Twinkie Winkie

December 3, 2012

Junk-food journalism in Sunday’s local dailies.

From the Boston Herald:

Chew on Twinkie poll

Now that the election is over, pollsters have a lot more time on their hands to measure America’s barometer for other important topics. Such as the Twinkie.

Rasmussen Reports released a poll last week showing that 57 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Hostess Twinkies.

The endangered cream-filled cake actually polled higher than the brain trust in Washington, D.C.

A Rasmussen Reports poll taken just two days earlier showed 34 percent have a favorable opinion of the federal government.

From the Boston Globe:

ad63d379c1a747e89d862a985edd034b-30a09f3f4dc41320210f6a7067005d73The Twinkie defense

Wait, are you really telling me it’s over?

Seriously, it wasn’t supposed to be like this.

I’m a golden white cake in the snack-addicted United States.

I lifted America through the Great Depression.

I built bakeries and factories. I created jobs.

I joined Facebook, darn it.

Polls had me pulling ahead.

They said there was no way a perfectly groomed treat like me could lose.

It’s not my fault that 47 percent of America wants some wheaty lefty cholesterol-freebie.

I earned my success. I did the 100-calorie thing, shed my transfats.

Of course, there were places I could not compromise: high fructose corn syrup.

Did this anger Ohio?

I know how to run a business, to run a country.

And it’s not handing out gifts.

Not even to the workers who make me.

You know who says, “Better days are ahead.”

We’ll see about that.

Yes we will.

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Safe-T First?

December 2, 2012

Saturday’s local dailies duly reported on Thursday’s MBTA trolley-car crash, the latest in a series of T-bonehead incidents over the past several years.

The Boston Herald, as usual, has the basics:

193715_T_11302012Driver in T trolley crash cited for speeding in 2009

The operator of a Green Line trolley that rear-ended another train parked at a downtown station Thursday had been cited by the MBTA for a speeding violation in 2009, according to the T.

The citation, for running a C branch trolley 13 mph over the speed limit along Beacon Street in Brookline, was the only prior issue concerning train operation in the man’s six-year career at the T, said MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo.

“He has traveled through hundreds of speed checks since then, with no violations,” he said.

Pesaturo said the operator was disciplined and retrained after the citation.

The T hasn’t identified the 46-year-old operator, who was to receive a safety recognition pin yesterday for three years of accident-free driving but skipped the ceremony because he is on unpaid leave, MBTA acting General Manager Jonathan Davis said.

 

Crosstown rival Boston Globe added this ironic detail:

The accident occurred a day before that operator was scheduled to receive a “safety pin” along with other Green Line drivers, including the one whose trolley he hit, for three straight years of driving without an accident or moving violation. Instead, he remained on paid leave and did not collect his pin, officials said.

 

But, as the Globe noted elsewhere in Saturday’s edition, this operator did:

Picture 2

 

Safety First?

That’s just how the T rolls, yeah?

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Track Gals (and Megan!) Rip Off Hardworking Staff

November 30, 2012

Yesterday the hardworking staff at kissin’ cousin Campaign Outsider noted that the Boston Globe was having a difficult time distinguishing between the late Tip O’Neill and Ken Howard, who played Tip in a local stage production.

From yesterday’s boston.com homepage:

picture-21

 

Then, lo and behold, the Track Gals (and Megan!) include this in their Boston Herald column today:

Boston.com, the website of our favorite Boring Broadsheet, posting a picture of actor Ken Howard, in costume as Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, and identified it as the late House speaker in a story about a new federal building named for Tip. (It was later swapped for the real ONeill)

 

So not only can’t we get quoted in the feisty local tabloid (they know what we’re talking about), we can’t get credited either.

That’s just wrong.

Meanwhile, the Globe took the high road and didn’t mention our post at all.

UPDATE: Unbeknownst to us, Megan Johnson had left the Track before this item ran.

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BBC’s ‘The Hour’ Is/Is Not Worth the Time

November 28, 2012

Split decision in the local dailies today over the BBC series The Hour, which returns for its second season on BBC America tonight.

First up, the Boston Globe’s Matthew Gilbert, whose opinions the hardwatching staff generally agrees with (except when he called John Simm’s portrayal of Sam Tyler in the original Life on Mars “weaselly”).

His review in today’s edition:

‘The Hour’: Worth the time

I hear from a lot of TV viewers who really want to like “The Newsroom,” Aaron Sorkin’s HBO drama about the media, integrity, and the Gordian knot of love. But while they’re drawn to a drama about TV journalism, they complain that the “Newsroom” characters are preternaturally intelligent, overly self-important, and emotionally adolescent. The usual Sorkin rumpus. I enjoy the show, for Sorkin’s passionate treatment of timely issues, and for Jeff Daniels’s flamboyant performance, but I can’t argue with those who reject the kit because of the kaboodle.

