September 6, 2013
From our Late to the (Democratic) Party desk
Massachusetts amateur – sorry, junior – Sen. Ed Markey’s “present” to the GOP got front-page treatment in both Boston dailies Thursday.
Start with the Boston Globe.
Print edition headline (with one very weird photo):
Members on left, right uniting in wariness
WASHINGTON — A Senate committee voted on Wednesday to give President Obama the authority to use military force in Syria, providing momentum to the White House plan to punish President Bashir Assad for allegedly using chemical weapons.
But in twist that signaled the issue still faces an uncertain outcome, Senator Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, voted “present,” choosing not to register his position on the highest-profile issue to come before him since he was sworn in nearly two months ago. He was the only senator to cast a noncommital vote.
Crosstown at the Boston Herald, Markey’s “noncommital vote” (and senior Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s squishiness on Syria) got a decidedly rougher reception.
Wethinks the Herald got it right on this one.
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Uncategorized | Tagged: Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Ed Markey, Elizabeth Warren, Howir Carr, present vote, Syria | 
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Posted by Campaign Outsider
September 4, 2013
Our feisty local tabloid has this story all to itself today.
This all comes out of an interview Menino gave to the New York Times Magazine. Headline (from the print edition):
Menino’s comment bombs
Mayor’s ‘blow up’ gaffe angers Detroit officials
Mayor Thomas M. Menino admitted today it was “a poor choice of words” to declare he would “blow up” struggling Detroit and “start all over there” to fix its problems but stopped short of saying he would apologize to the Motor City’s mayor.
“It was a poor choice of words,” Menino told the Herald at an event today in the North End, referring to the comments he made in a recent New York Times interview. “Let me tell you, I look at our city, I look at their city….Cities need help.”
That got a quick response from Menino’s Detroit counterpart.
“I would think the mayor of a city that recently experienced a deadly bombing attack would be more sensitive and not use the phrase “blow up,” [Mayor Dave] Bing said in a statement.
Menino told the Herald he would call Bing not to apologize, but to “offer help.”
Just so long as it’s not elocution lessons.
Crosstown, the Boston Globe had an item about the Times interview two days ago, but noting else.
Here’s guessing it’ll stay that way.
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Dave Bing, Detroit, New York Times, Tom Menino | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
September 3, 2013
This is really disgraceful: For the fourth straight day the Boston Herald has ignored the death of Seamus Heaney, a major literary and local figure who graced Harvard University with his presence for many years.
Here’s who aced out the great Irish poet today:
We know what you’re thinking: How long will the hardflogging staff keep this up?
Tell you what: Assume the Herald has maintained its misguided ways until we tell you otherwise.
UPDATE: Tuesday’s Boston Globe even featured a Names item about Heaney’s funeral.
Poet Seamus Heaney laid to rest in Dublin
DUBLIN — Ireland mourned the loss of its Nobel laureate poet, Seamus Heaney, with equal measures of poetry and pain Monday in a funeral full of grace notes and a final message from the great man himself: Don’t be afraid.
Among those packing the pews of Dublin’s Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart were government leaders from both parts of Ireland, poets and novelists, Bono and The Edge from rock band U2, and former Lebanese hostage Brian Keenan.
Ireland’s foremost uilleann piper, Liam O’Flynn, played a wailing lament before family members and friends offered a string of readings from the Bible and their own often-lyrical remembrances of the country’s most celebrated writer of the late 20th century. The 90-minute service ended with a cellist’s rendition of the childhood bedtime classic ‘‘Brahms’s Lullaby.’’
Sleep the Big Sleep, Seamus.
And sleep fitfully, Heraldniks.
3 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Bono, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Brahms's Lullaby, Harvard University, Liam O'Flynn, Names, Seamus Heaney, Tommy Morrison, U2 | Permalink
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September 2, 2013
Today marks the third edition of the Boston Herald to ignore the death of the great Seamus Heaney.
It’s not like anyone at the dicey local tabloid would have to actually read some of Heaney’s poetry. They could just run a wire story, they way they did today with David Frost’s obituary.
Better yet, they could pick up this appreciation by Roy Foster in The Guardian:
Seamus Heaney remembered
Seamus Heaney, who has died at the age of 74, was a poet of immense power, a brilliant intellect, an inspiration to others – and the best of company
My first thought on hearing the immeasurably sad news of Seamus Heaney‘s death was a sensation of a great tree having fallen: that sense of empty space, desolation, uprooting. Heaney’s place in Irish culture – not just in Irish poetry – was often compared to that of WB Yeats, particularly after he followed Yeats in winning the Nobel prize in 1995. He possessed what he himself ascribed to Yeats, “the gift of establishing authority within a culture”. But whereas Yeats’s shadow was seen, by some of his younger contemporaries at least, as blotting out the sun and stunting the growth of the surrounding forest, Heaney’s great presence let in the light. Part of this was bound up in his own abundant personality. Generosity, amplitude and sympathy characterised his dealings with people at every level, and he was the stellar best of company. It was as if he had learned the lesson prescribed (though not really followed) by Yeats: that the creative soul, “all hatred driven hence”, might recover “radical innocence” in being “self-delighting, self-appeasing, self-affrighting”.
For God’s sake, Heraldniks – just run something.
