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I’m heading to New Haven in a little bit for my final visit to the New Haven Independent before my book deadline at the end of June. Founder and editor Paul Bass and I are meeting at the Brū Café, where we first met almost exactly three years ago (see interview, above). It’s been a long journey, and it’s not over yet. But this feels like a huge milestone.
Month: May 2012 Page 1 of 3
About a month after the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) reported that the Boston Herald’s paid circulation was falling and the Boston Globe’s was rising, the Herald today offers the results of a new Scarborough survey that claims exactly the opposite.
OK, not exactly the opposite — the Scarborough report counts total print and Web readership, not papers and digital editions sold. Overall, according to Herald reporter Frank Quaratiello, “The Herald’s print and Web audience rose 6 percent while the Globe’s combined audience dropped 6 percent.”
Unlike ABC reports, I do not have access to Scarborough surveys, which clients such as the Globe and the Herald pay for. So I’m not in a position to endorse or dispute the Herald’s take. (But if anyone wants to send me a copy …)
And though it doesn’t merit its own item, I’ll note a final Globe-versus-Herald brief for today: a Herald story quoting an unnamed union source who says the New York Times Co. is shutting the Globe’s suburban bureaus in the near future — “another sign that the Big Apple company is setting the stage to sell the Hub broadsheet.”
More: I should note the latest ABC figures, which show the Globe’s total paid circulation on Sundays is 365,512, whereas the Herald’s is 81,677. On Monday through Friday, it’s 225,482 for the Globe and 103,616 for the Herald.
For Web traffic, the best I can do is Compete.com, whose overall numbers are suspect, but which has some usefulness in terms of making apples-to-apples comparisons. According to Compete, the Globe’s free Boston.com site attracted 2.8 million unique visitors in April, compared to 1.2 million for BostonHerald.com.
It depends on what you mean by “bureaus.” Update: The Herald story refers to the Globe’s “remaining suburban bureaus.” But two Globe sources tell me that the Globe only has one — in Danvers.
Two days after the Boston Globe published a lengthy story by arts reporter Geoff Edgers questioning the Boston Herald’s defense in a libel suit brought by Tom Scholz, leader and founder of the band Boston, the Herald has struck back.
Edgers’ article, based on court documents, centered on the notion that Boston lead singer Brad Delp committed suicide in 2007 because he’d been caught placing a camera in the bedroom of his fiancée’s sister, Meg Sullivan. Scholz sued the Herald after Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa, the paper’s Inside Track gossip columnists, wrote that Delp’s ex-wife Micki Delp blamed the suicide on Scholz’s abusive behavior. (Last year a judge dismissed Scholz’s suit against Micki Delp, ruling she had done no such thing.)
The Herald’s Joe Dwinell today counters Edgers’ story with a statement from Sullivan blasting the Globe and Scholz:
The article printed recently in the Boston Globe seems to imply that Brad took his life because he was so horrified at the idea of confessing to my sister what he had done. The article neglects to print the fact that Brad had already told her about the incident. Quite contrary to what the article implies, Brad’s fear of the repercussions from the event between us was not the reason that he decided to end his life. They had discussed it and were dealing with it together as the loving couple they were….
Based on what I know, what I observed, what Brad told me before he took his life, what Brad told others before he took his life and several pretty clear facts, I do not believe that this incident was what led Brad to take his life. I am sorry, and I am outraged, that Mr. Scholz has treated Brad’s family and friends the way he has in the 5 years since Brad’s death, filing lawsuits, threatening lawsuits, serving subpoenas and forcing all of us to relive one of the most traumatic events of our lives. Whether he does this in order to obtain publicity, out of a penchant for bullying those without the resources to fight back, or for other reasons, I do not pretend to know.
Dwinell also writes a sidebar noting that Edgers appeared on television to discuss the case in February 2011 and, according to Dwinell, “seemed to endorse Scholz’s claims against the Herald.”
Since Edgers’ journalistic integrity is now being questioned, I should note that I worked with him at the Boston Phoenix some years back and considered him to be a good, reliable reporter. I now work with his wife, Carlene Hempel, at Northeastern.
Dwinell does not dispute the accuracy of Edgers’ reporting on court documents regarding the hidden-camera incident. And Edgers himself noted on Sunday that Sullivan believed Scholz had contributed to the depression that caused Delp to engage in such behavior.
As I wrote two days ago, “Libel suits contain many twists and turns.” The only thing we can be sure of is that if this ever goes to court, it’s going to be one hell of a trial.
Writing in Technology Review, the noted media critic Michael Wolff says Facebook is doomed — and is going to take the Web down with it. The reason: online advertising, ubiquitous and not particularly lucrative, is in a death spiral.
In my latest for the Nieman Journalism Lab, I take a look at Wolff’s analysis, and suggest some ways that news organizations can avoid the meltdown.
And thank you to Harvey Silverglate for pointing me to Wolff’s provocative essay.
Politico posted a feature late Sunday afternoon on the state of the rivalry between the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald over Elizabeth Warren’s questionable Cherokee roots. I’m quoted near the end.
And is it just me, or have things between the two papers been heating up since the Globe began printing and distributing the Herald earlier this year?
Brad Delp in 2006
In case you missed it, the Boston Globe uncorked a high, hard one at the Boston Herald on Sunday.
The Globe’s Geoff Edgers reported on court documents that strongly suggest the 2007 suicide of Brad Delp, lead singer of the band Boston, was tied to Delp’s having been caught placing a hidden camera in his fiancée’s sister’s bedroom. The documents portray Delp, who had long suffered from depression, as being distraught over the incident. He killed himself a little more than a week later.
