Our Dogged Local Tabloid (Dennis Lehane Edition)

January 4, 2013

When the Boston Herald gloms onto a good human interest story, it’s like a dog with a bone.

And that goes double for the sad tale of author Dennis Lehane’s dog Tessa, who’s been missing since Christmas Eve.

Today the feisty local tabloid devotes a full page to the dog hunt:

BI1E2265.JPGLehane family ‘can’t give up’

As temps plunge, desperate search for Tessa

Best-selling crime writer Dennis Lehane and his wife, Angie, announced yesterday they are 
offering a cash reward for the safe return of their beloved beagle, 
Tessa, as overnight temperatures have plunged into single digits and days stretch on without word of where she could be.

“We just want her home — want her back with my kids, back with my dogs — we just want her to be happy,” Dennis Lehane said yesterday, addressing whomever may have the pooch.

“So If you can do that, believe me, there won’t be a single question asked … she just needs to come home,” he said.

 

This is the umpteenth piece the Herald has run on the runaway pooch. If the Herald web archives weren’t the unmitigated disaster they are, we’d link you to a bunch of them. But this is what you get when you plug Dennis Lehane into the search box:

Picture 3

 

And then, this:

Picture 4

 

Anyway, the Boston Globe is also covering the story, but on a more modest level. From today’s Names:

chin010313lehanedog_liv04-Dennis Lehane and friends continue search for lost dog

Boston author Dennis Lehane asked his social media followers on Thursday to help him continue his search for his lost dog, Tessa. Lehane invited supporters to meet him at the Stop & Shop in Brookline and at the McDonald’s in Brighton where he and his family and friends put up signs with Tessa’s picture and contact information. Lehane, who reported the rescue dog’s disappearance late last month, has said that he’ll name a character in his next book after anyone who locates the pup. Tessa is a black and tan beagle. Lehane says that if you see her, don’t chase her. There are tips for approaching lost dogs on Lehane’s Finding Tessa Facebook page.

 

That’s the long and short of it.

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Brown: Ex Markeys the Spot in Malden

January 3, 2013

Despite the Boston Herald’s speculation yesterday that Scott Brown (R-Unemployed) might run for governor in 2014, he’s sure acting like a man who wants a return trip to the U.S. Senate.

Today’s Page One Boston Globe story:

Brown swipes at Markey’s residency

Scott Brown, in an attempt to define a potential Senate campaign rival before the race even kicks off, questioned Wednesday whether US Representative Edward J. Markey is a bona fide resident of Massachusetts.

Brown took to talk radio, his favored venue, to question whether Markey, the Malden Democrat whose Senate candidacy top Democrats are rallying around, spends too much time in Washington and not enough time in the Bay State.

The early skirmish was a remind er that the campaign season, seemingly over after the November election, is begin ning again as politicians scramble for the seat likely to be vacated by Senator John F. Kerry, who is expected to be confirmed later this month as secretary of state.

Brown, a Republican who has given strong hints that he is running, is heavily leaning toward another campaign, but has not yet made a decision, according to a person familiar with his deliberations.

Uh-huh.

The piece notes that Markey has faced this issue before:

During the 2010 election, challenger Gerry ­Dembrowski, a Woburn Republican, videotaped interviews with neighbors in Malden asking whether they had ever seen Markey in his home. Most knew his house was there, but said they had not seen him.

The video called “Ed Markey: The Undocumented Congressman,” was posted on YouTube, but it did not stop Markey from winning that year’s race in a 2-1 landslide.

Said video (which is mildly amusing, if a bit heavy-handed):

 

Crosstown at the Herald, columnist Margery Eagan seems to have actually gone to Malden.

TED_8370.jpgQuestion hits home with Markey neighbors

In what may be the first salvo in the race for John Kerry’s Senate seat, U.S. Sen. Scott Brown wondered yesterday whether longtime Congressman Ed Markey, who wants Kerry’s job, even lives in his hometown of Malden anymore.

