WQOM Catholic Radio Billboard: Try ‘God Damn’

August 25, 2013

The billboard that WQOM Catholic Radio posted earlier this month has gotten the local station plenty of attention.

Start with this report in the Boston Pilot:

Radio station launches ‘Try God’ billboard campaign

450x300_Pilot_12619

BOSTON — 1060 AM WQOM Catholic Radio is launching a billboard campaign with the message “Try God: 1060 AM Catholic Radio” across the greater Boston area.

According to a [WQOM] press release, the goal of the billboard campaign “is to reach the widest possible audience in a broad cross-section of the Boston community as a way to expand the station’s current evangelization efforts and bring the ‘good news’ of the Gospel message to even more people in the region.”

 

The bad news, though, is that people in the region can’t stop mucking with the message.

A week or so ago the Boston Globe featured this Dan Wasserman cartoon:

 

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Now comes today’s Boston Herald with a new alteration. (From our Credit Where Credit’s Due bureau: Fox25 had the story Friday. The dicey local tabloid failed to mention that.)

Pranksters aim billboard barb at higher authority

082413billboard

A religious billboard with a little attitude and humor aimed at Mass Pike drivers captured the attention of clandestine critics who went to great lengths to change its message with a barb of their own that looked like the original script.

Chris Kelley, station manager of three-year-old WQOM Catholic Radio, said listeners called early Thursday morning reporting that the big black billboard suggesting: “Try God,” with the text “1060 AM Catholic Radio” underneath had grown a new punch line with the words “The Other White Meat” replacing the station’s call letters.

 

Scot Landry, host of “The Good Catholic Life” radio program on WQOM, was not in an especially forgiving mood about the edit. “This act of vandalism was certainly not a prank,” he told the Herald. “It should cause us to reflect on the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that hostility is increasing against the practice of faith and against religious expression.”

But Kelley tried to spin it into a higher good:

This act . . . is an indication that the ‘Try God’ billboard campaign is attracting attention and making people reflect on the role of God in our lives.

 

Or at least in our dinners.

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Boston Herald a Day Late, $500,000 Short on Mayoral Race

August 22, 2013

Preliminary indications are that our feisty local tabloid is taking a pass on the Boston mayoral race. The first competitive City Hall election in 20 years is apparently less important than the non-existent political career of a certain Scott Brown (R-Nowhere).

Monday it was Brown traipsing around Iowa that earned him Page One of the Herald.  (Q: What’s the difference between Scott Brown and the Iowa State Fair butter cow? A: The cow will participate in the 2016 Iowa presidential caucus.)

Today the big news is that Brown continues not to run for governor. So that’s front-page material too.

 

MA_BH

 

But while the Herald recites Make Way for Charlie, a real campaign has broken out in the Boston mayoral race, mostly around City Councilor (and current co-favorite) John Connolly.

From Monday’s Boston Globe:

 

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Tuesday:

 

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Wednesday:

 

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So, to recap: Stand for Children, a national education non-profit, says it’s going to dump half a million bucks into the race. Initially no response in Monday’s Globe from the object of the kibitzer’s largesse. Rival candidates scream bloody murder. One proposes a People’s Pledge.  Connolly bites back at critics in Tuesday Globe, but still doesn’t say anything about the Stand for Children loot. Rivals scream louder. Wednesday, Connolly says he he won’t take the dough, but says People’s Pledges are just a gimmick – no wait – he signs the pledge.

Got that?

Meanwhile, the Herald isn’t reporting much of anything or even recycling Globe stuff the way it sometimes does. Thank goodness, though, for the Herald editorial page, which has noticed there’s a mayoral race.

 

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The Herald agrees with what Connolly used to believe: “[The People’s Pledge] has become just another self-serving campaign gimmick.”

But fun to watch, yes? As long as someone’s covering it.

