Globe Retweets From Its Patrick-Third-Term Gaffe

March 21, 2013

So Gov. Deval Patrick made a joke yesterday about running for a third term and wouldn’t you know some people took him seriously and faster than you can say tweet tweet it was out there on the social media wire.

From today’s Boston Globe:

Patrick trips online firestorm with reelection joke

For a few minutes early Wednesday afternoon, the Massa chusetts political world was in flames.

Governor Deval Patrick’s attempt at humor during an appear ance at the University of Massachusetts Boston went viral, leading many to believe that he would seek a third term. That would have been news, indeed, since Patrick has long professed to be satisfied with two terms.

And, while there is no law prohibiting a third consecutive term, there is no modern precedent.

“#Breaking: @MassGovernor announces he’s running for a third term” New England Cable News network tweeted at 1:10 p.m. to its more than 19,000 followers.

That ignited a firestorm of retweets, online exclamations of disbelief, and panicked phone calls by news organizations looking to catch up on a story that would dramatically remake the state’s political landscape.

 

It turned out to be a false alarm, but what the Globe piece fails to mention is that one of its own was among the retweeters. It was left to our feisty local tabloid to reveal the full story.

From today’s Boston Herald:

NECN tweets from the hip

A red-faced NECN chalked its social media gaffe up to “human error” yesterday after firing off a mistaken tweet declaring Gov. Deval Patrick was running for a third term — a blunder experts say newspeople can avoid by thinking before they tweet.

The cyber slip spread like wildfire to Washington, D.C., where it was retweeted by a Boston Globe reporter, and the governor’s press office was forced to field a barrage of calls. Social media experts say the blame lies with shoddy journalism.

“Twitter’s not dangerous — the people who use it can be,” said Al Tompkins of the journalism think tank the Poynter Institute.

Added “Twitter for Dummies” lead author Laura Fitton: “It doesn’t matter where that person published it. People tend to blame the tool. People will blame Twitter, but that’s just bad journalism.”

 

Ouch.

Here’s the twitstream:

Picture 7

 

A spokeswoman for our stately local broadsheet told the Herald’s Jessica Heslam that reporter Matt Viser followed the newspaper’s social media policy. “He retweeted a trusted source, NECN,” she said,”and the second NECN said it made a mistake, Matt retweeted that. All of this took place within a minute.”

Hey – maybe that’s why the Globe didn’t report it today. It happened too fast.

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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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Why Aren’t The Boston Dailies Asking About the Gardener Guard?

March 20, 2013

Both local dailies on Tuesday featured the blockbuster revelation that the FBI knows who stole 13 works of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum 23 years ago.

Boston Globe:

paintings-4793FBI says it knows identity of Gardner art thieves

Names not divulged; trail of Gardner masterworks ended with a sale try a decade ago; investigators cite progress, seek help in cracking 1990 case

Federal investigators, in an unprecedented display of confidence that the most infamous art theft in history will soon be solved, said Monday that they know who is behind the Gardner Museum heist 23 years ago and that some of the priceless artwork was offered for sale on Philadelphia’s black market as recently as a decade ago.

In the most extensive account to date of the investigation, Richard DesLauriers, the FBI special agent in charge of the Boston office, would not identify those involved in the heist, saying it would hinder the ongoing investigation. But he said that knowing the identity of the culprits has “been opening other doors” as federal agents continue their search for the missing artwork.

 

Boston Herald:

BI1E6653.JPGFBI: We know who pulled off Gardner art heist

The stunning revelations that the 13 masterworks stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum were shuttled through Connecticut and Philadelphia and peddled for sale in Pennslvania — and most amazingly, the FBI knows who did it — whipped even the most fervent experts of the infamous 1990 heist into frenzy yesterday, stoking optimism that authorities may soon solve the world’s greatest art theft.

Federal authorities, speaking on the 23rd anniversary of Boston’s last great unsolved mystery, said yesterday that members of an East Coast “crime organization” orchestrated the daring theft and then tried selling a share of their $500 million haul in Philadelphia a decade ago.

 

But neither paper seemed to ask the obvious question:

Does this new knowledge have anything to do with the recent re-interviewing of the hippie Gardner guard as reported by the Globe last week?

cavanaugh_17gardner4_metroDecades after the Gardner heist, police focus on guard

Night watchman Richard Abath may have made the most costly mistake in art history shortly after midnight on March 18, 1990. Police found him handcuffed and duct-taped in the basement of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum seven hours after he unwisely opened the thick oak door to two thieves who then stole 13 works of art valued at more than $500 million.

For years, investigators discounted the hapless Abath’s role in the unsolved crime, figuring his excessive drinking and pot smoking contributed to his disastrous decision to let in the robbers, who were dressed as police officers. Even if the duo had been real cops, watchmen weren’t supposed to admit anyone who showed up uninvited at 1:24 a.m.

But, after 23 years of pursuing dead ends, including a disappointing search of an alleged mobster’s home last year, investigators are focusing on intriguing evidence that suggests the former night watchman might have been in on the crime all along — or at least knows more about it than he has admitted.

 

Is it just us, or are the Boston news media not connecting the dots?

