Herald Romes Much Farther Than Globe

March 20, 2013

It’s a rare day – and therefore a noteworthy one – when the Boston Herald devotes more resources to a big story than the Boston Globe does.

Welcome to today’s edition of our feisty local tabloid gone global. Note the dateline on Margery Eagan’s column:

Vatican PopePope Francis fever catches on in Rome

ROME — The Roman Catholic Church has been losing the faithful in Italy and much of Europe for decades. Pope Francis has clearly revived interest, if only until his novelty wears off.

Yesterday, for the third time in a week, an estimated 150,000 packed St. Peter’s Square. Police were keeping order in subway stations en route to the Vatican as crowds tried to push onto nearly full trains. Streets all around the Vatican were closed to traffic. But they were filled with what looked like thousands more spectators who showed up too late to fit into the square — meaning they didn’t get here by 7:30 a.m. for a 9:30 a.m. Mass.

These thousands watched on at least a dozen Jumbotrons as Pope Francis, just before his inaugural Mass, rode about the square not in the bulletproof glass popemobile, but, unusually, in an open-air model. It allowed him to get on and off and kiss a baby and the forehead of a man who appeared disabled and smiled up at Francis’ face.

 

Today’s Herald also features a thumbsucker on Sean O’Malley’s elevated status after his waltz with the Great Mentioner at the Vatican conclave.

Vatican PopeObservers see O’Malley as papal adviser

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley will return to Boston this week a more influential figure than when he left for the papal conclave late last month — with international name recognition, and possibly the prospect of a role in Rome as Pope Francis aligns his inner circle, religious experts said.

“My sense is that Sean O’Malley is happy in Boston and would not be happy at the Vatican. On the other hand, he is a close friend of Pope Francis. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a role for Cardinal O’Malley,” said Thomas Groome, a theology professor at Boston College. “He’ll have a more enhanced role in advising and leadership than he did under Benedict. He certainly is coming home with an enhanced reputation.”

National Catholic Reporter’s John Allen Jr., whose article on O’Malley prior to the conclave helped elevate the Boston archbishop’s profile, said O’Malley has been rumored to take over as leader of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, which manages the rules governing priests and nuns.

Meanwhile, crosstown at the Globe, today’s edition included only this on the pontiff front:

2013-03-19T141110Z_01_MBH11_RTRMDNP_3_POPEAt inaugural, Pope Francis vows to serve poor

Urges those in power to protect world

By Elisabetta Povoledo, Rachel Donadio and Alan Cowell |  NEW YORK TIMES     MARCH 20, 2013

VATICAN CITY — At the formal start of his papacy, Pope Francis offered a passionate pledge Tuesday to serve ‘‘the poorest, the weakest, the least important,’’ striking the same tones of humility that have marked the days since he was elected last week.

On a raised and canopied throne on a platform looking out from St. Peter’s Basilica to the piazza in front of it, the pope enjoined those in temporal power to protect the world and ‘‘not allow omens of destruction and death to accompany the advance of this world.’’

“Today, too, amid so much darkness, we need to see the light of hope and to be men and women who bring hope to others,’’ he added to frequent applause from some among the tens of thousands of people cramming the square and the broad avenue leading to it from the River Tiber. The Vatican estimated the number at 150,000 to 200,000.

 

A story plucked from the New York Times wire service?  Kinda pales in comparison with the Herald, eh?

It’s possible-to-likely the paper is splitting the cost of Eagan’s Roman gig with WGBH (where she co-hosts a radio show with Jm Braude), since she’s also reported on the papal festivities for 89.7 FM.

Either way, it’s the Herald that’s the papal tiger on this story.

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Boston Retail History: Bonwit Teller Part Two

March 20, 2013

In response to our post, Local Dailies Disappear Bonwit Teller from Boston’s Retail History, splendid commenter Rick in Duxbury sent this to the hardreading staff:

If memory serves, the thing that really killed Bonwit’s was the boneheaded real estate department employee who forgot to exercise the renewal option in their lease, thus putting the iconic building on the market in the first place.

 

(First, full disclosure: Regarding all things retail, we routinely defer to the Missus who, as it happens, worked for Bonwit Teller as an executive shopping consultant throughout the 1980s.)

So, Rick: We think you’ve confused Bonwit’s with the boneheaded Lord & Taylor employee who forgot to renew the Boylston Street store’s lease in 2002.

The Bonwit Teller story is something else again.

The upscale retailer occupied 234 Berkeley Street (former home of the New England Museum of Natural History) from 1947 to 1987. At which point Louis Boston resided across Boylston Street, where they had a 20-year lease.

