John Nichols | The Nation

A job fair in Washington, DC. (Reuters/Jason Reed)

The US economy is suffering from a nasty case of austerity.

Only 165,000 new jobs were created in April—far fewer than is needed to address existing unemployment and to create positions for the millions of Americans who are entering the workforce.

More than 11.7 million active job seekers cannot find work. And that figure does not include millions of Americans who have given up on looking for work, or who are severely under-employed. Add them in and the real unemployment’s at 13.9 percent.

Even the jobs that are being created tend to be in sectors of the economy where wages tend to low and benefits often nonexistent. For instance, the latest report notes growth in the “temporary services” sector. But there’s zero job growth in manufacturing.

“This is a classic ‘hold-steady’ report—enough job growth to keep the unemployment rate stable but not much more,” Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, says of the latest news from the US Department of Labor. “In good times, this would be fine, but at a time like this, it represents an ongoing disaster.”

Why are things so slow?

In a word: austerity.

“This month’s abysmal jobs number—165,000 new jobs in April, barely enough to cover new people coming into workforce—is a self-inflicted wound. Government austerity—[misguided tax policies] and spending cuts—is suffocating the economy, just when it needs air,” explains Robert Borosage, the co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future. “And the perversity will get worse. The sequester cuts are only now beginning to hit. Austerity is driving Europe deeper into recession. China is slowing. US exports will suffer. And Washington is about to descend into new self-manufactured crises around next year’s budget and the debt ceiling. The positive signs in housing, the extraordinary measures taken by the Federal Reserve, the soaring stock market are undermined by Washington’s failure.”

Congress cannot even agree on the problem. Despite the fact that their approach has been discredited—academically and practically—there are still members of the House and Senate who buy into the fantasy that what’s holding the economy back is government spending. Typical is Senator Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, who says, “To get the economy moving and generate real, self-sustaining job creation, we need to limit spending and reject more tax increases.”

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In fact, the government should be targeting investments to spur job growth. As Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, says, “Unless the government takes steps to boost growth, we will be seeing millions of people needlessly denied employment for over a decade. That should be the central focus of everyone in Washington.”

The immediate threat is posed by sequester cuts—following a classic austerity model. As they are implemented, the Congressional Budget Office projects, growth will be reduced by 0.5 percent, costing as many as 700,000 jobs. Congressman Mark Pocan, a Wisconsin Democrat who has emerged as a key player in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, says the House and Senate need to “pass a budget that ends the job-killing sequester cuts for everyone—not just the well-connected—and makes investments in job-creating programs such as infrastructure, education, and research and development.”

Pocan’s got the right answers. Unfortunately, there are too many politicians in Washington who have yet to start asking the right questions about how austerity is strangling economic recovery.

The entire austerity enterprise is based on faulty math. Listen to John Nichols's take.

Early voting in Ohio, November 5, 2012. (AP Photo/Mark Duncan)

As the 2012 election approached, Republican governors and legislators in battleground states across the country rushed to enact restrictive Voter ID laws, to eliminate election-day registration and to limit early voting. Those were just some of the initiatives that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People identified as “an onslaught of restrictive measures across the country designed to stem electoral strength among communities of color.”

Why did so much energy go into the effort?

John Payton, the president and director-counsel of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, explained, “These block the vote efforts are a carefully targeted response to the remarkable growth of the minority electorate, and threaten to disproportionally diminish the voting strength of African-Americans and Latinos.”

Civil rights groups pushed back, working with the League of Women Voters, Common Cause and other organizations to mount legal and legislative challenges. But the most dramatic pushback may well have been the determined voter registration and mobilization drives organized on the ground in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and other battleground states.

A key supporter of the Ohio voter registration and turnout drive, State Senator Nina Turner says, “Republicans thought that they could suppress the vote, but these efforts actually motivated people to get registered and cast a ballot. It’s no surprise that the communities targeted by these policies came out to the polls in a big way—they saw this not just as an affront to their rights, but as a call to action.”

Turner’s point turns out to be highly significant.

According to a new study produced by Brookings Institution demographer William Frey for the Associated Press, 2012 turnout was down overall from 2004 and 2008. But African-American turnout does not appear to have declined at the same rate as white turnout.

Headlines suggested that African-American turnout levels may actually have exceeded white turnout levels, which would be a historic first. Frey tells MSNBC that he'll need to analyze more census data -- some of which is not yet available -- to confirm whether this was the case.

