Herald: Barack O-bomb-a’s Pats Joke Falls Flat

April 24, 2015

From our One Town, Two Different Worlds desk

When the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots went to the White House for the customary presidential pat on the back, here’s what they got to kick off the festivities.

 

 

Pats coach Bill Belichick isn’t the only one who gave Obama’s lame joke the thumbs down. Today’s Boston Herald is in Full Snit over the Deflategate dis.

Start with Page One:

 

Screen Shot 2015-04-24 at 2.10.18 PM

 

Then move on to Tom Shattuck’s column:

SPOTLIGHT INTERCEPTED

Barack Obama, Bill Belichick, Robert Kraft

It was a day that should have belonged to the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots, but in a reversal of last February’s fortune it came to a dramatic and sudden halt.

Interception, Obama.

The president called a very different play as the champs gathered at the White House South Lawn to accept an attaboy for their Super Bowl victory.

But the egotist in chief made it all about him.

“I usually tell a bunch of jokes at these events,” he mused, “but with the Patriots in town I was worried that 11 of 12 of them would fall flat.”

 

That one sure did.

Back at the frosty local tabloid,  sports scribe Karen Guregian also weighed in.

Just like so many people at this point, the leader of the free world can’t help but chuckle at what this is, and what it’s become. So right out of the gate, he set the tone for the Patriots visit by taking a poke at Deflategate, and it became the theme of the day Barack Obama, Bill Belichick, Robert Kraftwith Pats tight end Rob Gronkowski later piling on . . .

When Gronk was asked if he had enjoyed himself before the president’s speech, perhaps with a beverage or two, Gronk drew on Obama’s Deflategate remark.

“No, there was no drinking,” he said. “Maybe the president was wasted from his deflate joke. We’re still wondering as an organization about that, right?”

 

(To be fair graf goes here)

To be fair, Guregian’s column was mostly about NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s foot-dragging in his investigation into the pigskin rumpus. Regardless, look for the umbrage-industrial complex to continue Obama-bashing for awhile.

Crosstown at the Boston Globe, Ben Volin’s piece about Pats players (as well as owner Robert Kraft and Belichick) visiting wounded vets at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center was the main story today:

 

Screen Shot 2015-04-24 at 2.34.57 PM

 

 

The Obama joke also got mentioned in Shalise Manza Young’s piece, but it was no big deal.

Obummer, eh Heraldniks?


Elizabeth Warren Hits Boston Dailies Double

March 23, 2015

The local dailies are giving a whole new meaning to the Warren Report.

Yesterday’s Boston Globe was a Love Letter to Liz (actually a mash note, not to get technical about it). The paper devoted over 25% of its Ideas section to making a Warren for President case, starting with this rare front-page editorial.

Democrats need Elizabeth Warren’s voice in 2016 presidential race

0322oped_warren3-1057

DEMOCRATS WOULD be making a big mistake if they let Hillary Clinton coast to the presidential nomination without real opposition, and, as a national leader, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren can make sure that doesn’t happen. While Warren has repeatedly vowed that she won’t run for president herself, she ought to reconsider. And if Warren sticks to her refusal, she should make it her responsibility to help recruit candidates to provide voters with a vigorous debate on her signature cause, reducing income inequality, over the next year.

 

There are three – count ’em, three – other pieces playing variations on that theme in this high-priced spread:

 

Screen Shot 2015-03-23 at 3.09.17 PM

That’s a lotta real estate for Warren to gobble up.

Not to be left home from the dance, the Boston Herald jumped on the Lizwagon today.

 

Screen Shot 2015-03-23 at 3.54.51 PM

 

For starters, there’s this Kimberly Atkins column:

For Clinton to win she needs Warren to run

NEL_6269.JPG

WASHINGTON — Elizabeth Warren, as we now know her, would make a terrible presidential candidate. But her party, the Democrats — including presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton ­— need Elizabeth Warren to run.

Because they need a primary, and no one else can give them one.

 

The Herald’s Tom Shattuck is even more desperate for a Warren run.

Please, please, PLEASE! Go for it!

Let the movement begin.

Starting today, all good progressives should write it on their Starbucks latte cups:

Run Liz Run.

And don’t stop there. Facebook profile pics, Twitter avatars, the dirty windows of your Priuses, Subarus and Range Rovers — even the Burberry sweater your Maltese named “Chloe” wears — take a Sharpie to that Shar-Pei and scrawl “Run Liz Run.”

