Middleborough’s “no” vote revisited

Boston Globe reporter Sean Murphy has a 7,000-word retrospective on the lessons of the proposed Middleborough casino in the forthcoming issue of CommonWealth Magazine.

The whole thing is worth reading, but to me, the best part comes near the end. Here is Murphy’s description of the July 28 town meeting at which an agreement negotiated by the selectmen with the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe was put to a vote:

Moderator James Thomas kept the meeting under a tight rein. When the votes were counted, he announced that the casino agreement had passed, 2,387 to 1,335. A cheer went up. But there was a second item on the agenda, a nonbinding question to town residents. It asked a more basic question: Do you want a casino in Middleborough?

Thomas asked for a show of hands. Remarkably, the vote was overwhelming against a casino. Some chalked it up to proponents having left the football field after the binding vote on the selectmen’s casino deal was taken. What did they care once that deal had been validated? But others saw it as evidence that Middleborough residents really didn’t want a casino at all, but voted for the selectmen’s deal because, once the tribe and its bigfoot partners had scooped up the land, they felt painted into a corner.

Murphy closes with an anecdote about Ted Eayrs, a town assessor in Middleborough, who says he voted in favor of the agreement, but then turned around and voted “no” on the nonbinding question because, all things considered, he’d rather not see a casino come to town at all.

Indeed. Eayrs told me the same thing several months ago, saying he hoped the state would step in and kill the casino.

The second vote matters. I’m glad Murphy knows it, but I’d be even more glad if his newspaper would acknowledge it, too.

Disclosure #1: I write the “Mass.Media” feature for CommonWealth.

Disclosure #2: Just click here.

Another ugly truth about casinos

If you haven’t seen it, I want to call your attention to a terrific story on the front page of today’s Boston Globe about the effects of casino gambling. According to reporter Stephen Smith, the rate of gambling addiction is twice as high as it would otherwise be among people who live within 50 miles of a casino. Smith writes:

Psychiatrists and compulsive behavior specialists have shown that gambling can turn addictive in much the same way that alcohol or illicit drugs do, through a process in which the brain causes the dependence and then is damaged by it. Gamblers can be treated — with counseling, medication, and 12-step programs — but success is far from guaranteed. A year after entering treatment, studies suggest, about half of gamblers return to the slots and gaming tables.

How many times have you heard casino proponents say that people are going to gamble anyway, and that Massachusetts might as well benefit from the tax revenue that’s now going to Connecticut? In case there was any doubt, now we know: That’s less than a half-truth.

And look at where our population centers are. If Gov. Deval Patrick’s plan for casinos in Western Massachusetts, Southeastern Massachusetts and north of Boston comes to pass, then at least two-thirds of state residents — maybe more — will be within 50 miles of a casino.

Over at Blue Mass. Group, Charley Blandy links to a Boston Business Journal editorial that’s dripping with disdain for Patrick’s view that building casinos equals economic development. My favorite line: “We now have a governor who defends a major policy initiative on the basis that it won’t be ‘the end of civilization.’ What an endorsement for setting the stage for ruining more lives to gambling.”

My standard disclosure.

Hoyt says Times erred on MoveOn ad

Accusations that the New York Times gave a price break to MoveOn.org for its ad attacking Gen. David Petraeus didn’t strike me as all that interesting. When it comes to newspaper advertising, everything is for sale, and the official rate card is often just a way to start negotiations.

But Times public editor Clark Hoyt says the Times made a mistake — that the price MoveOn paid ($65,000 as opposed to $142,000) was for a “standby” ad for which a specific day of publication could not be guaranteed. The MoveOn folks wanted their ad run on the Monday of the week that Petraeus was to testify on Capitol Hill, and they got their wish.

So how did it happen? Hoyt doesn’t quite say. But it sounds like an ad salesman wanted a commission.

Hoyt also doesn’t think the ad should have run at all. I disagree. As I’ve said before, the ad was an unfair attack on an honorable public official, although it’s hardly so offensive that it warranted breaking out the smelling salts.

The Times is a public trust, and its ad pages ought to be as open to political speech as possible, offensive or otherwise. Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. gets it right when he tells Hoyt, “If we’re going to err, it’s better to err on the side of more political dialogue.”

Update: Looks like MoveOn just cost Rudy Giuliani $77,000. From a press release:

Now that the Times has revealed this mistake for the first time, and while we believe that the $142,083 figure is above the market rate paid by most organization, out of an abundance of caution we have decided to pay that rate for this ad. We will therefore wire the $77,083 difference to the Times tomorrow (Monday, September 24, 2007).

