By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
You’ve got to see this. John Ritchie, superintendent of the Lincoln-Sudbury school system, tells newly minted high-school graduates that blogs are nasty things, even as he admits that he’s never actually read any. Kids, if you want to succeed, get away from this man as quickly as possible.
To be fair, Ritchie makes a reasonable point about commenters who take advantage of anonymity to launch personal attacks. But he wraps it in so much ignorance and hyperbole that it’s hardly worth mentioning.
Yes, I am a fair-weather Celtics fan, and have been since the demise of the Bird-Parish-McHale team. But man. That was unbelievable. Whether the Celtics beat the Lakers or not, this group has as much heart as any I’ve ever seen.
Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr’s snide attack on state Sen. Jim Marzilli today is by the numbers, but it’s worth reading all the way to the last two lines. No, he hasn’t gotten over it. Will Carr get chewed out when he shows up at work this afternoon at WRKO Radio (AM 680), or will this just be waved off as Howie being Howie?
Meanwhile, good Jon Keller commentary on WBZ Radio (AM 1030) this morning on Marzilli’s lawyer, who’s gone way, way beyond the call of duty. While Marzilli himself has made it clear that he’s got some serious problems by checking in to a psychiatric hospital, his lawyer, Terrence Kennedy, has dismissed the charges against Marzilli as “ridiculous.”
That’s pretty offensive. What ever happened to “my client has pleaded not guilty, and beyond that we have no comment”?
State Sen. Jim Marzilli, D-Arlington, has announced that he won’t seek re-election. Here’s a report from the Boston Globe.
Sounds like he’s not planning on resigning before his term expires next January. Frankly, though, I’d be surprised if his legal problems make it possible for him to continue serving.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Washington Post’s big bet on hyperlocal, online journalism — LoudounExtra.com — has been a flop.
According to Journal reporter Russell Adams, there have been a number of problems, from a failure to commit sufficient resources to an odd strategic decision not to link to the site from WashingtonPost.com. But I wonder if there’s something larger going on.
To an extent, the Post’s woes strike me as similar to those of Microsoft. For years, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and company acted as though they knew someone was going to come along and steal their lunch money someday. And so they moved aggressively, most memorably destroying Netscape and earning themselves a massive antitrust suit in the process.
But, in the end, Microsoft couldn’t overcome the tendency of huge, established companies not to be able to anticipate what’s next. And so Google slipped onto the scene, making a ton of money with online advertising and slowly but surely developing free, Web-based applications that may someday make a program like Microsoft Office (or at least the idea of paying for it) obsolete.
Likewise, when it comes to hyperlocal online journalism, I think it’s more likely that community-based bloggers will start doing real journalism, and embrace professional standards, than it is that big papers like the Post will be able to dominate that turf.
At least the Post has a national and international audience. What about big regional metros such as the Boston Globe, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Denver Post and the like? If there’s no longer a market for such papers doing international and national coverage, don’t they have to embrace the hyperlocal model?
Not necessarily. It could be that what they really need to do is find the sweet spot — completely dominate regional coverage of state and local politics, business, sports, health and the arts, while leaving the national and international coverage to the Post and the New York Times, and the Little League banquets to community papers and bloggers.
In Massachusetts, Web sites tied to local weeklies (such as GateHouse Media’s Wicked Local project) and dailies (such as the Cape Cod Times and the Eagle-Tribune papers) strike me as being more connected at the local level than the Globe’s site, Boston.com. Local blogs are proliferating; here are a few, covering Brighton, Arlington and Newton.
It will be a tough trick for big papers to pull off. The Post’s failures thus far in Loudoun County are specific enough that it’s hard to generalize from them. But I find it difficult to imagine that the Globe will ever be the first place you’ll want to go to find out what the lunch menu is in your child’s elementary school.
Hillary Clinton will drop out of the race on Friday and endorse Barack Obama, the New York Times reports. (ABC News had it first, but the Times version strikes me as a bit more definitive.)
Not surprisingly, Charlie Rangel has the best line: “We pledged to support her to the end. Our problem is not being able to determine when the hell the end is.”
In my latest for the redesigned Guardian, I write that by placing their own psychodrama above Obama’s big night, the Clintons have managed once again to hurt their party and their own reputations.
Last night, Hillary Clinton urged supporters to visit her Web site and let her know whether she should fight on or get out. I thought I’d take a look. As with any good Soviet-style election, you’re given two options:
Choices, choices …
The Lowell Sun reports some disturbing details from state Sen. Jim Marzilli‘s arraignment this morning on charges of sexual assault. According to Sun reporter Lisa Redmond, the Arlington Democrat tried approaching another woman hours before he was chased and pepper-sprayed by Lowell police after he allegedly tried to grope a woman on an outdoor bench.
A trio of Boston Globe reporters pass along some nasty details as well, including an allegation that Marzilli initially identified himself by the name of another state legislator (nice touch!), and that police say he broke down and said his life was over upon being arrested. Ugh. And here is the Boston Herald’s update.
As we know, Marzilli was just cleared in a more ambiguous situation. It’s impossible not to evaluate what happened yesterday in light of that. Needless to say, it doesn’t look good.
Marzilli is a smart, hard-working legislator with a strong reformist impulse. In August 2003, I wrote a profile for the Boston Phoenix of then-House Speaker Tom Finneran, who was under fire for his authoritarian streak. Marzilli, then a state representative, had a characteristically smart take, telling me:
Tom Finneran is not the devil. He is a man of enormous talent and intellect, and he is one of the most charismatic people you’ll find. He is at the same time very conservative, and he has a very controlling manner. He wants to be in charge. Now those are not bad characteristics automatically. But in an institution of legislators who are spending less and less time and attention on public-policy matters, it’s dangerous for our democracy. It’s dangerous because a conservative ideology dominates with precious little dissent or input, for that matter.
In an era when liberals are often accused of being socialists, it’s interesting to note that Marzilli actually is one. He chaired (PDF) the Boston Democratic Socialists of America in the 1980s, and his name has continued to pop up in DSA literature in recent years.
Tuesday update: It’s now clear, according to Lowell police reports, that Marzilli was not pepper-sprayed; rather, he was told that if he didn’t stop resisting arrest, he would be. At least one early news report that I saw stated that he had been pepper-sprayed, so I’m not calling this a correction.
The Massachusetts Republican Party just sent out an e-mail headlined “MassGOP Statement on Barack Obama.” The entire press release that follows is about Deval Patrick. Must be because they both have a Chicago accent, eh?
We’ll post the apology as soon as it arrives.
Update: Got a corrected e-mail shortly before noon. No apology.