“I’ve come back and forth (from Washington) every weekend,” Brown said yesterday when he called into my last radio show on WTKK. “I see, you know, most of the delegation, and I have never seen Ed on the airplane. … Does he even live here anymore?”

The results of my cursory inquiry of Markey’s Malden neighbors: We’re not quite sure.

Representative samples:

“I don’t see him, to tell you the truth,” said a man who identified himself as Mr. Iacuzzi and has lived next door to Markey on Townsend Street “for more than 30 years.” Iacuzzi thinks he’s seen Markey before, but “it was long time ago.”

“I’m not sure what he even looks like,” said Josh, the manager at Dockside Restaurant, a Malden favorite for fundraisers. So he Googled Markey to make sure. “No, I can’t say that I’ve seen him in here.”

“I have no idea who he is,” said a worker at the legendary Moe’s Cafe.

A Markey spokeswoman had this reply: “(Brown) is already launching false, personal attacks …”

Ha! That’s not even a slapfight. Unlike with Elizabeth Warren, Brown doesn’t have to worry about gender gaps when he jumps ugly on Markey. And there’s not gonna be no People’s Pledge either.

Get ready for some serious smashmouth politics this time around.

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Boston Herald: Scott Brown for Governor?

January 2, 2013

Up until now, conventional wisdom in the Bay State held that Scott Brown (R-Tickle Me Grover) had first GOP dibs on the U.S. Senate seat soon to be vacated by John Kerry (D-So Long, Suckers), while Good (Next) Time Charlie Baker had same on the 2014 Massachusetts gubernatorial race.

Not so fast.

From Joe Battenfeld’s piece in today’s Boston Herald:

Scott BrownDems fear Scott may run for gov

While Democrats frantically try to block Scott Brown from going back to the U.S. Senate, there are also increasing fears he could pose an even bigger threat as the next Massachusetts governor.

Republicans close to the departing U.S. senator said he’s itching to go back to Washington to replace John Kerry, but Democrats are buzzing more about a potential Brown gubernatorial campaign in 2014. It may be tempting for Brown to run in a special election against a vulnerable Rep. Edward J. Markey, but he should reject the easy play and go for the job that really matters — running the state of Massachusetts.

“In the last week, there has been more speculation (about a Brown gubernatorial campaign),” one top Democratic strategist said. “He’d have a much better shot at (governor).”

 

Battenfeld says in a Senate race Democrats “will throw millions of dollars against him and use the same strategy they used last year for U.S. Sen.-elect Elizabeth Warren, trying to tie him to national Republicans.” The gubernatorial race would be an easier one to win.

[I]f you were Scott Brown, who would you rather run against, Ed Markey and the entire Democratic Party, or state Treasurer Steve Grossman or Attorney General Martha Coakley?

 

Good question.

One last question: What does Charlie Baker think?

Battenfeld doesn’t say.

UPDATE: Gotta add today’s overcaffeinated Page One (via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages):

MA_BH

 

Love that feisty local tabloid.

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Boston Globe Film Critic Wesley Morris Djangoed by Mediaite

January 1, 2013

In an unusual confluence of influence, the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald both gave positive reviews to Quentin Tarantino’s new film, Django Unchained.

From James Verniere’s Herald review:

DJANGO UNCHAINEDQuentin Tarantino ‘Unchained’

Director charges into American slavery tale with guns blazing

You’ve seen “Lincoln.” Now, see the low low-down on slavery in America.

Brought to us by the much imitated, uniquely gifted and never surpassed Quentin Taran tino, the ultra-violent “Django Unchained” gives us a glimpse of a barbaric episode in American history through the twisted lenses of Tarantino and the Euro-spawned, Asian-­influenced 1960s-’70s hybrid the spaghetti Western.