 

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Herald Goes Double ‘Dutch’

August 21, 2013

The Boston Herald devotes two pages today to remembrances of the great Elmore Leonard, who died yesterday at age 87.

Start with the Associated Press obituary, which begins “He was the master of his genre, the Dickens of Detroit, the Chaucer of Crime. Every novel Elmore Leonard wrote from the mid-1980s on was a best-seller . . . ”

 

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The obit includes Leonard’s legendary writing tip: “Try to leave out the parts that people [tend to] skip.”

In addition to that, the Herald has appreciations by James Verniere and Bill Burke.

 

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From Verniere’s piece:

In terms of the films based on his work, no one compares to Leonard except perhaps another hard-boiled master, Raymond Chandler (“The Big Sleep,” “Farewell, My Lovely”), and genre masters Ray Bradbury and Stephen King. That’s the company of giants. Leonard was one.

 

Amen.

Crosstown at the Boston Globe there’s an obit picked up from the Washington Post, and an item in Names.

But the feisty local tabloid takes this round.

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Al Jazeera America Has Bad News for the Boston Herald

August 20, 2013

The hardreading staff gets four newspapers delivered to the Global Worldwide Headquarters every day: Boston Globe, Boston Herald, New York Times, Wall Street Journal.

Guess which one didn’t have an ad promoting today’s launch of Al Jazeera America, the Qatar-based news organization that recently bought Al Gore’s ghostship channel, Current TV?

That’s right. The Herald.

Today’s Globe featured this ad on the back page of the A section:

 

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The Journal ran the same ad, except with different colors.

The Times, meanwhile, had two Al Jazeera America ads. This full-page ad in the A section:

 

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And this smaller one in the Business section.

 

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The Herald got bubkes.

Of course, this happens to the feisty local tabloid all the time, as the hardreading staff has previously noted. Then again, it’s just possible that the paper rejected an effort by AJAM to purchase ad space. Maybe one of the hardhating Heraldniks who reads this will let us know.

Regardless, it’s one thing for Al Jazeera America to buy ads, and quite another to sell them. From TVNewser:

One of the complicating factors with regard to [today’s] launch: it is not clear whether AJAM will have much advertiser support.

The channel’s executive team touted its light commercial load leading up the launch arguing that it was a differentiator, but also declined to say who the flagship launch advertiser would be.

 

That, and cable carriage, will likely determine the fate of AJAM. But not in the near future: They’ve got some pretty deep pockets in Qatar, however you pronounce it.

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Brown Is the New Block(head)

August 19, 2013

Of all the nudnik 2016 presidential wannabes (Peter King! Martin O’Malley! Come on down!), Scott Brown (R-Fox News) ranks among the most delusional. But you’d never know that from reading the Boston Herald.

Today’s Page One:

 

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Inside, the feisty local tabloid is plenty giddy itself, starting with a sunnyside up semi-news story.

081819brown01Nation may learn what Scott Brown can do for U.S.

National Republicans rushed to give former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown’s presidential trial balloon a thumbs up yesterday, saying the Bay State moderate’s impassioned plea for a big tent party could be the 2016 anecdote to debilitating GOP infighting.

“I’m thrilled he’s here. I see 2016 as wide open both nationally and in Iowa — especially if a candidate can come here and make a strong case,” said Iowa Republican committee chairman A.J. Striker. “I think having a diverse field actually strengthens and grows the party.”

 

Certainly grows the coffers of the Iowa Republican committee, yeah?

Then there’s this legit opinion piece by Kimberly Atkins:

 

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Wait – more good news in the Scott Brown Gazette! His daughter Arianna just got engaged! To “a paralegal specialist at the Department of Justice and a former Brown Senate office intern”!

 

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The only skunk at the Herald garden party was this letter writer:

Brown’s betrayal

Bona fide registered Republicans, who share conservative fiscal values and liberal social views, wish Scott Brown would just go back to his obscure role as a member of the corrupt Massachusetts House or Senate (“Brown: ‘Infighting’ aids Dems,” Aug. 16).