 

(There’s also, inevitably, this: Indian claims would be under microscope.)

Funny – the Globe wants a Warren run to help Hillary Clinton, while the Herald wants one to hurt her.

Imagine that.


Boston Herald’s Clinton Obsession Is Hill-arious

February 25, 2015

The feisty local tabloid has a hill-acious dislike of Hillary Rodham Clinton, with today’s edition serving as Exhibit Umpteen.

Start with the page 2 column by the always unreadable Adriana Cohen, who rattles on about salary inequality in both the Obama White House and Clinton’s training-wheels-up presidential campaign.

Last April [Clinton] tweeted, “20 years ago, women made 72 cents on the dollar to men. Today it’s still just 77 cents. More work to do. #EqualPay #NoCeilings.”Screen Shot 2015-02-25 at 11.50.35 AM

Now flash forward to today — she’s reportedly given the top jobs, and salaries, on her exploratory presidential campaign staff to men.

But that’s not all.

Back when she was a U.S. senator for New York, reports are now surfacing that she paid women on her staff only 72 cents to a man’s dollar. Proof she’s no champion of women.

 

Okay, then.

Next page, Tom Shattuck’s column about a softball interview with Elizabeth Warren on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Into the middle of his rant (he called MSNBC “America’s most shamelessly partisan cable ‘news’ channel” – didn’t he read this?), Shattuck drops an H-bomb.

All anyone really cared about Warren this week wasn’t the middle-class hammering thing. Monday was the day the hated conservative genius Karl Rove’s video went viral — brilliantly using Warren’s own words, in her own voice, in a video to hammer Hillary Clinton.

 

Okay, then.

Moving along in our madcap review, say hello to Joe Fitzgerald, who serves up some Clinton evergreens.

Are you, too, tired of looking at Hillary Clinton?

It infuriates her when anyone suggests she rode her husband’s coattails to prominence, but who was she before Bill’s star began to rise?

Indignantly assuring us she was “no Tammy Wynette, standing by her man” when it was revealed her man was a lecher, she raged against a “vast right-wing conspiracy” for making his philandering public.

As Secretary of State, when asked by Sen. Ron Johnson if she had any thoughts on the motives behind the murders of four Americans in the attack at Benghazi, she snapped, “At this point, what difference does it make?”

 

Okay, then.

Next up: Jonah Goldberg’s syndicated column on the op-ed page.

Hillary searches for true (’16) self

Screen Shot 2015-02-25 at 12.37.22 PMPR gurus can’t hide her opportunistic quest for power

“Is Hillary Rodham Clinton a McDonald’s Big Mac or a Chipotle burrito bowl? A can of Bud or a bottle of Blue Moon? JC Penney or
J. Crew?”

That was the opening question of a front-page Washington Post story on Clinton’s effort to figure out her “brand.” To that end, she has recruited a team of corporate marketing specialists to “help imagine Hillary 5.0.”

After decades of public life, even Clinton doesn’t really know who she is — or at least who she should be this time around.

 

But the Herald sure does.


Boston Herald Radio All Pimped Out to Advertisers

February 20, 2015

As the hardreading staff noted several months ago, the Boston Herald is not exactly covert in its catering to the few advertisers it manages to attract.

The Herald Runs on Dunkin’

As our Walt Whitman desk attests on a regular basis, the Boston Herald is a past master at using its newshole to promote . . . that’s right – the Herald. And now apparently, the fuzzy local tabloid is offering the same sort of ad-itorial package to its advertisers.

Witness the latest installment of the paper’s daily plug for Boston Herald Radio, the webcast that up to several people a day listen to.

 

screen-shot-2014-09-29-at-12-08-46-pm

 

Nice bit of venial synergy for Dunkin’ Donuts, eh? Lede of the “interview” at left:

Todd Wallace, field marketing manager for Dunkin’ Donuts, joined Boston Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” with Hillary Chabot and Joe Battenfeld to talk about the iconic coffee chain’s new products.

 

Now comes this piece from the Nieman Journalism Lab’s Joseph Lichterman about local newspapers that hope online radio can become significant revenue generators. Along the way, Lichterman nails the coffin shut on the thirsty local tabloid’s unabashed willingness to pimp out any part of its editorial content to advertisers.