But The New England insurance company wanted to raze the block and build what became 500 Boylston Street. Louis said they’d only move if they could have Bonwit’s location.

So Bonwit Teller, conveniently motivated by a sweetheart lease, moved into the New England’s new building across the street.

From the (1988) New York Times:

The new Boston Bonwit’s is on Boylston Street in the city’s affluent Back Bay neighborhood, the location for several big stores and an increasing number of specialty shops and boutiques. It replaces a store shut down in 1987 after 30 years in a distinctive nearby building.

The new store is in a recently opened $150 million, 25-story office building designed by Philip Johnson for the New England, an insurance company. The first two floors house retailers and restaurants. Bonwit’s, which declined to say how much it had spent on the store, has 33,000 square feet of selling space, as against 24,000 in its former site.

 

Regardless, Bonwit Teller soon went out of business, a victim of changing retail times and shaky management.

But that doesn’t mean it should be erased from Boston’s retail history, as the local dailies have done in reporting its latest successor at 234 Berkeley, Restoration Hardware.

Better to restoration Bonwit’s into the record books, yes?

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Herald Brings Brazil Nightclub Tragedy Home

January 28, 2013

The nightclub fire that killed 233 people in Sao Paulo Santa Maria, Brazil, yesterday has, as many have pointed out, haunting similarities to The Station nightclub fire in Rhode Island a decade ago. Both Boston dailies noted the echoes in their print editions today, one much more vividly than the other.

The Globe ran the story Page One, but it was a pickup from the New York Times.

Picture 1

 

The Globe did toss in a couple of local references:

The disaster ranks among the deadliest nightclub fires in history, comparable to the 2003 blaze at The Station nightclub in Rhode Island that killed 100 people, one in 2004 in Buenos Aires in which 194 were killed, and a fire at a club in China in 2000 in which 309 people died. In 1942, a fire at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston killed 492 people . . . The scene recalled the 2003 fire at The Station nightclub in West Warwick, R.I., at which the rock band Great White was performing. During the show, pyrotechnics set fire to flammable soundproofing foam that lined the walls and ceiling, killing 100 and injuring 200.

 

The Herald coverage, though, cut much closer to home:

Picture 2

 

Lead piece:

Brazil Nightclub FireFire rocks Hub Brazilians, survivors of R.I.’s station

‘It’s just heartbreaking … that someone else has to go through this’

The pyrotechnic fire that killed at least 233 people in a crowded Brazilian nightclub yesterday stunned the still traumatized survivors of Rhode Island’s 2003 Station nightclub blaze and prompted prayer vigils among the Boston area’s large Brazilian community.

“It’s just heartbreaking to know that someone else has to go through this,” said Gina Russo, 45, of Cranston, R.I., a survivor of the Station nightclub fire, who has undergone 54 surgeries to date after more than 40 percent of her body was burned. She lost her fiance in the fire.

“It’s everybody’s worst nightmare,” said Aguilar Martins of 
Lynnfield, a 42-year-old Brazilian who attended a vigil at the First Brazilian Baptist Church in Charlestown. “We’re so far away, you can’t really do much about it.”

 

Except tell the stories as best you can.

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It’s Good to Live in a Two-Times Co. Town (Paywall Edition)

December 9, 2012

As newspaper revenues continue to go down like the Hindenburg, more and more dailies are looking to erect paywalls to corral new cashflow.

Exhibit Umpteen: The Washington Post.

From David Carr’s post on the New York Times Media Decoder blog (via Politico’s Playbook):

fence-decoder-blog480Pay Wall Push: Why Newspapers Are Hopping Over the Picket Fence

When The Wall Street Journal broke the news that The Washington Post was likely to start charging for online content sometime next year, it should not have come as a surprise, but it did.

The shock had something to do with the certainty that Donald Graham, chairman of the Washington Post Company, has always displayed on the subject. He has long had serious reservations about putting the work of his company’s journalists behind a wall. According to GigaOm, he explained it in the following way to Walter Isaacson at an Aspen Institute event:

The New York Times or Wall Street Journal can say we’re going to charge, but we’re not going to charge you if you subscribe to the newspaper. The Washington Post circulates in print only around Washington, D.C., but way over 90 percent – I think over 95 percent of our Internet audience is outside Washington, D.C. We can’t offer you that print or online choice. So, the pay model would work very differently for us.

But now The Post is contemplating a model in which the homepage and section fronts will be free, but the rest will require a subscription, which is a pretty nifty way to allow for snacking while hoping that people stick around to eat.

