One for the ages

Last Sept. 2, right after the Red Sox announced that Jon Lester would leave the team to undergo cancer treatment, I predicted that Lester would be the Opening Day pitcher in April 2008. It’s not going to happen — that honor will obviously go to Josh Beckett.

But this is a whole lot better, isn’t it? What an absolutely incredible story. Lester got behind on some batters last night, but he looked pretty much unhittable.

And not to sully this moment with the Alex Rodriguez saga, but he’s already done that, hasn’t he? Mike and Mike were tearing into him on ESPN Radio (AM 890 around here) this morning, as well they should. Blowing off Hank Aaron and putting his contract wishes above the World Series in one day has got to be some sort of a record.

I hope Theo and Larry don’t even think of signing him. A-Rod’s a great player, and maybe his post-season failures have been a fluke (or maybe not). But he’d be a constant distraction. The Sox have proved they can win without him. The Mariners, Rangers and Yankees have proved they can lose with him. Enough.

Viva Massachusetts!

Daniel Gross writes in Slate that gambling is on the wane in Las Vegas, even as Gov. Deval Patrick tries to bring it here. Does Las Vegas know something that Patrick doesn’t?

Meanwhile, Casinofacts.org, formed to fight the proposed Middleborough casino, is going statewide at a rally on Beacon Hill this Monday. In a statement on its Web site, the organization’s president, Rich Young, says:

The coalition is a combination of religious groups, mental health organizations, business groups, social service agencies and citizen activist groups. They will be coming together under one banner to oppose the Governor’s plan to put casinos in three communities in Massachusetts. This is the start of the first organized opposition to this flawed “economic model”.

Casinofacts.org has been at the forefront of this coalition. We were asked to participate in the planning, development and will be active members in the ongoing campaign. I want you also to know that yesterday the coalition decided to structure their organization with a President and a Board of Directors. I was asked and will serve as the President of the Coalition.

Monday begins the fight on a wider scope. No longer is this just about Southeastern Massachusetts. This is about every one of the Commonwealth’s cities and towns being put up to bid. The Governor is wrong on this issue and we must rise up against this plan.

The New Bedford Standard-Times weighs in as well.

Hat tip on both items to Cape Cod Today, whose blogger/reporter Peter Kenney was recently nominated for a Best of the Blogs award for his relentless work on this subject.

My standard disclosure.

Edwards versus student journalism

John Edwards’ presidential campaign is reportedly using intimidation and threats to get a student-produced news report removed from YouTube. As a public service, Media Nation presents the report here:

As you will see, the story — by a University of North Carolina student named Carla Babb — is a fair and neutral piece of journalism on Edwards’ decision to place his state headquarters in an affluent area of Chapel Hill.

Edwards should apologize for the actions of his overzealous aides.

Sign Schilling?

One of the great non- controversies in Boston sports is on the plate this morning, as Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe considers what the Red Sox ought to do now that Curt Schilling’s contract is expiring.

The answer, which I can’t imagine anyone would disagree with, is this: If he’ll take a one-year deal, then yes, of course. It is, as Cafardo says, a “no-brainer.” More than one year? Well … maybe.

Tim Wakefield may be on the verge of retiring. That would leave Beckett and Matsuzaka as the number-one and -two guys, and Lester and Buchholz at the back of the rotation. I want Schilling at number three. Don’t you?

Especially after last night.

Schilling photo (cc) by benostrander. Some rights reserved.

New media conference at BU

I should have mentioned this earlier, but I’ll be spending the day at “New Media and the Marketplace of Ideas,” a conference at Boston University sponsored by BU’s College of Communication and School of Law, WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) and the law firm of Prince, Lobel, Glovsky & Tye.

The keynote speaker will be the Daily Kos‘ Markos Moulitsas Zúniga.

Here is the schedule for the day. I’m hosting a breakout session on blogging at 3:45 p.m.

Objectivity redefined

The Boston Herald’s Casey Ross reports that pro-casino legislators are trying to steer Gov. Deval Patrick’s three-casino proposal away from the Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies, whose House chairman, Rep. Dan Bosley, D-North Adams, opposes casinos.

