Kyrie Irving & Nike Blow Right By Boston Herald

January 6, 2018

From our Local Dailies DisADvantage desk

The hardreading staff is sorry to say that this is the third time in a week we’re reporting from the LDD desk. (See here and here.) We fear we’ll soon be yielding to our kissin’ cousins at One-Daily Town.

But until then . . .

The Sports section in today’s Boston Globe features this two-page spread.

 

 

With a slight detour through Cleveland, of course. But no stopping at the Boston Herald.

While we’re on the topic of Nike and Irving, here’s the new TV spot he directed and stars in.

 

 

Gronk, Sun Tzu, flat earth, plant-based diet – totally memelicious, as SB Nation’s Tim Cato chronicles.

None of which, however, does any good for the thirsty local tabloid.

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JetBlue Union Pilots Give Boston Herald the Air

January 5, 2018

From our Local Dailies DisADvantage desk

For several years now, JetBlue Airways Corporation has had an interesting tagline attached to its logo.

 

Except not you, JetBlue pilots.

According to an Air Line Pilots Association press release, JetBlue has experienced five straight years of earnings growth, but its pilots have gone almost three years without a contract.

Through the first nine months of 2017, JetBlue has reported over $751 million in pretax profit (a 14.3 percent margin), bringing the total to more than $2.5 billion over the last two years since the pilots have been negotiating with the company. Meanwhile, the pilots are still without their first contract since unionizing in 2014, and without market-rate pay.

 

Consequently, the pilots have 1) filed for mediation from the National Mediation Board, and 2) started running this half-page newspaper ad – yesterday in the Boston Globe, today in the New York Times, but not at all in the Boston Herald.

 

 

At its website, the JetBlue pilots have a clever slogan and a count-up clock.

 

 

No doubt the thirsty local tabloid would settle for Ad Contract Above All.

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In Boston Herald Sale, Employees Are the Wishbone

January 3, 2018

Full disclosure: The hardreading staff forgot to get an MBA, so we might be off in this analysis. But the two bids to buy the Boston Herald clearly have very different interests at heart.

Start with the new offer from Revolution Capital Group, as described today by Herald reporter Brian Dowling.

Second potential buyer makes offer for Boston Herald

A Los Angeles investment group is pledging a $5.75 million bid for the Boston Herald, the second public bid for the tabloid since it filed for bankruptcy in December.

Revolution Capital Group filed its bid yesterday with the federal bankruptcy court in Delaware. The company previously offered to buy the Herald in 2013.

Components of Revolution’s bid add up to more than the $5 million offer that newspaper giant GateHouse Media made last month.

 

But it’s not just more – it’s who gets more. “Revolution is offering $3 million cash for the company, agreeing to honor $750,000 of paid time off for employees who join the company, and is pledging to pay out $2 million in severance.”

Crosstown at the Boston Globe, Jon Chesto reminds us what the deal is with GateHouse.

GateHouse proposed paying $4.5 million in cash, as well as at least $500,000 in assumed liabilities, including paid time off owed to employees.

 

Unless our math skills fail us, that means Herald owner Pat Purcell gets $1.5 million less from a sale to Revolution, while employees at the shaky local tabloid get $2.25 million more.

Maybe that’s why “[the] new bid drew immediate praise from the Communications Workers of America, which represents more than 100 unionized workers at the Herald,” according to Chesto.

But Poynter Institute media business analyst Rick Edmonds points to Revolution’s acquisition of the Tampa Tribune in 2012, which it then sold to Poynter, owner of the Tampa Tribune, four years later. Edmonds told Chesto he thinks Revolution would likewise flip the Herald in a few years.

Long-term, Edmonds said, “[GateHouse does] make cuts themselves, and they have profit targets that they’re trying to hit. [But] they have a body of resources and competence that I don’t think Revolution Capital has.”

It’ll be interesting to see how the bankruptcy judge sorts that out.

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Independence Ad Leaves Boston Dailies Poles Apart

December 29, 2017

From our Local Dailies DisADvantage desk

The Polish Cultural Institute has reached up from the Big Town to run this full-page ad in today’s Boston Globe as part of the country’s celebration of 100 years of independence.

 

Body copy:

 

 

Except not you, Boston Herald.

Once again the thirsty local tabloid gets the air from an advertiser that thinks Boston is a One-Daily Town.

Of course, if this keeps up, it likely will be.

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Boston Dailies Split on Trump-Kraft Bromance

December 24, 2017

From our Tear the Sheets desk

There seems to be some confusion at the local dailies about what exactly transpired between White House squatter Donald Trump (R-Donald Trump) and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft (R-NFL) over the GOP tax bill passed the other day.

