protest reporting. With the coverage area so increased I think maybe some articles couldn’t get the editorial attention they needed before they were published.
Andy, I hope you find what you’re looking for whether it’s a reimagining or any new position. I wish you all the best.
@Andy: Thank you for your service to this City. Whether we agreed or disagreed on any issue, I always appreciated your honesty and conviction and most of all – your love for Newton.
Sad, but not surprising news. I often wondered how the Tab could survive on handyman and dry cleaning ads in the classified section, some of which I doubt are even real. Andy did an admirable job with the resources he had, and I will miss his presence in my life.
I wonder what will happen next. This looks like the end of the Tab as a meaningful local resource. I hope social media and blogs like this one can step up and fill the void.
@Newtoner – I’m afraid not. Blogs like this one can provide a useful civic service but it’s a very different service than a newspaper I’m afraid. All the posts here are just whatever comes into the head of a few fellow citizens as they go about their lives. That’s quite different then a reporter who’s paid job is to uncover the facts, call and question public officials, request public documents, and dig out the details of a story.
There is certainly a bit of overlap but the primary stock-in-trade here on Village14 is opinion and discussion not news gathering. It is more than a bit worrying that the role of a journalist covering Newton has nearly completely disappeared for all but the very biggest stories.
We’ll certainly keep writing here on Village 14 and maybe once in a while even uncover a small bit of “news” but without people who’s job it is to do the legwork of digging, much local news that should be covered probably won’t be.
@Newtoner: I’ve always thought of Village 14 as a portal, helping readers discover what others are reporting and saying about Newton. Many of the threads here start with a link to reporting from a professional journalist. Then as a community we discuss and deliberate. But in recent years its become harder and harder to find those stories to link to. I fear we’re about to see even less.
Also: It used to be that one worried that losing journalists would mean no one was watching the hen house and uncovering misdeeds or government actions that we’d never learn about otherwise. And that’s still a huge concern.
But local media coverage (not just in Newton) has become so under resourced to the point that we don’t even have journalists covering public meetings, events, elections and explaining basic issues to us.
These are very scary times.
Andy, I join others who will miss you at the TAB and wish you well in your next undertaking. I worry about what happens next for Newton. Will information come only from partisans on one side or the other of an issue? Who will find the facts and hold people accountable? Communication in Newton is hard enough without losing another channel. I found out earlier in the week when I wrote Andy to complain about the reporting on Monday night’s rally. What that article lacked was a sentence that asserted that four Jewish organizations had debunked the claims of this group. I hope that Julie will step up.
Andy, I’m sorry to see you go. I’ve always appreciated that you engaged with readers, which is why I wrote in the other post that I wanted to hear your reasoning behind the decisions.
The fact that you thought through the decisions is why it was good to have you in the seat.
The fact that you resigned before the story answers the question I asked, which was to understand how the story happened without context. It happened without context precisely because no true editor was in place. That’s not a good sign for the future of the publication.
Good luck to Andy Levin in his future endeavors. I empathize with his struggles to deal with shrinking resources and a parent company like Gatehouse. But holding someone in a position of authority in journalism to a high standard is not mean-spiritedness. The job has always come with a high level of responsibility and accountability to the community you serve — like a lot of difficult jobs, it’s a challenging privilege, not some sort of unfair burden.
After we wish Andy well, this conversation should turn to Gatehouse Media, Digital First Media, and other corporate news owners and whether we should continue to accept their increasingly irresponsible stewardship of community news organizations. We need and deserve better, and hopefully there will be some conversations soon about how we can accomplish that.
@Ralph: Do you have any ideas as to how we don’t accept the increasingly irresponsible stewardship of community news organizations? I doubt they care what the readers think.
There is a new model coming, Gail, that will replace the cost-cutters and corporate vultures. I don’t know when it will be here exactly, but when it does, people in the community will need to support it.
Good luck to Andy Levin! I appreciated his deep connections to Newton and his commitment to covering all aspects of the city during his tenure at the TAB. This is indeed a challenging time for all newspapers. Let’s hope that Andy’s replacement shows equal professionalism and dedication in the face of these challenges.
Andy’s care and thoughtfulness will be missed. – Councilor Lisle Baker