Cut to: BBC America’s “The Hour,” the British series that returns for a second season of six episodes on Wednesday night at 9. This is also a drama about the news business, the challenges of integrity, and love’s near misses and thunderclaps, but it’s not marred by any of Sorkin’s excesses. Set at a weekly BBC newsmagazine in the 1950s called “The Hour,” it’s a subtle intertwining of journalists’ professional struggles, their personal lives, and the thorny social issues that envelope them, and I can’t recommend it enough. “The Hour” is not “Breaking Bad” good, or “Mad Men” good, but it’s close.

 

Quickly we go crosstown to Herald TV critic Mark Perigard’s review:

BBC America’s period drama drags

Zero ‘Hour’

The Brits are learning the wrong things from American TV.

Take BBC America’s “The Hour,” which returns tonight for a second season. The 1950s-set drama about the making of a “60 Minutes”-style news show sucks up all the excesses of AMC’s “Mad Men” and none of its storytelling virtues.

 

Tiebreaker, please.

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Editorial Cartoons the Same . . . Only Morsy

November 27, 2012

His ‘n’ His editorial cartoons at the local dailies today.

In the Boston Globe, the great Tom Toles:

 

 

In the Herald, local stalwart Jerry Holbert:

 

 

 

Except here’s what ran in the dead-tree edition of the feisty local tabloid:

 

 

The website’s been scrubbed. Long live dead trees.

 

 

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Dearth and Taxes

November 26, 2012

Two – wait for it – very different takes on Taxachusetts in today’s local dailies.

Start with this glass-half-empty front-page piece in the Boston Globe:

Mass. tax revenues decline; budget trims loom

Looks for ways to curb spending; automatic cut in taxes ruled out

Facing weaker than expected state tax revenues, Governor Deval Patrick’s administration has curbed state hiring, halted an automatic income tax reduction, and begun identifying cuts in spending that may be necessary to balance the budget.

Recent tax collections have been unexpectedly disappointing, failing to measure up to last year’s levels. In October, revenues were $162 million short of budgetary estimates and $48 million below the level reached in October 2011.

State revenues are running $256 million behind budget and $33 million behind last year’s actual collection, officials said.

Cut to Ho-Ho-Holly Robichaud’s column in today’s Boston Herald:

Dems think state loses if you save $$

The never-ending saga of Taxachusetts is coming to our wallets soon.

Whether or not there is a need for more revenue, the fundamental problem is that Democrats have a delusional view about our money. They believe what we don’t pay in taxes is an expenditure on behalf of the state.

Hence, it is costing Bacon Hill tax dollars because we keep more of our savings and paychecks.

A bit tortured there, but emblematic of the glass-stolen-by-the-state school of politics.

See you when there’s a tiebreaker.

 

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Globe Scoops Herald on Scumbag Steve

November 25, 2012

Saturday’s Boston Globe featured a Page One piece by Billy Baker that some would say shouldn’t have been Page One, and others would say shouldn’t have been a piece (except maybe in the Boston Herald).

Regardless . . .

Millis man savors his time as an Internet (punching) bag

Blake Boston takes a seat on a bench outside the Red Line station in Kendall Square, lights up a Newport, and it happens. Immediately. A young MIT student sees him, does a double take, and then approaches, cautiously.

“Are you . . . ” the student says, then pauses and takes a big swallow. He’s about to call a stranger a bad name.

“Are you, um, Scumbag Steve?”

“Yeah, man,” Boston says, then shakes the student’s hand and poses for a photo.

Blake Boston is the Internet’s favorite scumbag. He hasn’t always been thrilled with this honor. But after nearly two years as the butt of one of the most persistent jokes in the history of the Internet, the 22-year-old Millis resident has come to embrace being Scumbag Steve. And now he is trying to capitalize on it.

The same way the Globe is capitalizing on him.

Read the whole piece, because this is the way the (media) world works now:

Sweat the small stuff. Hope the big stuff sorts itself out.

UPDATE: As Universal Hub’s Adam Gaffin points out below, the Phoenix scooped them both.

 

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Herald Scoops Globe on Facebook’s Privacy Grab

November 23, 2012

For the past several days the hardtracking staff at Sneak Adtack has been chronicling Facebook’s new data-sucking policies, which essentially strip control of online information from the Faceherd.

The Boston Herald noted the change – in its usual minimalistic way – in Saturday’s The Ticker:

Facebook may end voting on privacy

Facebook is proposing to end its practice of letting users vote on changes to its privacy policies. But the social network said it will continue to let users comment on proposed updates.

Which of course means nothing, but why get technical about it.

Meanwhile, the Boston Globe has reported exactly nothing about what many believe is a major blow to online privacy rights.

Score one (more) for the feisty local tabloid.

