Extra! Boston Herald Credits Globe Twice in One Day!

April 25, 2016

From our Credit Where Credit’s Due desk

In the course of covering local events, the Boston dailies often piggyback on one another’s stories, most often without acknowledging that the rival paper got there first. (See, for example, the Boston Globe’s routine drafting off the Boston Herald’s Grand Prix of Boston coverage.)

But sometimes one of the dailies does the right thing. Spoiler alert: It isn’t the Globe.

Page One of yesterday’s Boston Sunday Globe featured this piece about Mayor Martin J. Wiretap.

Walsh is drawn into federal labor probe

Before he was mayor, when Walsh was a labor leader, he was heard on a wiretap saying he had warned a developer using non-union workers. Walsh denies it.

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A sweeping federal investigation into allegations of strong-arm tactics by unions has triggered a wave of subpoenas to union leaders, developers, and Boston City Hall staff, bringing scrutiny to Mayor Martin J. Walsh’s administration and his work as a labor leader before taking office in 2014, according to people familiar with the inquiry.

At issue in the investigation is whether labor officials threatened developers and business people who hired nonunion workers on their projects. Walsh, though apparently not an early focus of the probe, became drawn into it through wiretaps on which he was recorded in 2012, saying he had told a development company it would face permitting problems on a planned Boston high-rise unless it used union labor at another project in Somerville, according to people familiar with the tapes.

 

Well that’s a big story and you knew right off it would be in the Herald today and sure enough it gets a two-page spread.

 

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Nothing unusual there. But what does stand out are the two times the Globe is credited with breaking the story, first in Hillary Chabot’s piece:

Walsh yesterday shook off suggestions that a federal inquiry into labor strong-arming has any connection to his work as mayor. The Boston Globe reported that Walsh as the head of Boston Building Trades Council was heard on a wiretap in 2012 saying he had warned a developer to get union workers on a Somerville project or risk losing Boston permits.

 

Then a second time in this piece by Jack Encarnacao and Laurel Sweet:

The wiretapped statement was captured during a conversation between Walsh, then-head of the Boston Building and Construction Trades Council, and Laborers Local 22 leader Anthony Perrone, the Boston Globe reported yesterday citing unnamed sources.

 

Good for you, Heraldniks!

And, hey, you Morrissey Boulevardiers: Take a lesson, wouldja?

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Boston Dailies Take Turns Beating One Another

January 14, 2016

. . . on the dopey Chandler Jones story, that is.

Yesterday it was all Boston Herald, starting with this Erin Smith/Laurel Sweet story on page two.

Details of Chandler Jones’ ER visit remain murky

Patriots defensive end Chandler Jones was rushed to Norwood Hospital Sunday morning after he showed up at the Foxboro Police Department with a medical Screen Shot 2016-01-14 at 1.11.19 PMemergency, police dispatch records show.

But police officials won’t say what the emergency was and the police chief confirmed information was deleted from dispatch records before they were released to the Herald yesterday.

Dispatch records show Jones arrived at the police station at 7:42 a.m. Sunday and was evaluated by fire and EMS officials before being transported to Norwood Hospital just after 8 a.m.

 

Regardless, Foxboro police Chief 
Edward T. O’Leary did an end run around the Herald’s questions, “[denying] his department and officers had any dealing with Jones over the weekend and 
[adding] the only time he’d ever seen Jones was being interviewed on television.”

That proved to be entirely false. But why get technical about it.

Crosstown, the Boston Globe ate the firsty local tabloid’s dust, running a story on D5 that mentioned the Herald six times in 11 paragraphs.

But today the tables were turned.The Morrissey Boulevardiers have this Jim McBride/Christopher Gasper piece on D1.

Bad drug reaction cited

Source: Jones used synthetic marijuana

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FOXBOROUGH — Chandler Jones had a bad reaction to synthetic marijuana leading to his admittance to Norwood Hospital Sunday, a source familiar with the situation told the Globe Wednesday.

The source said Jones lives near the Foxborough police station and walked there to seek help after he had the reaction.

 

Crosstown the other way, the Fargo Street Gang has a solid follow-up today, but not all the details.

Dispatch records show a Foxboro officer also secured Jones’ residence during the Sunday incident.

“The front door’s open,” the officer says when he arrives at Jones’ home, which is about a block from the station, and later reports: “Yeah, I got his keys off the kitchen table. I was able to lock the front door. If you want to just pass along to the fire he was definitely involved in Class D — Delta — before this happened, just so they know.”

Delta is a police call sign to denote the letter D, while Class D is a category of controlled substances under the state’s drug laws, according to a law enforcement source. Class D drugs include marijuana and some prescription drugs, which can be legal.

 

So there’s more difference between the Boston dailies than how they spell Foxboro(ugh). That’s just swell.

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Boston Dailies: Tsarnaev Jury’s In

March 5, 2015

From our Late to the Hanging Party desk

After an initial pool of 1373 potential jurors (who filled out a 28-page questionnaire) was whittled down to 256 by presiding US District Judge George A. O’Toole, whose interviews yielded 75 possibly unbiased jurors who then shrank to the Elite Eighteen – 12 jurors and six alternates – Boston now has an actual jury for the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for the Boston Marathon bombings that killed three people – Martin Richard, Krystle Campbell, and Lingzi Lu (along with MIT police officer Sean Collier) – and wounded over 200.

And the finalists had their cotillion in Wednesday’s local dailies.

Boston Globe:

 

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Boston Herald:

 

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This is shaping up to be one hellacious bakeoff between the two local dailies.