He has disappointed a majority of Republicans and moderates who elected him on a false belief he shared their views of less government intervention in their lives. Unfortunately, like every other RINO, he blindsided us with his decisive vote on the Consumer “Destruction” Act. Shame on him for scolding the members of his party who support Republican values.

— Todd Douglas, Weston

 

So Brown’s disappointed Republicans and moderates? That won’t put much giddy-up in a presidential campaign, will it?

Which is essentially what Adrian Walker writes crosstown in the Boston Globe today.

I don’t want to make light of Brown’s presidential prospects. It’s just hard to believe that he has any presidential prospects. For starters, he lost his last election by a substantial margin, something unusual for a sitting senator.

And his so-called brand of politics is far out of step with the leadership of his own party. There’s not much reason to believe the GOP wants a nominee whose main qualification is that he can draw support from Massachusetts moderates. Why would a party that got trounced with Mitt Romney in 2012 turn around and nominate Scott Brown?

 

Walker’s conclusion is that Brown can’t stand being out of the spotlight, so “[t]he quest for attention has become his never-ending campaign.”

At least he’s raised his sights, though. Here’s what the Herald reported yesterday about Brown’s fondest wishes:

Brown, who’s tapped into his musical side since his November defeat to Elizabeth Warren, said he’ll make his “debut” next month playing guitar with his daughter, Ayla, when she opens for the Charlie Daniels Band on Sept. 8 in Webster.

A beginner five months ago, Brown said he’s religiously practiced each night before bed to the point he can strum more than a half-dozen songs . . .

 

Great – he can always live off Ayla if this presidential thing doesn’t work out.

 

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Tony C Tributes: Globe 1, Herald 0

August 18, 2013

Forty-six years ago  today, Red Sox homeboy and Hall-of-Fame sureshot Tony Conigliaro had his baseball career turned inside out.

From Bob Ryan’s terrific Boston Globe column today:

tcTony Conigliaro would have been an all-time great

I was there. I was there, and I was pretty close, too.

I was there the night of Aug. 18, 1967, when a Jack Hamilton fastball hit Tony Conigliaro in the face. I was sitting in a box seat not far up the third base line from the screen. I went to 27 Red Sox games that summer, and I seldom had a better seat than I did on that Friday night, the start of a four-game series with the California Angels. I had intended to buy my standard bleacher seat, but a guy sold me a box seat for face value down at Kenmore Square, and so I was hobnobbing with the swells in the $3.50 section that night rather than my usual cronies in the dollar bleacher seats (No, kiddies, I’m not making those numbers up).

I saw a lot of Red Sox history made that summer, but there are some historical events you can do without, this one being quite near the top of the list.

 

Ryan says, “I have not yet been able to let an Aug. 18 go by without thinking of Tony Conigliaro and the night when his life changed irrevocably.” And it certainly did, although Tony C fought back as best he could. As Ryan notes:

Tony Conigliaro was enormously talented. Please remember, when he came back in 1969 after missing the final six weeks of the 1967 season and all of the 1968 season, he was fooling us all. He hit 20 homers and drove in 82 to become the logical winner of the Comeback Player of the Year Award, and he followed that up with 36-116 production in 1970. And then the Red Sox traded him! Don’t get me started on that one.

 

Just be glad he did get started on this one. It’s an excellent read.

(P.S. The Boston Herald had nothing on Tony C’s anniversary today. We’re guessing Joe Fitz tomorrow.)

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Globe Has Jared Remy Interview, Herald Has Jared Remy Neighbor Interview

August 18, 2013

Saturday’s local dailies featured two contrasting interviews that illuminated Jared Remy’s brutal slaying of his girlfriend, Jennifer Martel.