 

But some who’ve gone this route aren’t getting all that many bites. Among them is NYT kissin’ cousin the Boston Globe. Here’s what Carr writes about the two:

The New York Times’s positive experience with online subscriptions is probably not one that will scale across the industry. As a national newspaper with international resources, The Times is fishing in a pool of many millions of potential readers, so the fact over a half a million of that audience has opted in is a good sign for the organization, but not necessarily for the industry.

Mr. Graham noted that The Boston Globe, the former home of the incoming Post editor Martin Baron and a high-quality publication, had just 25,000 people sign up. That is a scary low number. But it is a place to begin.

 

Yeah, so’s zero. That don’t make it good news.

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Herald Coverage Is Twinkie Dinkie

November 17, 2012

Everybody has the Twinkie strikeout on the front page today.

The New York Times:

 

 

The Wall Street Journal:

 

 

The Boston Globe:

 

 

The Boston Herald?

Unh-unh.

 

 

Tel Aviv over Twinkies?

Good for the Herald.

 

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Special Edition: It’s Good to Live in a Two-Times Company Town (X Marks the Thompson Spot)

November 17, 2012

Friday’s New York Times featured what might be the first chime in the death knell of newly minted New York Times Company CEO Mark Thompson.

Letter Raises Questions About When BBC Ex-Chief Learned of Abuse Cases

A legal letter sent on behalf of Mark Thompson, the former director general of the BBC, raises questions about his assertions that he learned of accusations of sexual abuse against its longtime host Jimmy Savile only after leaving the corporation’s top job.

In the letter, sent 10 days before Mr. Thompson left the BBC in September, lawyers representing him and another executive threatened to sue The Sunday Times in London over contentions in an article it was preparing that they had been involved in killing a BBC investigation of Mr. Savile.

Interviews show that the letter included a summary of the alleged abuse, including the allegation that some abuse might have occurred at the BBC.

Translation: Thompson at the very least misremembered when he became aware of the Jimmy Savile row.

At worst, this is just the first shoe to drop. At best . . . well, there is no best.

Meanwhile, the Times kissin’ cousin Boston Globe has yet to even grab a shoehorn.

The Globe’s most extensive reference to the Thompson kerfuffle ran in this October 26 pickup from the Times wire service:

The scandal has drawn in several top figures at the BBC, including its current director general, George Entwistle, who took over in September from Mark Thompson, the incoming president and chief executive of The New York Times Co.

Thompson was director general of the BBC when the editor of a current affairs program canceled an investigation into Savile in late 2011, just as other divisions of the BBC were planning Christmastime tributes to him a few months after his death at age 84.

Thompson has said repeatedly that he knew nothing about the investigation by the ‘‘Newsnight’’ program while it was under way, had no role in canceling it and also had heard none of the suspicions about Savile.

On Thursday, Thompson won an enthusiastic endorsement from Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the chairman of The New York Times Co. and the publisher of The Times.

Since then, a whole lot of nothing.

The hardreading staff sort of feels Globeniks are entitled to something more.

 

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Herald: Baron Jumps Sinking Ship?

November 14, 2012

Today’s Boston Globe has the front-page story on the exodus of editor Marty Baron.

11-year Globe editor Martin Baron to depart

Will take reins at Washington Post

Martin Baron , the editor of The Boston Globe who led the news organization as it won six Pulitzer Prizes over the past decade, will become executive editor of The Washington Post in January, both papers said Tuesday.

The Globe will launch a search to fill Baron’s job, said publisher Christopher M. Mayer. While citing the talent within the newsroom, he said he would also consider outside candidates. Mayer said his aim is to fill the position as quickly as possible.

“We’re looking for the right person at the right time to really carry on the quality journalism that’s the embodiment of everything we are doing today,” Mayer said in an interview.

In his valediction to the Globe newsroom, Baron asserted that his departure has nothing to do with the fiscal fitness of the paper.

Noting that he navigated through difficult times for the news business, Baron said New England’s largest newspaper has emerged as a sound institution. “We’re on solid footing here at the Globe,” he said. “The Globe has a good future ahead of it. “

Not if you listen to the Boston Herald, which says it has the inside story.

Globe editor departing for gig at Washington Post

Baron successor all the talk

The long-rumored departure of Boston Globe editor Marty Baron for the top slot at The Washington Post — the beleaguered broadsheet’s third bigwig to jump ship in recent months — has roiled the Morrissey Boulevard newsroom and set tongues wagging about a possible fire sale.

“He may think that the clock is ticking, it’s time to get out,” said Benchmark Co. analyst Edward Atorino. “The Post is going to be around forever, whereas the Globe — not sure.”