In addition to a terrific and fearless Jamie Foxx in the title role, a freed slave turned gunman named Django (“The d is silent”), the film has great Austrian actor Christoph Waltz (“Inglourious Basterds”) in fine fettle as Dr. King Schultz, a silver-tongued German immigrant and dentist along with his horse Fritz, whom he introduces to strangers. Dr. Schultz traverses the frontier in 1858 in a small coach with a giant tooth on its roof. The truth is Schultz  is a gun-slinging bounty hunter, complete with a spring-loaded derringer up his sleeve. Schultz brings in fugitives from justice dead or alive, preferably dead.

 

Equally enthusiastic was Globe film critic Wesley Morris:

du-ac-005765_lgTarantino blows up the spaghetti western in ‘Django Unchained’

In “Django Unchained,” Jamie Foxx plays Django, a black slave purchased for about a hundred dollars and freed by a German dentist and bounty hunter named Schultz (Christoph Waltz). A straightforward treatment might have involved having the slave run away north. But the movie Quentin Tarantino has written and directed is corkscrewed, inside-out, upside-down, simultaneously clear-eyed and completely out of its mind.

Django is married. He and his wife (Kerry Washington) were savagely lacerated and separately sold. He’s not free until she is. So he works as the bounty hunter’s sidekick, with the bounty hunter agreeing to help him find the wife and rescue her from a Mississippi plantation.

Set in 1853, this isn’t a runaway narrative. It’s a run-toward narrative, rigged for shock. Each scene lays a stick of dynamite and lights a fuse that runs down and down and down until the whole thing blows up like the Fourth of July. I’ve never seen anything like this movie, not in one 165-minute sitting, not from a single director, not made with this much conscientious bravado and unrelenting tastelessness — this much exclamatory kitsch — on a subject as loaded, gruesome, and dishonorable as American slavery.

 

But it was only Morris’s review that got whacked on Mediaite:

django-blackBoston Globe Movie Critic Likens Django Unchained’s Villainous ‘House Negro’ To Black Republicans

In his official review of Quentin Tarantino‘s box office smash Django Unchained, Boston Globefilm critic Wesley Morris likens the movie’s villainous “house Negro” to black Republicans like Justice Clarence Thomas or former RNC Chairman Michael Steele.

The positive review largely took note of the film’s successful twisting of the Spaghetti Western genre to fit a Civil War rebellion story, with special praise for Tarantino’s script and the actors who filled the screen.

But upon praising Samuel L. Jackson for his portrayal of Stephen, the head servant at the villainous Candie family mansion, Morris invoked the names of modern black Republicans whom he believes Jackson channeled in his “black self-loathing” performance . . .

 

Discuss among your self-loathing selves . . .

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Boston Herald: A Year in Picture

December 31, 2012

The hardreading staff has long been baffled by BostonHerald.com, which is to news websites what the Edsel was to automobiles.

Exhibit Umpteen: The Herald’s online Year in Pictures, which features up to one photo:

Picture 4

 

We’re looking forward to Monday’s print edition – Still Only $1! – for the full picture(s).

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Howie Carr’s WTKK Drive-By

December 29, 2012

Boston Herald columnist/WRKO squawker Howie Carr is experiencing an extreme bout of Howenfreude over the demise of FM talk station WTKK. (Full disclosure: The hardreading staff did a weekly segment on the Jim & Margery show.)

Today’s triumphant nyah-nyah from Carr:

PL6Q0092.JPGTalk radio’s not dead, just moonbats’ radio

WTKK wouldn’t be turning off the lights next week if I could have just gotten over there back in 2007. No brag, just fact. And by the way, I’m still damn sorry I didn’t make good my escape from the AM band.

But here in Massachusetts, in the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls. And you wonder why I dismember so many state judges. Payback is a bitch, you hacks.

Still, WTKK’s failure is not the end of talk radio in Boston. Nature abhors a vacuum, and having no talk station on FM is a gaping hole. Less than 20 percent of the radio audience ever listens to AM radio — and it’s a mighty old audience, too. They don’t call it “Ancient Modulation” for nothing.

