Globe Columnist Ignores Herald’s Ayla Brown Scoop

December 26, 2016

TO: Boston Globe columnist Renée Graham

FROM: The hardreading staff

RE: Your Sunday op-ed

First, we hasten to stipulate that we yield to no man in our professional respect for Boston Globe chinstroker Renée Graham.

However . . .

We must needs take issue with her latest piece in the Boston Sunday Globe.

Musicians lead the resistance

Nobody wants to play with Donald Trump.

Or, to be more precise, no one wants to play for Trump. Less than a month before his inauguration, the president-elect and his minions are flapping about trying to convince somebody — anybody — to perform at his various inaugural events. Last week, pop-opera tenor Andrea Bocelli declined Trump’s invitation after some of the singer’s fans threatened to boycott his concerts and albums if he sang a single note at the inauguration.

Bocelli’s refusal joins snubs from Elton John, Garth Brooks, and Celine Dion. So far, no A-list performers are willing to do anything that might suggest support for Trump, especially on a day he likely views more as a coronation than a swearing-in. Mark the moment: This is the first perceptible proof of life for an anti-Trump resistance that has been more bark than bite since Election Day. This is a silent but effective protest from artists usually thrilled to make a joyful noise.

 

Graham adds this: “So far, Trump has booked Jackie Evancho, a 16-year-old former “America’s Got Talent” runner-up, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the latter somehow feeling like yet another swipe at Mitt Romney.”

That’s all well and good.

But what Ms. Graham fails to note is Saturday’s Boston Herald front page.

 

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Ayla, of course, is the daughter of former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown (R-Scott Brown), who is currently jockeying to head the Department of Veterans Affairs.

(We’ll pass over in silence that every other candidate for the post is far more qualified than Brown.)

Regardless, an offer from a 2006 American Idol round-of-16er is something the Trump inauguration team – or Renée Graham – should hardly ignore.

In our humble opinion.


Herald Gets Top Billing in Globe Re: ‘Patriots Day’

December 22, 2016

Patriots Day, the latest production from the Wahlberg-industrial complex, is turning into the ultimate Boston Rorschach test.

Exhibit Umpteen: This tweet from the estimable David Bernstein.

 

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The Sean Burns review in NorthShoreMovies David cited includes this:

Before the closing credits roll, “Patriots Day” tacks on almost ten minutes of interview footage from some of the story’s real-life subjects, all of them offering canned aphorisms that sound over-rehearsed. It feels like a pre-emptive bid for exoneration by the filmmakers, proof they got permission to cash in on a city’s still-tender memories in order to massage the ego of their superstar producer. Without this documentary material, the movie would have ended on a shot of David Ortiz shaking Mark Wahlberg’s hand, the real slugger thanking the fake cop for his heroic service.

 

Ouch.

Here’s another pinprick: On G5 of Wednesday’s Boston Globe Food section, there’s this ad for “Patriots Day.”

 

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And check out who gets top billing.

 

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That’s right – the Herald’s Jim Verniere, who wrote in his review that “’Patriots Day’ is a film every American and anyone planning to do us harm should see.”

Crosstown, Globe movie critic Ty Burr – in that same Food section – said something quite different.

Peter Berg’s movie, starring Mark Wahlberg in an invented role, is neither great nor gawdawful. It’s professionally made, slickly heartfelt, and is offered up as an act of civic healing. At best, it’s unnecessary. At worst, it’s vaguely insulting.

 

Roll your own, splendid readers.


Boston Herald Whiffs on Liz Warren Tiff Riff

December 16, 2016

Let’s start from the start.

On Tuesday, the New York Times ran this Andrew Ross Sorkin piece.

Elizabeth Warren Condemns the Wrong Man

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Senator Elizabeth Warren, furious about President-elect Donald J. Trump’s appointments of finance industry insiders, took to Facebook a little over a week ago to fire off a message to her nearly 2.5 million followers.

She took aim at an individual she described as a “hedge fund billionaire” who is “thrilled by Donald Trump’s economic team of Wall Street insiders.”