Of course, that’s exactly what you’d expect a Herald piece to say. But at least columnist Jessica Heslam spiced it up with some speculation:

Scuttlebutt has it that Times metro editor Carolyn Ryan, a former Herald and Globe staffer, could come in as a caretaker editor in a move that could signal a sale of the paper.

Among the inside candidates bandied about: Globe editorial page editor Peter Canellos, deputy managing Sunday editor Mark Morrow, associate editor and metro columnist Brian McGrory and managing editor Caleb Solomon.

(The Globe’s kissin’ cousin down in New York just teased readers: “Three internal candidates [at the Globe? the Times?] have been named as possible successors. A spokesman for the Times Company said a national search would be conducted.”)

No dish from the Globe yet. At least not in the paper.

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Special Edition: It’s Good to Live in a Two-Times Co. Town (College Live/Deadstock Division)

November 14, 2012

Looks like the New York Times is rippin’ off its kissin’ cousin, the Boston Globe.

Or maybe it’s the other way around.

Monday’s Globe piece about Green Mountain College being oxymarooned:

Lou the ox is quietly euthanized at Vt. college

Injured animal put down, buried in early morning; second ox’s fate undertermined

The veterinarian came before dawn, and Lou the ox was quietly euthanized.

The decision by the small liberal arts college in Vermont in early October to slaughter its beloved pair of oxen and serve their meat in the campus dining hall had sparked worldwide outrage.

The euthanasia of Lou, who was suffering from an injury, was performed on the campus farm by a large-animal veterinarian between midnight and daybreak Sunday, according to Philip Ackerman-Leist, director of the farm and food project at Green Mountain College, in Poultney, near the border with New York State.

“It was hard for him to get around,” Ackerman-Leist said, adding that with winter approaching things would only get worse. “We wouldn’t want to see him suffer anymore.”

The other ox, Bill, remains at Green Mountain’s Cerridwen Farm, according to the Globe report. “Ackerman-Leist said he was not sure whether Bill would go back to work ‘as a single ox or not.’”

He also said Lou was buried at an undisclosed location off campus.

Tuesday’s Times piece about the same:

A Casualty Amid Battle to Save College Oxen

A working ox named Lou, who in recent weeks became arguably his species’ most prominent representative, died on Sunday in pastoral Vermont, euthanized after his impending slaughter stirred a face-off between sustainable farmers in the state and animal rights advocates from around the world.

For Green Mountain College, where Lou tilled the fields with his teammate, a second ox named Bill, this was never the plan. After about 10 years at the college, Lou sustained an injury to his right rear hock over the summer. The college decided to slaughter both animals and serve them in the dining hall, viewing the action as an execution of the college’s sustainable-farming mission . . .

But, of course, that didn’t work out. Then again, this did:

Bill will remain at Green Mountain College, which said in its statement that he will “receive care consistent with appropriate livestock practices.”

Note the link above: The Times reported on this oxycontention two weeks ago.

So . . . whose ox is being gored here?

You tell us.

UPDATE: As you can see in Sweet Jane’s comment below, the Globe had the original story several days before the Times did. The hardwincing staff thanks her, apologizes to the Globe.

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Herald Dogs Times On Jimmy Savile Row; Globe Just Dodges

October 26, 2012

The Boston Herald has been on the BBC/Jimmy Savile scandal like Brown on Williamson, and today’s edition extends the drumbeat.

Despite gaffe, Times’ Sulzberger gives Thompson vote of confidence

New York Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who has been acting as interim CEO, offered a vote of confidence for embattled incoming CEO Mark Thompson today, but also made a gaffe on the company’s earnings call that linked him to the late BBC alleged sex predator Jimmy Savile.

“We’re delighted to welcome Mark Thompson,” said Sulzberger, reiterating the former BBC director general’s Nov. 12 start date at the Times.

Then, Sulzberger referred to the alleged pedophile and longtime BBC TV host as “Mark Savile” before correcting himself.

Sulzberger also sent a letter yesterday to Times staffers (who are embroiled in a contract dispute with Times management) that said this in part (via Romenesko.com):

At the New England Media Group, BostonGlobe.com recently marked its one-year anniversary and continues to make steady progress in growing paid digital subscriptions. The team has implemented a variety of initiatives to increase reader interest and engagement, and to strengthen subscription opportunities. And the August launch of Boston.com’s new live streaming radio station, RadioBDC, is just the latest of the site’s ongoing efforts to broaden its reach in the market.

I want to address a topic that has been on many people’s minds. You no doubt have read the recent reports of a controversy regarding the BBC’s decision in late 2011 to cancel a news story investigating allegations of sexual abuse and molestation by an on-air BBC talent, Jimmy Savile, who died last year. Mark has provided a detailed account of that matter, and I am satisfied that he played no role in the cancellation of the segment.

