Author: Dan Kennedy

Matthew Felling writes:

When I took the occasional hot-air balloon ride with the more blustery Sean or Joe, I always knew that at the end of the night I’d make use of “NewsNight” — and more importantly, Aaron Brown’s sense of handling the news — to tether me back to The Real World.

Yes, I confess to not having joined the “Cult Of Personality” surrounding Mr. Cooper as much as some. (“Gosh, he’s hawt!”) And yes, I know many of Aaron Brown’s negative nicknames around the newsrooms he has worked in. (That Space Shuttle golf trip debacle didn’t help.) But on camera, Brown was peerless (at least among the motley crew of night-time cable gabbers) at making sense of the world and asking the question that punctured the subtleties of spin.

Way, way back in June 2002 — a lifetime in the narrow little world of cable news — you could actually take sides in a substantive news war every weeknight at 10. On MSNBC, Brian Williams anchored an hour-long newscast as he prepared for the day that Tom Brokaw would retire. And on CNN, Aaron Brown hosted “NewsNight,” then in its pre-Klein glory. Those were the days. Here’s part of something I wrote at the time:

CNN’s NewsNight, anchored by Aaron Brown, is not perfect by any means, and much of the reason has to do with Brown himself, who alternates between refreshing candor and annoying self-absorption. But NewsNight, which debuted on October 15 (Brown himself began work at CNN on September 11, less than an hour after the first tower was hit), works as an invigorating alternative to the traditional newscast, with longer stories, some attitude and edge, and the arch presence of Brown, who, despite being 10 years older than Williams, comes across as an entire generation younger.

Not to wax too enthusiastic. NewsNight has been devoting a lot of time to the trial involving the murder of young Danielle van Dam, mainly because the lawyer for the neighbor accused of killing her is making an issue of the exotic and varied sex life indulged in by Danielle’s parents. And Brown gave an entire hour to the arrest of Robert Blake — something that he apologized for the next night. At its best, though, the show comes across as a less-boring version of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer or the television equivalent of All Things Considered.

Harry Shearer has a worthwhile post on Brown’s demise.

Now, please think about what has happened. We have three all-news cable channels. There are three prime-time hours per night — 8 to 11 p.m. And CNN brainiac Jonathan Klein has decided to blow up the sole 60-minute segment out of those nine hours that was an actual, you know, newscast. (MSNBC’s “Countdown” definitely has its moments, but it’s more “The Daily Show” than it is Edward R. Murrow. Long live Keith Olbermann, but don’t call it a newscast.)

To his very, very slight credit, Klein is sticking to a newscast at 10, with Anderson Cooper as the new anchor. But, whether you like Cooper or not, he simply doesn’t bring the intelligent, analytical approach of Aaron Brown. Worse, the program has been expanded from one to two hours, which usually means that they’ll spend much of the first hour hyping stories that will appear in the second hour.

Klein has been destroying CNN. Brown was one of the network’s few remaining symbols of quality. The only good that could come out of this would be if Klein drives down the value of CNN so much that Ted Turner can afford to buy it back from Time Warner.

I realize not everyone shares my enthusiasm for Aaron Brown’s unusual blend of intelligence, irony and befuddlement. At its best — that is, before Jonathan Klein started mucking around with it — Brown’s “NewsNight” show on CNN was the closest thing on television to NPR. Not nearly as good, mind you, but similar in tone and lack of condescension.

It’s been clear for some time that Klein wanted to whack Brown. I’d been hoping that Klein would get whacked first. It didn’t happen. Brown is out, to be replaced by Klein’s golden boy, Anderson Cooper. The only reason to watch CNN (other than when Larry King has a good guest) is gone.

I’d make Brown the anchor of an expanded network newscast. But I know it’s not going to happen. I don’t detest Cooper, and I wish him well. But I won’t be watching much, either.

Barring a major development, I’m taking a rest from the Theo wars. But I do want to remind you that, this Sunday, Boston Globe ombudsman Richard Chacón is supposed to weigh in with part two of his take on the business relationship between the New York Times Co. and the Red Sox, and how that affects the Times Co.-owned Globe. Forget the sports section — go straight to the editorial page.

Part one, I thought, showed some guts: Chacón opined that Globe publisher Richard Gilman and president Richard Daniels should give back their World Series rings “to protect the paper’s credibility.” But the larger problem isn’t that Gilman and Daniels accepted the rings — the issue is that they are business associates of the Red Sox, which quite naturally led them to believe there was nothing wrong with taking the jewelry in the first place. This is about high-stakes business ties, not rings.

Mind you, the contretemps of the past week strike me more as having to do with the Globe’s being the dominant newspaper in town than it does with any ownership connection, and with the scrappy Boston Herald’s being in a position to pounce on the Globe’s missteps. Still, what people at the Globe — and the Times Co. — have to realize is that every time something like this happens, critics are going to beat them over the head with the ownership issue.

