Author: Dan Kennedy

The cultural divide that won’t go away

The assassination of Dr. George Tiller, I write in the Guardian, shows once again that abortion is the cultural divide that won’t go away. Which is why Bill O’Reilly’s taunting name-calling — “Tiller the baby killer” — and his comparisons of Tiller to Nazis and Al Qaeda terrorists was so mind-blowingly irresponsible.

Globe expands Your Town

The Boston Globe has rolled out six more Your Town hyperlocal sites, the subject of so much angst (and a lawsuit) last winter. Unlike the original iteration, the sites now feature mostly Globe content, with a few links to community sites. Your Town is now in 10 communities.

My quick perusal reveals no links to GateHouse’s Wicked Local sites, even though the out-of-court settlement between GateHouse and the New York Times Co. allows linking as long as the Globe doesn’t resume its practice of running an automated feed of GateHouse content on Your Town.

Interesting that the Globe continues its local push even as the Times Co. threatens to close the paper.

The new sites are on the South Shore (Hingham, Norwell and Scituate) and in the urban communities of Medford, Malden and Melrose. Here’s an e-mail that went out to the staff on Friday from David Dahl, the Globe’s regional editor:

All,

This week we launched six more Your Town sites, bringing to 10 the number of our hyperlocal sites. The new communities are Hingham, Scituate, Norwell, Medford, Malden and Melrose. You can find the sites at boston.com/hingham, boston.com/scituate, etc.

As many of you know, in addition to posts from Globe correspondents and staffers, the sites offer a collection of links to other blogs and websites, interactive opportunities for readers to post events and to report potholes and other problems, and, coming soon, improved blogging tools to allow readers to more easily post words and photos on our sites.

The sites enable us to reach deeper — and on a daily basis — into the communities that we’ve covered for years in our zoned sections. And the effort represents another collaborative effort between the Globe and our colleagues at boston.com to boost our local online effort.

Thursday’s Globe North offers a good example of our early successes. Steve Rosenberg wrote a story about municipal salaries for the city of Medford, the latest in a series of muni salary stories to come out of the zones this year. Eric Bauer created a searchable database of the top 100 salaries. We published the story and database at boston.com/medford and in Globe North.

The response: several thousand page views, and 50 reader comments. “Great expose of public information. Plenty more out there. Next story: follow around a few of these administrators to see what they do all day and then figure out to whom they are related,” wrote one reader. (It wasn’t me, I swear…).

There are many people who worked to assemble these new sites, among them: Teresa Hanafin, Angela Nelson, Glenn Yoder, Marcia Dick, Dean Inouye, the zones copy desk and the staff on Bob Kempf’s product team. In addition to staffers whose work will appear on the sites, we are using free lance “Town Correspondents” to post blog items and conduct outreach in the communities. They are Kathryn Eident, Ben Terris, Lisa Crowley and Travis Andersen.

Several of you have asked about page views and about advertising support. We’re closing in on a half million page views this month from the Your Town sites. Ad sales are going reasonably well at this early date, and I’m assured that our sales people are looking for more.

David Dahl
Boston Globe Regional Editor
Boston.com/yourtown

Another public pension outrage (III)

Salem News reporter Chris Cassidy is back with another sordid tale about the Essex Regional Retirement Board. This time, the board is looking to lower the retirement age for public-works employees from 65 to 55. You can’t make this stuff up.

Unlike the board’s recent move to lower the age for 911 dispatchers from 65 to 60, this time it apparently cannot act on its own. Rather, it has asked state Sen. Thomas McGee, D-Lynn, to file legislation on its behalf. Board chairman Timothy Bassett, a notorious double-dipper, is said to be buddies with McGee, son of a legendary former House speaker who was ousted by reformers a generation ago.

Fortunately, Cassidy writes that the bill, which has been filed in previous sessions, is unlikely to go anywhere.

Did Severin take a pay cut?

From Jessica Heslam’s interview with Jay Severin in the Boston Herald:

Severin referred questions about the conditions of his return — including whether he took a pay cut — to his agent and attorney, George Tobia. Tobia declined to comment on the conditions, saying simply, “Jay is very excited to be back in the fold on his station. He loves working there and he’s excited about doing a great show for WTKK.”

If the answer was “no,” wouldn’t Severin and Tobia just say “no”?

From Eric Moskowitz’s story in the Boston Globe:

As have others who have followed the issue from both sides, [El Planeta managing editor Marcela] García speculated that the suspension had as much to do with Severin’s reported $1 million annual salary and his recent drop to 14th in the ratings as with his particular remarks. A spokeswoman for Greater Media Inc., has confirmed that WTKK’s parent company and Severin are in negotiations.

Negotiating over what?

Keep your eye on the big picture. From the beginning, this has sounded more than anything like the story of a troubled media company — and keep in mind that all media companies are troubled — trying to get out of a contract it agreed to in the midst of an entirely different economic climate.

I don’t think we’re going to see any $1 million-a-year local radio hosts anymore. It must be particularly galling for Greater Media to have to pay Severin that much to come in last in his two-person race with WRKO’s Howie Carr.

