Today’s Boston Herald features this story about an interview Jerry Remy gave to WEEI’s John Dennis and Gerry Callahan yesterday.
‘Mixed feelings’ for Martel’s father after Remy interview
Jennifer Martel’s father said he has “mixed feelings” about Red Sox icon Jerry Remy’s lengthy and defensive radio interview yesterday, in which the NESN color man admitted he and his wife enabled their alleged killer son but denied coaxing Martel into dropping a restraining order shortly before her murder . . .
In the interview — Remy’s first extensive comments about his son — the second-baseman turned broadcaster and restaurateur said he never got Jared Remy his Red Sox security job, didn’t know the bodybuilder was using his allowance on steroids, and defended his record as a grandfather to the couple’s 5-year-old daughter, Arianna. A custody settlement reached this week awards the Remys visitation while giving guardianship to Martel’s parents.
But the foggy local tabloid left out how Remy “defended his record as a grandparent” – by attacking Herald columnist Margery Eagan for this piece questioning the wisdom of giving Jerry and wife Phoebe Remy shared custody of their granddaughter Arianna, whose mother, Jennifer Martel, Jared Remy allegedly murdered.
From Eric Randall’s Boston Magazine blog post yesterday:
Jerry Remy Does Not Like To Be Called a Bad Grandparent
Remy shot back at a Herald column that wondered whether he’s fit to see his granddaughter.
NESN Red Sox commentator Jerry Remy gave a fascinating interview to the Dennis & Callahan radio show that shed light on which criticisms gets most under his skin in the wake of his son Jared’s alleged murder.
You know I read a column yesterday that comes out and says we’re bad parents and we shouldn’t even be allowed to see our granddaughter because what will we do, have pictures of our son all over the house? I mean we’re not stupid … It’s that kind of reporting that is disgusting to me because what are we going to do, bring our granddaughter into the house, show her pictures of daddy? Give me a break. Have her on the phone with him from the can? Give me a break. Take visitations to jail? Give me a break. I mean, we’re not stupid either. So it’s those kind of things that upset me a bit.
Apparently it upset the Herald too, since they left that part out.
Today’s edition of the Boston Herald is a case study of what tabloids do best: Flood the zone on big breaking stories, and fill the paper with vivid text and images.
It’s all hands on deck at the feety local tabloid today. First sports columnist Steve Buckley decides to get into the Marathon mix.
BC scrapper inspires run for ALS cure
I wish I had video highlights of Pete Frates’ entire baseball career.
If I did, I’d seek out the longest home run he ever hit, the greatest catch, and the hardest, dirtiest takeout slide he ever made at second base, and then I’d somehow combine them into one rock-’em-sock-’em, in-your-face Pete Frates Baseball Moment.
And even then, it would look like a game of backyard ring toss compared with the aggressiveness and determination that Pete is showing in his fight against amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
That’s why I’m running this year’s Boston Marathon:
As he has done with so many others, Pete Frates, a Beverly native and former Boston College baseball captain, has inspired me to help him help find a cure for ALS.
Herald columnist kicks up heels with Irish dance cast
Who doesn’t dream of dancing on Broadway?
Until yesterday, the closest I came was a few birthdays ago when I went to see the rock musical “Hair.” At the end of the show, the cast invited audience members on stage to sing and dance to “Let the Sunshine In.”
I was in heaven.
So I was thrilled — and very nervous — to get yesterday’s assignment: Take part in a master dance class taught by the dancers of “Heartbeat of Home” — a new dance sensation by the producers and director of the Broadway hit “Riverdance” — opening today at Boston’s Citi Wang Theatre.
Thereby producing a nifty piece of newsvertising for the show.
Video evidence here:
Those crosstown Globeniks better step lively if they want to keep up.
UPDATE: Apologies to our Walt Whitman desk for not crediting it earlier.
Jared Remy’s certainly hurting after the Boston Globe blowtorched him on Page One Sunday. (In that piece, it should be noted, the stately local broadsheet yet again failed to disclose that Red Sox principal owner John Henry also owns the paper. Or is the hardreading staff the only one who still cares about that kind of stuff?)
When exactly do you throw up your hands, turn your back and walk away from your own child?
Jerry and Phoebe Remy are the parents of a 35-year-old monster with a long history of hurting women — particularly pregnant ones — but they haven’t reached that point yet. Their son Jared is evil to the core, but they still visit him in jail. They presumably pay for his lawyers. They probably hope and pray he will once again come before a pliable Massachusetts judge and avoid the harshest penalties allowed by law.
Somehow this doesn’t sit well with many Red Sox fans who think Jerry Remy should no longer be allowed to sit in the NESN booth with Don Orsillo and talk about baseball.
But it sits okay with Callahan, who ends his piece this way: “Jerry Remy admits he made mistakes and he knows things will never be the same for Remdawg Inc. But he shouldn’t be stripped of his livelihood and sent home to stare at the walls. Jared should go to prison for the rest of his life. Jerry should go back to work, and, finally and at last, give up on his rotten, hopeless kid.”