Boston Globe Page One:

 

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Marcella Bombardieri’s 2009 interview with Remy and Martel:

 

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Crosstown, the Boston Herald had this front page:

 

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Inside story:

081613murdermg005Neighbor: I punched Remy ‘over and over’ but couldn’t save her

A Waltham neighbor of Jared Remy and his slain girlfriend said she called police and raced to the woman’s aid Thursday night — even pouncing on the hulking Remy — after she heard “banging on the wall” just before 9 p.m.

“He was on top of her. One hand was strangling her and the other hand was stabbing her,” said Kristina Hill, referring to her neighbor and friend Jennifer Martel. “I was punching him over and over in the head and when I couldn’t do anything, I started screaming at the top of my lungs and that’s when my neighbor came out and tried to get him off of her.”

 

Good for her.

Good for the local dailies.

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Jock Shock: WEEI’s Jason Wolfe Punchout

August 16, 2013

The local dailies turn a quick double play today in their coverage of the shakeup at former sportstalk powerhouse WEEI.

Start with the Boston Herald, which goes all Page One over the firing of longtime WEEI VP of programming/operations  Jason Wolfe – except it’s really about Gerry Callahan, a WEEL morning drive personality and a sports columnist for the feisty local tabloid in his spare time.

 

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The inside story:

IMG_1889.JPG’EEI assures duo after boss axed

WEEI morning men John Dennis and Gerry Callahan — blindsided by the firing of boss Jason Wolfe yesterday — said they have been assured that station suits want them to be “part of the solution” to the once-dominant sports station’s ratings woes.

Callahan, a Herald sports columnist, said Entercom Boston general manager Jeff Brown told him and Kirk Minihane, who was added to the morning show in February, that “we’re going nowhere.” And Dennis, who is on vacation this week, said Brown called him after Wolfe got the ax to reiterate that the morning show was not in any danger.

 

“We’re going nowhere,” eh? All depends on how you hold that one up to the light.

The Herald throws some stats into the mix as well, which illustrate the drubbing WEEI has taken from CBS-owned 98.5 The Sports Hub:

In the most recent ratings period, The Sports Hub’s top-rated morning show, Toucher and Rich, dominated with a 13.4 share. Dennis and Callahan finished fifth with a 6.0. The Sports Hub was No. 1 overall with men age 25-54, both stations’ target audience, while WEEI was fifth, according to Arbitron.

 

For dessert, the Herald serves up some Howiesnark:

 

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And etc.

Crosstown at the Boston Globe, sports media columnist Chad Finn provides more narrative background.

For all of Wolfe’s success at WEEI, he was also complicit in its recent struggles and the attitude that got it there. The station easily vanquished upstart challengers such as WWZN 1510 and ESPN 890 during the 2000s. Neither station had the signal or the resources of WEEI. But in continuing its dominance, the station’s hubris rose, and it radiated as arrogance through the airwaves.

There was a collective sense that those at WEEI believed their success was much more to do with them than with their comparatively strong signal, their broadcast rights deals (particularly with the Red Sox), and Boston fans’ insatiable desire for any level of sports discourse.

 

But then came The Sports Hub, and ‘EEI got smoked.

When 98.5 The Sports Hub launched in August 2009 — a station with CBS Radio’s support, broadcast rights deals with the Patriots and Bruins, and a strong FM signal — WEEI was outwardly dismissive of the potential competition despite its vast resources.

And its complacent actions — including dotting its programming with back-slapping D-list personalities — suggested [The Sports Hub] was just one more competitor that would fade to static soon enough.

 

ENHHHH! We’re sorry, that’s incorrect – but thanks for playing!

Official Campaign Outsider Prediction: Dennis & Callahan are gone in six weeks.

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Murphy’s Law: Herald Hits Globe Reporter

August 15, 2013

Yesterday’s Boston Globe featured this juicy Page One story by Sean Murphy about Lisa Saunders and her magical mystery spot in front of the appropriately named Park Plaza Hotel:

 

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As the piece says, “[i]t’s not exactly the crimes of Whitey Bulger,” but it did include this nifty map:

 

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Now comes the Boston Herald today with a follow-up.