No doubt Severin’s ratings on Tuesday will be spectacular. We’ll see if he can sustain it.

Severin to return on Tuesday

Jay Severin’s suspension will end next week, and he will return to WTKK Radio (96.9 FM) on Tuesday. The following statement is from Heidi Raphael, spokeswoman for Greater Media, WTKK’s parent corporation:

We have had conversations with Jay Severin over the past several weeks about his hurtful, inappropriate remarks. He understands that we will not accept this type of commentary on our airwaves in the future. Based on this understanding, we have agreed to conclude Jay’s suspension and he will return to the 96.9 FM WTKK airwaves on Tuesday, June 2, 2009. We want to emphasize that WTKK still strongly supports an open and spirited debate about the many issues our community and our country currently face. There will no doubt be times when people disagree with what Jay says. Our goal is to maintain a level of discourse that is compelling and thought-provoking, yet civil and respectful. While we will not always succeed in walking this line, we will continually strive to do so.

Given that Severin’s entire show is based on making hurtful, inappropriate remarks, it will be very interesting to see how this plays out.

The Boston Herald’s Jessica Heslam and the Boston Globe’s Martin Finucane have more.

Full disclosure

The New York Times today runs an op-ed piece by James Glassman, who argues that the Obama administration’s plan for saving General Motors is unfair to the company’s bondholders. But shouldn’t the Times have noted that Glassman was the principal author of “Dow 36,000”?

The book, published in 1999 just before dot-com stock-market crash, is one of the most unintentionally hilarious artifacts of the ’90s boom. Hell, no, I haven’t read it, and thank you for asking. The title is more than enough.

Newspaper runs Obama assassination ad

A Pennsylvania newspaper published an advertisement on Thursday calling for the assassination of President Obama. The ad, buried in the classifieds, says:

May Obama follow in the footsteps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, & Kennedy!

According to this item at the Daily Kos, the ad — published in the Times Observer of Warren, Pa. — appears to have made it into the paper by accident. Publisher John Elchert is quoted as saying, “It is unfortunate that it made it to press. The person who took the ad didn’t recognize the significance of the names. We canceled the ad and turned the information over to the authorities.”

In an apology published in today’s edition, the Times Observer reports that the identity of the person who placed the ad was provided to local police, who in turn alerted federal authorities. (Via Greg Mitchell. The story is currently leading Romenesko as well.)

Image from Capitol Beat, which has also been covering the story.

Times spokeswoman disagrees on Dowd

Curious that New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd would be out of the paper on Sunday and Wednesday of this week after having her knuckles rapped by public editor Clark Hoyt, I sent an e-mail to Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis asking whether Dowd was on vacation or had been suspended. Mathis’ reply, in full:

Maureen is on vacation. Since she didn’t do anything wrong, there would be no reason for a suspension.

That, of course, would be contrary to Hoyt’s view, who delivered a mild rebuke to Dowd last Sunday after she lifted a paragraph from Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo without attribution. In addressing Dowd’s claim that she had taken the e-mailed passage from a friend without realizing it had originally come from Marshall, Hoyt wrote:

I do not think Dowd plagiarized, but I also do not think what she did was right.

Andrew Rosenthal, the editorial page editor, said journalists collaborate and take feeds from each other all the time. That is true with news articles, but readers have a right to expect that even if an opinion columnist like Dowd tosses around ideas with a friend, her column will be her own words. If the words are not hers, she must give credit.

No, Hoyt’s views are not those of Times management. Even so, I’m surprised Mathis would say something so definitive in defense of Dowd just days after Hoyt offered a different view. But there you go.

More on GateHouse pay cuts

GateHouse’s Patriot Ledger of Quincy has posted an admirably straightforward story about what’s going on inside the ailing newspaper chain. The article, by Jon Chesto, describes the 7.75 percent pay cut announced by GateHouse New England chief executive Rick Daniels as “temporary.” The goal, Chesto writes, is to save $2.5 million this year.

Chesto explains:

The size of the pay reduction will vary depending on an employee’s salary, ranging from 7 percent up to just under 15 percent for the company’s top earners.

The average pay cut would be 7.75 percent. If the reduction lasts through the end of 2009, it would have the effect of an average pay cut of 4.5 percent for the full year. They will take effect next week except at the chain’s three [not two, as I wrote earlier] unionized papers: the Ledger, the Enterprise of Brockton and the Herald News of Fall River.

We also learn more about the downsizing that’s taken place recently. According to Chesto, “GateHouse cut its New England work force by about 10.5 percent since the start of the year through a mix of layoffs, voluntary buyouts, attrition and work-week reductions. After the latest round of job cuts, GateHouse Media New England will have the equivalent of more than 1,100 full-time employees.”

That amounts to a bit more than 100 positions lost since the beginning of the year.

This is miserable news if you’re a GateHouse employee. But it’s encouraging that Daniels has committed himself to reversing the pay cuts if and when the advertising market recovers. I’m also impressed that GateHouse — like my friends at the Boston Phoenix — is cutting higher-paid employees by a larger percentage than those at the bottom of the pay scale.