Crosstown at the Globe, not everyone is so forgiving. Alan Wirzbicki in a point-counterpoint with Alex Beam:
[I]f Jerry Remy sold used cars, then maybe none of it would matter. The questionable decisions an employee makes with his own paycheck are usually his own business.
But Jerry Remy doesn’t sell used cars. His job is to be a particular TV persona — the gentle, chuckling color commentator on Sox games. Playing that role has made him popular. But now that’s not an image that he can project without turning New England’s collective stomach.
Now it’s Beam’s turn:
I understand that when most people read the story of Jerry and Jared, they see an entitled, well-off sports celebrity gaming the legal system on behalf of his wild and dangerous son. I see something different: a complicated, confusing morass, of biblical pain inflicted on a family that wants to balance its love for a disturbed child against society’s legitimate expectations of personal safety.
Jared is in jail, where he belongs. I’m sure his father and his family are living in a special kind of hell. If the sins of the son are visited on the father, well, that’s not what I call justice.
CONCERNING THE return of sportscaster Jerry Remy to the booth as his son, Jared, awaits trial in the murder of his girlfriend: Perhaps charity demands that NESN be given the benefit of the doubt about what the network knew of the elder Remy’s role in the repeated enabling of his son. However, the Globe’s expose of the monumentally sordid circumstances of Jared Remy’s record removes all doubt (“For Jared Remy, leniency was the rule until one lethal night,” Page A1, March 23).
Who will be able to watch Remy without being reminded of the unimaginable havoc wrought by his son? Even for crass economic reasons alone, let alone the basic duty of social responsibility that NESN owes the community — and yes, there is such a thing — how can NESN possibly allow Remy to stay on the air?
If you’re looking for a tiebreaker, try the redoubtable Dan Kennedy at Media Nation. He has an interesting conversation going on in the comments thread.
This all started with Jessica van Sack’s Boston Herald report on May 28, 2009 (the hardreading staff can’t link to it because bostonherald.com is the Lindsay Lohan of websites) that claimed local prisoner advocate Joanna Marinova had sex with a convicted murderer at the Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater on May 7, 2009.
And it sort of culminated in yesterday’s Suffolk Superior Court verdict that found for Marinova to the tune of $563,052.
A Suffolk Superior Court jury today found the Boston Herald responsible for defamation in a case arising from a May 28, 2009 article regarding a prison visit involving Joanna Marinova at Old Colony Prison in Bridgewater earlier that month. The newspaper states that it expects to “ultimately prevail in this matter.”
“The Herald has stated since its May 28, 2009 article on a major security breach at Old Colony Prison was published that its article was entirely correct, from its headline to its last line,” the Herald said in a statement. “The article was meticulously researched, carefully written and extremely well documented. We are proud of it and the journalist who wrote it.”
The Herald has stated since its May 28, 2009 article on a major security breach at Old Colony Prison was published that its article was entirely correct, from its headline to its last line. The article was meticulously researched, carefully written and extremely well-documented. We are proud of it, and of the journalist who wrote it.
The article was not only excellent, but important, leading as it did to a Department of Corrections investigation and certain reform measures. Lawsuits like the one filed here are serious threats not only to the rights of a free and robust press, but to the rights of the citizenry that expects, and depends upon, that free and robust press.
The Herald fully expects to ultimately prevail in this matter.
Boston Herald loses defamation suit; Boston woman wins $563,052 award
A Suffolk Superior Court jury awarded a Boston woman $563,052 in damages after concluding that she was defamed by a 2009 Boston Herald story that falsely said she had been “written up” by prison officials for having sex with a convicted murderer.
Joanna Marinova sued the newspaper and Herald reporter Jessica Van Sack for the story, which the newspaper published on May 28, 2009. In the verdict they reached after deliberating for about 15 hours, jurors concluded that three parts of the story were false and that two of them defamed Marinova, according to her attorney and the verdict slip.
Rows of decrepit, manure-strewn racehorse barns could pull the reins on Suffolk Downs’ casino dreams, after the Massachusetts Historic Commission threw up a roadblock on their proposed demolition in a landmark claim development experts say could be costly and time-consuming at best — and a project-killer at worst.
Suffolk Downs wants to demolish 30 wood-frame horse stables and a pony barn on the Revere side of the track to make way for the casino. It plans to move the barns to the East Boston side of the track, where the art deco clubhouse, grandstand and racetrack are located, all of which were built in 1935 and are listed in a state inventory of historic landmarks.
Not so fast, pony boys.
Commission director Brona Simon sent a letter to state environmental secretary Richard Sullivan saying her staff has “determined that the proposed demolition and new construction will have an ‘adverse effect’ … on the historic Suffolk Downs through the demolition of all or part of the property and the introduction of visual elements that are out of character with and will alter the setting of the property.”
Translation: We just opened the family-size can of worms.
Crosstown, meanwhile, the story failed to place or show in the Boston Globe.