 

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Herald Serves Up Menino Leftovers

November 21, 2012

Yesterday’s Boston Globe featured the main course:  A front-page piece on the hospital room where Boston Mayor Tom Menino’s been holed up for a month with a Whitman’s Sampler of symptoms from blood clots to spinal cracks.

Hospital room is now Mayor Menino’s office

Top aides help mayor retain links to his city

A black accordion file sits on a desk outside Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s empty office on the fifth floor of Boston City Hall. Most days, city employees stuff paper work into manila folders in the compartments: One sleeve is reserved for documents Menino needs to sign, another for memos the mayor needs to read.

Normally, the bundle goes home with Menino to Readville. But for the past 25 days, the plastic file has been driven the 3½ miles from City Hall to Francis Street, where doctors at Brigham and Women’s Hospital continue to treat Menino for a variety of ailments.

The impersonal shuttling of documents to the Brigham — and verbal orders the mayor shares from his hospital bed through an inner circle of aides — has become the main link between Menino and roughly 20,000 city employees he has closely managed for almost 20 years. It marks a stark change for Menino, who so prides himself on personal connections that he has forbidden voicemail at City Hall.

Another stark change: Today’s slim pickins in the Boston Herald, which feel decidedly warmed-over.

A-list visitors call on ailing Boston mayor

Gov. Deval Patrick and Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley have been among the visitors to Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who has been at Brigham and Women’s Hospital for a month and is expected to remain there through Thanksgiving.

Patrick and his wife, Diane, met with Menino for about 30 minutes at the hospital last weekend, while O’Malley, the Boston archbishop, visited on Friday, said Menino spokeswoman Dot Joyce.

“He’s able to engage and have conversations,” Joyce said. “They’re not long visits.”

The hardreading staff hopes that soon those visits won’t be necessary, and Mr. Mayah can get back to not checking his voicemail at City Hall.

 

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Gronkpocalypse 2! (Formerly Gronkmageddon 2!)

November 20, 2012

The Boston Herald is a bit bipolar in its Gronkoverage of the Patriots tight end, who broke his arm on a meaningless play in Sunday’s rout of the Indianapolis Colts.

(Front page: THE GRONK CRISIS. Back page: GOTTA MOVE ON.)

But the feisty local tabloid is absolutely sure that the Gronkastrophe deserves four full pages in today’s edition.

Start with this Duh! headline in the news section:

Doctors: Best play is to let it fully heal

Despite the public clamor and Rob Gronkowski’s obvious determination to return as soon as he can from a broken forearm, the general consensus from medical professionals is that the 23-year-old All-Pro tight end should err on the side of caution — even if it means missing the start of the playoffs.

Dr. David Forsh, chief of orthopedic trauma at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, said that Gronkowski could potentially be sidelined up to eight weeks. Even when the tight end gets his cast off, he could be delayed with more rehabilitation to get his range of motion and strength back.

“The concern with these fractures is not how soon they heal, which is normally about 6-8 weeks, but when he’d be able to return to play,” Forsh said. “It really depends on how he does with his rehab and how quickly he heals it.”

The print edition has a swell illustration with all kinds of medical claptrap to obsess over.

Then there’s this piece on the facing page:

Patriots must break the mold in life minus Gronkowski

All-Pro tight end’s absence won’t be filled by just one player

FOXBORO — Sunday afternoon, Rob Gronkowski ran over, around and past hapless Colts players, debilitating Indy with his full arsenal of skill, brawn and athleticism.

Today, those are mere highlights to a Patriots [team stats] team and fan base that now must bear life without their All-World tight end.

Gronkowski had successful surgery yesterday morning and had a metal plate inserted into his broken left forearm. He told people Sunday night that he would miss 4-6 weeks, according to sources, and a separate source said he would miss “a few weeks” after yesterday’s procedure. Unless there’s a drastic change, those sources all believe he’ll be back for the playoffs.

Then it’s on to the sports section for two more pages of coverage, starting with this Ron Borges column:

No ‘extra’ work needed

Silly to play Gronkowski on special teams

FOXBORO – The argument that Rob Gronkowski should not have been on the field when he broke his forearm blocking for an extra point because his team was leading by 34 points Sunday is a specious one.

The argument that he should not be blocking for extra points and field goals at any time is not.

And then finish it all off with this Gerry Callahan piece:

No Gronk? Next man up

While fans gnash teeth, Pats shrug off injury and move on

The news broke one hour and 43 minutes after the forearm did. From the parking lots to the private boxes, from barrooms to living rooms, Patriots [team stats] fans were in a panic.

Did you hear? Gronk was down. Gronk was out.

The news was bad, real bad: Gronk broke.

Just like the hardreading staff’s patience with this story.

Regardless, we dutifully trundled crosstown to the Boston Globe to see if they’d developed more of a sense of urgency than they exhibited yesterday.

And indeed they had:

Can we go now?

 

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