As the hardlyreading staff noted this past weekend, our front porch failed to nestle a Boston Herald delivery either Friday or Saturday.
But yesterday the twicey local tabloid tried to make up for it by delivering two copies of the Sunday edition.
Page One of the first:
Just for the record, Page One of the second:
Okay, we’re done now.
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From our Tab-void desk
As one of the 17 home subscribers to the Boston Herald, the hardreading staff has exceedingly low expectations in terms of quality of service. But the heisty local tabloid has hit new lows this week.
Yesterday: No paper. “Printing problems,” they said. (What – Howie ran out of crayons?) But, the nice lady assured us, they’d include it with today’s delivery.
Today: Forget two – we got no Heralds this morning. But we did get Barron’s. (Your head scratch goes here.)
Front page:
Just for the record, front page of today’s Herald that we never got:
Yeah. Whatever.
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Looks like the family of Edward J. Walsh Jr., the Boston Fire Department Lieutenant who lost his life fighting a nine-alarm Back Bay fire in March, really started something over the weekend.
Page 3 of today’s Boston Herald:
Very classy. (As the hardreading staff noted, the Walsh family ran their ad in the Herald on Saturday, then ran one in the Globe on Sunday. We’ll see if the BFD follows suit.)
Also firefighter-related is this ad in today’s Herald:
Hmmm. We called Precision Fitness Equipment to get more info, especially about the involvement of any Massachusetts fire departments in this bakeoff. There is none, as it turns out. A pleasant fellow named Dave Aykanian says the company had done something similar seven or eight years ago (he remembers a Quincy fire station winning back then) and, given all that’s happened with firefighters lately, thought it would be nice to do something for them.
Okay, then. Pretty sure that ad will not be running in the Globe tomorrow.
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On Saturday the hardreading staff noted the Boston Herald ad the Walsh family ran saluting Edward J. Walsh Jr., the Boston Fire Department Lieutenant who lost his life fighting a nine-alarm Back Bay fire in March.
Yesterday it was the Boston Globe’s turn. From page A4:
Rest in peace, Ed Walsh.
And rest assured, Walsh family:
It’s Boston that should be thanking you.
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From our Late to the Pity Party desk
Yesterday’s Boston Globe featured this reporticle on page B8:
And etc. But here’s how it appeared on the Globe’s website:
Jared Remy implicated in 2d alleged jailhouse attack
Jared Remy, already charged with murder in the death of his girlfriend and with attacking another inmate at the Cambridge jail where he is being held, could face charges in an alleged assault on a correctional officer.
A spokesman for Middlesex Sheriff Peter J. Koutoujian confirmed Friday that Remy is being investigated in an alleged assault on a correctional officer April 25, but he declined to release any details of the incident.
Koutoujian wasn’t so coy in Friday’s Boston Herald.
Note especially this nugget from Laurel Sweet’s piece in the feisty local tabloid:
Accused killer Jared Remy is in more jailhouse trouble, with the sheriff saying the 35-year-old hurled a milk carton at a correction officer assigned to watch over him in solitary confinement.
The alleged outburst at the Cambridge Jail was called to the Herald’s attention through an internal investigation report Remy mailed to the paper along with a letter. Remy is the son of Red Sox legend Jerry Remy, a color commentator for Red Sox games.
Middlesex Sheriff Peter J. Koutoujian said yesterday he “absolutely” intends to press charges.
The officer claims that at 4 p.m. on April 25, “While sitting in front of Isolation cell 1 D/T Remy began to threaten this reporting Officer and after approximately 2 minutes D/T Remy threw a closed milk carton at this reporting Officer hitting me on the collarbone,” the report states.
Not to get technical about it, but the Globe failed to include 1) those details; 2) a thuggish photo of Remy; and especially 3) credit to the Herald either in print or on the web.
Not to mention the Globe piece noted that Jared Remy “is the son of famed Red Sox broadcaster Jerry Remy,” but failed to note that Red Sox owner John Henry also owns the stately local broadsheet.
Bad form on all counts, Globeniks.
Bad form.
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This tribute appears on page 9 of today’s Boston Herald.
