Casting a misspell

At the beginning of each semester, I tell my students that I have a rule about spelling: botch a proper name — person, place or thing — and it will cost you a letter grade. Even so, I often find I have to temper justice with mercy, lest I risk failing someone for the course despite turning in work that is otherwise quite good.

Apparently it’s not much different at the New York Times, whose public editor, Clark Hoyt, weighs in with a piece today on misspelled names. He writes:

The fact is, The New York Times misspells names at a ferocious rate — famous names, obscure names, names of the dead in their obituaries, names of the living in their wedding announcements, household names from Hollywood, names of Cabinet officers, sports figures, the shoe bomber, the film critic for The Daily News in New York and, astonishingly and repeatedly, Sulzberger, the name of the family that owns The New York Times.

Pretty amazing, and I’m not sure why it’s so difficult. Hoyt thinks the Internet might have something to do with it, as it’s become all too easy for reporters to pass on other people’s mistakes. But that doesn’t make sense, because any reporter ought to know enough to visit an authoritative Web site.

A small example. One day in the early ’90s, when I was working for the Boston Phoenix, a fellow copy editor and I were trying to figure out how “Dunkin’ Donuts” ought to be rendered. One of us ended up walking to Kenmore Square in order to look at the sign outside a DD. Today, all we would have needed to do was click here.

When I was going to journalism school, one of my professors, Bill Kirtz (now a colleague), used to say that if you couldn’t be trusted to get the little things right, then you couldn’t be trusted to get the big things right, either. It’s a credo I’ve tried to live by, even as I’ve gotten my share of things wrong, both little and big.

Media Nation on hiatus

I’m leaving tomorrow morning for a six-day, 50-mile backpacking trip in the Berkshires with the Boy Scout troop I help lead. I would ask that you not try to post any comments during this time, since I’m keeping moderation on and won’t be able to approve them until I get back late next Thursday.

I did consider quietly turning moderation off. But the last time I went away, Blogger got hit with a bot attack, and I was glad I had kept the gates up.

Million Dollar Howie?

Carolyn Johnson reports in the Globe that Howie Carr last year made $790,000 from WRKO Radio (AM 680), the station from which he is now seeking a less-than-amicable divorce. If you figure in what he’s making as a Herald columnist, I’ll bet he’s at $1 million or close to it — and that’s not counting whatever he’s making from his book, “The Brothers Bulger.”

That ought to put things in perspective the next time he goes off on some poor bastard grasping for another $10,000.

Over on Cape Cod Today, Peter Kenney offers some thoughts and insight into the Carr-Cary Pahigian relationship. Kenney gets at something very odd: the propriety of Pahigian, an executive with one radio company, freelancing as an agent and messing with the star property of another radio company.

Howie’s unusual agent

This is way inside baseball, but it’s odd enough to mention. Both the Globe (which quotes me) and the Herald, in reporting on WRKO’s countersuit against Howie Carr, note that Carr’s agent is Cary Pahigian.

But Pahigian is a radio management guy of long standing. As recently as late June, he was oozing sincerity in front of the FCC in his capacity as president and general manager of Saga Communications’ Portland (Maine) Radio Group. He’s still listed in that capacity on Saga’s Web site.

One of Saga’s Maine stations, WGAN (AM 560), carries Carr’s show from 3 to 5 p.m. every weekday. And in the late 1990s, when Pahigian was running a hate radio station on Cape Cod owned by the late auto magnate Ernie Boch, he carried Carr’s show and provided airtime to Carr’s then-sidekick Giles Threadgold.

So clearly there are ties between Carr and Pahigian. Still, it’s pretty unusual for someone to walk both sides of the management-talent divide.

By the way, Howie was still doing his WRKO show yesterday. What a strange situation.

Patrick to Murphy: Uh, no

There’s really nothing left to say about the saga of Middlesex Superior Court Judge Ernest Murphy, other than good for Gov. Deval Patrick for refusing to approve Murphy’s request for a disability pension.

I don’t consider myself a Murphy-basher. I don’t doubt that he suffered terribly at the hands of the Herald’s sensationalistic coverage of him — although Media Nation readers know I disagree with the libel verdict that he won, and that the state’s Supreme Judicial Court upheld.