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Local Dailies Disappear Bonwit Teller from Boston’s Retail History

March 19, 2013

There’s been lots of hubbub the last two weeks over Restoration Hardware’s botched opening (Worst. Party. Ever.) in its new home at 234 Berkeley Street.

Including yesterday’s Boston Globe front page piece:

hardwareAfter packed debut, store at a standstill

Restoration Hardware has buzz, goods, but no permit

On March 5, Gary Friedman, the silver-haired CEO emeritus of Restoration Hardware, was warned that a party in Boston the next night to celebrate the opening of his enormous store could get seriously overcrowded.

“We can ask for forgiveness [afterward],” he told the group, according to people who were there.

Friedman denies saying that, but 24 hours later, police and fire officials were indeed summoned to the former Louis Boston building at 234 Berkeley St. to block a horde of smartly dressed men and women trying to shoehorn themselves through the store’s gaping steel-and-glass doors.

Now, forgiveness isn’t all Friedman needs. The 40,000-square-foot home goods store selling $279 duvet covers and $895 riveted mesh chandeliers still doesn’t have an occupancy permit. Even after the over-the-top party and a photo-op ribbon-cutting, the lavish store in the heart of the trendy Newbury Street shopping district isn’t open. And it’s not clear when it will be.

 

Further on:

It was nearly two years ago that Restoration Hardware — now branded simply as RH — announced plans to move into the historic Berkeley Street building, the 150-year-old former home of the New England Museum of Natural History and, more recently, the luxury emporium Louis Boston.

 

That’s the keystroke version of “the historic Berkeley Street building,” repeated in the Boston Herald’s coverage:

The party, to celebrate the opening of the new Restoration Hardware, an upscale furniture and fixture boutique in the old Louis Boston building, quickly became the hottest ticket of the year.

 

What both papers have missed are the glory years of the historic Berkeley Street building when it was occupied – beautifully – by Bonwit Teller.

Representative image:

bonwit_teller_1

 

The Louis Boston renovation was an abomination, and the hardreading staff – which was decidedly not invited to the Restoration Hardware meltdown – doubts the latest incarnation is much better.

But, as the historic Berkeley Street building is repeatedly demeaned, let’s at least remember when it was historically honored.

 

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Herald’s Joe Fitz Kisses Phoenix Goodbye

March 18, 2013

From our Late to the (Going Away) Party desk

Last week the Boston Phoenix got its front-page Ave atque Vale from the Boston Globe’s Joseph P. Kahn. (It also got a mournful editorial and this spiffy op-ed by ex-intern Joe Keohane, among other coverage.)

The Boston Herald? A whopping five paragraphs.

Until Saturday, that is. And from the unlikeliest of sources: Columnist Joe Fitzgerald, who notes the anomaly straight off.

DSC_8269.JPGWhen a newspaper dies, we all lose

You can add this column to the list of mourners now grieving the passing of the Boston Phoenix, even though its publisher, Steve Mindich, made no bones about his disdain for this writer.

The feeling was mutual, but that’s not what this is about.

It’s bigger than that.

You may question the objectivity of this observation, considering its biased source, but nothing serves a community the way a newspaper does.

It’s informative, annoying, provocative and vigilant, constantly stirring the pot of civic awareness, constantly poking at apathy, or at least that’s what it’s supposed to do, and the Phoenix did it well.

 

Fitzgerald adds that the Phoenix was also radical, rude, and impertinent, not to mention prone to “push[ing] the boundaries of good taste.”

Of course, leave off the “radical” and you have a pretty good description of the Herald as well. Not to get technical about it.

Regardless, it was good of Fitzgerald to send the Phoenix off.

 

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Herald Ambush-Interviews Ex-Early Ed Chief

March 16, 2013

From our Dog with a Bone desk

The Boson Herald absolutely owns the Sherri Killins story, and today our feisty local tabloid adds another chapter to the saga of the Moonlighting Moonbat (our formulation).

Page One (via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages):

MA_BH

 

Enterprising reporter Matt Stout apparently staked out Killin’s Connecticut (!) home, and caught her for the classic driveway interview:

031513killinsmg002Ex-early ed boss: I gave job my all

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The state’s former early education chief finally broke her silence yesterday, saying she gave “everything” she had to her $200,000-a-year job, worked nights and weekends to make up for her controversial moonlighting internship and racked up nearly 100,000 miles the past two years commuting to the Bay State from her home here.

“I gave everything I had to Massachusetts. … I gave everything I had. Massachusetts is in a good place, it is a good time for me to move on,” Sherri Killins told the Herald in the driveway of her white two-story Colonial, where she’s lived while heading the $499 million Department of Early Education and Care, and training as a future school superintendent in a 300-hour internship at Ware Public Schools.

 

And there’s plenty more for the Herald’s bloodthirsty mob to chew on, and  – as these comments indicate – they totally masticate Killins.

Your pun-chline goes here.

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Herald Columnists Double-Team Gomez

March 15, 2013

GOP Senate wannabe Gabriel Gomez gets tuned up real good in the Boston Herald today. Two columnists – Howie Carr and Michael Graham –  give Gomez a working-over (the kind of pigpile that’s a specialty at our feisty local tabloid) for the letter he sent to Deval Patrick asking to be appointed to the interim U.S. Senate seat.

