In my latest for the Guardian, I report that Massachusetts has returned to normal since Election Day. Which is to say that corrupt politicians are running wild, tolls are going up and the traffic jams the Big Dig were supposed to alleviate are now worse than ever. James Michael Curley’s statues — yes, both of them — are laughing at us.
Author: Dan Kennedy
Thoughts on the Globe’s Newton project
The battle between the Boston Globe and GateHouse Media over the Globe’s hyperlocal Newton site isn’t really about the possibility that the Globe will grab more content from the Newton Tab than fair use — or fair play — should allow.
Rather, it’s over a more fundamental issue that will likely be a key to survival as struggling news organizations seek to reinvent themselves: Who will control the virtual front door to Newton, as well as to other cities and towns?
At first glance, Boston.com Newton strikes me as attractive, well-organized and generous. By generous, I mean the blog-like feature that fills the center well is a nice mix of content from the Globe, the Tab and local blogs. Just as important, the items give you just a bare taste of the story — if you have any interest at all, you’ll click through. So it seems likely that Boston.com will drive some traffic to the Tab, not to mention the blogs.
By combining content from different sources so seamlessly, Boston.com, at least for the moment, has leapfrogged ahead of the Tab’s Wicked Local Newton site. GateHouse’s Wicked Local sites, which debuted in Plymouth a few years ago, before there even was a GateHouse, were supposed to combine content from the local GateHouse paper with blogs and citizen journalism in order to be a one-stop community guide. That never quite panned out, although Wicked Local is stronger in some towns than in others.
Probably the least generous item on Boston.com Newton right now involves my friends at the Boston Phoenix. There’s a big photo of a plate of food, along with a headline that says, “Foodies: Phoenix reviews Hotel Indigo.” Follow the link, though, and you find a Globe blog item that summarizes the Phoenix review. You have to click again to get to the actual Phoenix review.
There’s a lot more to Boston.com Newton than the news blog. Readers can contribute to a wiki, discuss issues and send in photos. There’s a calendar of events, real-estate listings and local school data.
At the moment, at least, there is no RSS feed. That may change, though the site strikes me as ill-suited to reading via RSS, as it consists of many little items that require you to go off-site if you want to learn more. (Boston.com’s director of community publishing, Teresa Hanafin, makes exactly that point in a comment to the Garden City blog. And don’t miss GateHouse editor Greg Reibman’s hilarious retort.)
The Globe and GateHouse face different challenges.
The Globe, like all big regional papers, is caught in a squeeze. People who are interested mainly in national and international news are now getting it elsewhere, online. And though it’s often said that local is the future, it’s difficult for a big paper that covers all of Eastern Massachusetts to become local enough. Boston.com Newton, which is clearly intended as a prototype (note the “yourtown” in the URL), is an interesting way of overcoming the disadvantage of being a regional paper — and of attracting local advertisers who could never afford to buy space in the paper.
GateHouse, which publishes about 100 papers in Eastern Massachusetts, is all about local, so it doesn’t have to reorient its mission. But its natural advantage in print doesn’t necessarily hold up online, because players as large as the Globe and as small as a few passionate activists can play on the same turf.
What’s going on in Newton will tell us a lot about the future of the newspaper business over the next few years. I hope both sides find a way to win.
Boston.com versus GateHouse redux
Boston.com’s Newton site debuted today. I’ll try to offer at least a quick assessment tomorrow. At first glance, it strikes me as an attractive mix of content from the Boston Globe, GateHouse Media’s Newton Tab, the Boston Phoenix and local bloggers.
Meanwhile, take a look at this video, posted on Boston.com’s Green Blog. Be sure to watch the closing credits. Pretty aggressive, don’t you think?
More: It’s only fair to point out it’s virtually impossible to learn that the video is from the GateHouse’s Belmont Citizen-Herald unless you watch all the way to the end. Even if you go directly to the YouTube site, you’ll find nothing unless you click on “more info.” And even then, it’s pretty cryptic.
So I can believe it’s an innocent mistake — but one that should be corrected soon.
Still more: Now fixed — see fourth paragraph.
Obama job-seekers beware
Ari Herzog, who’d like to work for the Obama administration, is put off by the 63-question, privacy-invading survey that all applicants must fill out.
That, at least, you might have already heard about. But Herzog also discovers that the data you provide to Team Obama’s Change.gov site is stored not on a government server, but with a private contractor, Cluen Corp.
Here we go again
Doesn’t President-elect Obama have a problem on his hands if Sen. Hillary Clinton turns him down for the secretary of state’s post? Wouldn’t anyone else now be seen as second-best?
Obama got lucky with Rahm Emanuel. But the name-floating that’s going on right now strikes me as a significant breakdown in discipline on the part of the Obama camp.
For whom the toll tolls
What, are they insane?