 

In his gleeful victory dance, however, Carr gets his feet all tangled up.

Harry Truman used to say, “If you give people a choice between a Republican and a Republican, they’ll vote for the Republican every time.”

Here’s WTKK’s epitaph: “If you give listeners a choice between NPR and NPR, they’ll pick NPR every time.”

Sorry, Jim and Margery, nobody was giving up “All Things Considered” for you guys.

 

First of all, what Harry Truman actually said was this: “Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.” That makes sense, as opposed to Carr’s mushbrained quote.

Second, Jim and Margery are up against “Morning Edition,” not “All Things Considered.”

Not to get technical about it.

Crosstown at the Boston Globe, the Namesniks have  a slightly kinder – and slightly more optimistic – take.

WTKK to abandon talk radio for music

For an all-talk station, the folks at WTKK aren’t saying much. But we’re told the rumors are true: News Talk 96.9 FM is ditching its lineup of loudmouths in favor of music. The format change, which will take place right after the new year, means no more Michael Graham, who was sent packing last Friday, or midday host Doug Meehan, who actually left Boston a few weeks ago, or Rick Shaffer, cohost of the weekend “Money Show.” We’re told Jim Braude and Margery Eagan will be on the air as usual Wednesday morning, but that will be their last day at WTKK. Fans of “Jim and Margery” will be happy to learn, however, that they’re very likely to show up elsewhere on your radio dial sometime soon. No word on what sort of music 96.9 will be playing, but let’s hope it’s more soothing than Graham’s rants.

 

Or Howie Carr’s, for that matter.

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Herald Can’t Make Up Mind About Markey

December 28, 2012

First today’s Boston Herald tells us this:

keating31Mr. Ed draws yawn in Senate horse race

Seriously, is this the best the Democrats can come up with? Ed Markey?

This is a guy who has been in Congress for 36 years — the ultimate Washington insider.

A guy who didn’t even own a home in his own district for the first 20 years of his career.

This is a career politician who has never had a serious re-election challenge in decades.

 

And etc.

Then the feisty local tabloid tells us this:

(Boston MA)112512) (Photo by Faith Ninivaggi)Republicans cheer ‘tired’ Ed Markey’s entry into election

U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey became the first Bay State congressman to jump into the U.S. Senate special election yesterday, with an announcement that gleeful Republicans called a late Christmas gift for Republican Scott Brown.

“This is a huge positive for Scott Brown,” said GOP consultant Rob Gray, noting that Markey, in Congress for 36 years, is seen as a consummate insider. “This looks like the first in a series of non-bigfoot candidates that Democrats are putting forward.”

 

Or the last. To all appearances the Democratic establishment is trying to pull the ladder up behind Markey.

Here’s the Herald web piece:

2V0R1860.JPGKerry, Vicki endorse Markey in Senate race

U.S. Sen. John Kerry and Victoria Reggie Kennedy are giving their hearty backing to Congressman Ed Markey, who yesterday became the first Democrat to throw his hat in the ring in the race for Kerry’s seat — an indication of the eagerness of Bay State Dems to anoint a candidate swiftly and painlessly before what is expected to be a bruising battle with likely GOP nominee Scott Brow [sic].

 

Which still leaves this question for the Herald: Endorsements aside, is Markey drawing yawns or cheers?

Not that it really matters.

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Our Dogged Local Tabloid II

December 27, 2012

Sad to say, the Boston Herald’s gala two-part series on the Boston Police K-9 Unit ends not with a bang, but with a whimper. What earned Page One treatment yesterday (plus a 17-paragraph, tw0-video report) is shuffled off to page 11 today, and doesn’t appear anywhere on the Herald’s homepage or News & Opinion page.

(If you plug the reporter’s name – Robert Greim – into the search box, you still don’t get the story. We tried to plug “Crime Biters,” the name of the two-part series, into the search engine but that was a bust too.)

