Category: News

Talking about information literacy at Bentley

I’ll be part of a panel discussion this evening at Bentley University on information literacy, along with Elizabeth LeDoux, senior lecturer and director of the Media and Culture Program at Bentley, and Cynthia Robinson, research director at Bain Capital.

Titled “Who Wrote This and Why Should I Care? Evaluating and Understanding Information in a Business Context,” the discussion will begin at 6:30 p.m. at Bentley’s LaCava Campus Center, room 305AB.

The moderator will be Chris Beneke, associate professor of history and director of Bentley’s Valente Center for Arts and Sciences. We’ll also hear from Kathy Aronoff, special projects librarian at Bentley, and Elizabeth Galoozis, reference librarian and coordinator of user education.

It should be a wicked good time, and I hope to see you there. Here’s a copy of the program.


			

				

					
				

			
	


	









	

		
		
Talking online local news at MIT
	


	
	
	

		
Please mark this on your calendar — it should be a good one. Next Thursday, Sept. 22, I’ll be moderating a panel on “Local News in the Digital Age,” part of the MIT Communications Forum.


We will have an all-star cast: David Dahl, the Boston Globe’s regional editor, who’s in charge of the paper’s regional editions and the hyperlocal Your Town sites; Callie Crossley, host of “The Callie Crossley Show” on WGBH Radio (89.7 FM) and a fellow panelist on “Beat the Press” (WGBH-TV, Channel 2); and Adam Gaffin, the co-founder, editor and publisher of Universal Hub, Greater Boston’s one essential hyperlocal news site.


The free event will take place from 5o to 7 p.m. in the MIT Media Lab’s Bartos Theater, at 20 Ames St. in Cambridge. It’s being held at the same time that the Online News Association’s annual conference gets under way in Boston, and we’re hoping a few attendees decide to wander over as well.

	


	





	

		
		
Kevin Cullen’s nightmare in South Boston
	


	
	
	

		
With our television set broken, I’ve been cruising around for the best video coverage of Whitey Bulger. I think I’ve done a lot better with my laptop than I would have in front of the TV.


Lots of good stuff, but this one is particularly must-watch: Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen and former Globe reporter Dick Lehr talking about the FBI warning Cullen that Bulger might walk into his living room and “blow [his] brains out” around the time the Globe was revealing Bulger’s corrupt relationship with that agency.


“It wasn’t exactly an idle threat,” Cullen says. “I lived in South Boston. I was well-known in that community, especially by people of Mr. Bulger’s ilk.”

	


	





	

		
		
Finally, interesting news about Whitey Bulger
	


	
	
	

		
Whitey Bulger


I have a confession: the Whitey Bulger story has always bored me. No, not heart of it — the murders, the corrupt dealings with the FBI, the bad brother/good brother dynamic between Whitey and former Massachusetts Senate president Bill Bulger. That’s all incredibly compelling. But the years of incremental stories on various attempts to arrest him have left me cold.


Earlier this week, I barely glanced at the headlines over the FBI’s latest ruse — commercials on daytime televisions shows aimed at women who might recognize Bulger’s girlfriend, Catherine Greig. Someone who has followed the case much more closely than I dismissed it, saying it was pretty clear to him that Bulger was dead.


Well, he wasn’t, and the ads worked. Pretty amazing. As a few people have commented on Twitter, first Osama bin Laden, now Whitey Bulger.


Rather than directing you to specific news stories from today’s papers, I suggest you keep visiting the Boston.com and Boston Herald home pages, where the story is being continuously updated.

	


	









	

		
		
A very scary night
	


	
	
	

		
NYTimes.com’s lead headline right now is about as horrifying as it gets: “Japan Faces Potential Nuclear Disaster as Radiation Levels Rise.” The lede:


Japan faced the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident Tuesday morning, as an explosion at the most crippled of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station damaged its crucial steel containment structure, emergency workers were withdrawn from the plant, and much larger emissions of radioactive materials appeared immiment, according to official statements and industry executives informed about the developments.


Note the wording: the “likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident.”


I’ve been watching NHK’s English-language service at CNN.com. It is not reassuring, despite the cool élan of the on-air folks.