Ross writes that casino supporters wonder if Bosley can be “objective,” and he quotes Rep. John Quinn, D-New Bedford:

If we want a fair and open hearing, I’m not sure [Bosley’s] committee is the one that can provide it. I have tremendous respect for the chairman, but this is an issue that impacts the entire commonwealth, and we ought to treat it appropriately.

It seems not to have occurred to Quinn — or maybe it has — that the reason Bosley is such a staunch opponent of casinos is that he’s studied the issue more closely and for a longer time than anyone else in the Legislature.

Bosley understands that casino gambling is bad news, and he’s got the data to back it up. That doesn’t make him non-objective; it makes him right.

And no, I’m not objective, either.

Young people and the news

My latest for CommonWealth Magazine takes a look at the disconnect between young people and the news. Among the folks I interviewed was veteran television journalist Judy Woodruff, now with PBS. Earlier this year Woodruff hosted an hour-long report called “Generation Next,” which examined the lives of people between the ages of 16 and 25. Here’s part of what she told me:

Much of the news young people see is not presented in a way that’s relevant to them. It’s presented in a way that makes sense to people who are older, who know what Medicaid Part B is, or who know what the Kyoto Accord is, or McCain-Feingold. There’s a lot of jargon in the news, and there’s an adult framing of the news, if you will….

I think we need to put ourselves in their shoes. I’m not at all saying we should dumb stories down, because young people today are smart. They’re better educated than any generation that preceded them. But we need to find out what they’re interested in and address the news to them. They’re young. They’re not at a stage in their lives where they own property and are home by 6 or 6:30 at night.

My bottom line: News organizations need to move more quickly in embracing technologies such as interactivity, sharing and social networking. But young people have an obligation to start paying attention to the world around them, too.

If you read the article, you’ll come across a note on how difficult it is to measure the number of people who visit a Web site. The specific example I cite is BostonHerald.com, whose internal numbers show more than three times as many visitors as those counted by Nielsen/NetRatings — a disparity that is not at all unusual.

On Sunday, the New York Times ran an article that explains all, sort of. The most startling assertion, given how important the Web is to the future of the faltering news business, is this: “[T]he growth of online advertising is being stunted, industry executives say, because nobody can get the basic visitor counts straight.” Wow.

Got their mojos working

Pardon the link to a press release, but this bears watching. Reuters journalists have been trying out a Nokia smartphone that lets them write stories, shoot video and still photos, and record audio, and then edit everything and upload it right from the field. I first took note of this trend last December, when it was written up in the Online Journalism Review. Now it’s becoming a reality.

Reuters has put together a site showing off the work of their “mojos,” or mobile journalists. Check out “Robots R Us,” and note the high-quality video and sound. It’s easy to imagine watching this on your own smartphone.

The mojo tool of choice at Reuters is the Nokia N95. With a list price of $699, it’s not cheap — unless the alternative is to outfit a journalist with a laptop and a video/still camera. Compared to that, it’s ridiculously inexpensive.

The press release says that the N95 “provides everything journalists need to file and publish stories from even the most remote regions of the world.” Well, OK. But I suspect such tools are mainly going to be a boon for community journalism, as both professionals and amateurs seek to add more multimedia to their sites.

This just in: No sooner had I posted this than a blog item from the Guardian showed up in my inbox. The writer, Jemima Kiss, goes into quite a bit more detail than the press release does.

A note on quotes

I’m scratching my head over this, from a Boston Globe review by Brion O’Connor about two new Patriots books:

[H]e has an irritating habit of repeating pet clichés, including “mortgaging the future,” “in over his head,” and “slow slide toward mediocrity,” as well as setting up quotes — a gaffe usually corrected in Journalism 101.

Setting up quotes is bad? This Google search suggests the contrary. The very first hit is for a document called “The Art and Craft of Setting Up Quotes.”

I advise my students to tell the reader a little something about new interview subjects and what they’re going to say before quoting them, which is what I take “setting up quotes” to mean. O’Connor is a longtime journalist, and I’m guessing that what he means is different from what I mean.

Anyway, any insight would be appreciated.