1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: Associated Press, Boston Herald, David Frost, Nobel prize, Richard Nixon, Roy Foster, Seamus Heaney, The Guardian, WB Yeats | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
September 2, 2013
The Boston Sunday Globe featured an unusually graphic – and lengthy – editorial about the need to upgrade Boston Harbor.
The particulars:
Dredge Boston Harbor
Advent of much larger cargo vessels means city’s venerable port will have to adapt
THREE TIMES a week, large container ships dock at South Boston’s Conley Terminal. Enormous cranes and some 1,000 workers work in tandem to offload the cargo — mostly alcoholic beverages, frozen seafood, and furniture — from Asia and across the Atlantic. In about 30 minutes, the goods are loaded onto trucks headed for points throughout New England. The ships are then reloaded — this time, with animal skins, paper, scrap metal, and more frozen seafood — before continuing on to their next port of call. The process is at once complex and orderly.
Yet the shipping industry is undergoing dramatic changes amid relentless pressure to transport more cargo faster; today in Boston, it takes half as long to unload a cargo container from a ship and discharge it via truck as it did just eight years ago. But how long Boston’s port will remain competitive amid even farther-reaching changes is an open question.
There are lots of other fun facts to know and tell in the piece.
Check ’em out.
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: Boston Globe, Boston Harbor, dredge Boston Harbor, editorial, shipping industry | Permalink
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September 1, 2013
Seamus Heaney, once described as “like a rock star who also happened to be a poet,” was richly memorialized in most major newspapers yesterday, as the hardreading staff noted.
But not the Boston Herald.
And not today either. Here are the obituaries the dicey local tabloid did run.
Look, we know the Heraldniks don’t consider themselves part of the poetry set, but Heaney was a major literary figure who spent a good chunk of his life at Harvard, which means he was a major local figure as well.
Let’s just hope the paper acknowledges that tomorrow.
1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: Boston Herald, Harvard University, obituary, Seamus Heaney | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
September 1, 2013
The great Seamus Heaney, considered by Robert Lowell the finest Irish poet since William Butler Yeats, died this week at age 74.
The Boston Globe gave him a front-page below the fold appreciation by Kevin Cullen . . .
. . . and a major obituary by Joseph P. Kahn.
Not to mention this Globe ave-atque-editorial:
(Meanwhile, the Globe’s still-kissin’-cousin New York Times ran a Margalit Fox above-the-fold obit, along with this appraisal by Michiko Kakutani.)
The Boston Herald?
Ran nothing.
The hard reading staff will check out the Sunday Herald, but we’re cautiously pessimistic.
3 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: ave-atque-editorial, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Joseph P. Kahn, Kevin Culen, Margalit Fox, Michiko Kakutani, New York Times, Seamus Heaney | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
August 30, 2013
As the hardreading staff noted recently, the local dailies’ foray into Internet radio was bound to create some drama and conflict, even though Boston Herald Radio does talk (mostly to themselves) and RadioBDC does music. I wrote last month: “Be interesting to see if some news/talk shows start turning up on the indie rockstream.”
Lo and behold, from today’s Boston Globe:
The new show is Edging the Xtreme, described this way on its home page:
Edging The Xtreme with Dan Egan focuses on the hip and happenings of the extreme sports world, with exclusive interviews with regional, national and international athletes in the world of skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking, surfing and so much more.
Be interesting to see how much more talk RadioBDC will start offering, yes?
3 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Boston Herald Radio, Dan Egan, Edging the Xtreme, RadioBDC | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
August 29, 2013
This is what the Boston Herald lives for.
Our feisty local tabloid devotes nearly four full pages to the casino-industrial complex today.
Corruption! Rampant patronage! Zero accountability!
For the Herald, this deal is the grift that keeps on giving.
Crosstown, by contrast, the Boston Globe has this nothingburger of a story in today’s Metro section:
Aside from some mild finger-wagging by columnist Adrian Walker over Boston Mayor Tom Menino’s ram-rodding this deal through, our stately local broadsheet has had nary a discouraging word about the proposed billion-dollar gambling hell – sorry, hall.
C’mon, Globeniks – get on this stick. Where’s that righteous indignation about gambling? Or even some of your trademark tsk-tsking?
You gonna let the Herald have all the fun?
4 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Adrian Walker, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, casino, Revere, Suffolk Downs, Tom Menino | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
August 28, 2013
The Boston Herald and the Boston Globe do casino-half-full/casino-half-empty in today’s editions.
The Globe:
The story itself gives a more detailed set of numbers.
A Suffolk Downs casino would pay Boston at least $32 million annually — and potentially far more — while guaranteeing at least 4,000 permanent jobs and providing East Boston an upfront payment of $33.4 million, under an agreement signed Tuesday with Mayor Thomas M. Menino.
The deal includes provisions that would substantially increase the annual payment to the city if the casino is highly profitable. Under those provisions, the deal could be worth $52 million for Boston annually, based on projections from a city consultant that the resort would gross $1 billion per year in gambling revenue.
Crosstown, those eternally optimistic Heraldniks go for the big score:
You need to go down to this graphic to get the more modest number.
Then again, overstatement is pretty much the Herald’s business these days.
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: Boston, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, casino, East Boston, Suffolk Downs, Tom Menino | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town 