Fasten your seat belts, as Bette Davis would say. It’s going to be a bumpy trial.

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Irish Ayes for Boston Globe’s St. Pat’s Coverage

March 17, 2014

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.

 

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Laurel Sweet got all of seven paragraphs for her piece on the breakfast, and the parade coverage got the same.

Crosstown at the Boston Globe, by contrast, Dorcena Forry was the Cover Gal.

 

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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

 

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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.

 

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For Boston Herald, DCF=Don’t Cease Flogging

February 26, 2014

The feisty local tabloid has been on the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families like Brown on Williamson for weeks now. And today is no exception, starting at the top of Page One.

 

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Then there’s the over-the-top page 5.

 

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From Laurel Sweet’s report:

The devastated victim of a sexually abusive DCF-approved therapist today described his “torture,” moments before his predator was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

“I find it ironic that a person who claims to be helping kids was actually destroying their lives. And he nearly destroyed mine,” the now-17-year-old boy told Suffolk Superior Court Judge Christine M. Roach. “I will never fully get over the despicable things he did to me. Despite this, I will face this awful truth in my past and fight to stay in control of my feelings of hurt, anger, sadness, and betrayal. One thing that would go a long way in my healing would be that this man, who stands before you today in judgment, faces serious consequences for what he has done so he can pay the price for his evil actions. This man is a cruel and abusive man who needs to be kept from other children so they will never have to experience the torture he perpetrated on me.”

 

It’s yet another indictment of a state agency that has thoroughly lost its way.

The (unlicensed) therapist, Kenneth Edwards of Dorchester, received “the mandatory state minimum sentence of 10 years for sexually assaulting the boy when he was 13.”

That was not well-received by “Edwards’ family and church supporters.”

It also was not covered by the Boston Globe.

Not to get technical about it.

 

 

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Text-book Case of Boston Herald’s Appeal

February 25, 2014

Remember those two knuckleheads who had the bright idea of scamming the One Fund Boston out of $2.2 million by claiming an aunt had been maimed in the Marathon bombings?

Last we heard from them, Branden Mattier had filed suit against the State Police and FedEx in December for “[violating] his constitutional rights when he was arrested in July after allegedly signing for a bogus $2.2 million check from One Fund Boston.”

Well, they’re back.

And knuckleheaded as ever, which Laurel Sweet’s Boston Herald report confirms.

‘Real Tears of Joy, Dawg’

Texts show alleged scammers rejoicing over cash

A South End rapper texted his brother he was moved to “real tears of joy, dawg,” upon learning The One Fund Boston had approved them for a $2.2 070213onefundmillion payday based on their bogus claim that a long-dead aunt had lost both her legs to last year’s deadly Boston Marathon bombings, according to grand jury testimony their lawyers have filed in the case.

Branden “The Real SouljaBoy” Mattier, 23, told Domunique Grice, 28, the pair would be moving to “a place where only royalty lives” courtesy of their newfound wealth and the black Mercedes-Benzes they’d soon be driving.

 

Those are just a few of the roughly “40,000 texts between them police said they recovered from Mattier’s iPhone, according to voluminous documents filed Friday in Suffolk Superior Court.”

Here are a few more:

 

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According to Sweet, “[t]he brothers were due to face a jury next month on charges of conspiracy, identity fraud and attempting to commit a crime, but the trial has been postponed indefinitely.”

But SouljaBoy will be in court on Thursday hoping to suppress recorded statements he made to police last July.

Maybe the Boston Globe will cover that. Because right now this one is all the Herald’s.

 

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Hark! The Herald! (Battle of the Bulger Edition)

May 31, 2013

From our Walt Whitman desk

The Boston Herald is still pounding away at Gov. Deval Patrick (D-Elsewhere) over the Massachusetts welfare rumpus, but the feisty local tabloid has its eye on bigger game next week when the trial of James “Whitey” Bulger begins in earnest.

Here’s the preview the Herald ran in today’s edition:

 

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And here are some of the details:

 

Picture 4

 

Picture 5

 

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It’s all fabulously overdone:

Look for Howie Carr, who vowed to watch Whitey every step of the way through judgment day, on the video reports.

No deadly detail is too small, so Herald reporters will be tweeting live . . .

[Reporter Laurel Sweet will] be close enough to look into Whitey’s eyes as loved ones of his 19 alleged murder victims take the stand. She’ll also be able to read jurors’ reactions to the gruesome evidence and chilling testimony.

 

Sweet.

Crosstown, there’s no word yet from the Boston Globe on who’ll be close enough to look into Whitey’s eyes, but today’s edition does feature this:

Globe’s Cullen, Murphy may testify in Bulger trial

Lawyers for James “Whitey” Bulger, who has bragged about strafing The Boston Globe offices with gunfire during the busing crisis of the 1970s, may call two of the newspaper’s journalists as defense witnesses at his upcoming trial.

His legal team filed a list of 78 potential witnesses Thursday, including Globe columnist Kevin Cullen and reporter ­Shelley Murphy.

Both have covered Bulger for decades and earlier this year published a book detailing his rise to power in Boston’s underworld and his capture in 2011 in Santa Monica, Calif., ­after 16 years on the run as one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives . . .

Other journalists on the ­potential witness list include former Globe reporters Gerard O’Neill and Dick Lehr, as well as Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr.

 

Damn – the Herald forgot to mention that part in its full-page promo, although it did have this online (tip o’the pixel to Mike Deehan at Massterlist).

Then again, there’s always tomorrow.

 

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