Boston Herald: The Fail of the House of Tsarnaev

December 16, 2013

Okay, well not everyone thinks the Boston Globe’s big Sunday takeout – The Fall of the House of Tsarnaev – is Pulitzer prose the way the hardswooning staff at Campaign Outsider does.

From today’s Boston Herald:

‘SICKENING’

Globe’s bomber tales disgust mother of Marathon survivors

The Stoneham mother whose two sons each lost a leg in the Boston Marathon bombing called “sickening” a nine-page special section in yesterday’s Boston Globe that downplayed Islamic extremism, suggesting the Tsarnaev family’s bad luck, poverty and mental issues had more to do with the plot, while legal experts said BI1E1611.JPGthose claims are likely to figure strongly in any effort to spare surviving accused terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev from the death penalty.

“I hope people don’t fall for this. It’s a joke. There’s no excuse for what those terrorists did,” Liz Norden said of Tsarnaev, 20, and his older brother Tamerlan, who was killed in Watertown in a firefight with police after four people had been murdered and more than 260 others wounded — with numerous amputations.

Both Norden’s sons, JP and Paul, lost their right legs as one of two pressure-cooker bombs packed with shrapnel exploded in Copley Square on April 15.

 

The feisty local tabloid notes that “[a] Globe spokeswoman declined to comment.”  Herald readers, by contrast, are staging a regular Who Struck John in the comments section.

Representative sample:

 

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From there, they were off to the races (123 comments as of this posting).

Check the Herald’s editorial page tomorrow for Chapter Two.


Boston Herald ‘Press Party’ Crasher

November 1, 2013

Well, more like shaker-upper if you want to get technical about it.

The feisty local tabloid has a new host for Press Party, its weekly media-review webcast, along with a streamlined panel.

The musical chairs featured former Press Party multimedia reporter Katie Eastman taking over the host’s role, while former host (and Herald columnist) Joe Battenfeld moves over to the panel.

 

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(That’s Herald reporter Hillary Chabot and Suffolk University’s Bob Rosenthal in the other two chairs. The fifth chair from previous webcasts is, well, unendowed.)

As for the content of the webcast, we’ll leave that to the hardreading staff at Campaign Outsider.

Meanwhile, in other Herald web news, a splendid reader of Two-Daily Town sent this today:

Have you noticed that they’ve cut the 6 to 9 a.m. slot [on Boston Herald Radio]? If you turn to the radio page in the paper, you’ll see there’s nothing listed. I listened this morning for a bit between 6 and 6:30 and heard an unbelievably lame segment from yesterday’s sports show followed by the beginning of Graham’s Thursday show.

Said radio page:

 

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The rumor mill also has Battenfeld taking over the vacated 6 to 9 slot.

Stay tuned.


WGBH Herald Hostage, Day 4 (Part 2)

October 11, 2013

The hardreading staff didn’t know the half of it in its earlier post this morning. Also in today’s Boston Herald, a handful of other shoutouts in the WGBH/David Koch rumpus.

Working our way through the opinion pages from left to right, start with this editorial:

Going cuckoo on Koch

Perhaps we should be accustomed to the lunatic fringe making comparisons between conservatives and, say, the Ku Klux Klan. We confess it’s a bit surprising when a man of the cloth engages in the odious practice, but hey, when it comes to protecting Mother Earth all bets are off!

 

Segue smoothly to Jerry Holbert’s editorial cartoon:

 

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Toss in a couple of Letters to the Editor:

Opposing views silenced

Just because protesters disagree with David Koch is no reason to shut him down and have him removed from the WGBH board (“Tough climate as WGBH faces protest over board member,” Oct. 10). That’s even if protesters do think they are scientifically correct about climate change, despite the fact that the issue is still being debated and researched and there is no unanimity on it in the scientific community.

A protester is quoted as saying of Koch, “His presence is extremely offensive. People who are actively fighting to destroy the climate should not have equal political voice.” The whole point of free speech in a democracy is so all sides may be heard.

I even support the protesters’ right to make statements that I believe are strident, hysterical and inaccurate. But to be “offended” by someone’s “presence” just because they disagree with you and to demand that their rights be abrogated is a far greater offense.

— Jeffrey Miner, Belmont

 

Raise the heat on Koch

There is profound irony in the use of the word “heat” in your headline about the grassroots movement to encourage WGBH to sever ties with pollution powerbroker David Koch (“Activists put heat on WGBH to oust donor, board giant,” Oct. 3). Thanks to Koch’s relentless assault on regulations to combat heat-trapping carbon emissions, we are on the verge of a climate cliff far more hazardous than any economic “fiscal cliff.”