But the data that is available points to the critical conclusion: While overall turnout dropped from 2008 to 2012, African-American turnout remained steady at 13 percent.

That 13 percent figure is a big deal, as African Americans make up only 12 percent of eligible voters. In other words -- according to numbers reviewed by Brookings, the Pew Research Center and others -- the actual African-American vote in 2012 “outperformed” the group's percentage of the potential electorate.

Turnout among non-Hispanic white voters has traditionally outperformed that group's percentage of eligible voters. This was still the case in 2012. But, according to AP, the margin was down, and overall the white turnout nationwide was off by millions of votes.

The turnout patterns appear to have aided President Obama’s reelection run. Polling data tells us that the president always retained a good measure of popularity in the African-American community, as he did among young people. There was plenty of talk before the 2012 election, however, about an “enthusiasm gap” that would undermine turnout among voters who were most likely to be supportive of the president.

But the Reverend Al Sharpton, the president of the National Action Network and the host of MSNBC’s Politics Nation, says anger over voter suppression did much to alter the dynamic.

“From the tours we did in 22 states, it became clear to us that many blacks that were apathetic and indifferent became outraged and energized when they realized that [Republicans] were changing the rules in the middle of the game, in terms of voter ID laws, ending ‘souls to the polls,’” Sharpton told theGrio.” So what was just another election, even though it dealt with the re-election of the first black president, took on a new dimension when they realized that they were implementing the disenfranchisement of black voters.”

This was a big deal for Obama and the Democrats.

Indeed, the emerging research on voter turnout suggests, it might well have been definitional.

As AP notes:

Romney would have erased Obama’s nearly 5 million-vote victory margin and narrowly won the popular vote if voters had turned out as they did in 2004, according to Frey’s analysis. Then, white turnout was slightly higher and black voting lower.

More significantly, the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida and Colorado would have tipped in favor of Romney, handing him the presidency if the outcome of other states remained the same.

If the African-American voting patterns seen in 2012 continue—in combination with rising Latino and Asian turnout and support for Democratic candidates—Frey says, “By 2024, the [minority] vote will be essential to victory. Democrats will be looking at a landslide going into 2028 if the new Hispanic voters continue to favor Democrats.”

But that’s a prediction that does not take into account the prospect that political parties can and do change.

By and large, the recent focus with regard to the future of the Republican Party has been on speculation about how the Republicans might change their fortunes by nominating a candidate with broader appeal: Florida Senator Marco Rubio or, perhaps, New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez.

But the significance of rising African-American turnout—in combination with other turnout and voting patterns—suggests that the extent to which the Republican Party changes its approach on voting issues could matter as much or more than the ethnicity of candidates.

The Republican National Committee’s remarkable “autopsy report” on the GOP’s 2012 election debacle concluded that “many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country.”

“The pervasive mentality of writing off blocks of states or demographic votes for the Republican Party must be completely forgotten,” wrote the authors of the report. “The Republican Party must compete on every playing field.”

The Republicans who penned that statement provided indications of their sincerity. The autopsy report was strong in its general recognition of the challenges the GOP faces in attracting African-American, Asian-American and Latino voters, as well as women and young people. But it was soft with regard to the voting-rights debate.

But it is hard to imagine that Republicans can make the inroads they seek with minority voters if the party is identified with what civil rights, voting rights and good-government groups identify as voter suppression.

If that identification remains, the party’s candidate recruitment and messaging strategies are unlikely to be sufficient to renew its fortunes.

If the GOP becomes more clearly and seriously supportive of voting rights, on the other hand, the party’s options expand.

This is something Republicans—and, frankly, Democrats who imagine a simple strategy of benefitting from Republican missteps—ought to recognize: There should not be a partisan divide when it comes to voting rights.

The message for Republicans is clear enough: The backlash against what were broadly perceived as assaults on voting rights appears to have been a significant factor in the 2012 election results.

If Republicans are serious about reaching out to African-American voters, and to voters in other minority groups, they have to address voting-rights concerns.

Republicans have a tremendous story to tell. Theirs is not just the “Party of Lincoln,” it is the party of former Congressman William Moore McCulloch, the Ohioan who served as the ranking Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee in the critical days when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were being forged.

No one who knows the history of that time doubts the vital role that McCulloch, a very conservative Republican who was a steady critic of federal spending, played in securing essential support for measures that outlawed segregation and racial discrimination. Lyndon Johnson would hail the Ohio Congressman as “the most important and powerful political force” in advancing civil rights legislation in the period.

