The hardbeating staff was out most of Friday punishing the Glen Ellen golf course, so we’re a bit late to this story. But yesterday’s local dailies had a very interesting sports smackdown.
First, the Boston Herald totally pwned the Boston Globe on Aaron Hernandez being kicked out of Gillette Stadium:
Then again, the Globe totally pwned the Herald on this story:
Let the wild Aaron Hernandez rumpus begin!
P.S. The hardreading staff apologizes for lagging. Back up to speed later.
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Uncategorized | Tagged: Aaron Hernandez, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Gillette stadium, Glen Ellen golf course, New England Patriots | 
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Posted by Campaign Outsider
All the while self-styled vigilante John Martorano has occupied center stage in the James “Whitey” Bulger trial this week, he’s been joined at the hit – sorry, hip – with Boston Herald scribbler Howie Carr, who split a six-figure advance with Martorano for the book Hitman.
But in his Herald column today, Peter Gelzinis writes Carr out of the picture.
Blood money only motivation for Johnny Martorano
“Other than the 20 people you killed, Mr. Martorano, is there anything else notable in your life?”
The 72-year-old henchman of Winter Hill decked out in a light blue suit seemed a bit bewildered by the question Hank Brennan, co-counsel for Whitey Bulger, tossed at him.
After momentarily wrestling with it, much like a bear might grapple with a camper’s jar of peanut butter, Johnny Martorano said, “I can’t change it.”
No, he can’t. But that hasn’t stopped him from trying to squeeze every nickel he can from the loathsome life he’s lived.
Gelzinis writes further, “[y]esterday, we learned that in addition to the $250,000 Johnny pocketed for the movie rights to his life story, he stands to make another 250 grand if such a film ever makes it into production. And that’s not counting the $70,000 or so he says he’s made from his book.”
What Gelzinis chooses not to mention is that Carr was Martorano’s partner in Murder, Ink.
Conveniently, the Boston Globe’s Kevin Cullen fills in the blanks in his column today:
Brennan nailed Johnny when he got him to talk about how he has made money since being released from custody.
“Are you remorseful, Mr. Martorano?” Brennan asked.
“Yes,” Johnny replied.
But, Mr. Martorano, you wrote a book with Howie Carr and made money off the blood of your victims, Hank Brennan suggested. You split the $110,000 advance for the book with Carr, Mr. Martorano.
So, wait – Martorano got $70,000 and Carr got $40,000? Sounds like someone got strong-armed.
1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Hank Brennan, Hitman, Howie Carr, James "Whitey" Bulger, John Martorano, Kevin Cullen, Murder Ink, Peter Gelzinis | Permalink
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Talk about mailing it in: Apparently Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr can cover the James “Whitey” Bulger trial without actually attending it.
First, today’s third-class piece:
Johnny’s bad, but not the real rat
The worst word you can ever use against Johnny Martorano is “rat,” so you can bet that Whitey Bulger’s lawyers will be throwing it up against him again this morning within 30 seconds or so of resuming their cross-examination.
They’ll be trying to make him lose his cool. Good luck with that.
Stipulated, I wrote a book with Martorano, and we split the profits. I get along pretty well with him. So does just everybody else I know who knows him, believe it or not.
Carr’s readers? Not so friendly. Representative (if ungrammatical) sample:
And it gets even worse when it turns out Carr was a no-show yesterday:
Unless the hardreading staff is misreading this, Howie’s reporting telepathically.
Meanwhile, crosstown at the Boston Globe Kevin Cullen has his daily bookend to Carr’s whatever.
Pretty sure Cullen was even in the courtroom.
3 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Boston Globe, Boston Herald, David Hunt, hair plugs, Howie Carr, James "Whitey" Bulger, John Martorano, Kevin Cullen, WRKO | Permalink
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From our Walt Whitman desk
By now it’s clear to the hardreading staff – as it should be to everyone – that the trial of mobster James “Whitey” Bulger is about one thing and one thing only:
Howie Carr.
The Boston Herald columnist previously milked his presence on Bulger’s witness list for some bulk-mail pieces. Now it’s John Martorano’s turn to get a Carr ride.
From today’s piece:
Martorano’s ‘career’ nothing to be proud of
Johnny Martorano seems a little more subdued these days. He’s 72 now, but it’s more than that.