The hedge fund manager she condemned was Whitney Tilson, who runs Kase Capital. Ms. Warren — the fiery Massachusetts Democrat who is known for her stern mistrust of Wall Street — called him out by saying, “Tilson knows that, despite all the stunts and rhetoric, Donald Trump isn’t going to change the economic system.” Then she added, “The next four years are going to be a bonanza for the Whitney Tilsons of the world.”

 

Except . . .

Ms. Warren appears to be suffering from the same affliction that Mr. Trump’s critics accuse of him: a knee-jerk, fact-free reaction to something she had read in the news.

In this case, Ms. Warren seems to have come across a Bloomberg News article that includes some quotations from Mr. Tilson. But she didn’t read to the bottom or dismissed it before firing off her zingers.

 

Turns out “Mr. Tilson’s wife, Susan Blackman Tilson, was one of the students in the first Harvard Law School bankruptcy class that Ms. Warren taught, in fall 1992. The student has remained loyal to her professor; Mrs. Tilson wrote in a letter to Ms. Warren last week that she had been ‘cheering from the sidelines as you rose to national attention for your excellent work on behalf of consumers.'”

Oops.

On Wednesday, both Boston dailies picked up on the Times scoop.

Victoria McGrane’s piece in the Boston Globe.

In Warren, some are seeing shades of Trump’s antics

WASHINGTON — A little over a week ago, a powerful politician read something disagreeable in a news article, logged on to social media, wrote a post blasting a private citizen, and sent it to millions of loyal followers.

The politician wasn’t Donald Trump. It was Elizabeth Warren.

And the private citizen, a wealthy hedge fund manager named Whitney Tilson, is going public with his belief that Warren misunderstood the comments he made to a Bloomberg News reporter that prompted the Facebook denunciation from the liberal Massachusetts senator.

 

Wednesday’s Boston Herald had this op-ed from Colin Reed, executive director of America Rising, a Republican communications Super PAC.

Liz losing her grip after Dems’ losses

Foolish Facebook tirade hits at . . . one of own donors

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is coming unglued. Maybe it’s the looming inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump. Or maybe it’s the realization that had she — rather than a 75-year old socialist — challenged Hillary screen-shot-2016-12-16-at-1-45-11-amClinton in the Democratic presidential primary season, her party could have had a different nominee.

Whatever the reason, the post-election weeks have not been kind to the former Harvard professor. Consider the most recent head-scratcher. On Monday night, The New York Times published a lengthy story about the Massachusetts senator taking to Facebook to blast a “hedge fund billionaire” who she accused of being “thrilled by Donald Trump’s economic team of Wall Street insiders.”

As the Times noted, there are several major problems with this attack. First, the target of her ire, Whitney Tilson, is not a billionaire. Second, he was not a Trump supporter. He’s actually a longtime and extremely generous donor to the Democratic National Committee and such candidates as Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and, you guessed it, Elizabeth Warren.

 

Yesterday, however, only the Globe had Warren’s predictable moonwalk, via this Yvonne Abraham front-page piece.

Her post went too far, senator says

Elizabeth Warren is still mad as hell at the Wall Street takeover of the next White House. But she’s also a little mad at herself.

That Facebook excoriation of hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson? She shouldn’t have done it, the senator said in an interview Wednesday afternoon. Afterward, she called Tilson to tell him so.

“I think I took it too far,” Warren said.

 

Yesterday’s Herald, on the other hand, had nothing.

Which brings us to today’s edition of the whiffy local tabloid.

Still nothing.

Then again, the Heraldniks have never been all that good at corrections and clarifications, have they?


Is Adriana ‘Cohen Away’ from the Boston Herald?

December 6, 2016

Sharp-eyed readers of the feisty local tabloid might have noticed a few changes this week at Boston Herald Radio.

First, though, here’s what the lineup looked like as recently as last Friday.

 

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And here’s the new one.

 

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The change that jumped out at the hardreading staff was the shifting of Herald columnist Adriana Cohen from the daily 6 to 9 morning slot to an hourlong Wednesday gig at noon.