McCulloch did so because, he said, “To do less would be to shirk our responsibility as national legislators, and as human beings who honor the principles of liberty and justice.”

The contemporary Republican Party has lost four of the last six presidential elections. It has won a plurality of the popular vote just once since 1988. A recognition of the challenges the party faces has led to a measure of soul searching, and that in turn has inspired public and private wrangling over electoral strategies. It may be the case that some Republicans still want to play the voter-suppression card, but they do their party no favors.

The smarter strategy is to recognize that voters are wary of those who seek to restrict voting. In Maine, in 2011, a referendum vote overturned an attempt by the Republican governor and legislator to eliminate election-day registration. In Minnesota, in 2012, voters rejected a Republican-backed constitutional amendment to impose a strict Voter ID law.

Republicans need to engage in a rethink when it comes to voting issues.

It is often said that the emerging demographics of the United States are not on the side of the GOP. However, demographics are not necessarily the stuff of electoral fate.

The new studies of voter turnout offer sobering indicators for party strategists. But they also suggests a way forward.

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If Republicans desire to stop “writing off blocks of states or demographic votes,” the party must send affirmative signals about its commitment to voting rights. Republicans can and should do so in the spirit of William Moore McCulloch, and the many Republicans—some of them quite conservative—who recognized that his party should be in the forefront of supporting voting rights.

But it’s not just Republicans who need to get more serious, and more focused, on taking practical steps to advance voting rights. Both parties need to work dramatically harder to establish a uniform commitment to defend the right to vote and to assure that every vote is counted. In short order, Congressmen Keith Ellison, D-Minnesota, and Mark Pocan, D-Wisconsin, will introduce legislation calling for a “Right-to-Vote” amendment to the US Constitution. It’s being proposed with an eye toward ending the lingering uncertainty about voting rights in the United States. Ellison and Pocan are interested in appealing to Republicans as potential co-sponsors. They should make this a high priority, not merely for the practical reason that broad support is needed for their initiative but because the American commitment to expand and sustain voting rights can and should be embraced by all parties.

Immigrant rights activists, unions and others are gearing up for May Day—under the FBI’s watch. Read Allison Kilkenny’s analysis.

Dick Cheney and other senior administration officials at a meeting in George W. Bush's Oval Office. (Reuters/Larry Downing)

George W. Bush’s presidency began on a note destined to inspire skepticism.

Bush did, after all, lose the ballot-box count at the close of his 2000 run for the nation’s top job by 543,895 votes. But with a boost from an outdated Electoral College system and a Supreme Court that decided to make an extraordinary intervention on his behalf, the son of the forty-first president of the United States became the forty-third president of the United States.

And in what historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., long ago identified as the era of the “imperial presidency,” the fact of his tenure entitles Bush to something George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison never got: an official presidential library and museum.

Bush has gone all in.

His library and museum are the biggest of the thirteen that have been established to recognize former presidents: 226,560 square feet on the grounds of the twenty-three-acre Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University near Dallas.

His is also the most expensive of these monumental endeavors, with a $250 million price tag.

But it may not be the most thorough.

News reports tell us that:

Politics is downplayed; the 2004 reelection campaign goes unmentioned. And essentially invisible are Karl Rove, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, who the president became somewhat estranged from in his second term.

Bush wants to be remembered as a statesman, not a hawk.

Why would anyone who is hoping to be remembered as a statesman want to avoid being associated with Karl Rove and Dick Cheney?

To ask the question is to answer it.

A case might be made for giving Bush a pass when it comes to downplaying Rumsfeld—whose Pentagon role kept him of the fringe of domestic policy making and who surely took a backseat to Cheney when it came to foreign policy.

But Cheney and Rove were not exactly spectators in the George W. Bush White House.

As Bush’s senior advisor, deputy chief of staff and political czar, Rove proudly positioned himself in the tradition of Mark Hanna, the Gilded Age political operative who created an assessment system to channel the riches of the robber barons into a scheme for “buying” elections with what came to be known as “The Money Power.” Rove’s updating of Hanna’s approach—via his network of contribution-bundling “Bush Rangers” and “Bush Pioneers” and his more recent machinations with the American Crossroads combine—created a crony capitalist behemoth that delivered mightily for Wall Street and the energy industry but steered the party away from core conservative principles and set the stage for the economic turbulence that rocked the last years of his protégé’s presidency.