The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority yesterday didn’t just kill the goose that lays the golden eggs — that would be us. In raising tolls through the roof, as Noah Bierman reports in the Boston Globe, the authority buried the goose’s carcass somewhere beneath a cash-stuffed toll booth, never to be seen again. “I’m already mapping out, in my mind, alternative routes,” writes Jay Fitzgerald at Hub Blog.
Let me say right up front that the proposed toll increases would have little effect on me. I come in from the North Shore, and maybe a couple of times a year I’ll swing over to the Ted Williams Tunnel because something has gone wrong on Route 1. So I’m not looking at a $7 daily toll. But this is just nuts.
Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr is his usual irresponsible self today, writing a damn-them-all screed that doesn’t leave room for any reasonable approach to what has become a huge problem. But on his WRKO Radio (AM 680) program yesterday, he was making more sense, admitting that the state somehow has to pay off the Big Dig fiasco — and that it would be much fairer to spread the pain with an increased gas tax than with toll hikes that, in the case of MetroWest, are paid by those who don’t even use the Big Dig.
Then again, both he and Herald reporter Hillary Chabot raise the specter that we’ll get a gas-tax hike on top of the toll hike. They could be right, even though the Globe’s Bierman reports that Gov. Deval Patrick remains opposed to a gas tax.
On the other hand, the Outraged Liberal thinks yesterday’s announcement is a ruse that will lead not to a toll increase but to a boost in the gas tax. He writes:
But there is a method to this planned madness.
The Globe notes the increases will go into place after another hearing by the Turnpike Authority in February or March. I personally would book Fenway Park as a location that could handle the crowd of angry people.
Presumably, that would be enough time for Deval Patrick and legislators to get off their, um, sidelines, and approve a comprehensive plan to tackle the transportation nightmare (hey, throw in the disaster known as the MBTA while you are at it.)
I hope he’s right. As a Globe editorial noted earlier this week, a 4-cent increase in the state gas tax would bring in $100 million a year — exactly the amount to be raised by the toll hike.
Photo taken inside Ted Williams Tunnel (cc) by Mark Danielson and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
Waiting for Boston.com’s Newton site
It’s a little after 11:30 a.m. So I guess we can now officially say that the Boston Globe has delayed the unveiling of its hyperlocal Newton site, the subject of much speculation and angst this week.
I would imagine the delay is due to some tech snafu, though it’s possible it’s being retooled in response to the concerns raised by GateHouse Media, owner of the Newton Tab.
Though I’ve been among those who’ve been wondering if the Globe’s plans might unfairly make use of the Tab’s content, I also expect that the Globe folks are smart enough not to go too far. If there’s a blog on the Globe site that links to some Tab content, well, you can’t stop the Globe from blogging. Nor should you.
If the Globe refrains from linking to every story in the Tab; and if, when it does, it does so in such a way that you feel as though you need to click on through, then everyone should be happy.
Update: Media Nation reader G.R. tells me that the the site now says the Newton page will debut on Monday.
Globe losing nearly $1m a week?
That’s what Boston Globe executives have been telling union members, according to this story by Boston Business Journal reporter Craig Douglas. That number comes from the summer, before the paper reorganized its sections and saved itself some money. On the other hand, the economy is much worse now than it was then.
As for the possibility that the Globe will soon be sold, Douglas offers this:
“Who wants to catch a falling safe?” said a source familiar with the Globe’s financials. “Nobody’s going to fund a $50 million hole in the ground.”
A falling safe with no money in it, apparently.
Bad as things may be, so far the New York Times Co. has spared Boston the chaos that has rocked other large regional papers such as the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. At some point, though, something’s got to give. (Via Universal Hub.)
Really, folks, the campaign’s over
Maybe it’s because I have no memory, but I can’t recall a time when there has been this much speculation right after a presidential election concerning who might run in four years. No doubt we can expect Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney to form exploratory committees any minute now.
And we’re already down to people I’ve never heard of.
I suspect it’s a consequence of the expansion of the political press (the aforementioned item is from the Politico, which really does have nothing better to do) and the intense interest in politics generated by an unusually dramatic campaign.
Hoax doesn’t affect Palin story
A number of observers seem to misunderstand the meaning of the revelation that a man who claimed to be Carl Cameron’s source for some of his Sarah Palin dish has turned out to be a fraud.
Citing unnamed sources, Cameron reported on Fox News last week that Palin, among other things, didn’t know that Africa was a continent and couldn’t name the countries in NAFTA — or, for that matter, in North America.
Now I’m hearing that the exposure of the fake Martin Eisenstadt shows that Palin really isn’t that stupid. Except that this AP story, posted on the Fox News Web site, reports that Eisenstadt — or “Eisenstadt” — was not Cameron’s source, and that Fox is standing by Cameron’s story.
For what it’s worth, I never believed Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent. But if you want to believe it, there’s no reason to stop now.