Advertising has also been slow for Boston Herald Radio, but the station has been able to introduce new forms of advertising by integrating advertisers into segments of its shows. Last fall, a marketing manager for Dunkin’ Donuts appeared on the Herald’s morning show to promote Dunkin’s new dark roast coffee.

“Sales love it, we love it in programming, and the clients love it,” said Herald Radio executive producer Tom Shattuck.

 

The first and third of those make perfect sense. But . . . we love it in programming?

That’s just sad.


Hark! The Herald! (Radio Daze Edition)

January 4, 2015

The flighty local tabloid is once again rearranging the deck chairs on Boston Herald Radio, an exercise it devotes all of page 4 to trumpeting today.

Herald flips the radio dial

Morning ‘Drive’ time talk will never be the same again

STON6531.JPG

At 7 a.m. tomorrow, “Boston Herald Drive” hits the air on WMEX 1510 AM, bringing local morning news and talk to radio for the first time in years.

Hosts Adriana Cohen and Tom Shattuck, backed up by the Herald newsroom, will cover all the breaking news of the day ­— and provide instant analysis and interviews.

 

Good for you guys. But here’s the part where the Herald drives off the rhetorical cliff:

“We’ve always been straight with our audience,” said Shattuck, executive producer of Boston Herald Radio. “This is the city of Jerry Williams, Gene Burns and David Brudnoy. We are lucky enough now to have an opportunity to be custodians of those same airwaves and we will do it humbly, tirelessly and with the utmost respect for the listener.”

 

C’mon, Heraldniks. Williams, Burns and Brudnoy? Seriously? They were real forces in the life of the city, the politics of the city, the image of the city. Boston Herald Radio is like someone’s hobby. Get a grip.


Boston Herald: Clinton Not Worth a Hill of Beans

December 4, 2014

From our One Town, Two Different Worlds desk

Former First Lady/U.S. Senator/Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D-Bill’s Not Here) is in town today to pick up a few bucks and drop a few pearls of wisdom.

From the Boston Globe’s Names section:

 

Screen Shot 2014-12-04 at 2.08.33 PM

 

From the Globe’s (new!) Business section:

 

Screen Shot 2014-12-04 at 2.09.16 PM

 

So, according to the Globe – twice – the event is sold out. Wouldn’t know it from looking at the Boston Herald, though.

 

MA_BH

 

That’s accompanied by this Tom Shattuck piece.

In spirit of holidays, go see poor Hillary Clinton

Ex-first lady needs all the help she can get

Hillary Rodham Clinton

It was a speech for the ages. Hillary Clinton’s rousing oratory at Georgetown University yesterday brought the packed house to their feet.

The problem? Their feet were elsewhere.

In fact, it was a humiliating day for Madame Secretary as many, many seats remained empty, a feat which at this moment in time could only have been matched with a cameo by Bill Cosby.

 

Shattuck goes on to say, “[I]n the spirit of the holiday season, I implore you to attend [today’s event]. In the words of her home state predecessor, Robert F. Kennedy, ‘I dream of things … and ask why not?’ Seriously, why not?”

Uh . . . because it’s sold out? Not to get technical about it.


Hark! The Herald! (Listen Up! Edition)

November 5, 2013

From our Walt Whitman desk (Lost in Cyberspace bureau)

It’s no news that the Boston Herald devotes the better part of a news page every day to flacking Boston Herald Radio.

Representative sample from [Monday’s] edition:

 

Picture 1

 

Every now and then, though, the Herald surrenders the entire page to self-promotion.

Representative sample from [Tuesday’s] edition:

 

Picture 2

 

Boston Herald Radio executive producer Tom Shattuck related his past experience of producing lousy election-night coverage for a real radio station (presumably WTKK) and promises real election-night coverage for his virtual station.

Beginning at 6 p.m. tonight, Boston Herald Radio will air the most comprehensive coverage of the mayoral election available anywhere.

The Herald’s political team of Joe Battenfeld and Hillary Chabot are real reporters and they will serve as in-studio anchors for the evening. Not only do they live and breathe local politics, but they love what they do and they know the subject matter like no one else.

And speaking of resources …

 

And etc.

The hardlistening staff will try to check it out. Not sure how much company we’ll have.

UPDATE: We forgot to listen. Pretty sure we had a lot of company there.