Scott Brown’s Mash Note to Himself

December 15, 2012

Oddly enough, it was the Boston Globe – not the Boston Herald – that ran this Scott Brown op-ed that was all about . . . him.

A pleasure and a privilege

FOR THE past three years, I have had the great honor and privilege of serving the people of Massachusetts in the Senate. Although I served for only three years, and losing this past election was disappointing, that disappointment is tempered by the great respect I have for the judgment of the people of this Commonwealth. To all the people of Massachusetts, I count myself in your debt, for the confidence you placed in me, and for allowing me to represent you.

 

Nut graf:

I never wanted to go to Washington just to be a senator. I ran because I believed our country was on the wrong track, and I thought I could help by being an independent voice more interested in building bridges than burning them. I kept my promise to be bipartisan, and to serve the interests of everyone in our state.

 

After that, Brown shifts to the Royal We (hey – he’s cavorted with kings and queens, yeah?):

Because we refused to bow to special interests, because we were willing to work across the aisle, we actually got things done to make a positive difference in the lives of our people. We should be incredibly proud of all that we’ve accomplished.

This collaborative and constructive approach helped us pass a Wall Street reform bill to rein in the excesses that brought on the financial crisis . . .

 

Hold it right there:

Brown actually weakened the Dodd-Frank Act, but why get technical about it, right?

The rest of the Globe op-ed is the usual Scottie-Come-Lately litany of bills where Brown saw which way the wind was blowing, then voted with the prevailing breezes.

Re-elect him at your own peril.

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Herald Pulls ‘Crosshairs’ Headline

December 14, 2012

The hardreading staff noted a few hours ago that the BostonHerald.com homepage had the headline “Kerry in the crosshairs if nominated for state” right next to its coverage of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy.

To its credit, the paper has now corrected that unfortunate pairing.

Homepage at 4:20 pm:

 

Picture 3

 

Sad, sad day.

 

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Unfortunate Headline of the Day

December 14, 2012

BostonHerald.com homepage at 1:35 pm:

 

Picture 2

 

Of course, the Herald couldn’t know, when it wrote the “Kerry in the crosshairs” hed, what would transpire only hours later. But it’s a damn good argument to stop using gun references in headlines.

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Boston Globe’s Papal Cut

December 13, 2012

That old Pontifox, Benedict XVI, was all tweetness and light yesterday as he took to Twitter to bless the faithful (over one million served so far).

Picture 1

 

Of course  everybody’s reporting on the gala debut – except the Boston Globe. Its print edition had no mention of it – versus the Boston Herald, which splashed it all over Page Two:

023607_121212pope01Faithful flock to @pontifex

Pope Benedict XVI’s debut tweet kicked His Holiness’ coolness factor up a notch yesterday, but the 85-year-old’s messages of faith will have more merit if he actually socializes with his growing flock of followers, social media experts say.

“It’s one thing to know the Pope’s on Twitter but when the Holy Father — or one of the cardinals — responds to me on Twitter, it’s like, wow, then I’m connected,” said Todd Van Hoosear, principal of Cambridge social media consulting firm Fresh Ground. “That’s social. That’s where they really ought to take it eventually.”

 

And just so the circle will be unbroken, that same Todd Van Hoosear went to @pontifex and plugged his Herald appearance (see bottom tweet):

Picture 3

 

That sort of digital communion is a beautiful thing. As opposed to some of the truly nasty stuff going up @pontifex.

Meanwhile, back at the Globe, they still haven’t jumped on the Popewagon. The only Pope-a-Tweet they have is a preview from last week.

The hardworking staff will let you know if they seek our indulgence.

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Herald on Tim Cahill Mistrial: Not Exactly Martha C(r)oakley

December 13, 2012

Not only did the prosecution of former Massachusetts Treasury Secretary Tim Cahill on ethics violations end in a hung jury, so did the Boston Herald’s coverage of the verdict.