As Bush’s first-term prince regent, Cheney guided Bush away from the basic premises and principles on which he had campaigned in 2000. Cheney showed little taste for the “compassionate conservatism” that was Bush’s most appealing—and I would suggest sincere—message of the 2000 campaign. And Cheney abandoned Bush’s stated skepticism about positioning the United States as a nation-building “policeman to the world,” embarking instead on a neoconservative rewrite of American foreign policy objectives which, from the very first days of the Bush-Cheney administration, saw the country begin to reject international diplomacy and cooperation in favor a heavy-handed approach that would eventually include invasions, occupations and pressure tactics so crude that some of the country’s closest allies distanced themselves from its endeavors.

Rove liked, or at least appreciated, Bush. They came up together politically and there is no question that at key “decision points” along the former president’s political trajectory, the man they called “Bush’s Brain” did his best to serve his candidate. Which, of course, also served Rove’s ambition to be a defining figure not just in the Republican Party but the broader conservative movement—in much the same way that Mark Hanna’s “service” to William McKinley made it possible for Hanna to define the politics of another era (and to become a very wealthy and powerful figure). But just as Hanna’s name became associated with the backroom deals and abuses of power that progressive reformers (many of them Republicans) decried a century ago, Rove’s name is now synonymous with manipulation of the political process by billionaires, corporations and their cronies.

Cheney’s relationship with Bush was always more complex than Rove’s. It is much harder to suggest that the former vice president ever really served Bush. As Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff during the harshest days of the Bush-Cheney tenure, well explained it, Cheney “became vice president well before George Bush picked him. And he began to manipulate things from that point on, knowing that he was going to be able to convince this guy to pick him, knowing that he was then going to be able to wade into the vacuums that existed around George Bush—personality vacuum, character vacuum, details vacuum, experience vacuum.”

What this all adds up to is a quite understandable choice by Bush to downplay his former associates.

Aides report that Bush was a very hands-on player in the development of his museum. “He literally looked at every exhibit and said ‘I want this one, and I want that,’ ” says George W. Bush Foundation President Mark Langdale.

So it is that the space devoted to the former president’s commendable efforts to tackle AIDS and malaria in Africa is by all accounts quite substantial. And the section dealing with his stated commitment to “Protecting the Environment” is a good deal grander than those mentioning his response to Hurricane Katrina or the Wall Street meltdown of September 2008.

Such choices fit within the broad debate about Bush’s legacy, which the former president—who is mounting a campaign to improve his image—well understands.

Bush seeks to make a case for himself.

But he does not want to shoulder the burden of the Rove and Cheney legacies.

This is understandable. Ron Suskind noted in his 2004 book, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill, that Rove and Cheney often appeared to roll over Bush in a mad rush to advance their preferred agendas.

Famously, following the Republican success in the 2002 off-year elections, Treasury Secretary O’Neill (a former deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget and CEO of Alcoa) counseled that new tax cuts for the rich would be economically and fiscally unwise. Bush seemed to agree. “Haven’t we already given money to rich people?” Bush asked. “Shouldn’t we be giving money to the middle? Won’t people be able to say, ‘You did it once, and then you did it twice, and what was it good for?’ ”

Rove immediately told the president to: “Stick to principle. Stick to principle.” Cheney was typically blunt, explaining: “You know… Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter. We won the midterm elections, this is our due.”

Nine days after O’Neill argued against more tax cuts, he got a call—not from Bush, but from Cheney—asking him to resign.

Stories like that offer a fair measure of insight into why Bush would want Americans to remember him, as opposed to Rove and Cheney. Or at the least, to remember him in a better light than his political czar and his vice president. So it is understandable that the focus of The George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum would err in that direction.

The problem, of course, is that it was Bush who gave Rove and Cheney the extraordinary power they enjoyed through his first term. And as O’Neill reminds us, that power defined the Bush presidency. Rove and Cheney may indeed have formed a “a praetorian guard that encircled the president.” But it was from Bush, not anyone else, that they gained the authority to form the circle.

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In the middle of Bush’s tenure, Paul O’Neill said: “The president started from scratch and relied on advice of ideologues without any honest brokers in sight.”

There is case to be made that, as Bush’s presidency progressed, he came to recognize that Cheney, in particular, was not the honest broker he needed. Indeed, the story of Bush’s claiming of his own presidency during his second term is the stuff of interesting history. But it is a history that requires a clear recognition of the role that Rove and Cheney played—not a history where the “praetorian guard” remains “essentially invisible.”

Read TheNation.com's exclusive excerpt from Jeremy Scahill's new book, Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield.

