The Boston Globe’s Ryder Cup-Out

October 2, 2012

Here’s how Monday’s Boston Globe reported the throat-grabbing collapse of America’s Ryder Cup team on Sunday, after it had built a supposedly insurmountable 8 1/2 – 3 1/2 lead over the European squad.

Europe turns tables on US

It rallies, avenges galling 1999 loss

MEDINAH, Ill. — Move over, Brookline, and make room for Medinah. There’s a new location that forever will be locked in Ryder Cup lore.

Turning the tables on a day from 13 years ago that still stings, Europe staged the greatest comeback — or benefited from the biggest collapse, depending on your perspective — in Ryder Cup history, pulling off a victory just as improbable as the one grabbed by the United States at The Country Club in 1999.

Just as emotional, too, at least to the Europeans, who sang and danced and hugged and sprayed champagne over their fans from a bridge near the clubhouse when it was over. Keeping former Ryder Cup icon Seve Ballesteros close to their hearts all week — and wearing his image on their sleeves Sunday — the Euros would have made the late Spaniard proud, somehow finding a way to win when the situation 24 hours earlier seemed hopelessly lost.

The Globe even provides this helpful graphic:

But it was the Boston Herald that cut to the chase on its back page:

 

 

Yeah, that’s more like it.

Only one question left:

How’s that Monday morning hangover, Herald columnist Ron Borges? Borges wrote this in Sunday’s edition:

No shot, Europe

U.S. lead too daunting

MEDINAH, Ill. — For the European team to win the 39th Ryder Cup competition today it won’t take a comeback. It will take a resurrection.

The Euros find themselves buried in a deeper hole this morning than the Greek economy. They don’t need a bailout plan. They need a concession speech.

Actually, Ron, you need a concession speech.

Not to get technical about it.

 

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Brown/Warren Debate and Ditch

October 1, 2012

Scott Brown (R-Clearly I’m Not) and Elizabeth Warren (D- Oh Yes He Is) have their much anticipated second U.S. Senate debate tonight. And since the debate is sponsored by UMass-Lowell and the Boston Herald, it’s also much hyperventilated in the feisty local tabloid, which devotes ten – count ’em, ten – pages to the bakeoff, including Page One (via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages):

Beyond the obligatory tale of the tape (which the hardsearching staff can’t find on the Herald’s website,) their are five – count ’em, five – thumbsucking columns. Chinstrokers Row comprises Joe Battenfeld, Jessica Heslam, Holly Robichaud, Kimberly Atkins and Andy Hiller of WHDH-TV, which will broadcast the debate.

PLUS . . . an editorial AND an op-ed by our BU colleague Tobe Berkovitz.

Whew!

As for the Boston Globe, they have exactly zero – count ’em, zero – mentions of the debate.

We’ll check back in when it’s the Globe’s turn to sponsor a debate.

 

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Mass. State Police Drug Lab(yrinth)

October 1, 2012

The current Massachusetts crime-lab rumpus is nicely revealing the true nature of Boston’s local dailies.

From Sunday’s Boston Globe (boink! sorry, paywall):

How a chemist dodged lab protocols

Close supervision is key in a lab, specialists say, and Annie Dookhan’s appeared to lack it

State drug lab chemist Annie Dookhan labeled the vials as containing THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. But when another chemist ran the vials through a machine to confirm Dookhan’s analysis, one had little THC, and another was mixed with morphine and codeine.

The second chemist sent the vials back to Dookhan to resolve the discrepancies, asking her to repeat the screening test the lab used to tentatively identify the drugs in an evidence bag. When she resubmitted them, the machine showed the vials contained pure THC.

The incident, detailed in a 100-page State Police report obtained by the Globe last week, illustrates one of the many ways Dookhan was able to circumvent safeguards intended to ensure that drug evidence was properly handled and analyzed by workers in a now-closed lab formerly run by the state Department of Public Health.

Forensics specialists interviewed by the Globe say the lab’s procedures appear to have been fairly standard, including having two chemists test every sample, but they were still not enough to prevent an ambitious chemist’s rampant breaches of lab protocol, apparently to boost her performance record. In the process, investigators say, Dookhan has jeopardized the reliability of drug evidence used in 34,000 cases during her nine-year career.

Substantive, no?

Not so in Sunday’s Boston Herald:

Lab-freed ‘villains’ eyed as Deval’s downfall

Horton effect could sink gov’s future

Every accused drug dealer sprung from jail thanks to the state crime-lab fiasco could be another Willie Horton waiting to snuff out Gov. Deval Patrick’s aspirations for higher office, political watchers say.

“If Deval Patrick were to run for president, this would be a huge issue,” former state treasurer Joe Malone, a Republican, said. “This is a case where every American would understand that this kind of malpractice on his administration’s part puts criminals back on the street. Willie Horton certainly comes to mind.”

Horton is the convicted murderer whose violent crime spree while on weekend furlough from prison under Michael Dukakis’ watch was the subject of an infamous attack ad that helped sink the former governor’s 1988 presidential bid.

And now Patrick, who has said he will not run for re-election and is seen as a rising Democratic star on the national stage, must watch as offenders in potentially thousands of cases try to use evidence tainted by alleged rogue chemist Annie Dookhan, who was arrested Friday, as their ticket to freedom.

No investigation. Just speculation.

That’s right: The Herald.

 

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