From Hillary Chabot’s column today:

Defeat seen as big blow for Martha Coakley

Attorney General Martha Coakley’s stunning courtroom defeat in the Tim Cahill trial dealt another blow to her political career — spoiling her hopes of rebooting her image and marring her chances for a gubernatorial run, political observers said yesterday.

“Anyone eying the field for the ‘14 gubernatorial race certainly is no less enthusiastic about doing it after today,” said Dan Cence, a key state Democratic operative, after Coakley failed to net a corruption conviction against the former state treasurer.

Added Democratic consultant Mary Ann Marsh: “Obviously it’s a loss for her in that some people will think that while people are sick of politics as usual, this jury thought she was overreaching.”

 

Then again, from the Herald’s editorial on the trial:

Far from innocence

This was never going to be a slam dunk. This case against ex-Treasurer Tim Cahill was always tricky to understand, a complex stew of politics and of governing. And then there was the “but everybody does it” defense.

And so at the end of the day we can’t fault jurors who wrestled for seven days with weeks of testimony for not being able to reach a verdict. Nor should anyone fault Attorney General Martha Coakley for bringing the case in the first place — although there will be many who fall into that camp.

 

Yeah – like the Herald’s own Hillary Chabot.

Not to get technical about it.

Bottom line: Score one for the separation of news pages and editorials.

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Herald on the Ball Re: Napoli Deal

December 12, 2012

So maybe the Mike Napoli signing isn’t sealed and delivered just yet.

From John Tomase’s column in today’s Boston Herald:

3b58dc_080612soxnl33Catch to Mike Napoli signing?

Injury issues may put contract in jeopardy

Mike Napoli was the Red Sox [team stats]’ primary target of the offseason, and he might become their first casualty.

No one on Yawkey Way had anything to say on the matter last night, but alarm bells have been sounding ever since the one-week mark of his three-year, $39 million agreement passed without an official announcement.

Last night the estimable Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports speculated that Napoli’s deal might have hit a snag, noting that he was supposed to be introduced at a Fenway Park [map] news conference yesterday.

 

Interestingly, what reportedly did happen yesterday was Napoli’s physical. Which has led to all kinds of speculation, as the Herald piece notes.

Meanwhile, crosstown at the Globe, the dead-tree edition had nothing on the Napoli deal, but the website caught up this afternoon with this piece:

Red Sox trying to close Mike Napoli deal

The Red Sox are trying to work through some issues that have prevented them from formalizing a new deal with Mike Napoli, according to a major league source, but nothing is resolved yet.

It seems like for days now the Red Sox have been on the verge of an announcing that Napoli had been signed to a three-year, $39 million deal, but none has come.

A newly acquired Red Sox player usually comes to Boston for a physical and officially signs the contract. Then, the player is introduced at a Fenway Park press conference.

 

Call Napoli the player to be quizzed later.

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Hark! The Herald Angles Sing!

December 11, 2012

While the Boston Globe is makes its Pulitzer push with a three-part megaseries about felonious illegal immigrants, the Boston Herald has been scooping up stories hither and yon.

From the feisty local tabloid’s Yon desk: yesterday’s Page One story on Gov. Patrick tolling the bell for Mass. Pike tollbooths.

11afbc_tollsplash_12102012Gov. Deval Patrick plans to take toll on toll takers

Gov. Deval Patrick is putting toll takers on notice and quietly moving forward with a pricey plan to install electronic tolling across the state, despite a budget crisis that’s triggering massive cuts in spending, the Herald Truth Squad has learned.

Patrick’s transportation officials inserted a new clause in a Nov. 21 union contract proposal, obtained by the Truth Squad, that gives the administration power to “have the unlimited right … to eliminate manual toll collection” on all Massachusetts highways.

 

Both Patrick and the Globe gave the Herald a shoutout today (although the paragraph-eight mention in the Globe was more like a whisperout).

From the feisty local tabloid’s Hither desk comes this scoop:

849694_010307radionl02A possible switch to music is all the talk around WTKK

Keep your ears tuned for some big changes at WTKK-FM (96.9).

