Baker, Cahill and Mihos, too

Incredible as it may seem, there may not be a single candidate for governor in 2010 who’s opposed to expanded gambling. As we know, Gov. Deval Patrick is hopeless on the issue, as is State Treasurer Tim Cahill, who’s running as an independent.

A little Googling reveals that the leading Republican candidate, Charlie Baker, is also pro-gambling. Blue Mass. Group recently highlighted an interview Baker gave to the Boston Herald:

During his Herald interview, Baker also:

• Opposed Patrick’s plan to legalize three resort casinos in Massachusetts, saying the resorts would “cannibalize each other.” Baker said he is open to some sort of expanded gaming, however.

And businessman Christy Mihos, who’s challenging Baker for the Republican nomination, actually wants to legalize betting on college and professional sports.

Will no one stand up for common sense?

Just wondering

What is it that House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Therese Murray like best about gambling casinos?

Is it the social dysfunction they help foster, including crime, suicide and bankruptcies? Or the fact that the promised revenues are an illusion, as the industry is in freefall thanks largely to oversaturation? (See recent reports by the New York Times and the Boston Globe.)

Casino opponents gave up a long time ago on Murray and Gov. Deval Patrick. It’s sad to see DeLeo joining them. Oh, where have you gone, Sal DiMasi?

Getting ready for the stretch run

In Theo Epstein-like fashion, the Boston Globe is getting ready for the stretch drive by bolstering its sports staff.

Peter Abraham, who covers the (gasp!) Yankees for the Journal News, which serves the Lower Hudson Valley, is joining the Globe to cover the Red Sox for the paper and Boston.com. “I’m sure some of you will accuse me of being a traitor because I’ll be covering the Red Sox,” Abraham writes on his blog. Yet the comments are surprisingly kind.

And speaking of refugees from Yankee country, Matt Pepin of the Times Herald-Record [now fixed] of Middletown, N.Y., has been named the sports editor of Boston.com. He’ll join the staff on Oct. 5, just in time for the playoffs. Adam Reilly has the details.

Torturing a Cheney photo

cheney_20090917Well-known photojournalist David Hume Kennerly is ripping mad at Newsweek for cropping his photo of Dick Cheney and his family to make it look like the former vice president is picking over the remains of a small animal. (Be sure to click through so that you can see the before and after pictures.)

Appropriately enough (make that inappropriately enough), the photo was used to illustrate something Cheney had said about torture, of which he’s all in favor.

Noting that Newsweek had taken a picture of a warm family scene and cropped it so that it looked like an animal sacrifice, with Cheney as the knife-wielding priest, Kennerly writes:

This radical alteration is photo fakery. Newsweek’s choice to run my picture as a political cartoon not only embarrassed and humiliated me and ridiculed the subject of the picture, but it ultimately denigrated my profession.

Kennerly’s right on target, as the lame response from a Newsweek spokesman makes clear. The photo was tortured into something that it was not. As a result, it’s not journalism, either.

Murder suspect charged — and named

Police in Connecticut this morning finally charged Raymond Clark in connection with the murder of Yale University student Annie Le. And with that, the New Haven Independent — which had refused to identify Clark when he was merely a “person of interest” — has named him and posted a photo.

Earlier: “Ethics, competition and a high-profile murder.”

Audio of panel on journalism and social media

Thanks to four excellent panelists and an interested and engaged audience, we had a great time last night at a discussion titled “Are Blogs and Twitter Improving the Dissemination of Information and News?”

The panel was held at the historic Vilna Shul on Beacon Hill — a bit of a nostalgia trip for me, as I lived less than a block away in 1979-’80.

I’ve posted an MP3 of the discussion. There’s a lot of reverb, and it is difficult to hear members of the audience, who did not use the mic. My apologies. The panelists, in the order in which they spoke, were:

And thanks to Doug Levin, who put together the program.

Paul Bass on (not) naming names

After I posted an item earlier today on the New Haven Independent’s decision not to identify Raymond Clark, the “person of interest” in the murder of Yale University student Annie Le, I invited editor Paul Bass to comment on his decision.

Bass replied by e-mail, telling me that “you’re so right — it’s futile. But we wanted to be consistent.” He added that “we originally broke the story about this suspect. The national media said a student was the suspect. We reported that, no, it was a lab tech, and we gave details that wouldn’t lead the public to be able to find him. We had the name pretty early, and some good info, but decided to go with the basic story.”

In a follow-up e-mail, Bass explained, “We do have quite a strong policy about withholding names. In our routine police stories, we rarely name people (non-public figures) arrested unless there’s a compelling reason, or we’ve gotten their side. We might be wrong, for sure. Lotta back and forth. Maybe a futile high horse thing. Don’t know.”