Ever since the Boston Globe dumped the Tank McNamara comic strip from its Scoreboard page last year (a move the hardreading staff roundly denounced), the hately local broadsheet has been shrinking its agate-type offerings at an alarming rate.
Exhibit Umpteen: Saturday’s edition of the Globe, specifically the top of the Scoreboard page.
Look at all those college basketball games. Then look at the anemic Latest line.
That’s just sad.
Crosstown at the Boston Herald, meanwhile, there was this:
And that’s just the half of it. Literally.
Today’s editions bring more of the same. Globe Sports:
Boston Properties and Delaware North Wednesday officially launched construction of a massive new complex on Causeway Street in front of TD Garden and North Station. Dubbed, “The Hub on Causeway,” the first phase of the complex underway will include a new grocery store from Star Market, a 15-screen movie theater from ArcLight Cinema, office space, and underground parking.
The first phase is to open in late 2018.
Additional phases would bring a 38-story residential tower, and two shorter towers for offices and a hotel.
The developers are also building a new entrance to North Station as well as an underground connection between the train and subway stations.
Sure sounds like a press release to us.
That reminded the hardstashing staff of a post we uncharacteristically held off publishing several weeks ago:
When its home delivery isn’t going Chernobyl, the Boston Globe has been all about advertising partnerships lately. So you’ll excuse us if we wonder about this piece in [the January 3rd] Address section of the $tately local broadsheet.
Up close:
The hardcounting staff tallies the plugs (and potential advertisers) thusly:
Heidi Pribell/Pribell Interiors: 5
Medusa Studio: 1
Visual Comfort: 1
Osborne and Little: 1
Oly: 1
Global Views: 1
Bernhardt: 1
Ballard Designs: 1
Maybe nothing will come of this. Maybe something will. We’ll keep an eye out.
[Full disclosure: In truth, we’ve been less than vigilant in tracking the potential advertisers above. We’ll try to do better in the future.]
The headscratching staff freely admits we’re confused: Is Boston’s venerable Northern Avenue Bridge slated for a $100 million fix or a $100 million replacement?
Massive tax breaks that helped bring General Electric’s world headquarters to the Hub are being blasted by critics for creating too sweet a deal for the global conglomerate — but don’t expect a public movement like the one that derailed the Boston 2024 Olympic bid to sidetrack the relocation.
In exchange for agreeing to move its global headquarters to the booming Seaport District, GE will get $145 million in grants and tax breaks from the city and state. But under the agreement, Boston will also pay up to $100 million to fix the dilapidated Northern Avenue Bridge . . .
The Northern Avenue Bridge could soon fall down, and US Representative Stephen Lynch is ready to release $9.4 million in federal funding to help design a new one.
The city will need to match a portion of the money, but Lynch has been waiting more than a decade for Boston to do something about the century-old span. Last week, officials said they plan to start removing the dilapidated bridge in March after the Coast Guard raised concerns that it might tumble into the Fort Point Channel.
But here’s the headscratching part:
The Walsh administration will begin a formal public process this spring to decide whether to rehab the bridge or build a new one. The city has to do something after committing up to $100 million to replace the link as part of its agreement to woo General Electric Co.’s world headquarters to Boston.
Except the Herald says the commitment is to fix the link, not replace it.
So, to recap:
The local dailies agree that the Northern Avenue Bridge is dilapidated.
But, as Leung might say, will the state fix it or nix it?
Yesterday’s Boston Herald featured this endorsement in the New Hampshire GOP presidential primary.
A former U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, [Chris] Christie knows something about being on the front lines of the ongoing war on terror. And he’s certainly not reluctant to talk about where this nation has gone astray on the international front.
But as governor of a largely Democratic state he also knows well that you don’t get anything done on the homefront without cooperation.
He has been gutsy on the campaign trail — and yes it takes guts to talk about entitlement reform, which he has.
He has also established a solid reputation in New Jersey for education reform and expanding school choice, and for criminal justice reform, including tackling the growing problem of drug addiction by expanding the use of drug courts and treatment options.
And there is just something about that Jersey guy attitude — feisty but not mean-spirited, tough but not hateful — that has a shot at taking an angry electorate and helping it find a focus and a purpose.
Not mean-spirited? Not hateful? Tell that to the young woman Christie sandblasted in a New Hampshire town hall meeting Monday night when she asked why he hadn’t stayed in his home state a little longer to help the recovery effort from last weekend’s monster snowstorm.
Not to get technical about it, but it wasn’t “just one county” in Jersey that got walloped by the storm. So Christie is not only mean-spirited, he’s a liar. Even worse, Christie went on for another five minutes berating the young woman.
Memo to the feisty (but not mean-spirited?) local tabloid:
At least that’s the assumption of Publishers Circulation Fulfillment, the Globe’s once and current distributor. For the past few days, PCF has run this ad in the drivey local tabloid.
The details:
But, as the hardreading staff has noted, “Before anyone jumps at this excellent opportunity . . . he might do well to check out Aviva Chomsky’s In These Times piece about the whole Globe delivery meltdown and the havoc new distributor ACI Media has wreaked on local drivers. In addition to all the ACI mishegoss, there’s this collateral damage: ‘[T]hose who were kept on by PCF are also faced with longer routes to deliver the same number of papers, because of the Globe’s decision.'”
