By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
The Valley Independent Sentinel, an affiliate of the New Haven Independent, live-streamed a Fat Tuesday pazcki-eating contest this morning from a bake shop in Ansonia, Conn. You can view the clips here.
How did they do it? They used a Motorola Droid cellphone connected to Qik. Consider this yet another sign that a journalist can no longer walk out the door carrying just a notebook and a pen.
This New York Times story on the Tea Party movement starts slowly but gradually gains momentum. In the first half, reporter David Barstow seems intent on showing that many of the new Tea Party activists are nice folks, if a bit misguided. In the second half, he really lets it rip, writing about the movement’s ties to far-right extremist militia groups that have been around for years.
As Barstow makes clear, there is no one single Tea Party organization. Tea Party activism was crucial to Scott Brown’s victory, and neither he nor they (with some exceptions) could be considered extreme.
But Barstow reports that a large segment of the movement is far-right, dedicated to Obama-hatred and conspiracy theories. There may come a time when the Republican Party and Fox News regret egging them on.
I just trashed two long, well-written comments from someone who thought he (she?) was entitled to post under a pseudonym. I wasn’t kidding, folks. And yes, I do understand that sometimes there are reasons for not posting under your real name. It’s just that you’re not going to be doing it here.
The strange case of Amy Bishop is rapidly morphing into the biggest Boston news story in many years — the biggest, perhaps, since 20 years ago, when Charles Stuart murdered his pregnant wife, Carol, and jumped to his death as authorities were closing in.
At first, the story appeared neither to be local nor all that atypical as such things go. Bishop reportedly shot three colleagues to death at a faculty meeting at the University of Alabama, supposedly in response to not having received tenure.
But soon the Boston Globe broke two mind-boggling stories — that she had killed her brother with a shotgun when she was just 18 21 years old, and that she had come under suspicion in the attempted mail-bombing of one of her professors at Harvard University.
(Today we even learn there’s a Northeastern University angle. Bishop and her husband, James Anderson, are said to have met when they were undergraduates at Northeastern. From what we know so far, she apparently was not weaponized during her time as an undergrad.)
I’ve been thinking hard about whether there has been a bigger local story in the post-Stuart years. Yes, the 9/11 attacks began at Logan Airport, but that angle was quickly subsumed into the larger national story. Louise Woodward? A big one, yes, but not nearly as big as this may become.
At moments like this, it always makes sense to think about what we’ve learned from the past and how that might apply in the present situation. The Stuart case, you may recall, was a media fiasco. Nearly everyone went along for the ride when Stuart blamed the shooting on a black man who set up on him and his wife as they were driving home from a childbirth class at Brigham & Women’s Hospital.
In fact, Stuart had shot his wife for insurance money so he could open a restaurant, then shot himself. That neither law-enforcement officials nor the media questioned his initial story set back race relations in a significant way, and stained the legacy of then-mayor Ray Flynn, who’d made racial harmony his top priority.
In the Bishop case, no one is questioning that she shot fellow faculty members on Friday. Still, the fact that she was never charged — never mind convicted — in the earlier incidents ought to give us pause. (The killing of her brother was ruled an accident, though the reasons are unclear. A Boston Herald story about a man who says Bishop threatened him with a gun right after the shooting certainly raises questions.)
The Globe showed a lot of enterprise in digging out those stories about Bishop’s background. But it may be a while before we know how they fit into the larger picture.
*Update: Andy Smith asks, “wasn’t that priest thing kind of a big deal?” Indeed it was, and I’m glad I threw this out there before writing a more-considered version for the Guardian tonight.
It leaks. A woman was killed when a concrete ceiling tile fell off and crushed her. It virtually bankrupted the state.
And now we learn, from Boston Globe reporter Matt Carroll, that the folks who gave us the Big Dig even managed to botch the little things in deadly ways: a pedestrian railing with unnecessarily sharp edges was installed too low, resulting in deaths and dismemberment.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette shows that charging for online access is no way to build a Web site — but that it may very well be an effective way of preserving the print edition. (Via @howardowens.)
Paul Levy has written a characteristically thoughtful response to my suggestion that he should have disclosed his support for Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker when he criticized Gov. Deval Patrick’s proposal to control rising health-care costs. We also discussed it in the comments.
Levy offers a spectrum, and I’d answer it this way: If someone is writing a public blog offering commentary on political issues, then yes, he should disclose if he has publicly endorsed or donated money to a candidate. But no, there’s no need to disclose your private voting intentions, even if you have told friends. The former makes you a supporter; the latter merely makes you a likely voter.
Levy is not a journalist, but he’s doing journalism of a sort. Thus, not all of the ethical rules that journalists have to follow apply to him (it would be anathema even for an opinion journalist to give money to a candidate, for instance). But for someone in his position, it’s better to disclose.
Final point: Of course, Levy had already disclosed his support for Baker. It’s not a matter of being open; he is. It’s a matter of informing those who might not be aware of his political activities.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEbouh86DwY&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
Here is the advertisement that will be broadcast in Rhode Island on Sunday evening in which U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy announces he won’t seek re-election this fall (via Chris Cillizza).
Ian Donnis of WRNI Radio in Providence has more — including a list of possible Democratic contenders who want to take on Republican candidate John Loughlin. Jon Keller writes that it makes good sense for Kennedy to walk away given his personal problems and the difficulty he would have had getting re-elected.
Finally, last month, former Providence mayor Buddy Cianci told the Providence Journal that he might run for Kennedy’s seat, a federal corruption conviction apparently being no impediment (via @derjue). The spirit of James Michael Curley lives.
I’m a huge admirer of Paul Levy, president and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess, but I can’t pretend I’m in a position to judge the merits of his objections to Gov. Deval Patrick’s proposal to cap medical costs. (Although I do think Levy makes some good points.)
My main reason for posting this is to call attention to the ongoing media revolution made possible by the Internet. Old story though it may be, I think this is an unusually relevant example, and we shouldn’t take for granted the power to talk back:
As for influence, Levy’s blog, Running a Hospital, gets about 10,000 unique visitors a month, according to Compete.com. Obviously the Globe’s circulation is much larger. But how often do you read guest op-eds? Yeah, me too. Levy may well attract as many if not more readers by posting on his blog than if his piece had run in the Globe.
One thing I’ll point out, and, frankly, Levy should have: he is supporting Patrick’s main rival in the gubernatorial contest, Republican Charlie Baker, former head of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. Levy no doubt thinks that fact is well-known, especially among the specialized audience that reads his blog. But disclosure never hurts, and it often helps.
Lowell blogger Richard Howe wrote a post last summer urging his anonymous commenters to identify themselves. He sent me an e-mail yesterday, and said that though he didn’t have much success, he does think the conversation at his site became more civil. Here’s an excerpt from what he wrote last July:
I’ve often said that local blogs are the modern day equivalent of the neighborhood coffee shop where everyone gathered to talk politics. These intensely local gatherings, duplicated hundreds of times around the city, provided a solid foundation for democracy at its most basic level.
But when neighbors gathered at the coffee shop to talk politics, they didn’t wear bags over their heads to mask their identities. In the same way, those who stay anonymous online are not making a positive contribution to this vitally important community building function of local blogs.
Well worth reading in full.