WTKK NewsTalk owner Greater Media could soon be switching back to all-music because, experts said, “toxic” all-talk formats aren’t attracting enough younger listeners.

Speculation about a format shift reached a fever pitch yesterday when news broke that Internet domain names such as 969Bostons Beat.com, 969TheBeat.com, and Power969 had been gobbled up.

 

Not good news at all, at least from our standpoint.  (Full disclosure: The hardyakking staff does a turn every Friday morning on the Jim & Margery show.)

Others, however – like the redoubtable Dan Kennedy – would disagree.

UPDATE: Dan writes, “I specifically said I hope J&M land elsewhere — you make it sound like I’ll be glad when they’re gone.”

Sorry – that was entirely unintentional. It’s the rest of that lot he won’t miss.

Dan also adds this:

“Some scoop for the Herald, eh? That’s what I thought until this got posted [on Media Nation ].”

Sorted.

Sorta.

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Marty Baron’s Swan Song

December 10, 2012

Call it Marty Baron’s Last (Pulitzer) Waltz.

The Boston Globe editor is leaving to become editor of the Washington Post in January, but in the meantime he’s leaving this: A three-part series called Justice in the Shadows, which details – in impressive detail – the thousands of “convicted criminals released since 2008 because their native countries would not take them back.”

The first installment ran in the Boston Sunday Globe:

greene_secretcriminals2_metJUSTICE IN THE SHADOWS | SECRET CRIMINALS

UNWANTED AT HOME, FREE TO STRIKE AGAIN

The vast and secretive US prison system for immigrants, stymied when it tries to deport some criminals, has quietly released thousands, including killers, a Globe investigation shows.

FLUSHING, N.Y. — Qian Wu thought the man who brutally attacked her was gone forever.

She was sure that Huang Chen, a Chinese citizen who slipped into America on a ship and stayed in the country illegally, would be deported as soon as he got out of jail for choking, punching, and pointing a knife at her in 2006.

But China refused to take Chen back. So, after jailing Chen on and off for three years in Texas, immigration officials believed they were out of options and did what they have done with thousands of criminals like him.

They quietly let him go . . .

Chen then finished what he had started earlier, bashing Wu on the head with a hammer and slashing her with a knife. As she lay crumpled in a grimy stairwell, he ripped out her heart and a lung and fled with his macabre trophies . . .

Wu is just one casualty of an immigration system cloaked in a blanket of secrecy that the Founding Fathers could not have imagined, a blanket that isn’t lifted even when life is at risk.

The Globe has dedicated some serious newshole space to this series. Sunday’s real estate review:

Picture 1

 

Picture 3

 

Picture 4

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And still two parts to come.

Like we said – serious newshole space, serious Pulitzer push.

 

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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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Names & Facial

December 7, 2012

Ever since we found out that Mrs. Tom Brady had a Bundchen in the oven, we knew there’d be a race in the news media to announce  the arrival of the Littlest Ugg Model.

And on the local dailies front, we now have a winner.

The Namesniks at the Globe beat the Track Gals (without Megan!) at the Herald like a Boston traffic light.

The Globe item:

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Sure, the story’s up on the Herald’s website now:

112a28_ltp120712baby01It’s a girl for Gisele Bundchen and Tom Brady

Patriots QB/QT Tom Brady [stats]’s supermodel wife Gisele Bundchen took to Facebook this morning to announce the birth of Vivian Lake, a daughter born “healthy and full of life,” at home on Wednesday.

 “We feel so lucky to have been able to experience the miracle of birth once again and are forever grateful for the opportunity to be the parents of another little angel,” Gi posted along with a touching photo of her hand holding Vivie’s tiny hand.

Yeah yeah – whatever.

We all know it’s the dead-tree bakeoff that really matters. Score another one for the Boring Broadsheet, eh you feisty local tabloiders?

 

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