The post-Boston Marathon bombings ads continue to gravitate toward our stately local broadsheet.
For starters, the Boston Sunday Globe featured this half-page ad:
Topping that was this full-page ad in the same edition:
Notice the sponsors: The Buck – sorry, Back Bay Association and the Newbury Street League.
Funny, but neither ad ran in Sunday’s Boston Herald.
The feisty local tabloid might want to look here for the reason.
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Uncategorized | Tagged: Back Bay Association, Bloomingdale's, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Buck Bay Association, feisty local tabloid, Marvin Traub, New York Post, Newbury Street League, stately local broadsheet | 
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Posted by Campaign Outsider
Today’s local dailies have – wait for it – very different takes on the disposition of suspected Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body.
Start – where else? – with the Boston Herald’s front page:
Inside you get a twofer: this Peter Gelzinis column and, more notably, this news report:
Funeral director asks for help from government
‘This is a nightmare’
A Worcester funeral home director is pleading for government officials to use their influence to convince a cemetery to bury Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but so far no state or federal authorities have stepped forward to help out.
“We have a body for burial that has caused a lot of controversy and we can’t continue to play this game,” said Peter Stefan, owner of the Graham, Putnam and Mahoney Funeral Parlors. “Under normal circumstances, the government would say it’s (the funeral parlor’s) responsibility to find a place for burial, but this is not normal circumstances. This is a nightmare.”
Okay. But crosstown at the Boston Globe, we get a very different Peter Stefan, in this case well into a piece headlined “Bombing suspects body to undergo 2nd autopsy.”
Peter Stefan, owner of Graham Putnum & Mahoney Funeral Parlors, vowed to secure a plot quickly.
“This ends Monday,” Stefan said. “We will find a cemetery by the end of the day Monday.”
Stefan said he was determined to give Tsarnaev a proper Muslim burial in a cemetery with what he referred to as a designated Muslim section . . .
“If they had asked me to bury Adolf Hitler, I would have buried him,” Stefan said. “It’s what we do.”
Wow. Just imagine what the Herald could have done if Stefan had given that quote to the feisty local tabloid.
Then again, the story’s young. Let’s wait for it.
2 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Graham Putnum & Mahoney Funeral Parlors, Peter Gelzinis, Peter Stefan, Tamerlan Tsarnaev | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
Have some asbestos gloves handy if you’re reading the Boston Herald today. Here’s the lede of the lead editorial:
The whole narrative confirms that while the radical motivations of the Tsarnaev brothers — and perhaps, it remains to be seen, some of their training — came from international jihadist movements, the bombing was also the product of family dysfunction, youthful nihilism, and a pattern of low-level crimes escalating into a very major one.” —Boston Globe editorial May 3.
Dear Officer Krupke — of “West Side Story” fame — please call your office. Clearly these boys just have a social disease, so take ’em to a social worker.
It takes a lot for our competitors on Morrissey Boulevard to really get under our skin, but this one just sent us over the edge.
What gets the feisty local tabloid is “the [Globe’s] skepticism about whether the Brothers Tsarnaev were trained by international jihadists” coupled with “[the Globe’s] utter certainty that these two were the product of a dysfunctional family and ‘youthful nihilism.'”
If youthful nihilism is “all it takes to place a backpack with a bomb at the feet of an 8-year-old child and calmly walk away,” the editorial says, “then this nation is in one heap of trouble.”
(Sidebar: The Herald is pursuing the international jihadist angle in its news pages as well, as this piece from today’s paper shows.)
As usual, the comments on the Herald website range from rabid to ribald, but this one is reprintable:
Probably be good for business. Theirs and ours.
2 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Brothers Tsarnaev, international jihadi, Officer Krupke, West Side Story, youthful nihilism | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
In a variation on the old Does Macy’s Tell Gimbel’s? question, the Globe is telling on the Herald – and vice versa.
From Wednesday’s Boston Globe:
Globe circulation continues climb
Paid digital subscriptions rise nearly 50%
Paid circulation at The Boston Globe continues to climb on the strength of digital subscriptions, which shot up by almost 50 percent in six months, according to figures released Tuesday by the Alliance for Audited Media.
The Globe’s weekday circulation, which includes print readership and digital subscriptions, was 245,572 during the six-month period ended in March — the highest since 2009 and 8.9 percent higher than figures for the same period a year earlier. Sunday circulation rose 4.6 percent to 382,452.
But amid the good news, the bad:
The Boston Herald, which charges for an electronic replica of its print edition but offers free access to its website, reported 9,810 weekday digital subscriptions and total circulation of 95,929, an overall decline of 11.6 percent.
The Herald’s Sunday circulation fell 10.8 percent to 73,043.
The Herald did not respond to a request for comment.
Not only that, the Herald did not report its precipitous circulation decline.
But the feisty local tabloid did report the turmoil at Wednesday’s annual shareholder meeting of Globe parent New York Times Co.
New York Times execs on hot seat
Shareholders question wages, Globe sale
NEW YORK — New York Times executives came under pressure over their hefty compensation packages from shareholders yesterday who peppered the corporate brass with questions about belt-tightening and plans to jettison properties such as the Boston Globe.
“What kind of sacrifices have the executives made?” asked William Niederkorn, a former Times reporter, at the 117th annual shareholders meeting. He said he is dismayed to watch the Times’ stock value plummet.
“The stock was once $50 a share, now it’s down to $4,” he said.
Just about how much the Herald might be valued on the open market.
Poetic justice, yes?
Regardless, the Globe, in turn, did not report the Times Co. shareholder dustup.
Just another crisscross in the two-daily town.
2 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Boston Globe, Boston Herald, circulation figures, does Macy's tell Gimbel's, New Tork Times Co., shareholders meeting, William Niederkorn | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
Joe Fitzgerald plays yin to Adrian Walker’s yang in the local dailies today regarding Jason Collins’ coming-out party. Here’s how Walker starts out his Boston Globe column:
Jason Collins’ quiet facilitator
When Jason Collins got in touch with his friend US Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III a few weeks ago, Kennedy had little idea what he wanted to talk about.
The former Stanford roommates agreed to meet in person, before the Marathon bombing upended Kennedy’s schedule. When they finally caught up by phone, Collins had major news: He was gay, and he was going to become a trailblazer, by becoming the first active major-sport American athlete to come out.
Kennedy told him, “This has been a long week, but you just put a smile on my face,’’ the congressman recalled in a telephone inter view.
Later in the piece, Joe K 3.0 says “Jason is a great guy and a great friend . . . He is someone I’ve literally and figuratively looked up to. He’s a historical figure now, but he’s still the same great friend I know.”
Crosstown at the Boston Herald, Joe Fitzgerald isn’t so impressed:
Jason Collins isn’t courageous; just trendy
In telling the world of his sexuality through a cover story in Sports Illustrated, a now openly gay NBA journeyman named Jason Collins is being hailed as courageous and heroic, two weeks after we saw what those words really mean here on the streets of Boston.
Courageous? Heroic? Please.
Later in the piece, Joe Fitz elaborates:
Collins took no risk at all, knowing he’d be the darling of the media, indeed the personification of political correctness. He now has the admiration and affection of multitudes who didn’t know his name two days ago.
That’s heroic? No. Honest? OK. So he’s honest.
But, let’s get real: Being gay in 2013 is no more daring than being a Rotarian.
Yeah, maybe. In Boston. But get back to us after Collins has finished his next road trip.
3 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Adrian Walker, Boston Globe, Boston Herrald, coming-out party, Jason Collins, Joe Fitzgerald, Joseph P. Kennedy III, Rotarians, Stanford | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town 