The Boston Globe’s online homepage. (www.bostonglobe.com)

When editors at The Boston Globe recognized that their city had been bombed by suspected terrorists who were still at large, they immediately mustered a substantial and experienced newsgathering team to cover one of the most tragic, frightening and unsettling moments in the long history of a great American city.

They got the story, from the epic photos of the heroism of emergency workers last Monday to the remarkable announcement on Friday night of the apprehension of the second suspect in the bombing attack.

the Globe’s web headline, published minutes after the arrest of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, reflected the interests and emotions of a great city as a great newspaper should: “Alive, Conscious, Captured.”

Bostonians read the Globe all last week with a passion, as they did the tenacious Boston Herald, its smaller rival in a rare competition for big-city readers. Along with the Globe’s Boston readers, millions of people across the United States and around the world made the paper’s website an Internet hot spot.

That most of this reading occurred online is not news. What we call “newspapers” are better described today as “newsrooms.” It is silly to talk of an “old media” versus “new media” divide. A daily paper is still printed, and some of us love the experience of reading it. But, especially in rapidly-evolving “breaking news” moments, it’s the website that’s got the dynamism. And Twitter: the Globe now has 275,000 followers.

“This shows how vital (metro daily newspapers) are when disasters strike,” Globe editor Brian McGrory told The Huffington Post. “The  Globe and its website became something like a town square, where people turned for information and they got it.”

The Globe’s site was packed with instant and detailed coverage and analysis and superb editorials on the conflicts and concerns that arise in these moments. Some mistakes were made along the way, as is always the case when news is breaking so rapidly. But the Globe’s 24/7 coverage—which placed immense demands on its staff and on its limited resources—was overwhelmingly accurate, detailed and insightful. Media writer Seth Mnookin hailed the paper’s coverage of the bombing and the search for the killers as “Tireless. Dogged. Spirited.”

And the Globe’s coverage was something else: Free.

The paper knocked down the paywall that separated potential readers from what is usually a subscription-only website. Editors stripped a banner across the top of the webpage reading: “BostonGlobe.com is currently available to all readers.”

The readers came. On the day the paywall came down, the paper attracted 1.2 million unique visitors—six times the normal amount. Of course, dramatic events drew readers; of course, many of the new readers were from outside the Boston area. But the numbers were way, way higher—locally, nationally and even internationally—because readers did not have to jump through digital hoops and type in credit card numbers.

So dropping the paywall made sense from a standpoint of civic responsibility and from the classic journalistic standpoint of wanting to get new information and ideas to the broadest possible audience.

But it was not viewed as as economic success for the Globe, which is currently up for sale and wrestling with all the financial challenges that face American newsrooms. On Monday, the paywall will return.

That’s understandable but, to my view, unfortunate.

It is no secret that this is an era when major media outlets are desperate to find ways to pay for journalism. In some cases, this really is because they are out of touch with their audience and because alternative media is simply more compelling. But, more often than not, this is because of a dramatic shift in media economics. Advertising revenues that once sustained vast newsgathering operations, with deep commitments to cover communities, states, the nation and the world, have collapsed. And online advertising does not begin to provide sufficient support to pay for the journalism even of popular news sites.

Many publications (including The Nation), and most major dailes, have experimented with strategies to get people to pay for news stories, columns and editorials.

the Globe erected a subscription-style paywall two years ago to try to collect revenue from readers. It has had some success with this approach, as have other publications that are experimenting with models that charge for individual articles or groups of articles.

But when all news broke loose, dropping the Globe’s paywall was a “no-brainer.”

The decision by the editors to collapse the paywall at a critical juncture for the city the paper has covered since 1872 was not unprecedented. A number of major papers did so when Superstorm Sandy was hitting, as did several during in the aftermath of the Boston bombing.

But the Globe’s move was especially wise, and valuable. And it ought to provoke a new discussion about whether paywalls make sense, economically or journalistically.

Newsrooms needs resources to pay reporters, photographers and editors to produce quality journalism that is sufficient not only to inform citizens but to sustain a democratic discourse. And it’s not wrong to ask readers, listeners and viewers to contribute. Indeed, Los Angeles Times national writer Matt Pearce announced Friday night: “If everybody in Boston doesn’t pay the Globe back with a subscription after all this, not sure what more you could ask from a newspaper.”

I agree. If Boston pays the Globe back with a flood of new subscriptions, I’ll be thrilled.

But we ought not presume that this will be the case.