Publishers Circulation Fulfillment, the Boston Globe’s off-again on-again demi-distributor, is looking for a few good drivers . . . in the Boston Herald.
From today’s edition of the drivey local tabloid:
Details here:
Before anyone jumps at this excellent opportunity, though, he might do well to check out Aviva Chomsky’s In These Times piece about the whole Globe delivery meltdown and the havoc new distributor ACI Media has wreaked on local drivers. In addition to all the ACI mishegoss, there’s this collateral damage:
[T]hose who were kept on by PCF are also faced with longer routes to deliver the same number of papers, because of the Globe’s decision.
The Great Editorial Bake Sale proceeds apace at the Boston Globe.
As the hardreading staff has previously noted, the $tately local broadsheet is the NASCAR of newsprint, with logos peppered on it every which way. Take, for the latest example, today’s edition of Capital, starting Page One upper left.
That’s bookended by the strip across the bottom of the page.
And echoed in this page 3 ad.
Moving on, we have James Pindell’s Ground Game, brought to you by Steward.
Not coincidentally, Steward Health Care System also bought the back page.
Last, and sort of least, the Globe mortgaged its Politics Cafe to Capital One, a natural fit for this particular section..
So to recap: There are now a myriad of ways to use the pages of the Boston Globe to plug your products or services. Nothing especially egregious in most of the above, except allowing Steward to attach itself to editorial content. That’s a slippery slope the mately local broadsheet really should stay off.
The New England Patriots player who police said did the right thing by rescuing a woman trapped in a car took to Twitter late yesterday to condemn all the haters who doubted his good deed.
FOXBOROUGH — Heroes don’t always wear capes — sometimes they wear football uniforms.
Patriots backup linebacker Darius Fleming played in Saturday’s playoff victory over the Chiefs with 22 stitches in his right calf, two days after cutting his leg after he kicked out the window of a car to assist a woman who had just gotten into a three-car accident on Route 1, near Gillette Stadium.
“Obviously he had no regards for himself. Just wanted to get the girl out,” said eyewitness Stephanie Kube. “Came in, saved the day and left. A true hero.”
Not a word about the trolls.
Nor did the lately local broadsheet have a word about racial tensions at Boston Latin School, which was Page One in the Herald.
Black students at Boston Latin, the nation’s oldest, most prestigious public school, set off a social media firestorm this week, accusing the elite exam school of ignoring the casual use of racial slurs and offensive online taunts.
In a YouTube video posted Monday, two students representing a group called Black Leaders Advocating for Change and Knowledge said the school has turned a deaf ear to their concerns about classmates’ racial slights.
“We are here to make our voices heard, to show BLS administration and everyone that we refuse to be silenced and we’re not afraid to speak up,” the students say in the video. “We’re here to use this campaign to unite our community, to unite the community of black alumni and the students of color at BLS and schools like it.”
Examples from the tweetly local tabloid:
We’ll see if there’s Change and Knowledge on Morrissey Boulevard anytime soon.
Patriots defensive end Chandler Jones was rushed to Norwood Hospital Sunday morning after he showed up at the Foxboro Police Department with a medical emergency, police dispatch records show.
But police officials won’t say what the emergency was and the police chief confirmed information was deleted from dispatch records before they were released to the Herald yesterday.
Dispatch records show Jones arrived at the police station at 7:42 a.m. Sunday and was evaluated by fire and EMS officials before being transported to Norwood Hospital just after 8 a.m.
Regardless, Foxboro police Chief Edward T. O’Leary did an end run around the Herald’s questions, “[denying] his department and officers had any dealing with Jones over the weekend and [adding] the only time he’d ever seen Jones was being interviewed on television.”
That proved to be entirely false. But why get technical about it.
Crosstown, the Boston Globe ate the firsty local tabloid’s dust, running a story on D5 that mentioned the Herald six times in 11 paragraphs.
FOXBOROUGH — Chandler Jones had a bad reaction to synthetic marijuana leading to his admittance to Norwood Hospital Sunday, a source familiar with the situation told the Globe Wednesday.
The source said Jones lives near the Foxborough police station and walked there to seek help after he had the reaction.
Crosstown the other way, the Fargo Street Gang has a solid follow-up today, but not all the details.
Dispatch records show a Foxboro officer also secured Jones’ residence during the Sunday incident.
“The front door’s open,” the officer says when he arrives at Jones’ home, which is about a block from the station, and later reports: “Yeah, I got his keys off the kitchen table. I was able to lock the front door. If you want to just pass along to the fire he was definitely involved in Class D — Delta — before this happened, just so they know.”
Delta is a police call sign to denote the letter D, while Class D is a category of controlled substances under the state’s drug laws, according to a law enforcement source. Class D drugs include marijuana and some prescription drugs, which can be legal.
So there’s more difference between the Boston dailies than how they spell Foxboro(ugh). That’s just swell.
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