As Ernie Boch Jr. might say, step on down!

But the more we thought about it, the more we started to wonder if this might be a transitional move while Cohen waits for a spot in the Trump administration.

After all, Yo Adriana was one of the most reliable of Trumpkins during the 2016 presidential campaign, although she tragically failed to make The Daily Beast’s All-Star roster of “The Donald’s Army of Media-Hungry Cable News Boosters.”

Which doesn’t seem right since Cohen was willing to do stuff like this (starting around 1:22):

 

 

But that kind of smashmouth politics is just what Trump tends to reward, so don’t be surprised if Cohen drifts down to D.C. sometime after the first of the year.

(Hey – maybe she and Trump coatholder Howie Carr could room together!)


Boston Herald Readers: Unogo to Uniqlo Today

November 17, 2016

Uniqlo has come to Newbury Street in Boston’s Back Bay, an opening the giant Japanese retailer announced with a four-panel wrapper around today’s Boston Globe that featured this:

 

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And this:

 

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And this:

 

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But here’s what the headscratching staff found puzzling: When we picked up today’s Boston Herald, we found something different.

 

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Wait, what? The store is open today for Globe readers but not until tomorrow for their tabloid counterparts?

Is Uniqlo worried about some kind of Jets and Sharks rumpus?

Or do they just not want the riff and faff cluttering up the store its first day.

Huh.


Boston Globe Still in the Tank for Children’s Hospital

October 14, 2016

Apparently, the Boston Globe is willing to carry water for Boston’s Children’s Hospital like Gunga Din in the ongoing dispute over the medical center’s expansion plan.

As the hardreading staff noted the other day, the Globe ran this op-ed piece by former Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation president Michael Widmer in Wednesday’s edition.

Watchdog overreaches on Children’s Hospital expansion

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ONE OF the iron laws of public policy is that regulatory agencies have an irresistible tendency to push the limits of their power and authority. Whether it’s the environment, transportation, or health care, the agency seems compelled to prove the purpose of its existence by reaching ever further into the regulatory arena.

We saw a classic example of that recently when the Health Policy Commission inserted itself into Boston Children’s Hospital’s determination of need application to upgrade its facilities. This is the first time that the HPC has chosen to comment on a determination of need application, and it did it 10 months after the hospital first submitted its application to the Department of Public Health, which had launched an extensive public process with widespread commentary and analysis.

 

Widmer also wrote that “the Health Policy Commission should never have inserted itself into the process in the first place.”

What we wrote was that Widmer shouldn’t have been inserted into the Globe op-ed page without the paper noting that he serves on the Children’s Hospital Board Committee for Community Service.

Coincidentally (or not), Wednesday’s Globe also featured this full-page ad.

 

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Conflict of interest, right?

Calls for full disclosure, right?

No such thing from the Globe.

So we sent this email to Globe editorial page editor Ellen Clegg:

Hi, Ellen,

[We] just published this post on Two-Daily Town.

http://bit.ly/2dXG7ZD

[We] would welcome the opportunity to post your response.

Sincerely,
[The Hardreading Staff]

 

So far . . . nothing.

No response from Ms. Clegg. No editor’s note about Widmer in the Globe. No nothing.

Except . . .

Another full-page ad in today’s Globe.

 

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(Children’s is so desperate to burnish its image, the hospital even ran the ad in today’s Boston Herald.)

To recap: The Boston Globe ran an op-ed piece from a Children’s Hospital Board member (without identifying him as such) that promoted the hospital’s controversial expansion plan on the same day the paper ran a lucrative full-page ad promoting the hospital’s controversial expansion plan.

And then ran another lucrative ad.

That’s not journalism. That’s full-service marketing.

Globe editors should know better. Globe readers deserve better.


Cable Network to Boston Herald: FX You

September 27, 2016

From our Late to the After Party desk

As always, this year’s Emmy Awards spawned all kinds of self-congradulatory ads touting the number of wins various networks garnered.

And one of them actually landed in Sunday’s Boston Globe.

 

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But not, alas, in the Boston Herald.