Meanwhile, the Times’ kissin’ cousin Boston Globe has played no role in examining its connection to the Mark Thompson rumpus.

Here’s what the hardsearching staff found on the Globe website around 1 am:

Try fewer keywords?

Try more coverage, Globeniks.

 

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Boston Globe Writes Off Jimmy Savile Row

October 24, 2012

The Transatlantic rumpus over alleged sexual abuse of children by the late BBC television host Jimmy Savile gets double coverage in the New York Times today. First up, this John Burns report on the latest developments in a scandal that’s turning the BBC into a pretzel.

BBC Leader Admits ‘Horror’ as a Sexual Abuse Inquiry Opens

LONDON — As the first of a battery of inquiries into Britain’s burgeoning sexual abuse scandal opened in a parliamentary committee room on Tuesday, lawmakers reacted with stunned incredulity and barely disguised anger as they sought answers to the painful questions being asked in every living room, commuter train and pub in the country.

How could this have happened, over decades, without action to stop it? How could some of the country’s most respected institutions — among them the BBC, the National Health Service, police forces in London and other areas, as well as the national prosecuting authority — have failed to bring the accused principal abuser to book? How could so many vulnerable young girls and boys — more than 200, according to the police — have been exposed to such vileness, for so long,and so blatantly, without anybody stepping in to help them?

The occasion was the opening of hearings by the House of Commons committee on culture, media and sport, and the matter at hand cascading revelations in the past month that have portrayed one of Britain’s most beloved television hosts, Jimmy Savile, who died last year at 84, as an insatiable pedophile, a predator who abused teenagers in children’s homes, in hospitals for the emotionally disturbed, in BBC dressing rooms yards from stage sets where he made himself a national idol.

Also being questioned: Why did the show “BBC Newsnight” kill an investigative report into Savile’s actions?

Here’s what the Times says:

Channel 4 television reported Tuesday that it had seen an e-mail from a BBC reporter, Liz Mackean, in which she said the editor of “BBC Newsnight,” Peter Rippon, who had shelved an investigative report she was working on, had diminished the seriousness of Mr. Savile’s abuse by saying of the victims, “The girls were teenagers, not too young,” and that “they weren’t the worst kind of sexual offenses.”

Really?

The second piece in today’s Times – and this is where it gets even more interesting – examines the role of Mark Thompson, former BBC head, future New York Times Co. CEO.

Former BBC Head Says He Had No Role in Squelching Program

Mark Thompson, the former head of the British Broadcasting Corporation who has been drawn into the scandal involving allegations of sexual abuse against the former television personality Jimmy Savile, reiterated in an interview on Tuesday that he was not aware of an investigative report prepared for the BBC program “Newsnight” into Mr. Savile’s behavior until after the investigation was canceled.

Both in the interview and in a letter to Parliament, Mr. Thompson, who is also the incoming chief executive of The New York Times Company, said that he was made aware that “Newsnight” had been investigating Mr. Savile only during a conversation with a reporter at a company holiday party last December.

Thompson’s party line:”There is nothing to suggest that I acted inappropriately in the handling of this matter.” That’s about as good a defense as the Washington Generals put up against the Harlem Globetrotters.

NYT kissin’ cousin Boston Globe runs a perfunctory pickup of the Times report, with no mention of the Thompson mishegosss.

That’s left, as the hardworking staff predicted about 10 hours ago, to the Boston Herald, which features this on page 2:

Is new Times CEO fit for print?

Ex-BBC chief accused of shelving sex abuse expose

The New York Times [NYT]’ public editor is questioning whether incoming Times Co. CEO Mark Thompson “is the right person for the job,” even as a British lawmaker has accused the former BBC director general of changing his story about the spiking of a news report on sex abuse allegations surrounding the late TV personality Jimmy Savile.

“Mark Thompson has already had to correct his version of events once. He originally implied that he knew nothing about the Newsnight investigation, before admitting that a BBC journalist had told him he had reasons to worry about it,” said Rob Wilson, a member of Parliament from Reading East, who has questioned Thompson’s role and whether there was a BBC cover up regarding Savile. “Now it appears he may have known more about the subject of the Newsnight investigation than he has previously admitted.”

The pedophile sex abuse scandal involving the late BBC TV host is the talk of Britain and the timing couldn’t be much worse for the Times, which tapped Thompson in August before the scandal erupted.

Of course, the public editor’s piling on doesn’t help either, especially with the headline “Times Must Aggressively Cover Mark Thompson’s Role in BBC’s Troubles.”

Ditto for the Globe, dontcha think?

 

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