Author: Dan Kennedy

Comcast replaces NECN’s Kravetz

Comcast has finally completed its long-in-the-making takeover of New England Cable News — and the first thing it’s done is part ways with president and general manager Charlie Kravetz. According to the Boston Herald’s Jessica Heslam, Kravetz will be replaced by Bill Bridgen, executive vice president and general manager of Comcast SportsNet New England.

Johnny Diaz’s Boston Globe story is here. And here’s the official word.

I know nothing about Bridgen. I do know Kravetz, and he’s a first-rate newsman with a lifetime of experience. I don’t see how this can be good news, although it’s certainly possible that it was voluntary.

More on the Tiananmen analogy

It’s hard not to worry that the crisis in Iran will end in a Tiananmen Square-style massacre. Here is the Boston Phoenix editorial page:

Hope, even under a brutal medieval-minded regime, can be a political aphrodisiac. But hope alone, as the Chinese students who sought reform in Tiananmen Square 20 years ago found out, is no match for armed forces. Whether the death toll in Iran will come to equal that of the Tiananmen massacre and its aftermath remains to be seen.

Juan Cole has similar thoughts.

Greenway on Iran

Sharp analysis of the crisis in Iran by former Boston Globe columnist H.D.S. Greenway, now writing for GlobalPost. He begins:

Protests in the streets, angry crowds in numbers not seen since the revolution in 1979, have some people wondering if Iran is on the verge of revolution. But it’s more likely, if the street protests get out of hand, there will be a China-style Tiananmen, with voices crying for reform silenced by gun fire.

Greenway also gives President Obama high marks for not saying anything that would help Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “play the Great Satan card.”

We’re debating whether Obama has said enough here. It was also the subject of a Jeff Jacoby column in today’s Globe.

“Cluetrain,” 10 years on

Weinberger (left) and Searls

Last night I had a chance to see David Weinberger and Doc Searls, two of the co-authors of “The Cluetrain Manifesto,” speak at Harvard Law School. The conversation was moderated by law-school professor Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of the school’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

The sound was not great, so I missed a lot. VisiCalc founder Dan Bricklin, credited with the invention of the spreadsheet, finally became frustrated enough that he got out of his seat and ran around with a little handheld microphone. But I did get a chance to score a signed (by Searls) copy of “Cluetrain,” which has been reissued on the occasion of its 10th anniversary.

I read “Cluetrain” online a couple of years ago as research for this. I anticipate getting a lot more out of it this time around, now that I have a print edition. A computer screen is still no way to read a book.

Cautious optimism over new Globe talks

“Beat the Press” blogger-in-chief Ralph Ranalli writes that Boston Globe staffers are now “cautiously optimistic” that the New York Times Co. and the Boston Newspaper Guild will come to an agreement in renewed talks, which resume next week.

And Ranalli asks an excellent question: How can the Times Co. stick to the 23 percent pay cut — based on its contention that the two sides are at an impasse — when management and the Guild are actively engaged in bargaining sessions?

Obama’s rope-a-dope

I’ve been as frustrated as anyone that President Obama hasn’t spoken out more forcefully about what’s taking place in Iran. But I’ve also heard a contrary view — that if he is seen as giving support to the reformist candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, he risks whipping up anti-American sentiment in favor of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Here’s a fascinating excerpt from an Arab-American blog being highlighted by Global Voices Online. I have no idea who the writer is, but what he or she says makes a lot of sense:

Whether or not Mousavi had the election stolen from him, it seems clear the ruling class has made a calculating move. Anti-American sentiment is one of the strongest cards those wretched clerics hold. By merely softening the tone Tehran hears from Washington, Obama has weakened their hand considerably. But re-instating Ahmadinejad ensures that US-Iranian relations will continue down a rocky road. What happens next is crucial. If Obama takes a firm position as a result of what’s happening, the mullahs may emerge victorious.

Writing for the Independent, Robert Fisk says there are hopeful signs that the Iranian security forces’ support for Ahmadinejad may be fading. That would be an enormously important development.

Obama and openness

Bill Dedman of MSNBC.com reports that the Obama administration is following George W. Bush’s policy of refusing to release the logs identifying visitors to the White House — despite two rulings that such records are public.

Good story, though Dedman doesn’t say whether Bush’s policy was a reversal or a continuation of what previous presidents had done. I hope he’ll clarify.

Update: Dedman writes that “the story makes clear that only in limited cases have these records been released. And that apparently only the Bush and Obama administrations have stood up in federal court to argue that White House visitor logs are not public record.”

Howie Carr, working-class hero

I know we’re not supposed to take Howie Carr seriously when he writes about the Boston Globe. But check out his Boston Herald column today. “Danny Donuts” is Dan Totten, president of the Boston Newspaper Guild. Carr writes:

Let’s face it, the Globe is on the ropes because it’s crammed to the rafters with writers who can’t write, reporters who can’t report, and editors who can’t edit, because Danny Donuts and his cohorts couldn’t sell an ad to save their inherited, tastefully weathered summer homes on Nantucket.

Now here is Jason Schwartz, describing Totten’s background in a Boston Magazine profile:

Totten first got active in the union in 2002, and it was a natural fit. His father was a member of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association for more than 35 years, his sister was a union representative for the Boston school system, and his grandmother had been a steward for the hotel and telephone workers union “back in a time,” Totten says, “when it wasn’t very popular or easy for a woman to hold such a position.”

We also learn from Schwartz that Totten is a graduate of the former Boston State College, surely one of the forgotten Ivies, and earned his MBA at Anna Maria College in Paxton, widely regarded as the Wharton School of Central Massachusetts.

Carr, meanwhile, lives in Wellesley and makes some three-quarters of a million dollars from his talk show on WRKO Radio (AM 680), as well as a presumed six-figure income from the Herald. He’s also a graduate of Deerfield Academy and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — a real working-class hero.

For Howie to characterize a self-made man like Totten as overprivileged is laughable, bordering on the offensive.

“Look at this brave Iranian lioness”

Globe Voices Online has posted an update on what bloggers are saying and doing in Iran. There’s some pretty stunning material, including a video of a young woman kicking a member of the security forces.

Meanwhile, Simon Tisdall writes in the Guardian of unconfirmed reports that Hashemi Rafsanjani, the controversial mentor to the reformist presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, may be in the holy city of Qom, measuring how much support he might have from the Assembly of Experts in a bid to topple the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.