Author: Dan Kennedy

Amtrak’s customer disservice

You can’t make this stuff up. This coming Monday I’m traveling to New York City on business. I’m returning Tuesday. I had planned to take the Acela Express from Westwood.

Well. This afternoon, I received a call from Amtrak telling me that, due to bridge work, I would not be able to return to Westwood on Tuesday; South Station was my only option. No option at all, really, since overnight parking options in that neighborhood are poor. I said I had to think about what I wanted to do, and hung up.

I decided to drive to Providence and pick up the train there, so I called back. After waiting for 15 minutes, I found myself talking with an agent who told me that (1) trains were going no farther north than New Haven on Tuesday; (2) Amtrak was running buses from New Haven to Providence; and (3) all the buses were booked, so in fact I would not be able to get home.

I was incredulous, and kept repeating what I had just been told to make sure I’d heard it properly. I had. I canceled my reservation and pondered my next move.

Finally, I decided to drive to New Haven (two hours and 40 minutes) on Monday morning and take the train for the last stretch to New York. Now that I think of it, though, I’d better call the New Haven train station and make sure it’s got decent overnight parking.

I want to stress what Amtrak did right. They called me, and they didn’t wait until the last possible minute. Both agents I spoke with were exceedingly polite and sympathetic. Nevertheless, it is absolutely ludicrous that I couldn’t catch a bus from New Haven to Providence. Or, for that matter, to Westwood.

I like trains because they don’t fall out of the sky. But this is why Amtrak is in such trouble. It’s a shame.

Second-best Celtics team ever?

That’s what Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan says in today’s tour de force: his ranking of the top 10 Celtics teams of all time. He places this year’s winners right behind the fabulous 1985-’86 team.

Ryan’s list is sure to be controversial. Given that the Celtics have won 17 championships, it seems odd that he’d pick three losers among his top 10 — including the 1972-’73 squad, his only entry from the Dave Cowens era. Also, even at my advanced age, I’ll have to take his word for it on the great Bill Russell teams.

But this, kids, is why it’s important that papers like the Globe retain some institutional memory as they desperately seek to downsize their way to profitability. No one else in Boston could have written this piece. Good thing Ryan didn’t take the buyout.

What a game! What a season!

And to think that this year’s Celtics were Plan B, put together by Danny Ainge after he lost out on the first pick in the draft.

What can I say? As a casual basketfall fan, I did not suffer through the Celtics’ 22-year drought. Mostly I just ignored them. But I certainly enjoyed their playoff run, especially last night’s dismantling of the Lakers. It wasn’t just victory for the home team, but the culmination of several dramatic story lines: redemption after all these years; the triumph of character; and the defeat of a team of gutless crybabies led by a truly loathsome egomaniac.

The Boston Globe’s Bob Ryan writes:

So they’ve done it. They have claimed the honor of having the greatest single-season turnaround in NBA history. One year ago today, the franchise could accurately be described as forlorn. The Celtics were coming off a 24-58 season punctuated by an 18-game losing streak. They had been cruelly treated by the draft lottery, which left them with nothing better than the fifth pick.

And now they are champions. Again.

Lordy, Lordy, what hath Danny and Doc wrought?

The Celtics were obviously a better team than the Lakers. I suspect the Hawks, the Cavaliers and the Pistons would have beaten them, too. It wasn’t so much that the heavily favored Lakers lost as the Celtics won, with the Big Three of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen playing as hard and as selflessly as Larry Bird, Robert Parish and Kevin McHale. We shouldn’t take away a thing from what they accomplished.

Still, watching the Lakers fold like a cheap suit was part of the fun, don’t you think? You’ve got to love the headline on Bill Plaschke’s column in the Los Angeles Times this morning: “MVP? More like MIA.” And no, I hadn’t realized until I read Plaschke that the Celtics fans were chanting “You’re not Jordan!” at Kobe Bryant. How great is that?

No, he’s not. Before the Bulls started winning one championship after another, Michael Jordan found ways to ennoble himself even in defeat. Bryant, on the other hand, disappeared after the first quarter in every game that mattered. Check this out, from LA Times columnist T.J. Simers:

They are an embarrassment. They went into the NBA Finals favored, the Celtics suffering injuries to several of their starters along the way, and still the Lakers could not measure up.

The Lakers had a 24-point lead at home, the best coach and player on their side, and they gagged.

Their greatest claim in the NBA Finals is the fact the Celtics didn’t clinch the title in Staples Center, the Lakers’ closing mantra: “Not in our house,” and how pitiful is that?