Finally! Got the piece via the Googletron:

IMG_3409.JPGPartners on job, at home they’re family

When the criminals are cuffed and the workday is done, the police officers and dogs in Boston’s K-9 unit don’t part ways — they head home together.

The K-9 crime biters and their human handlers who make up the Boston Police Special Operations K-9 Division work and live together 24/7, fostering a special bond that lasts even after the dogs retire.

“They really do become part of the family,” said Officer Joseph Fisher, a handler in the K-9 unit.

It goes on from there for eight more heartwarming paragraphs, some of which feature multiple sentences. There’s also a “K-9 Dogs at Home” video, which might sound redundant but probably doesn’t look that way.

All in all, a disappointing end to a series that started with so much promise.

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Our Dogged Local Tabloid

December 26, 2012

The Boston Herald, God love it, is always scrapping to retain its foothold in the local news media, which leads to enterprising front pages like Wednesday’s (via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages):

MA_BH

 

Part One of the series focuses on the K-9 Unit’s preparation for drug- and bomb-sniffing duty.

121212copdogmg001.JPGK-9 squad keeps Hub’s streets clean

Barking up the right tree

Before the giant LNG tankers are allowed into the city, Boston’s crack bomb-sniffing K-9 squad sweeps the gargantuan ships seven miles out at sea.

If a bullet, spent magazine or gun must be found, these crime biters are called.

The U.S. Postal Service, DEA, ATF and area schools all have Boston Police Special Operations K-9 Division on speed dial.

“It’s just amazing what these dogs can do,” said Sgt. Frank Flynn, commander of the K-9 unit. “They won’t quit until we tell them to stop.”

 

Just like the Herald, yeah?

As the feisty local tabloid is wont to do these days, it also features videos of the dog-training on its website.

Given all that, would it be unfair of the hardreading staff to point out that Part One of the series is all of 17 paragraphs long? That compared to, say, the Boston Globe’s 68 Blocks series, this is sort of Nerf journalism?

Yes, it would be unfair.

The Herald newsroom has fewer than a dozen general-assignment reporters, with stripped-down crews across the board. In some ways, it’s a miracle they get a paper out every day.

So, in the holiday spirit, let’s all appreciate the Herald for what it brings to the table every day, shall we?

Doggone it.

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WGBH = Whacked Good By Herald

December 26, 2012

From our While We Were Out desk

While the hardreading staff was down the Big Town, the Boston Herald gave WGHB a real thrashing last Friday, featuring this Jessica Heslam column on Page Two:

_TED0358.jpgHigh-living WGBH owes $300G

Public TV behemoth WGBH has to pony up more than $300,000 as part of a federal civil settlement for what authorities said yesterday was shoddy record keeping of federal grant money.

Under a deal struck with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, WGBH must fork over the money for failing to “properly track and account for” federal grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, according to an announcement yesterday by Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz.

In 2011, a Herald review found that more than a dozen WGBH execs at the taxpayer-subsidized flagship station were making more than $200,000 a year while working in an $85 million multimedia headquarters dubbed the “Taj Mahal.”

“This settlement underscores that recipients of federal grant money must be scrupulous in their accounting for how those funds are spent, and in making accurate reports to federal grantors,” Ortiz said.

 

At issue: WGBH’s “inadequate accounting system” for the over $60 million in federal grants the station received from 2003 to 2010.

A Herald website news report on the fine included this comment from Doug708:

The left wing screaming liberal media will make sure this story gets buried. The only place anyone will see this story is the Herald.

 

If by “left wing screaming liberal media” Doug708 means the Boston Globe, he’s right. The hardsearching staff got this result for “WGBH federal fine” from the Globe’s website as of Monday at 1:27 AM:

Picture 1

 

Meanwhile, a Googletron search of WGBH federal fine produced this:

Picture 2

 

Take a bow, Doug708.

You too, Jessica H.

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