I think it’s the fact that unlike during the earlier Zip Connolly trials, he’s been back in Boston for a while now. He sees his family, they can read the papers, and even though “hit man” is a fearsome job description, obviously it’s not anything to brag about.
And by the way, Johnny was absolutely correct on the witness stand yesterday. I did name the biography about him “Hitman” — actually, it was one of my neighbors in Florida. And yes, it is named “Hitman” because I thought that title would sell more.
And etc.
Crosstown at the Boston Globe, Kevin Cullen also addressed what label should be attached to Martorano:
[A]ccording to Johnny Martorano, he was no hitman. He murdered people. Many people. But he didn’t do it for money. He did it for friendship. He did it for honor. He did it for blah, blah, blah.
Seriously, I don’t know what’s more ridiculous: Whitey’s claim that he was never an informant, or Johnny Martorano’s insistence that he was never a hitman.
Hey, Kevin, don’t you know: That’s “Hitman” with a capital Howie. Just ask ‘im.
5 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Howie Carr, James "Whitey" Bulger, John Martorano, Kevin Cullen, Walt Whitman | Permalink
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The Boston Herald wants to increase its number of home subscribers from the current level of 17, so it’s been running this ad the past few days:
Always Relevant, eh? So how come Herald home subscribers got no coverage of last night’s NBA Finals game in their one-star editions today? (Sorry – no pictures. The Missus has a real job.)
Lucky for the fusty local tabloid, any suckers who fall for its home delivery pitch won’t know what they’re missing until it’s too late.
Heisty, eh?
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: Boston Herald, fusty local tabloid, home delivery, the Missus | Permalink
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THE BOSTON HERALD WANTS YOU to swell the ranks of its current 17 home subscribers. So it ran this ad in today’s edition:
Always Relevant? Seriously?
Here’s Page One of the sports section Herald home subscribers received this morning.
Page 2 (photos courtesy of the Missus):
And that was the four-star edition.
Once again, crosstown rival Boston Globe delivered an eight-page Stanley Cup section.
Hey, Heraldniks: You haven’t just lost your fastball. This is like tee ball for the hardreading staff.
Seriously.
2 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Boston Globe, Boston Herald, home delivery, Stanley Cup Final, the Missus | Permalink
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It’s not often that the Boston Globe out-tabloids the Boston Herald, but today’s one of those times thanks to this Page One story:
The, er, money quote:
[T]he winner, Lisa Blumenthal, who lives in a single-family home with three parking spots on Commonwealth Avenue valued at more than $5.8 million . . . said the auction was a unique opportunity to get more parking places for guests and workers, although she admitted she didn’t expect the bidding to go so high.
Guests and workers? Seriously? That’s got Herald front page written all over it.
Except here’s what the musty local tabloid ran instead:
C’mon, Heraldniks – you can cuff Ed Markey around anytime. But how often do you get his ‘n’ her parking spaces . . . in the Back Bay . . . at $280,000 a pop . . . for guests and workers?
You’re losing your fastball, guys.
2 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Back Bay parking spaces, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Commonwealth Avenue, Ed Markey, Lisa Blumenthal | Permalink
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After the hardreading staff watched last night’s fabulous triple-overtime Stanley Cup final between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Boston Bruins, we trundled off to bed confident that there would be excellent coverage in today’s local dailies.
But what did we find on our doorstep this morning masquerading as a daily newspaper?
The Boston Herald one-star edition.
Which featured this back page:
And this inside back page (photos courtesy of the Missus):
The heisty local tabloid’s coverage spanned an entire two periods, which turned out to be roughly 40% of the game.
Is that any way to treat the 17 home subscribers the Herald boasts? Sure, the three-star edition had this back page:
BUT WE DIDN’T GET THE THREE-STAR EDITION, DID WE?
Meanwhile, the Boston Globe that plopped onto our front porch had a separate section with eight – count ’em, eight – pages of honest-to-God coverage.
Page One:
Page 8:
Yeah, we know – the Herald subcontracts the Globe’s printing presses so the stately local broadsheet has the advantage. But maybe the Heraldniks should put on some big-boy pants and find an arrangement that doesn’t force them to print a first edition at 11 pm the night before.
If not for their own sake then at least for the few, the proud, the 17.
2 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Boston Bruins, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Chicago Blackhawks, one-star edition, Stanley Cup Final, three-star edition | Permalink
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The Boston Herald goes all news noir in today’s edition, starting with its Page One “Whitey and Crew in Their Lair” collage.