According to yesterday’s Boston Herald Billionaire Bromance piece, Trump claimed that Kraft “based on this tax bill he just wanted to let me know that he’s going to buy a big plant in the great state of North Carolina and he’s going to build a tremendous paper mill there or paper products plant.”

But the Boston Globe’s Jon Chesto had a different take.

Unfortunately, the Kraft Group offered little clarity on the matter. A spokesman confirmed that Kraft and Trump spoke, and that Kraft believes the bill will spur corporate America to make significant capital investments.

But is a Kraft affiliate building another one in the Tar Heel State? The Kraft spokesman wouldn’t say. A spokesman for that state’s economic development office was similarly elusive.

 

As is just about everything Donald Trump has ever said.

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Red Sox Play Ball with Herald in New Ad Campaign

December 18, 2017

As the hardreading safe has noted many times, the Boston Herald is routinely overlooked as an advertising vehicle by local institutions ranging from General Electric to Verizon to AJC Boston to CVS.

But . . .

The new ad campaign for Red Sox ticket sales is totally bi-paper-san.

From Saturday’s Boston Globe.

From Saturday’s Herald.

 

 

Some context here, from Ricky Doyle’s NESN profile of Rafael Devers in August:

“In my neighborhood, when I played vitilla (baseball with bottle caps), there was always this guy who would say, ‘Look at this one with that fresh face,’ and from then on I was ‘Carita.’ ”

Carita. Or Baby Face. Hmm… we’ll see if it sticks.

 

Clearly, it did.

Back to the Sox ads. Both local dailies ran this one yesterday.

 

No explanation need for that, right?

But maybe an explanation for the ad campaign itself is in order.

Red Sox ticket sales were off last year (2,917,678) from 2016 (2,955,434) according to Baseball Reference.

Regardless, here’s what ticket buyers can expect for next year, via Nik DeCosta-Klipa at Boston.com.

The team announced Wednesday that [2018] (ticket prices at Fenway Park will increase by an average of 2.5 percent. Similar to last year, this means ticket prices are going up $1 to $5 for many of the seats closer to the field, as well as the bleachers.

 

Red Sox to fans: Read it and keep (paying more).

Let’s see how many of them vamos next season.

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John Henry Held Hostage by Boston Herald, Day One

December 14, 2017

From our Hark! The Herald! desk

It’s always entertaining – and sometimes enlightening – when the Boston Herald covers itself, and this story in today’s edition is no exception.

Judge approves Herald to continue business as usual

The Herald’s lights will stay on and it can pay most of its bills during the bankruptcy process, a Delaware judge ruled, as the newspaper enters Chapter 11 bankruptcy eyeing a late February sale to GateHouse Media.

Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein yesterday gave interim approval for business at the Herald to continue mostly as usual, including paying for utilities, payroll and insurance policies, as lawyers piece through the newspaper’s bankruptcy filing and GateHouse’s $4.5 million offer.

 

But not to pay the selfie local tabloid’s printer. “Herald bankruptcy attorney Bill Baldiga said the judge delayed approving payments to The Boston Globe for amounts owed for printing, delivery, inserts and paper returns, given uncertainty about the totals.”

What’s absolutely certain, though, is that the Herald owes the Globe “an estimated $600,000,” according to the former’s bankruptcy filing reproduced in the Boston Business Journal.

So it might not be a coincidence that Globe publisher John Henry wrote this mash note atop today’s editorial page.

Pat Purcell’s service to Boston

Patrick J. Purcell, longtime owner and publisher of the Boston Herald, is someone who has spent most of his adult life tending to the most essential task of our democracy: leading civic conversations in Boston that are sometimes contentious but are invariably important. While his efforts on behalf of journalism for the city are very well known, the personal impact he has had on so many over decades isn’t as familiar.

Our city knows Purcell as the driven media executive who bought the Herald from Rupert Murdoch in 1994. But he’s also unfailingly described as a loyal friend and devoted family man, who landed here after a colorful career in New York and became a Bostonian to his core.

 

Of course, Henry wouldn’t be so crass as to include an invoice in the editorial, although he did mention the Globe’s printing facility:

“I was giving Pat a tour of the Globe’s new print facility in Taunton about a year ago and as we walked through, people would seek him out just to shake his hand and thank him for things he had quietly done for them personally, or for something he had done to help a family member or associate.”

Guilt . . . guilt . . . guilt . . .

The bankruptcy court will address payments to the Globe on January 4. We’ll see if Henry’s still feeling this collegial after that.