The hardreading staff, which is three-quarters Irish (and a proud citizen of Ireland, to boot), has always disliked St. Patrick’s Day with its amateur drinkers and Irish for a Day idiots. (The old man used to say we had an Irish sense of work and a German sense of humor.)
Back then we lived at 89th and 3rd, just three blocks from where the St. Patrick’s Day Parade ended, so each year we spent the next morning sweeping the drunks off every stoop on the block.
We don’t like the fauxliday any better up here, what with all the annual knee-jerk nonsense that goes on in South Boston. But this year there was the new wrinkle of State Sen. Linda Dorcena Forry hosting the traditional St. Patrick’s Day breakfast, and we expected some lively coverage in the local dailies.
Not so fast, Armaugh Boy.
Surprisingly, the Boston Herald’s coverage was flat as yesterday’s beer.
Crosstown at the Boston Globe, by contrast, Dorcena Forry was the Cover Gal.
The Metro section featured two reports on the parade – here and here – along with columnist Adrian Walker waxing enthusiastic about the breakfast.
Linda Dorcena Forry rescues breakfast
You could spot a difference in the St. Patrick’s Day breakfast right from the start this year: The comedic opening was actually funny.
There was a video of Linda Dorcena Forry in front of the convention center sticking Bill Linehan in a cab and then explaining to the driver, in subtitled Haitian Creole, “Remember what we talked about. You need to take him on a long, long ride.”
And with that video Dorcena Forry strode into the breakfast, leading the crowd in the St. Patrick’s favorite, “Step Into the Parlor.” It had taken her roughly two minutes to completely own the event.
The same way the Globe owned the coverage in the Daily Bakeoff.
As the splendid readers of Two-Daily Town might remember, the hardreading staff is one of 17 home subscribers (a.k.a. The Few. The Proud. The Idiots) the Boston Herald boasts.
Consequently, here’s the front page of the fusty local tabloid that hit our porch this morning (tip o’ the pixel to the Missus).
Right: All sports, all the time.
By contrast, here’s the front page of today’s Boston Globe.
Exactly.
A later edition of the Herald did feature this front page, but the corn was off the cob by then.
We can’t wait until the Globe starts printing its papers – and the Herald’s – in Millbury (see Dan Kennedy’s piece here). At that point the Sunday Herald will likely roll off the presses sometime Friday afternoon.
Over the past two days the local dailies have wishboned those closest to Boston Mayor Marty Walsh.
Yesterday the Boston Globe front-paged Walsh’s longtime galpal Lorrie Higgins.
It struck the hardreading staff as odd that the piece would identify Higgins as “the intensely private waitress and legislative aide,” especially because it later reports she has taken a temporary leave from waitressing. But why get technical about it.
Not to be outdone, today’s Boston Herald pulls rank on the Globe.
Mom dishes on Marty Walsh
Mary Walsh — the mayor’s mom — would love to see her oldest son marry his longtime girlfriend.
“Oh, I would some day. I would love it,” she tells me when I ask her if she’d like to see her boy, Mayor Martin J. Walsh, tie the knot with his Savin Hill sweetheart, Lorrie Higgins.
“I love Lorrie and I love Lauren,” she said of Higgins and her daughter. “I love her whole family. They’re great people.”
But there’s no pressure.
“I never tell my kids what to do,” she said.
So in the end it’s all about the girlfriend. One way or another.
Today marks the latest round in the Great Boston Casino Slapfight between Wynn Resorts (wants to bring gambling – sorry, gaming – to Everett) and Mohegan Sun (wants to build a stately pleasure dome in Revere).
Slappy Bird #1 is running its second newspaper ad in an attempt to swing public opinion in its favor. From today’s Boston Globe’s op-ed page, in two pieces for legibility (the same ad ran in today’s Boston Herald as well):
Not everyone is buying into that sunny-side-up projection, though. Last month the Globe reported that any cleanup comes in the wake of new state environmental regulations, slated to take effect this spring, “[that] would double the amount of lead and increase by 150 percent the amount of arsenic allowed to remain in dirt 15 feet or more below the surface.”
That has the eco-set all lathered up, despite assurances from Wynn’s hired hands.
Officials representing Wynn Resorts, which has promised to spend as much as $30 million over about six months to clean the property, said the proposed regulations would have little impact on their plans.
“Any cost differential of the new regulations is marginal,” said Larry Feldman, a senior principal at GZA GeoEnvironmental, an environmental consulting firm in Norwood, who helped draft Wynn’s remediation plan and who sits on the environmental agency’s waste site cleanup advisory committee. “It’s not a big issue.”
That’s a classic content-free corporate statement, unlikely to satisfy local residents “worried that construction activity would produce dangerous dust particles of arsenic and lead that could be sent airborne and settle in the neighborhood, leach into the Mystic River, and get spread by trucks moving the dirt elsewhere.”
Maybe change that website to AWynnForSome.com, yeah?
restraining order shortly before her murder . . .
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