Boston Globe Media Partners should launch a new vertical – maybe Clux.com? – to house all their apologies for the Globe’s kissing’ cousin, Boston.com.
You’d think – after the t-shirt hit the fan the other week – there’d be some kind of moratorium on Boston.commentary down at Morrissey Boulevard. No such luck. Yesterday one of the Boston.comics posted a piece with the headline “Would Anyone Have Noticed if Bartender Succeeded in Poisoning John Boehner?”
It included this piece of sparkling wit (via Politico’s Hadas Gold):
The question is: Would anyone have noticed? Stories about Boehner’s drinking have circulated for years. His drinking inspired a blog called DrunkBoehner, and in 2010 he brought booze back to Washington. Had he been poisoned as planned, perhaps his pickled liver could have filtered out the toxins.
That led to this media culpa at Boston.com:
Last night, an opinion piece was published on Boston.com that has since been adjusted to what you’ll see below. The original column made references to Speaker Boehner that were off-color and completely inappropriate. It reflected the opinions of one of our writers; what it did not reflect, by any standards, were the site’s collective values. Rather than remove any reference to it or pretend it didn’t happen, we are handling with transparency and self-awareness. We are sorry, and we will do better. –Corey Gottlieb, General Manager, Boston.com
Right – “adjusted.” There’s also this: “Editor’s note: A previous version of this article made an unsubstantiated reference to the health of Speaker Boehner.”
Geez – any way they could have been a little vaguer?
Regardless, it was mother’s milk to the frisky local tabloid, which piled on with this high-priced spread (special bonus Inexplicable Green Numbers!):
The Globe, for its part, featured this blandish piece in today’s Metro section.
Look for Boston GlobeSox owner John Henry to lob a neutron bomb at Boston.com. When the dust settles, he might want to consider these recommendations from the redoubtable Dan Kennedy. Just for starters.
It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town 