Just as Boston will be underwater if we don’t get serious about reducing emissions, WGBH’s credibility will be underwater if the station doesn’t wash its hands of a man whose actions and statements on science contradict the station’s mission of educating and informing the public.

— D. R. Tucker, Brockton

 

And finish off Kochapalooza with a Michael Graham column:

Koch’s cash trash to libs

David Koch has a lot to learn about tolerance and diversity.

Koch, as every Occupod knows, is one of the infamous Koch Brothers (pronounced “coke,” as in “short for cocaine,’’ as in “white things that kill people!”). The Kochs are, well, they’re just the most dangerous, hateful and awful people in America. They regularly (and hatefully) give away millions of dollars to hospitals, universities, think tanks and, yes, public television.David Koch

Specifically, David Koch has given $18 million to support the science show “NOVA” and he sits on the WGBH board.

Liberals are demanding that he be thrown off the board over his political views.

In the name of tolerance and diversity, of course.

 

And just think: We still have the hardworking staff at Campaign Outsider’s Beat the Press Party Bakeoff to look forward to.

 

 

 


The ‘Ray Donovan’ Rumpus? It Ends Tonight!

July 2, 2013

As the hardworking staff at Campaign Outsider noted earlier, the Times-Industrial Complex rendered a split decision on Showtime’s new series Ray Donovan. New York Times critic Alessandra Stanley found it “grandiose, predictable and painfully slow,” while kissin’ cousin Boston Globe critic Matthew Gilbert considered it “fantastic.”

So the hardworking staff went to a tiebreaker: Wall Street Journal critic Dorothy Rabinowitz, who called it a “hard-bitten and buoyant tale.”

But then came Boston Herald critic Mark Perigard, who hated it.

 

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So we needed another tiebreaker.

Which was me and the Missus.

Our verdict:

Meh.

The Missus wants to stipulate that we love Liev Schreiber, but the rest of the cast does a lot of scenery-chewing, and Jon Voight has had so much cosmetic surgery, it now qualifies as a head transplant.

Regardless, we’ll give it one more chance.


Our ‘Beat the Press Party’ Bakeoff (Spotlight the Globe Edition)

April 6, 2013

It’s time once again to review the Great Boston MediaWatch Dogfight, especially the rumpus over the Boston Globe’s Spotlight report, Driven to the Edge.

Start as usual with the underdog Boston Herald, which has been hounding its crosstown rival all week over the Globe’s three-part taxidermy of the Boston cab industry.

The Herald’s Press Party segment is here.

Highlights.

The set-up piece accused the Globe of deception and essentially declared reporters should never go undercover, a position host Joe Battenfeld persistently pursued.

And a position Suffolk University’s Bob Rosenthal seconded, asserting that the Globe did a good job but committed an ethical violation because the paper could have gotten the story otherwise – which is nonsense.

Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson and State Rep. Shaunna O’Connell, to their credit, countered that the Globe could not have gotten the story without going undercover.

Over at the Big Dog, WGBH’s Beat the Press (hosted by Emily Rooney), the conversation went this way:

Host Emily Rooney said sometimes the end justifies the means.

The panelists generally praised the Globe story, asserted that you need to cross your T’s and dot your I’s in these situations, and said the Herald was just being the Herald.

Who’s Top Dog?

You tell us.

Originally posted at Campaign Outsider.


Herald Provides Globe Graphic

March 27, 2013

We have a rare tag-team effort today by the local dailies, starting with the lead piece in the Boston Globe:

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Helpful Globe graphic:

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Even more helpful Boston Herald graphic:

Picture 4

 

Hey – someone hand me that gold watch there, wouldja?

Originally posted at Campaign Outsider  for reasons unclear even to us.


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:

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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.


The Boston Herald’s Debate and Twitch

October 2, 2012

Big relief: In the aftermath of last night’s debate (co-sponsored by the Boston Herald) between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren, the feisty local tabloid didn’t run ten pages of coverage the way they did yesterday.

It ran THIRTEEN pages, which featured everything from a scorecard to a fashion critique to enough thumbsucking to fill a maternity ward. (Roll your own here.)

The Boston Globe, after ignoring the debate yesterday, actually covered it in today’s edition, which provided a news report, news analysis, and a thumbsucker trifecta. (Ditto here.)

You’ll find coverage by the hardworking staff at Campaign Outsider here.

And let the wild rumpus recommence.

 


Previously on It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town

July 21, 2012

For Campaign Outsider’s IGTLTDT archive, click here.

Bon appétit!