Closeup:
The Walsh Family goes on to thank a myriad of people and organizations, from the Boston Fire Department to Sean O’Malley to “the people who lined the bridges and streets in honor of Ed, as we first brought him home, and once again on the morning of his funeral. These images will be ingrained in our minds forever.”
Lovely.
And for once, only in the Herald.
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Back in the 1980s the hardreading staff carved out a spot for itself as a local advertising critic, possibly the smallest franchise in the universe. As such, we contributed to the splendid publication AdEast, which sadly seems lost to posterity.
Anyway, last night we happened upon some old clips and what did we see but a piece from 1986 headlined The Great Comics Strip Wars, which detailed the Herald’s nabbing nine comic strips – all, not coincidentally, controlled at the time by the News America Syndicate, which was owned by 
Herald owner Rupert Murdoch – from the Boston Globe.
Two passages stood out to us almost 30 years later.
First:
Under the ownership of Rupert Murdoch, the proverbial self-made man who worships his creator, the Herald has embodied tabloid journalism at its best. It serves as an excellent table of contents for the town’s “serious” newspaper, it has lots of pictures . . . and it doesn’t clutter up its pages with ads.
And then this:
Arguably, the greatest strength of the Herald is its uncanny knack of finding a hard-news angle in its own circulation gains and promotional activities. I’ll never forget the investigative vigor displayed by the Herald when the paper was running its first Wingo game. Stories began appearing about the the town and the townsfolk of Wingo, Kentucky (pop. 646 or thereabouts). As fine a group of people as they are, they were finer yet for all having received a free subscription to the Herald and their very own Wingo cards.
See our Walt Whitman desk for updated details.
Once it nabbed the comics from the Globe, the then-feistier local tabloid “launched a series of hard-hitting features, painting this as the most significant exodus since Biblical times.”
. . . plus c’est la même chose, oui?
P.S. If any of you splendid readers want to see the whole AdEast piece, just say the word and we’ll ask the Missus to shoot it.
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From our One Town, Two Different Worlds desk
For years the hardreading staff has described the feisty local tabloid as a sort of sprightly daily summary of the Boston Globe.
No more.
The crosstown rivals are absolutely living in parallel universes at this point.
Exhibit Umpteen: There are three big local stories on the front page of today’s Globe – the region’s big hit from climate change; GOP gubernatorial wannabe Mark Fisher’s alleged shakedown of state party officials in return for his dropping out of the race; and Boston College’s returning its Belfast Project tapes to the interviewees to avoid more mishegoss like last week’s Gerry Adams rumpus.
Exactly none of those three stories appears in the Herald.
Then again, there is this kickoff to the Herald’s two-part series on Bay State legislative shenanigans, which gets just about all of Page One:
And let’s not forget this exclusive from Track Gal Gayle Fee:
Those Namesniks at the stately local broadsheet need to get crackin’, yeah?
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From our Santo Subito! desk
The local dailies both play the home-away game in their coverage of this weekend’s Saintorama in the Eternal City.
Start, naturally enough, with Page One of the Boston Herald.
The faithy local tabloid follows up with four pages of Pope-O-Scope coverage, most notably former Boston Mayor/Vatican Ambassador Ray Flynn’s filing from Rome.
World’s Catholics celebrate the faith
O’Malley, Boston represented well
VATICAN CITY — The great and the good have gathered in this lovely city, flocking from all corners of the world — ambassadors and cardinals, presidents, prime ministers and royalty.
They are meeting in hotels and embassies and gorgeous residences in the Eternal City, and many gathered together for joyous reunions last night on the eve of today’s double canonization of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II.
It is a tribute to the remarkable occasion, the convergence of so many diverse and powerful leaders for the first time two popes will be canonized in a celebration presided over by two living popes — Pope Francis and the retired Pope Benedict XVI.
But there’s an even more important constituency in town, Flynn writes.
Yet there is a far greater tribute, below the glittering halls, past the motorcades and speeding police escorts and throngs of media.
Down in the streets of St. Peter’s Square, thousands of humble pilgrims gathered to sleep last night. They lay on the cobblestones in the spring chill, the clouds and stars above them, waiting for the dawn, waiting for one of the great moments in our faith.
