It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town

From our No Credit Where Credit’s Due desk

Let’s stipulate here that the Boston Globe has done yeoman’s work covering the local coronavirus calamity.

But let’s also acknowledge that the Globeniks have occasionally drafted off the work of other news organizations in the process.

Exhibit A: This Page One Globe story last Saturday.

Moving piece. No mention, though, of the Boston Herald’s Page One story that ran three days earlier.

Exhibit B: This piece by Steve Annear in yesterday’s Globe.

Separated by coronavirus, 88-year-old Watertown man uses bucket truck to see wife at nursing home

“They could have lifted me 10 stories and it would not have bothered me,” Nick Avtges said. “As long as I got to see her.”

Up until recently — before everything changed — 88-year-old Nick Avtges would wake up each morning, have his breakfast, and then head out to see his wife, Marion, at the Maristhill Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, where she’s been living for the last year. He would stay with her all day, hardly leaving her side.

“He’s been a very devoted husband,” said James Tracy, president and administrator of the Waltham center. “He never missed a day.”

But in March, as the novel coronavirus continued to spread, posing a critical threat to residents at facilities like the one where Marion, 85, is staying, the center went from reducing its visitations to not allowing visitors at all.

Once again, no credit to the original story by Joanna Tzouvelis six days ago in the MetroWest Daily News.

(To be sure graf goes here)

To be sure, lots of other news outlets drafted off the MetroWest story without attribution.

But you’d think the Boston Globe – five days later – would be better than that.

Unfortunately, you’d think wrong.