 

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Good story, eh? Except it fails to mention that yesterday’s Globe report, um, reported it first, if sort of awkwardly:

Saunders was clearly startled when initially approached by a reporter for comment about her parking spot as she got into her parked Cadillac at 5:45 p.m. on Aug. 6. “I have no idea what you are talking about,” she said, and drove away.

Later, Saunders filed a complaint to police alleging that the reporter had grabbed her by the shoulder from behind. “She was startled by his extremely aggressive manner and found it particularly upsetting that he knew her full name,” according to the police report.

The Globe reporter said he did not act aggressively, and made no physical contact with Saunders. He said he simply identified himself and, referring to her as “Ms. Saunders,” asked about her soon-to-be-taken-away parking space.

 

“The reporter,” of course, is Murphy himself. And the Herald is just re-reporting what the Globe already did. The feisty local tabloid just didn’t report that.

 

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The Jury’s In on Whitey Bulger Verdict

August 14, 2013

Both local dailies weigh in today with juror reaction to the James “Whitey” Bulger trial and verdict. And each brings something different to light about the jury deliberations, which resulted in guilty verdicts on 11 murder counts and 31 of 32 racketeering charges.

From the Boston Herald:

IMG_4378.JPGJuror: Debate over Whitey Bulger’s role in Davis’ murder ‘brutal’

The four women on the James “Whitey” Bulger jury were the hardest to convince that he took part in the 1981 strangulation of Debra Davis — the only killing the panel made no finding on in its historic verdict this week — one juror told the Herald.

Scott Hotyckey, 47, of Framingham, said the debate over whether Bulger played a role in Davis’ murder was “brutal” and greatly influenced by the daily courtroom presence of her brother, Steven Davis, who testified in the trial and also lashed out in the courtroom at her ex-boyfriend, Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi.

 

Hotyckey added, “It seems to me that some of the jurors didn’t like Steven Davis’ testimony. They thought he was very emotional. I said, ‘I don’t understand. It was his sister.’ ”

Interesting.

Among his other observations:

• Jurors initially wanted guilty verdicts in the murders of Michael Milano, Albert Plummer, William O’Brien, James O’Toole, Al Notarangeli and James Sousa, but changed the findings to “not proven” because the jury ultimately discounted the testimony of hit man John Martorano.

“They said the government didn’t do enough to prove them,” Hotyckey said.

• Some jurors were frightened of the government’s mobbed-up witnesses. Hotyckey said he laughed the paranoia off. “It didn’t seem other people were laughing,” he said.

• Some jurors said they went directly to sleep when they got home, out of sheer mental exhaustion.

 

Hotyckey also said “jurors wanted to hear Bulger testify.” Join the crowd, kids.

Crosstown, the Boston Globe also talked to Hotyckey, but added a second juror to the mix. (Both papers have video posted on their websites.)

juror-big-10496Witnesses raised Bulger jurors’ ire, suspicions

Some jurors grew so irate while debating the testimony of the career criminals in James “Whitey” Bulger’s trial that they shouted at each other. Others were so nervous about crossing the South Boston underworld that they popped aspirin to soothe headaches, according to one of the jurors.

For five days, the jury of four women and eight men pored over lengthy instructions from the judge, sheaves of evidence, and grisly crime scene photos . . .

Juror Janet Uhlar, 56, of Eastham said she was sickened to hear from witnesses who were walking free despite committing several murders.

“It was a very disgusting feeling, actually, a dirty feeling,” said Uhlar, a nurse and author of biographies on figures from the American Revolution.

 

Uhlar added, “It really broke my heart to see that happening, to see what our founding fathers laid down their lives for, the judicial system, corrupted like that.”

At least we’re done looking at it. For now. Can’t imagine how many books will come out of this fiasco.

And not all that anxious to read any of them, either.

 

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