There’s also Margery Eagan on John XXIII, Marty Walsh reminiscing about JP II’s 1979 Hub visit, journalist-turned deacon Greg Piatt on his vocational switch, and Peter Gelzinis on local-boy-mage-seminarian Kevin Leaver, who’ll be at the hoedown in St. Peter’s Square.
Crosstown at the Boston Globe, the front page features this:
The lordly local broadsheet has Cathoholic Czar John L. Allen Jr. in Rome, while Lisa Wangsness and Jeremy C. Fox patrol the local parishes.
From Allen’s piece (website version):
Francis accents unity with halos for superstar popes
ROME — Oct. 11, 1962, brought a beautiful moonlit night to Rome. Pope John XXIII was in an ebullient mood because of that morning’s launch of the Second Vatican Council, a gathering conceived by the pontiff in which bishops from around the world would throw open the windows of the Catholic Church to the modern world.
The first pope of television’s Golden Age, “Good Pope John” had a roly-poly, grandfatherly persona and seemingly inexhaustible cheer that won fans everywhere, though the changes he set in motion also stirred up critics, then and now. That night, the pope looked out over St. Peter’s Square at the vast crowd praying for the council, and made some off-the-cuff remarks that passed into history as his “Sermon on the Moon” . . .
“Tonight, when you get home, you’re going to find your kids,” Pope John said. “I want you to give your kids a caress . . . and tell them that this caress comes from the pope!”
No one could recall hearing a pope address the faithful in quite that way.
Today’s papal twofer is unique as well.
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Today’s Boston dailies have two different views about GOP gubernatorial hopeful Charlie Baker’s campaign-finance prospects – one good, the other not so much.
The Boston Globe’s Frank Phillips has this story:
Scott Brown’s candidacy could hurt Charlie Baker
Analysts see more GOP money and resources going to New Hampshire’s US Senate battle
Scott Brown’s entrance into New Hampshire’s US Senate race has created a political and media firestorm that some analysts believe will damage critical underpinnings of Charlie Baker’s gubernatorial candidacy in Massachusetts.
Many of the state and national Republican resources that would have been showered on Baker’s race for governor — in terms of fund-raising, strategists, and manpower — will now be directed at Brown’s challenge to Senator Jeanne Shaheen.
Just as problematic for Baker is the huge amount of money that will pour into the Boston media market, aimed at southern New Hampshire, to boost Brown’s candidacy in what the national GOP and the Democrats see as a key battleground over control of the Senate . . .
That translates into several potential problems for Baker. Start with independent expenditure groups and party committees scooping up big chunks of commercial inventory on Boston TV stations, leaving less desirable slots for Baker. Then factor in the inevitable smashmouth nature of the spots on both sides of the Granite State bakeoff; some of the mud slung at Brown will surely land on Baker as well.
So, to recap: Fewer dollars, worse ad placement, geld by association.
Then again, crosstown at the Boston Herald Two-Time Charlie’s prospects look much sunnier. Page One, lower half:
This one is Joe Battenfeld’s story:
Super PACs Join Fray
May pour big $ into governor’s race
Two new Super PACs — one Democratic and one Republican — have jumped into the Massachusetts gubernatorial race, the latest sign that shadowy special
interest groups and power brokers will be pouring millions of dollars into the race for the Corner Office.
One of the Super PACs, called “Massachusetts Forward Together,” has a clear purpose — to “support the gubernatorial candidacy of Steve Grossman,” according to papers filed yesterday with the state’s campaign finance office. Grossman, the state treasurer, is a Democratic candidate for governor.
The other Super PAC, chaired by longtime Republican strategist Beth Lindstrom, appears to be an effort to support the candidacy of Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker. Neither of the organizations has reported spending any money yet.
Lindstrom’s PAC has the intentionally vague name of “Commonwealth Future” and its stated purpose is “to support candidates who create jobs, grow the Massachusetts economy and improve education,” according to its filing with the state.
So, to recap:
Maybe Charlie Baker’s in good shape.
Maybe not.
But only if you read both dailies.
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It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town 