Silly me — I always thought the real problem would be when the Red Sox tried to move ahead on the business side, putting the squeeze on city and state officials for land and money. The Globe’s perceived interest could potentially become a huge problem in a situation like that, even if the paper’s coverage was properly fair and neutral.

Baseball? Well, that’s just fun and games. Except when it isn’t.

Sorry, Mr. Mayor. Theo’s not staying.

Mayor Tom Menino was dropping hints on WRKO and WEEI this morning that Theo Epstein would announce at his news conference later today that he’s staying with the Red Sox.

Would Menino know? If he has a team source, wouldn’t it mostly likely be (gasp!) Larry Lucchino?

It would be great news. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

And here is the Bill Simmons piece everyone is talking about. I read it last night, and found myself nodding my head. Yes, Theo is overrated. But no, he can’t go. (Except that he did.)

The Phoenix’s Mike Miliard absolutely unloads on Dan Shaughnessy — and on Larry Lucchino, too.

While you’re mocking the Globe for its report yesterday that an Epstein deal was in the bag, you might want to take a look at this from one of its Boston.com partners, Boston Dirt Dogs. It ran beneath a headline that read “Done Deal.”

Not that the Dogs have any inside information — they’re just feeding off the Globe story. But still.

And Bryan calls it, right down to what Dan would say. I listened for a couple of minutes before deciding it was time to do some actual work.

David Scott does a cut-and-paste at the end of his own commentary. It adds little to what we already know, but there you go.

Jay Fitzgerald’s got most of the relevant links this morning, so I’m not going to repeat them all. There seems to be little doubt that Dan Shaughnessy’s column in the Sunday Globe was a major factor in Theo Epstein’s decision to quit as Red Sox general manager. For support, I cite a neutral observer, Sean McAdam of the Providence Journal, who has an analysis today at ESPN.com. McAdam writes:

A column in the Boston Globe on Sunday, which Epstein deduced had been leaked by Lucchino or others on the CEO’s staff, intimated that the general manager had been at fault when a proposed multi-player deal with the Colorado Rockies fell through at last summer’s trade deadline.

(In truth, ownership made Epstein cancel the agreed-upon deal, though Lucchino reportedly later blamed the mess on [Epstein’s then-assistant Josh] Byrnes in talks with Rockies ownership.)

The column further stated that Lucchino had accepted public blame for the fallout to spare his general manager further embarrassment.

This incensed Epstein and, along with other anecdotal evidence, caused him to reconsider working under Lucchino for another three seasons. By late morning Monday, he had made up his mind: His tenure with the Red Sox was over.

This isn’t spin from the Globe’s archrivals over at One Herald Square. And it makes laughable Shaughnessy’s assertion today that “it seems pretty ridiculous that Theo would break away from a man he worked with for 14 years because of a few lines he read in a column in the Sunday Globe.” In fact, that’s a grossly oversimplified version of what McAdam is reporting. It wasn’t the column that made Epstein quit; rather, it was the fact that the column contained clear evidence that Epstein’s rift with Sox president Larry Lucchino couldn’t be mended.

Which leaves us with some questions:

1. Even if you accept that Shaughnessy’s column helped push Epstein out the door, does it then follow that this has something to do with the reality that the Globe’s parent company, the New York Times Co., is a 17 percent owner of the Sox? That’s what everyone seems to think at the Herald and on WEEI Radio (AM 850), but I’m not sure how one follows from the other. Shaughnessy, after all, just did a huge amount of damage to the Times Co.’s investment.

Lucchino obviously likes to suck up to the Globe — but that could be more because the paper is New England’s dominant media institution than because they’re business partners. Still, this is an awkward relationship given that such questions inevitably come up at times like this. Naturally, the Herald can’t resist doing a sidebar today on the “Cozy Sox-Globe ties.”

2. Should Shaughnessy have refrained from writing his Sunday column, with its over-the-top spin in favor of Lucchino and against Epstein? I’m not going to suggest that Shaughnessy should consider his words carefully lest they damage the team. (That’s what he’d do if he really were concerned with protecting his employer’s business interests.) But Shaughnessy appears to have used his column in order to advance Lucchino’s version of events without taking into account the possibility that he was getting spun. Still, Bruce Allen is surely right when he says, “It is clear though, if Shaughnessy didn’t write the article on Sunday, someone else would have.”

3. Might Theo still be talked into staying? The line of the day goes to Toronto general manager J.P. Ricciardi, who tells the Globe’s Gordon Edes, “I’ll believe it when I’m at the general managers’ meetings next week in Palm Springs and he’s not in his chair. It’s like a Mafia hit. You don’t believe it until you see the guy at the funeral.”

4. Will Shaughnessy show up on Mike Barnicle’s radio program this morning?

5. What would I learn from Peter Gammons, whose wisdom would be available to me if only I were a paid subscriber to ESPN.com?