It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town

While the Boston Globe is makes its Pulitzer push with a three-part megaseries about felonious illegal immigrants, the Boston Herald has been scooping up stories hither and yon.

From the feisty local tabloid’s Yon desk: yesterday’s Page One story on Gov. Patrick tolling the bell for Mass. Pike tollbooths.

Gov. Deval Patrick plans to take toll on toll takers

Gov. Deval Patrick is putting toll takers on notice and quietly moving forward with a pricey plan to install electronic tolling across the state, despite a budget crisis that’s triggering massive cuts in spending, the Herald Truth Squad has learned.

Patrick’s transportation officials inserted a new clause in a Nov. 21 union contract proposal, obtained by the Truth Squad, that gives the administration power to “have the unlimited right … to eliminate manual toll collection” on all Massachusetts highways.

Both Patrick and the Globe gave the Herald a shoutout today (although the paragraph-eight mention in the Globe was more like a whisperout).

From the feisty local tabloid’s Hither desk comes this scoop:

A possible switch to music is all the talk around WTKK

Keep your ears tuned for some big changes at WTKK-FM (96.9).

WTKK NewsTalk owner Greater Media could soon be switching back to all-music because, experts said, “toxic” all-talk formats aren’t attracting enough younger listeners.

Speculation about a format shift reached a fever pitch yesterday when news broke that Internet domain names such as 969Bostons Beat.com, 969TheBeat.com, and Power969 had been gobbled up.

Not good news at all, at least from our standpoint.  (Full disclosure: The hardyakking staff does a turn every Friday morning on the Jim & Margery show.)

Others, however – like the redoubtable Dan Kennedy – would disagree.

UPDATE: Dan writes, “I specifically said I hope J&M land elsewhere — you make it sound like I’ll be glad when they’re gone.”

Sorry – that was entirely unintentional. It’s the rest of that lot he won’t miss.

Dan also adds this:

“Some scoop for the Herald, eh? That’s what I thought until this got posted [on Media Nation ].”

Sorted.

Sorta.