Poor CommonWealth Magazine: No Credit for Its Scoop

February 28, 2014

Yesterday, CommonWealth Magazine broke this story on its website:

Walsh reviewing Red Sox deal

Agreement makes permanent Van Ness Street arrangement

THE ADMINISTRATION OF Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said it is reviewing an agreement the city struck with the Boston Red Sox in October that formalized a long-standing arrangement allowing the club to close off Van Ness Street during Fenway Park events.

The agreement, signed by Red Sox president Larry Lucchino and Mayor Thomas Menino’s police and transportation commissioners, makes permanent what appears to have been an informal arrangement between the club and the city allowing the team to close off the section of Van Ness next to Fenway during games. The Red Sox typically used part of the street for employee parking, paying no fee to the city to do so.

“We are currently reviewing the agreement, and compensation is one of the issues that we will consider during this review,” said Walsh spokeswoman Kate Norton.

 

As day follows the night, today’s Boston Herald featured this piece of xerox journalism:

Marty Walsh digs into Fenway’s deals

The Walsh administration said yesterday it is examining two 2013 contracts the city inked with the Red Sox granting the team exclusive rights to public BI1E6414.JPGstreets — arrangements made in the final months of Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s tenure.

“We are currently reviewing the agreement, and compensation is one of the issues that we will consider during this review,” Kate Norton, a spokeswoman for Mayor Martin J. Walsh, said of a little-known “public safety order” city officials signed in October giving the Red Sox permission to seal off Van Ness Street during game days and other major events at Fenway.

 

Nowhere in the piece is CommonWealth given credit.

Ditto for these other news organizations, which picked up the story from the Associated Press. (Before anyone gets all shirty about it, news outlets add info to AP reports all the time. Just not in this case.)

Screen Shot 2014-02-28 at 1.29.17 PM

The Boston Globe, meanwhile, played catch-up, posting a piece to its website at 6 am.

Screen Shot 2014-02-28 at 4.48.46 PM

But at least the Globe gave credit where credit’s due.

The Walsh review was first reported by Commonwealth Magazine online Thursday.

 

Cold comfort, but better than the nothingburgers CommonWealth got from everyone else, yeah?

 

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It’s Mike Sheehan Day in the Herald!

January 14, 2014

Who’s the hottest guy in town? The hardreading staff votes for Mike Sheehan, who does a daily double in today’s Boston Herald.

Sheehan, the former CEO and current part-time chairman of high-octane ad agency Hill Holliday, is first Heralded here.

One Fund organized in mere hours

Menino reached out to Hub leaders day after bombings

The morning after the April 15 marathon bombings, former Mayor Thomas M. Menino started calling local business and community leaders. He told them they had seven hours to create what would become The One Fund before he announced it at 5 p.m. that night.

“There was an immediate understanding of the urgency at hand,” said James Gallagher, executive vice-president of John Hancock, at an advertising conference in Boston yesterday. “We got underway right away.”

“The number one thing we had was a deadline,” Hill Holiday Chairman Mike Sheehan said, adding he has never worked on a project with the scale or urgency of what would become The One Fund.

“It took 15 minutes to design a logo,” Sheehan said — a blue “1” on a yellow background, modeled after a marathon bib.

“Everybody knew how to do their job, and we just did it,” he said.

 

The next day, Sheehan added, they had “a pile of checks 5 feet high, wide and long.”

Since then Sheehan has been hired as a consultant by the Boston Globe to help improve advertising sales. It’s in that capacity that he does his second turn in the feisty local tabloid.

Adviser: Globe no hobby for John Henry

Former Hill Holliday CEO Mike Sheehan said yesterday his new gig as an advertising adviser to Boston Globe owner John Henry is focused on maximizing revenue, and didn’t rule out a rebranding of the broadsheet, while emphasizing Henry is treating his own Mike Sheehan, chairman of Hill Holliday Jim Gallagher, executive vice president at John Hancock Former mayor Thomas M. Meninorole as a “full-time job.”

“The Globe has a very attractive audience,” Sheehan told the Herald. “Like any media operation, they have to be vigilant about making sure their advertisers know that and that they have great opportunities to reach them.”

Sheehan said there’s no set timetable for how long he’ll be advising the broadsheet. “To be perfectly frank, I just want to help where I can help for as long as it takes to really make this place start humming,” said Sheehan, who is chairman of the Hub ad agency.

 

Of course saying the stately local broadsheet is not a Henry hobby only makes people think it is.

Clever those Heraldniks, eh?