Americans who recognize the importance of not just journalism but the daily amalgamation of journalism that is produced by classic urban newsrooms—with substantial numbers of at least reasonably compensated reporters, columnists, editors, photographers, graphic specialists and all the other people who once made newspapers work and who now make news-oriented websites work—should be thinking of how to get the most news to the most people.

The huge readership—and the huge regard—that the Globe achieved during a critical week in the history of its hometown reminds us that there are a lot of readers out there who don’t leap paywalls.

That’s unhealthy for the future of big urban newsrooms, for the future of journalism and for the future of a vibrant and nuanced democratic discourse.

A lot of traditionalists would like to imagine that the people will eventually pay. After all, they say, newspapers have always charged for subscriptions—or copies on the newsstand.

But the Internet is different. It’s built on the premise that information should be free. And even if some newspapers make some money by erecting them, veteran technology writer Mathew Ingram correctly notes that paywalls that are hailed as “successful” still are not “making up for the continuing decline in print ad revenue.”

So it is that newspapers keep closing, cutting back and laying off reporters, photographers and editors.

But it’s not just the economic challenge that worries me. When a paywall limits access to the journalism produced by a great city’s newsroom, the public debate suffers. People can still get information, but they are edged out of the core conversations of their community—and often toward sources that reinforce rather than challenge and expand assumptions.

My point here is not to suggest that metropolitan dailies—or, to be more precise, the newsrooms that now produce the most popular news sites—can or will simply provide great reporting and analysis at no cost. What I am suggesting is that publications should be examining alternatives to paywalls.

If we learn anything from the Globe’s experience of recent days, it is that it’s a good idea to make information and ideas available to all readers in a moment of crisis. But why isn’t it a good idea to make information and ideas available during elections? During great debate about national, state or local priorities? Or during periods when cities are “getting back to normal” after terrifying events?

In other countries, journalism is sustained with public subsidies and tax breaks—not just for muscular public broadcasting systems but for print and digital journalism. There are, as well, models for running newsrooms (like that of The Tampa Bay Times) as nonprofit or low-profit enterprises, and for leveraging foundation money and community investment to sustain journalism. Some communities—including St. Louis and Seattle—have seen the use of public radio stations as platforms for sites bring together laid-off newspaper reporters to cover local news.

People who care about journalism can and should be engaged in a wide-ranging discussion about how to sustain journalism in the twenty-first century. And this week’s decision by the Globe to drop its paywall should get not just reporters, editors and publishers thinking about those alternatives. It should get citizens engaged with the issue.

Here’s why:

For Boston in particular, but for the nation in general, this past week has been daunting. People haven’t just wrestled with the news, they have wrestled with questions about the news means.

It is natural in such a circumstance to try to figure things out, to struggle with questions about specific events and about broad threats and deep fears. About clues and indicators. About responsibility and accountability. About the balance between public safety and civil liberties.

This wrestling with issues and ideas, this search for explanations, can be frustrating and contentious. But it’s healthy. It means that people are engaged. Even when they make mistakes, they tend to do so sincerely.

What’s important is that citizens have a steady flow of information and analysis and—of particular significance in so intense a circumstance—thoughtful reflection that helps steer the discussion beyond kneejerk reactions.

This is what the Globe provided. Its coverage was rich and nuanced. Its commentary was adventurous and challenging. Editorials provided comfort and perspective, reminding readers: “The fact that the Marathon takes place on Patriots Day may or may not have been a factor in the attack; it is, absolutely, a part of what makes the event unique, a celebration of both nature and history, the coming of spring and the region’s connection to the Revolutionary War.”

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The Globe’s editorial pages even found room to defend Family Guy, noting: “A real-life terrorist attack isn’t an appropriate source of humor. But some snippets of old movies and TV shows are bound to prompt cringe-inducing associations in the wake of an attack; still, viewers will understand the difference between a calculated insult and an unintended coincidence. So, while Fox executives showed commendable sensitivity in taking the unusual step of removing an old ‘Family Guy’ episode that involved the Boston Marathon from the web, it was an unnecessary gesture.”

That’s one example of the Globe’s many invitations to think freely, while focusing on what matters. A great paper—even if it’s not read on paper—can still do this, especially if it speaks to everyone. That’s what the Globe did last week. It deserves celebration and emulation—especially of the banner that reads: “available to all readers.”

How not to normalize terrorism in the wake of what happened in Boston? Read Aura Bogado’s interview with Sohail Daulatzai.