Is the anvil ready to drop?

This is depressing, but not unexpected. The Phoenix’s Adam Reilly hears that 60 jobs will be eliminated at the Boston Globe, as well as another 80 20 at the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. (Both papers are owned by the New York Times Co.) An announcement could come as soon as tomorrow.

Reilly notes that the cuts, which would shrink the Globe’s newsroom by 16 positions, would leave the paper with 75 fewer journalists than it had a little more than two years ago. Since we can expect the Globe to focus more and more on what it can uniquely offer, as opposed to what readers can find on other Web sites, look for the paper to accelerate its move toward almost exclusively local coverage.

Photo (cc) by Steve Garfield, and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Greenhouse effect doesn’t exist

Here’s what happens when newspaper-business cutbacks finally reach the New York Times: A legend like Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse takes early retirement. (Via Romenesko.) Who will Nina Totenberg hang out with?

More important, what will become of the so-called Greenhouse effect — the tendency of justices to move to the left in order to be thought well of by the dean of the Supreme Court press corps? Good grief. This could be bigger than another judicial vacancy.

It’s over

I thought Clinton sounded sad and subdued at the end, as though she knew that whatever she needed to do tonight she didn’t do. If she’s going to get back into the race, it won’t be because of this debate.

A further thought on the Louis Farrakhan reject/denounce exchange. Russert really let Obama off the hook by not forcing him to answer for things his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has said. Yes, Russert noted that Wright has praised Farrakhan, but then he let it pass. Obama “rejected and denounced” Farrakhan, but we never got back to Wright.

To be sure, Obama needn’t endorse everything Wright says to belong to his church. But it would have made for a more interesting conversation than simply beating up on an easy target like Farrakhan.

Rejections and denunciations

Maybe I’m too caught up in the moment, but I thought Clinton really got the worst of it in trying to say Obama didn’t go far enough in “denouncing” Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement — she said he should have “rejected” it, as she had done with a sleazy supporter in New York. Obama laughed a bit, said he didn’t see the difference and added that if it made her feel better he would “reject and denounce.” Oof.

This is their third one-on-one, but the first time I’ve seen such a performance differential between the two of them.

Obama’s left-right two-fer

Obama just pulled off the neat trick of going to Clinton’s left and right on national security simultaneously, and he was able to do it because Clinton handed him the opportunity. First, she criticized his opposition to the war in Iraq as nothing more than a speech, saying both of them had voted the same way on war-funding and related issues since that time. Then she questioned his judgment for saying last summer that he would bomb Pakistan.

Obama responded by saying that Clinton had enabled President Bush to “drive the bus into the ditch,” and that the reason their voting records are similar is that there are only so many ways to get out of the ditch. Then he said he didn’t favor bombing Pakistan, but did favor targeting specific Al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan. And he praised the Bush administration for doing that last week in taking out Al-Qaeda’s third-ranking leader.

That said, Brian Williams and Tim Russert seem to be doing everything they can to drop live grenades in her lap while making it easy for Obama to cruise along.

Cringing over Clinton

I think Hillary Clinton may have just burst into flames. After a contentious, 16-minute exchange over health care, Brian Williams finally moved the discussion to trade. Before she answered, she started channeling her campaign spokesman, Phil Singer, by complaining about always being asked the first question and referring to a “Saturday Night Live” skit in which Obama was portrayed as being coddled by the media. This can’t be helpful to her.

Vote early, vote often

Media Nation has been nominated in the Blog/Podcast category of the Boston Phoenix’s 2008 “Best” poll. I invite you to vote early and vote often. (Just kidding. Sort of.) Yes, I used to work at the Phoenix, and I still write for the paper occasionally. But this is a reader poll — I have no advantage over anyone else. If you visit Media Nation regularly or occasionally and like what you see, I hope you’ll make your feelings known. I’m keeping the graphic in the upper right until the polls close.

Other nominees are Universal Hub, Jon Keller, Blue Mass Group and the Allston Brighton Community Blog.