They should have been going to Boston in Games 6 and 7 with the chance to win one game and win it all, but instead they only proved they aren’t anywhere as good as the Celtics and certainly nowhere near as tough.

Great as the 1980s team was, it was never exactly a surprise when they won. They were large, deep and talented. This team is talented, too, but they made me think a little bit of the Dave Cowens-led Celtics of the ’70s: underdogs, winning through sheer force of will. Or the great Bill Russell, toward the end of his career, outdueling the taller, younger and more physically gifted Wilt Chamberlain. Wonderful.

And has anyone ever deserved to win more than Pierce, Garnett and Allen?

File photo (cc) by Lorianne DiSabato and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Have you seen the Globe today?

To borrow from an old advertising campaign.

Our phenomenal delivery guy of some 20 years’ standing, Brent, is gone. The paper arrived late yesterday, and as of 9 a.m. today, it’s still not here. So, for the second morning in a row, I’ve read the paper strictly online, propping open my MacBook while eating breakfast.

Warning: I could get used to this.

Online Journalism Review goes offline

The Online Journalism Review has ceased publication. I’m stunned, although it did strike me that there was a lack of clarity to its mission. Editor Bob Niles says he’ll continue on his own. I hope that the individual voice will allow him to bring greater focus to his work. I also hope Annenberg plans to keep the OJR archives up and running.

Perhaps this is a sign of online journalism’s growing maturity. After all, the Boston Computer Society and myriad other computer user groups of the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s died off once computers became just another tool. (Via Romenesko.)

The rise of Keith Olbermann

Peter Boyer has a terrific profile of Keith Olbermann in the current issue of the New Yorker. The theme — the emergence of the opinion-news hybrid in television journalism, seen first on the right with Fox News, now on the left with MSNBC — is an important one following the death of the determinedly centrist Tim Russert.

Personally, I enjoy Olbermann’s “Countdown” quite a bit. His standards for accuracy are considerably higher than those of his nemesis, Bill O’Reilly. My fear is that craven network executives will take any sign of success and drive it right over the cliff. I hadn’t realized until I’d read Boyer’s piece that CBS News had courted Olbermann as its lead anchor before settling on Katie Couric — who, despite all the drama over her low ratings and rumors of her departure, does a perfectly respectable job of anchoring the evening newscast.

Olbermann’s name has also come up as a possible replacement for Russert on “Meet the Press.” Fortunately, the most plausible rumor of the moment is that Tom Brokaw will come out of retirement to helm the program through the election.

By all means, let Olbermann be Olbermann — hosting a news-and-opinion program, not pretending to be something he’s not.

Also work checking out: NPR’s “On the Media” recently did a piece on what it called “The Olbermann Effect.”

After Russert, the deluge

How thin is the NBC News bench? The Los Angeles Times reports that the top three contenders for Tim Russert’s “Meet the Press” perch are David Gregory, Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough. Good grief. I’m adding “Face the Nation” to my podcast subscriptions right now. (Via Romenesko.)

Media Nation’s top two (and extremely unlikely) contenders: Gwen Ifill and Aaron Brown.

Reason #11

Picking up on Gladys Kravitz’s post on the top 10 reasons that a casino will never be built in Middleborough:

The wife of Shawn Hendricks, president of the Masphee Wampanoag tribal council, has taken a restraining order out against him, according to Stephanie Vosk and George Brennan of the Cape Cod Times. The Hendrickses are in the midst of a messy divorce that includes accusations of violence and steroid use.

Last year Hendricks took over the tribal presidency from Glenn Marshall after it was revealed that Marshall had lied about his military service and had a record as a convicted rapist. It was Marshall who led the tribe’s efforts to build the world’s largest casino in Middleborough. Hendricks has vowed to continue with that effort.

Tim Russert, 1950-2008

Tim Russert’s death does not bode well for the future of television news. Though he was sometimes criticized for being too much of an insider, and for being tougher on liberals than on conservatives, Russert was smart and serious. He had a rare talent for communicating his love and knowledge of politics. And he was, by all accounts, a thoroughly decent human being.

Will NBC executives take advantage of this tragedy to go younger, glitzier and cheaper? That is not the legacy Russert would want or deserves.

Bill Shields of WBZ-TV (Channel 4) interviews several of us from “Beat the Press” here. The actual “Beat the Press” discussion should go up here sometime over the weekend. I’ve also written a column on Russert for the Guardian, which should be available here in a little bit.

Saturday morning update: My Guardian piece is now online.

Photo (cc) by Joseph Hallett and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.