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That’s What You Get Living In Mayberry

January 30, 2013

Boston residents got a big helping of more of the same following last night’s State of the City address by Mayor-for-Life Thomas M. Menino.

Boston Globe report:

Optimistic Menino makes return to public stage

In a speech by turns sentimental and unabashedly bullish, Mayor Thomas M. Menino returned to the public stage Tuesday night after a lengthy illness and offered a buoyant vision of Boston, celebrating accom plishments and outlining initiatives for the future.

Menino entered Faneuil Hall to thunderous applause from a crowd of 800 that included Governor Deval Patrick, members of Congress, and scores of other elected officials and dignitaries gathered for the mayor’s State of the City address. Waving to the audience, Menino — serenaded by a Kelly Clarkson pop anthem with the lyric, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” — used a cane to help navigate the 50-foot walk to the stage.

 

Boston Globe editorial:

chin012913menino_met03With a warm speech, Menino shows his rejuvenated spirit

THE HIGHLIGHT of Mayor Menino’s State of the City speech wasn’t its admirable theme of enhancing human potential. It wasn’t in the genuinely impressive progress in city development, with 2,000 units of housing now under construction. And it wasn’t in Menino’s trademark medium-sized initiatives, like his networking plan for women-owned businesses.

Rather, the highlight was Menino himself. In his proud, steady walk to the podium, with only the help of a cane, Menino sent a strong signal that he is back of the job after nearly six weeks in the hospital for a range of ailments, followed by another month of rehab. The mutual affection between Menino and the city was visible in his interaction with the crowd, which whooped and applauded at even corny lines like a joke about Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women.” For his part, Menino offered his sincere thanks to all who helped him and stood by him during his rehabilitation. And he showed his graciousness in other ways, too, such as with a comradely tribute to retiring State Senator Jack Hart.

 

Time to edit Tip O’Neill’s classic “All politics is local.”

Nowadays in Boston, all politics is cozy.

Exhibit Umpteen from Peter Gelzinis’ Boston Herald column:

STU_7922.JPGWalk the walk & talk the talk? Yes, he can!

In the end, it was the irrepressible Rev. Eugene Rivers who captured the most important 50-foot stroll of Thomas Michael Menino’s public life.

“That dude didn’t just walk into this hall tonight, you understand,” Rivers said, of the mayor’s unassisted entrance into Faneuil Hall, “Tommy, man, he gangsta-walked in here, you hear what I’m sayin’?

“The message the man sent out to all those pretenders to the throne was, ‘Any of you wanna piece of this?’ ”

 

Not to get technical about it, but Eugene Rivers is the Hub’s fraud di tutti fraudi. And the ultimate Menino toady.

Any of you wanna piece of that?

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The Herald Feasts on Chick-fil-A Edition

July 27, 2012

The Boston Herald has sunk its teeth into the Chick-fil-A/gay marriage kerfuffle, and the feisty local tabloid is not about to let go.

It started last week with this piece:

Mayor Menino on Chick-fil-A: Stuff it

Mayor Thomas M. Menino is vowing to block Chick-fil-A from bringing its Southern-fried fast-food empire to Boston — possibly to a popular tourist spot just steps from the Freedom Trail — after the family-owned firm’s president suggested gay marriage is “inviting God’s judgment on our nation.”

“Chick-fil-A doesn’t belong in Boston. You can’t have a business in the city of Boston that discriminates against a population. We’re an open city, we’re a city that’s at the forefront of inclusion,” Menino told the Herald yesterday.

“That’s the Freedom Trail. That’s where it all started right here. And we’re not going to have a company, Chick-fil-A or whatever the hell the name is, on our Freedom Trail.”

That’s a mayor-for-life talking – and shredding the First Amendment – but fast forward to today’s paper, and the Herald has Menino moonwalking like Michael Jackson:

Menino says he can’t actively block Chick-fil-A

Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino repeated today that he doesn’t want Chick-fil-A in Boston, but he backed away from a threat to actively block the fast-food chain from setting up shop in the city.

“I can’t do that. That would be interference to his rights to go there,” Menino said, referring to company president Dan Cathy, who drew the mayor’s wrath by going public with his views against same-sex marriage.

For all the stuff that happened in between, see here.

Meanwhile, crosstown rival Boston Globe has come late to the party.

The local broadsheet had a single story last week (which seems to be a web piece featuring a :19 clip from NECN).

But the Globe is playing serious catch-up in today’s edition (see here and here and here.)

Regardless, the Herald owns this story.

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