So, to recap:
On Wednesday, Boston Herald reporter Brian Dowling had this piece in the selfie local tabloid.
Herald execs’ pay disclosed in bankruptcy filings
Premium salaries as bankruptcy neared
The Herald paid substantial salaries to its publisher and top executive as the newspaper’s finances grew dire and 
management directed the company to a bankruptcy sale, according to court papers.
Patrick J. Purcell, the Herald’s publisher, took home $970,092 in the year prior to the company’s Chapter 11 filing in Delaware on Dec. 8, according to papers in the ongoing bankruptcy case. His compensation included fringe benefits of a golf membership and use of a company vehicle.
Among others, Jeff Jacoby, late of the shaky local tabloid, applauded the paper for running the story (tip o’ the pixel to the redoubtable Dan Kennedy’s Media Nation).
Now comes today’s piece by the Boston Globe’s Kevin Cullen, in which he whacks Purcell and waxes nostalgic about the feisty local tabloid.
Herald mogul takes a hit
It was the perfect Boston Herald story: Greedy entrepreneur runs business into the ground, walks away to his myriad mansions with pockets lined with millions while working stiffs are left holding the bag.
Remarkably, that story, which ran in Wednesday’s Herald pretty much straight, without typical tabloid excess, was about the publisher of the Boston Herald, Pat Purcell. It noted that in the year leading up to the Herald filing for bankruptcy and being put up for sale, Purcell was paying himself an annual salary of almost a million dollars, while doling out some $265,000 in salaries among his three daughters.
If you ask me, the best argument for wanting the Herald to survive was on robust display when reporter Brian Dowling wrote that story and the Herald courageously printed it.
(Spoiler alert: Purcell does not come across as a sympathetic character in the piece. But Herald staffers do.)
Cullen’s column a far cry from this mash note Globe owner John Henry published when Purcell first announced the sale last month.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Pat Purcell’s service to Boston
Patrick J. Purcell, longtime owner and publisher of the Boston Herald, is someone who has spent most of his adult life tending to one of the most essential tasks of our democracy: leading civic conversations that are sometimes contentious but are invariably important. While his efforts on behalf of journalism for the city are well known, the personal impact he has had on so many over decades isn’t as well known.
Boston knows Pat as the driven media executive who long ago bought the Herald from Rupert Murdoch and infused it with a very strong vision for his adopted city. But he is also unfailingly described as a loyal friend and devoted family man, who landed here after a colorful career in New York and became a Bostonian to the core.
Which, apparently, means greedy and heartless.
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It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town 