C’mon, FXniks: Show the thirsty local tabloid some love, eh? ‘Cause they’re certainly feeling The Strain on Fargo (!) $treet.

(As for the Herald’s editorial content, if you were to recommend Anger Management, it would be Justified.)


Chipotle to Boston Herald: Eat Me (Ad-Free Edition)

September 22, 2016

From our Local Dailies DisADvantage desk

Yesterday’s Boston Globe featured this full-page ad from Chipotle, which is desperately seeking eaters after multiple food-borne illness outbreaks.

 

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Whatever.

No such advertisement, however, appeared in yesterday’s spicy local tabloid (although it did run in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal).

Memo to Chipotle’s marketing nudniks:

Boston Herald readers eat crappy food too.

Smarten up, eh?


Boston Globe ‘Reports’ on HUBweek (Sponsor: Globe)

September 20, 2016

From our Walt Whitman desk

The hardreading staff has long whacked around the Boston Herald for celebrating itself and singing itself in so-called news reports. Now it’s time to give the Boston Globe a dope slap.

For starters, here’s what headlined the Globe’s homepage at 12:45 this morning:

 

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That’s the residue of this Michael Levenson piece at the top of yesterday’s Globe front page:

HUBweek aims for wider appeal

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There will be a party in the South End with music, art installations, and an unusual tasting competition featuring six beers brewed with water from the Charles River that’s been purified (they promise) by a local company.

There will be intimate seven-person lunches in Kendall Square where anyone can ask a Broad Institute geneticist why science hasn’t cured cancer or delve into the dangers of artificial intelligence with a director of the Harvard Innovation Lab.

And just before the first presidential debate, a prominent philosopher will lead an even more high-minded debate at Faneuil Hall, asking: Is it fair to tax the rich to help the poor? And should rich countries have the right to restrict immigration?

Such are the events — both playful and provocative — that organizers are planning for the slightly revamped second year of HUBweek, a festival devoted to the arts, science, and technology that is aiming to become Boston’s answer to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.

 

Reality check: Those four paragraphs feature roughly the same number of plugs as Joe Biden’s head.

It’s not until the sixth graf (on the jump page) that readers learn this:

[O]rganizers are . . .  grappling with how to ensure that the annual festival — which is sponsored by The Boston Globe, Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — does not cater solely to the business and academic elite in downtown Boston, the Seaport, and Cambridge, where most of the events are held.

 

Maybe the Globe should grapple with how to ensure that promotional material is not presented as news. The hardreading staff would be happy to participate in that high-minded debate.

Meanwhile . . . Free the Michael Levenson One! 


Boston Herald (Pot)Head and Shoulders Above Globe

September 16, 2016

We tend to think of the Boston Herald as the town’s stern grandpa, holding everyone to the straight and narrow. While the Herald continues to be narrow, though, it’s not always straight. The tokey local tabloid features this full-page ad from Boston Smoke Shop in today’s edition.

 

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The ad fails to mention where and when the Boston Freedom Rally will occur (Saturday and Sunday on the Boston Common), but that’s weed for you.

Meanwhile, not high but in high dudgeon is the Herald editorial page, which weighs in with this bit of pearl-clutching.

Pot limits in order

Secretary of Transportation Stephanie Pollack is right — Massachusetts needs a reliable test to determine whether a driver is impaired by marijuana. And if Question 4 passes, legalizing the recreational use of pot, the importance of developing such a test will be even more important.

“One of the concerns with marijuana is, it is clear at some point, you are impaired legally, but we don’t have a test like we do for alcohol,” Pollack said on Boston Herald Radio this week.

There is an interim step that Beacon Hill could take — and frankly already should have taken. They could make it illegal to drive while in possession of marijuana, as it is with an open container of alcohol.

 

And remember: It’s against the law to smoke anything on the Common. Not to get technical about it.

Crosstown at the Boston Globe, there’s no Boston Smoke Shop ad, but there is this pot headline on Page One: “Colorado serves edible marijuana with a side of controversy.” And brownies you can eat on the Common.