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Sebastian Smee Jumps From Boston Globe to WaPo

November 22, 2017

Well, the hardreading staff kind of saw this coming.

Back in June, we posed the question Is Sebastian Smee Jumping to the New York Times? based on this piece that the estimable art critic wrote for the Times Arts section.

 

 

Turns out we got the jump part right, just didn’t stick the landing.

From the Washington Post’s PR Blog (tip o’ the pixel to The FlatsOnD Apartments Daily):

Sebastian Smee joins The Post’s Features team

From Features Editor Liz Seymour, Deputy Features Editor David Malitz and Deputy Features Editor Mitch Rubin: 

We are delighted to announce that Sebastian Smee, the art critic of The Boston Globe, will be joining The Post in January as an art critic.

Hiring Sebastian represents an expansion of The Post’s fine arts coverage. He will team with Philip Kennicott to review major exhibits nationwide and report engagingly on the art world for a wide audience. Phil becomes the senior art and architecture critic and will also continue to write cultural criticism.

 

According to the Post’s press release, Smee will work for the paper from Boston starting January 8.

Here’s another date to consider: November 8. That’s the dateline for the Post announcement. But there’s been no mention locally of Smee’s move – which is major, both for the Globe and the Post – until now (it first appeared in a tweet from @FortPointer on Sunday).

Huh.

P.S. Smee still has this profile on his Twitter feed.

Double huh.

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Hark! The Herald! (Both Sides No Edition)

November 6, 2017

As the hardreading staff has noted on numerous occasions, the Boston Herald has consistently failed to grasp the distinction between news and promotion.

Exhibit Umpteen: Today’s edition of the selfie local tabloid, which devotes half a page of its ever dwindling newshole to a talk Herald columnist Adriana Cohen gave yesterday at a Harvard student conference.

 

 

Just nuts graf:

“No one has a monopoly on smart,” Cohen said [at the event]. “There are good and smart people on both sides of the aisle and across demographics. When some people only want to hear one side of an argument, or one narrow set of ideas, they’re doing themselves a great disservice. We can all learn from one another.”

 

That’s rich, given that Cohen – a charter member of the Trumpettes – has demonstrably never met a knee she wouldn’t jerk.

Just as the Herald has never met a PR event it wouldn’t dress up as news.

(To be fair graf goes here)

To be fair, the Boston Globe has lately done its share of self-promotion as well. There was all the hubbub in the newshole last month over the paper’s HUBweek festival, and this wet kiss for “Globe Live” in the Names column last week.

 

 

Never say we don’t give you both sides.

Two-Daily Tune bonus track:

 

 

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Boston Globe Stiffs Herald – After Herald Stiffs Worcester Telegram – on Boy-Beating Girl Golfer

October 28, 2017

The hardreading staff has on more than one occasion referred to the Boston Herald as a “lively index to the Boston Globe.”

But every now and again it’s the Globe that becomes a lowly caboose to the Herald.

Like yesterday.

Let’s begin with this piece in Thursday’s Herald.

TEEING OFF ON BOYS’ CLUB

Girl golfer wins tourney, MIAA withholds her trophy

The record books won’t note Emily Nash’s amazing three-over-par high school tournament victory — because she’s a girl.

That has golfers from all over the country calling to praise the 16-year-old Lunenburg High junior who beat all the boys.

“It still kind of stinks,” Nash told the Herald last night. She had to give up the trophy to the second-place finisher.

“I’m disappointed I didn’t get the trophy. But that’s OK. Even if I didn’t get the trophy, everyone knew my score,” she said. “In golf, it’s all about the rules.”

 

In the news business, though, the rules are slightly looser. So on Friday, the Globe unblushingly ran this piece.

Girl golfer beats boys, denied trophy

MIAA rule book allows her to play, but not to win

She was allowed to golf with the boys, but the rules didn’t allow her to beat them.

So when Emily Nash, a Lunenburg High School junior, shot the best score at the Central region Division 3 high school golf tournament at Blissful Meadows in Uxbridge on Tuesday, officials had to hand the trophy to the best-scoring boy, who had finished four strokes back.

 

Drive the Herald nuts graf:

“The statewide rule that denied her a victory will be reviewed and possibly changed, high school sports officials said. On its face, it certainly seems like an injustice to deny a trophy to the golfer with the best score, and Nash’s story has quickly gained national attention, amplified by social media and highlighted on the Web page of the PGA.”

Not to mention local attention, which the Globe conveniently did not mention.

Low class, Globeniks. Very low class.

UPDATE:

(Tip o’ the pixel to @lordpaluzzi via @dankennedy_nu)

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