We call on Mayor Giuliani, who received exactly the same ad deal for the same price, to pay the corrected fee also.

Howie’s generic rant

Just a guess, but I’m betting Howie “What Is the Frequency?” Carr wrote this Boston Herald column long before Star Simpson walked into Logan Airport yesterday. After Simpson got arrested for wearing a blinking jacket, all Carr had to do was call up his generic rant about “wacky college kids” and update it with a few details.

OK, I’m kidding. But he could have save himself, oh, four or five minutes yesterday if he’d had this one parked on his laptop.

Paying for the news

“Recovering Journalist” Mark Potts has a great post on New York Times executives’ decision to get rid of their pay service, TimesSelect.

I’ll confess that my glee over the demise of TimesSelect earlier this week was a bit knee-jerk. For consumers, there’s nothing not to like about free. As a blogger, I like being able to link to all Times content. And since the Times Web site is by far the largest news newspaper site, it may be uniquely suited to the advertiser-only model.

But the Times’ move still doesn’t address the question of how to pay for journalism, especially at news organizations that lack the Times’ cachet. (That is, everybody else.) Even Times executives may not have thought this through completely. Potts writes:

[C]ommitting good journalism is expensive, and so far, there’s no indication that advertising will pay the entire way, especially for premium content from the likes of organizations like the Times. By dropping TimesSelect, the Times is walking away from more than $10 million in annual revenue, and it remains to be seen how quickly the resulting traffic bump — and attendant advertising — can make that up. A blanket statement that “content is now and forever free,” as Jeff Jarvis put it in his triumphant posting is just misguided — and belied by ESPN.com, ConsumerReports.org and Zagat.com, not to mention countless high-end subscription-based information and analysis services that serve professional markets. Oh, and print media are still successfully enjoying a revenue stream from subscriptions, you may have noticed.

Typical news junkies may regularly visit five, 10 or more sites. Given that, I think the subscription model remains impractical. (And thus I still don’t lament the passing of TimesSelect.) But microtransactions of some sort — that is, an account from which some small amount of money, perhaps on the order of less than a penny, would be deducted for every article you read — loom on the horizon as a possible solution of how to pay for the news.

Bill Densmore, the founder of one such system known as Clickshare, has further thoughts here.

Gannett’s same old tune

Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper publisher, is in the midst of an important experiment to re-invent daily newspapers around various forms of online citizen journalism. It also has a reputation for being among the most profit-obsessed media companies extant.

So when you read about downsizing and dumbing-down of the Burlington Free Press, you’ve got to wonder: Is Gannett serious about creating a 21st-century newspaper? Or is it just looking for a new ways to save money? (Via Romenesko.)

Gambling while blindfolded

What was Gov. Deval Patrick doing during all those months when he was trying to make up his mind about casino gambling?

Well, here’s one thing he wasn’t doing: He wasn’t consulting with outside experts, even though his own internal task force had urged him to do just that. Here’s a key paragraph from Ken Maguire’s Associated Press report:

The memo [from the task force] with the disclaimer about estimates states: “Realistic employment and revenue projections would be particularly important if the commonwealth wished to enter into any agreement with a federally recognized Native American tribe or a private developer to expand gaming in the state. To do otherwise would be to risk entering negotiations over license fees, tax rates, etc. on an uneven information playing field.”

(Note: You won’t see Maguire’s byline, but I found it elsewhere.)

Maguire also quotes Patrick spokeswoman Cyndi Roy as saying that Patrick’s economic team conducted its own review, and that no outside experts were consulted.

Pretty amazing, no?

Update: Then again, as Jay Fitzgerald reports in today’s Boston Herald, who needs to talk with experts when you can schmooze with Donald Trump’s peeps?

My standard disclosure.

Literally shocking

If you haven’t seen video yet of a University of Florida student being subdued and tasered by police during an appearance by Sen. John Kerry, well, here’s one of them:

Yes, it’s pretty shaky, and this package from MSNBC is clearer. But the amateur video captures the entire incident. It’s kind of astounding to hear Kerry droning on while the student, Andrew Meyer, is screaming from the electric shocks.

Meyer was being an obnoxious jerk, but I didn’t realize that was a criminal offense. As for Kerry — wow, talk about clueless.

More: Blue Mass. Group’s David Kravitz, who worked on Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, links to an AP story suggesting that Meyer was engaged in some sort of stunt. Well, maybe. But I don’t think his getting electrocuted zapped by police was a stunt. And why couldn’t Kerry bring himself to say, “I want the police to stop that”?