Start with Carr’s drive-by:

GomezGabriel Gomez is one of Dem guys

Gabriel Gomez is the Eddie Haskell of the Mass. Republican Party.

Only instead of sucking up to Mrs. Cleaver, in January the Republican candidate for the Senate was currying favor with Gov. Deval Patrick, begging for the interim appointment to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by John F. Kerry.

Actually, given Gomez’s obsession with ethnicity, as shown in his obsequious missive, perhaps he should be referred to as the Eduardo Haskell of the state GOP.

In case you haven’t yet read his letter to Gov. Mini-Me, Gomez makes it clear that he is a “Latino.” A Latino of “Latino background,” he elaborates . . .

 

You get the idea.

On the op-ed page, Graham also gets his licks in:

GomezGOP can do better than Gomez

I supported John McCain in 2008.” — Gabriel Gomez, Feb. 28, to Fox 25.

“I supported President Obama in 2008.” – Gomez, in a Jan. 17 letter to Gov. Deval Patrick

Is it asking too much for a Republican candidate in Massachusetts to be, you know … a Republican?

 

And etc., winding up with this: “Do the GOP party bosses really think that what Massachusetts swing voters want is a candidate they can’t trust? A guy who says right up front — ‘hey, I’ll take any position — just give me the job!'”

Crosstown at the Boston Globe, meanwhile, it was GOP women abandoning Gomez.

Republican US Senate candidate Gabriel E. Gomez lost the support of two of the three leaders of his women’s coalition Thursday, a day after releasing a letter that showed him praising Governor Deval Patrick, a Democrat, and attest ing to his support for President Obama in the 2008 election.

Angela Davis of Foxborough and Rachel Kemp of Boston both left the campaign less than a week after they were named cochairwomen of the Women for Gomez group.

Kemp confirmed her departure but would not comment on her reasoning. Davis also declined to detail her reasoning, but in a message obtained by the Globe, Davis told Gomez campaign aides she was quitting, saying, “The last 24 hours have been a turning point.”

 

Yeah – as in turning against point.

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Pope-a-Scope in the Boston Dailies

March 14, 2013

Boston being the Cathaholic hub that it is, the hardreading staff is not surprised at the hallelujah chorus in today’s local papers.

Start with the Boston Herald, which doesn’t measure its coverage of newly minted Pope Francis I, it weighs it.

Page One of our feisty local tabloid:

Picture 2

 

And then . . .

Picture 4

 

And then . . .

Picture 5

 

And then . . .

Picture 7

 

And then . .

Picture 8

 

And then . . .

Picture 9

 

And then . . . there was no more news coverage.

But wait – there’s this: An editorial (Francis a true first) and this editorial cartoon by Jerry Holbert:

holbert's 03-14 cartoon

 

Okay then.

Crosstown rival Boston Globe also weighed in with some heavy-duty (if ad-laden) coverage:

Page One of our stately local broadsheet:

Picture 15

 

And then . . .

Picture 12

 

And then . . .

Picture 13

 

And then . . .

Picture 14

 

And then there’s this op-ed by James Carroll (no relation):

Picture 16

 

And then . . .

That’s it.

Which paper did a better job?

I’ll leave that up to you.

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Bay State GOP Has a (Corned) Beef with Bay State Dems

March 14, 2013

From our Late to the (St. Pat’s Day) Party desk

First it was the gays and lesbians who couldn’t march in the South Boston St. Patrick’s Day parade.

Now it’s the Republican U.S. Senate hopefuls who can’t attend the South Boston St. Patrick’s Day breakfast.

Wednesday’s Boston Herald Page One:

Picture 3

The Hillary Chabot/Joe Battenfeld piece:

Saint Patrick's Day<br /><br /> * Wearing of the green|<br /><br /> * In Irelan‘No corned beef’ for 
GOP Senate hopefuls

The St. Patrick’s Day schmoozefest in South Boston will be missing something notable this Sunday — not bad jokes or warm beer, but all three Republican U.S. Senate candidates, who say they’ve been snubbed by the annual gathering of political power brokers.

Both Democratic Senate candidates, U.S. Reps. Stephen F. Lynch and Edward J. Markey, were invited and given speaking roles at the roast, which is traditionally a chance for candidates to get noticed by a statewide viewing audience.

“We weren’t invited to the party. No corned beef for Mike Sullivan,” said Lisa Barstow, spokeswoman for the former U.S. attorney, one of the three GOP Senate candidates. “It’s either a silly oversight or poor form. … Mike’s definitely got his Irish credentials.”

That’s a significant break with tradition, as the Herald piece notes. Bill Weld, Scott Brown, even Charlie Baker – all were invited to the hoedown in the past.

That was then. This is now:

Boston City Councilor Bill Linehan, the new host of the event, confirmed to the Herald last night that he didn’t invite any Republicans to speak this year, but said it was because only elected officials such as Lynch and Markey were getting speaking roles.

The Boston Globe-Repeater followed up with . . . nothing.

Score another one for our feisty local tabloid.

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