(Just checked – Whitey and Crew aren’t on Pinterest yet)
Inside we get this rogues’ gallery of State Police surveillance shots.
Crosstown at the Boston Globe, it’s Trial Coverage 101 for a non-televised case: courtroom sketches, transcript excerpts, and etc.
One place the two dailies do intersect, though, is in these dueling columns.
Both columnists paint Bulger’s lawyer, Jay Carney, as a man trying to lead the jury down the garden path by contending that Bulger was just a crook, not a murderer or an informant.
From Howie Carr’s column:
“Jim Bulger is of Irish descent and the worst thing an Irish person can do is become an informant.”
There’s not enough space in the paper to refute that one. So how about this one?
“Jim Bulger made millions upon millions upon millions of dollars.”
Then why are we the taxpayers picking up the tab for this “indigent” 83-year-old defendant?
From Kevin Cullen’s column:
It is obvious the defense strategy is to acknowledge that Whitey was a top echelon criminal but to refute any suggestion that he was a top echelon informant for the FBI who used his status to allow him to murder and maim with impunity.
Of course, that plays to Whitey’s grossly inflated view of himself. He was a millionaire! Admire his asset acquisition skills! He got an FBI agent to feed him information about criminal rivals and honest law enforcement efforts to nail him. Admire how he read Machiavelli and took those lessons to heart!
It’s classic Whitey: I’m the smartest guy in the room, and the rest of you are a bunch of rubes who just fell off a turnip truck.
Rats!
1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Howie Carr, Jay Carney, Kevin Cullen, Whitey and Crew in Their Lair, Whitey Bulger | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
From our Compare and Contrast in Clear Idiomatic English desk
Coincidentally (or not) both local dailies have salary surveys of the Boston mayoral candidates today, with – wait for it – mostly different numbers.
Start with the Boston Herald:
BIG BUCKS BACKING BIDS
Herald review shows top earners in mayor’s race
Dorchester health care executive Bill Walczak is the wealthiest among the top tier of mayoral candidates, reporting a staggering $450,000 salary, while state Rep. Martin J. Walsh and City Councilor Michael P. Ross each reported earning more than $200,000, and two others hauled in a quarter-million dollars with their spouses, a Herald review of candidates’ tax returns found.
Walczak, co-founder of the Codman Square Health Center, and his Boston schoolteacher wife, Linda, reported earning a combined $526,000 in 2011, according to a tax return supplied by the Walczak campaign.
Like that “staggering”? That’s the Herald all over.
The feisty local tabloid also listed the incomes of former state representative Charlotte Golar Richie, Boston School Committeeman John Barros, Boston City Councilors Felix Arroyo, Rob Consalvo, and John Connolly, and Suffolk District Attorney Dan Conley.
Crosstown at the Boston Globe, the story looked like this:
Income of Boston mayoral hopefuls varies
Many looking to succeed Menino now earn more than city’s median income
There are no Mitt Romneys in the bunch, no nine-digit personal fortunes, no eye-popping investments. But roughly half of the candidates hoping to succeed Thomas M. Menino as mayor of Boston earn more than double the city’s annual median household income of almost $52,000.
Four of the aspirants would face pay cuts if they move into the fifth-floor office that belongs to the mayor, a job that pays $175,000 a year.
As campaigns clash this summer over affordable housing and the plight of the middle class, tax returns can provide a glimpse of each candidate’s socioeconomic status. The Globe requested 2012 state and federal tax returns for all 15 people running for mayor and found that income varied from roughly $59,000 to $700,000. One candidate gave almost $19,000 to charity; another donated a few hundred dollars, the returns showed.
The stately local broadsheet also included this helpful chart.
Notice not just the different numbers, but the Globe’s inclusion of Robert Cappucci, “a former School Committee member and retired Boston police officer who collects a pension,” and its listing of tax rates and charitable donations – both quite telling.
Notice also who failed to provide tax returns, most conspicuously Councilor Charles Yancey.
Follow-up, anyone?
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: Bill Walczak, Boston City Councilor, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Boston mayoral race, Boston School Committeeman, Charles Yancey, Charlotte Golar Richie, Dan Conley., Felix Arroyo, John Barros, John Connolly, Martin J. Walsh, Michael P. Ross, Rob Consalvo, Robert Cappucci, Suffolk District Attorney, Tom Menino | Permalink
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It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town 