August 8, 2014
It’s been a couple of months since the Boston Globe launched its weekly section Capital, and for the most part it seems pretty fat (12 pages) and happy (exuberant layouts). The only thing even vaguely controversial about the sections is the spelling of its name.
Globe editor Brian McGrory has a running gag with Jim Braude and Margery Eagan on WGBH radio about why it’s Capital with an a not an o. McGrory keeps wriggling out of revealing the paper’s reasons, but here are three possible ones from today’s edition.
Would those ads likely have run in the A or B section if there were no Capital? Probably. But you have to believe a section geared toward political junkies is a more appealing environment for all three advertisers. For the first two, it’s obvious. For Steward Health Care, it’s a bit more oblique.
From Bruce Mohl’s CommonWealth piece last month on why Steward “is missing from the group of health care competitors that have banded together to fight the consent agreement negotiated by Partners HealthCare and Attorney General Martha Coakley”:
Some think the company decided to sit this one out because of its close ties to Coakley. The attorney general in 2010 approved the acquisition by Cerberus/Steward of six Caritas Christi hospitals owned by the Boston archdiocese. Coakley also retains some regulatory oversight over Steward, including a say in whether the health care system can shut down any of its hospitals.
Steward executives, led by CEO Ralph de la Torre, gave big to Coakley when she ran for the US Senate in 2010 and ponied up again earlier this year as she mounted her run for governor. Campaign finance records indicate de la Torre and his wife Wing led a group of Steward executives and spouses who made $500 donations to Coakley on February 26. More Steward officials contributed to Coakley in late March.
In all, Steward executives have contributed more than $18,000 to Coakley since late last year. No other health care system has taken such an interest in the gubernatorial campaign, which may help explain why Steward is less interested in the legal fight over the Partners expansion plans.
Interesting. But back to the original question: Why Capital with an a? Maybe because that’s what it hauls in.
P.S. Needless to say, none of the above ads ran in the Boston Herald.
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Uncategorized | Tagged: Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Brian McGrory, Bruce Mohl, Capital, Christians United for Israel, CommonWealth Magazine, CUFI, Everett, Hamas, Israel, Jim Braude, Margery Eagan, Martha Coakley, Massachusetts casino, Mohegan Sun, Revere, Steward Health Care System, WGBH, Wynn Resorts | 
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Posted by Campaign Outsider
July 20, 2014
From our One Town, Two Different Worlds desk
In Boston’s ongoing Casino Roulette, the latest Wynn Resorts offer got very different reactions in the local dailies.
Boston Globe:
Wynn makes offer to Boston
Proposal is richest to a city near planned Everett casino
Wynn Resorts has offered the City of Boston $1 million upfront and $2.6 million annually, along with hiring preferences for city 
residents, as compensation to offset the possible effects of a planned hotel and gambling resort on the Mystic River waterfront in Everett.
It is the richest deal Wynn offered to any community around the company’s planned resort, but far less than the $18 million annual payment promised to Boston by a rival applicant, Mohegan Sun, which is proposing a Revere casino.
Right – far less, as the Boston Herald headlined:
Wynn offer pales beside Sun’s
Rejected Everett deal a fifth of Mohegan’s
The best-and-final offer Wynn Resorts made to Boston — but Mayor Martin J. Walsh rejected — to soften the impact of the casino it 
wants to build in Everett called for $6 million in one-time payments and $2.6 million annually, according to a copy of the deal obtained by the Herald.
The cash pales in comparison to the $30 million upfront and minimum annual $18 million pledged to Boston by rival Mohegan Sun for a gaming resort on the Revere side of Suffolk Downs.
That’s the local dailies in a nutshell: Sunny-side-up Globe, sunny-side-down Herald.
Eggs-actly.
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Casino Roulette, Everett, Marty Walsh, Mohegan Sun, Mystic River, One Town Two Different Worlds, Revere, Suffolk Downs, Wynn Resorts | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
April 4, 2014
As the Great Boston Casino Slapfight proceeds apace, both local dailies ran the same Wynn Resorts ad yesterday.
From the Boston Globe’s op-ed page:
Copy:
Only difference: The Boston Herald version ran in the Business section and was not labeled ADVERTISEMENT.
Otherwise, AWynnForAll, yes?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Everett, Great Boston Casino Slapfight, Mohegan Sun, Revere, Wynn for All, Wynn Resorts | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
March 19, 2014
The feisty local tabloid is quite the frontrunner in today’s edition.
Story inside:
Historic barns may stall bid
Possible hitch in Suffolk’s casino plan
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.
No high horse for the Globeniks today, eh?
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Brian McNiff, Brona Simon, casino, East Boston, historic barns, Krista Selmi, Massachusetts Historic Commission, Mohegan Sun, Revere, Richard Sullivan, Suffolk Downs, William Galvin, Wynn Resorts | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
March 13, 2014
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?
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: arsenic levels, AWynnForAll.com, AWynnForSome.com, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, casino gambling, Everett, Great Boston Casino Slapfight, GZA GeoEnvironmental, Larry Feldman, Massachusetts, Mohegan Sun, pollution cleanup, Revere, Slappy Bird, Wynn Boardwalk, Wynn Resorts | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
March 12, 2014
The Great Boston Casino Slapfight is now resorting – get it? – to advertising to gain support from local gamblers – sorry, gaming enthusiasts.
Start with this ad that appeared on the February 27 Boston Globe op-ed page, promoting a Wynn Resorts casino in Everett.
The nut:
AWynnForAll, yes?
Not so fast, says Mohegan Sun in this ad on yesterday’s Globe op-ed page. It promotes Mohegan’s casino proposal for Revere.
MoheganSunMa.com, yes?
(The ad also ran in yesterday’s Boston Herald – mirabile dictu, yes?)
The Two-Daily Town Expert Advertising Panel™ says the Wynn (Five Stars Not Three Stars) ad wins.
Your guess is as good as ours as to who will actually win.
1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: AWynnForAll.com, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Everett, Great Boston Casino Slapfight, mirabile dictu, Mohegan Sun, MoheganSunMa.com, Revere, Wynn Resorts | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
August 29, 2013
This is what the Boston Herald lives for.
Our feisty local tabloid devotes nearly four full pages to the casino-industrial complex today.
Corruption! Rampant patronage! Zero accountability!
For the Herald, this deal is the grift that keeps on giving.
Crosstown, by contrast, the Boston Globe has this nothingburger of a story in today’s Metro section:
Aside from some mild finger-wagging by columnist Adrian Walker over Boston Mayor Tom Menino’s ram-rodding this deal through, our stately local broadsheet has had nary a discouraging word about the proposed billion-dollar gambling hell – sorry, hall.
C’mon, Globeniks – get on this stick. Where’s that righteous indignation about gambling? Or even some of your trademark tsk-tsking?
You gonna let the Herald have all the fun?
4 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Adrian Walker, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, casino, Revere, Suffolk Downs, Tom Menino | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
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