The Herald is fighting a libel suit brought by Boston founder and leader Tom Scholz over a story in the paper’s Inside Track gossip column, which reported that Delp’s ex-wife, Micki Delp, had blamed the singer’s suicide on his poisonous relationship with Scholz.
Superior Court Judge John Cratsley dismissed Scholz’s suit against Micki Delp last August, ruling that though Micki Delp had spoken about her late husband’s “dysfunctional professional life,” it was the Herald that “create[d] the connection to Scholz” and thus his suicide.
Last Wednesday the Herald’s Joe Dwinell wrote about court documents in which friends of Delp portrayed Scholz as an abusive tyrant who belittled the other band members — behavior that reportedly sent the sensitive Delp into a deep depression. As Edgers noted in his Globe story, the Herald account makes no recognizable mention of the hidden camera.
Edgers quoted from a statement released by Herald spokeswoman Gwen Gage in which she hailed her paper’s “accurate and excellent” coverage of the libel suit and criticized the Globe for letting “journalistic rivalry getting the better of editorial judgment.”
Libel suits contain many twists and turns, and the court papers Edgers cited do not necessarily contradict the theory that Scholz’s allegedly abusive behavior led Delp to kill himself.
For instance, Edgers noted that the fiancée’s sister, Meg Sullivan, at one point said, “I believe that Tom Scholz and Boston caused the depression which caused Brad to put a camera in my bedroom.”
Photo (cc) by Carl Lender and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
It’s the afternoon before Memorial Day weekend, and I’m sure most people have better things to do than to sit around reading media news. So I’ll be brief on the New Orleans Times-Picayune’s decision to cut back its print edition to three days a week.
First, taken in isolation, I think it’s a good idea. Print is inefficient and expensive, and newspaper companies ought to invest in journalism, not printing and distribution. Print ads are still far more lucrative than their online equivalent. But if the diminishing number of advertisers can be squeezed into fewer editions, then that makes a lot of sense.
It is a little strange that New Orleans will be the first major city to try such an experiment, given that 36 percent of residents are not online. But management is promising to beef up those three days’ worth of print editions, so I don’t see any harm. A daily print newspaper is a cultural artifact that doesn’t necessarily make a lot of sense anymore.
Second, and unfortunately, we can’t take this in isolation. It seems that Advance, the corporate chain that owns the Times-Picayune, is cutting not just its print edition but also its coverage of the city. (Advance is also doing the same thing at three of its papers in Alabama.)
Reporters are being laid off. Jim Romenesko yesterday heard that there has been talk of drastic salary cuts for those who stay — even though the paper has been profitable and has paid bonuses in recent years. The paper’s website is a disgrace.
This could have been an exciting day for New Orleans if it meant that the Times-Picayune was embracing a bright digital future. Unfortunately, it has all the appearance of a corporate chain trying to bleed dry one of its most celebrated newspapers.
Page-one image from “Today’s Front Pages” at the Newseum.
Boston Globe columnist Brian McGrory will not be ordered to reveal the identity of a source who told him about a secret sidebar conference involving two jurors in the murder trial of Dwayne Moore.
Moore was the principal suspect in a horrific 2010 multiple murder in Mattapan. His case ended in a mistrial earlier this year, and prosecutors are seeking to bring charges again. Moore’s lawyer had accused the prosecution of leaking the information to McGrory in an attempt to poison the jury pool. But Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Locke disagree, according to the Globe’s Peter Schworm.
“I don’t see anything in the column that differentiates it from all the other news stories,” Locke was quoted as saying.
Here is my earlier, more detailed post.
Elizabeth Warren
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has written almost exactly what I was thinking regarding U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren and her exaggerated (and possibly non-existent) Cherokee heritage. So I recommend you read it. I have just a few additional thoughts.
I have to admit this is one of those stories that got by me. I didn’t think it would amount to much after the Boston Herald’s Hillary Chabot broke the story on April 27. Even though Harvard Law School had touted her as a diversity hire, there was no evidence (and there still isn’t) that she had ever sought to claim minority status for career advancement. And when the Boston Globe reported that she was, in fact, 1/32 Cherokee, that seemed to be the end of it. After all, the current tribal chief is only 1/32 Cherokee.
But things got a lot worse for Warren last week, when the Globe published a correction stating that there was no real evidence of Warren’s Cherokee background. Apparently this is nothing more than one of those family legends that may or may not have some basis in fact.
Like Douthat, and like millions of other Americans, I grew up thinking I might have some Native American heritage. My mother’s family was named Shaw; we had a cottage in Onset when I was growing up with a sign out front that said “Shawnee,” a tribute to that supposed heritage. My mother didn’t think there was anything to it, but who knows? As far as I know, no one in my family has traced our ancestral roots. We do go back to the early days of Plymouth Colony, so anything is possible.
I’ve heard it said that Warren should have been able to put all this behind her rather easily, but I don’t think it’s that simple. At root, I think she harbored a romantic vision of herself, which is why she listed herself as a Native American in law directories and contributed recipes to a cookbook by Native Americans. I suspect she’s deeply embarrassed that her fantasies have been exposed and mocked.
Can Warren overcome this politically? We’ll see. I’ve thought from the beginning that Warren’s Republican opponent, Sen. Scott Brown, was a tough candidate with first-rate political instincts. As I recently wrote in the Huffington Post, I thought the only reason that Warren had a chance was the large Democratic turnout that could be expected given that she’ll be on the same ballot as President Obama. Otherwise, Brown would be a shoo-in.
Let’s just say that the events of the past few weeks won’t help Warren.
U.S. Treasury Department photo via Wikimedia Commons.