But surely the $3.41 million he pocketed recently, along with the regular pension he could receive by working for just three more years is enough — provided he doesn’t get bounced for alleged misconduct over those weird letters he sent to Herald publisher Pat Purcell.

On the plus side

The Weekly Dig’s Web site loads a lot faster than it used to.

You know, guys, there’s this thing called Blogger. It’s free, and you can set it up in about two minutes. You could use it to get some of your content online while you continue with the endless redesign. What do you think?

Adam Gaffin points out that it’s not July anymore. But what I want to know is this: Isn’t it kind of pushing things to run a vodka ad, complete with audio, on an “under construction” page?

A $2 million reward

Secretary of State William Galvin might want to take a close look at today’s Enterprise of Brockton, which reports the following:

A town police lieutenant, who was in charge of security for Saturday’s town meeting that approved a casino for Middleboro, and his family could score more than $2 million if the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe buys land they own near the casino site.

Middleboro Police Lt. Bruce Gates and two siblings own 204 acres of land off Precinct and Thompson streets. The land consists of a handful of parcels, which abut 125 acres already in the hands of the tribe.

The tribe is now negotiating with Gates and his family for their land, said Wampanoag spokesman Scott Ferson.

“We hope to have an agreement in the next week or two,” Ferson said.

This, of course, would be the same Middleborough police department that reportedly refused to let casino opponents distribute their leaflets while at the same time allowing supporters to enter wearing orange T-shirts and white caps emblazoned with a pro-casino message.

In other casino-related news:

  • Rich Young, director of the anti-casino group Casinofacts.org, makes his case on the op-ed page of the Patriot Ledger of Quincy. He writes:

The real story from Saturday’s “vote” was that while a majority at the FedEx-style town meeting supported the warrant article dealing with the agreement, they also voted against the idea of a casino coming to Middleboro in the next warrant article.

This came as a surprise to no one. During the three-week campaign, hundreds of voters we spoke with did not want a casino, but they were afraid if they did not vote for the agreement, the casino was going to come anyway and the town would receive nothing in return.

  • The Globe reports that a challenge is being made to the legitimacy of the town meeting vote, alleging a number of irregularities, including the presence of those orange T-shirts and a videotaped moment of what may have been ballot-stuffing.

The truth is out there.

Darkness falls

Ugh. I’ve already made my thoughts known about Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of the Wall Street Journal, both here and in the Guardian. So I’ve really got nothing new to say now that he’s finally pulled it off. (Indeed, this has gone on so long that opinion-slingers like me have run through our ammo two or three times already.) But the Journal is well on its way from being a great, independent paper to a very good paper with a grasping, interfering owner.

I love Eric Alterman’s take in The Nation. Alterman argues that because the Journal’s news pages will be seen as less serious under Murdoch, so will its nutty right-wing editorial page. Alterman writes:

The silver lining of this takeover is that when Murdoch destroys the credibility of the Journal — as he must if it is to fit in with his business plan — he will be removing the primary pillar of the editorial page’s influence as well. In this regard his ownership is a kind of poisoned chalice.

Locally, meanwhile, let the outsourcing (and selling?) begin. Last week, the Globe’s Steve Bailey reported that Herald publisher Pat Purcell — who bought the Herald from Murdoch, his old mentor, in 1994 — would look to strike a deal for the Herald to be printed at a Dow Jones-owned plant in Chicopee should the Murdoch deal succeed. (Dow Jones is the Journal’s parent company.) Purcell confirmed his interest in a Herald story two days later the same day.

The Herald’s current property, next to the Southeast Expressway, is worth far more than its crumbling plant. A printing deal would presumably enable Purcell to sell the property and reduce his costs by vast sums, and might even ensure the long-term financial health of his paper.

Today the Globe reports that the Globe itself is in negotiations to print the Patriot Ledger of Quincy and the Enterprise of Brockton.

Now, follow the bouncing newspaper owners:

  • The Globe, of course, is owned by the New York Times Co., and Murdoch’s Journal is likely to emerge as the Times’ principal competitor nationally. If the Globe’s main print rival, the Herald, is getting help from Murdoch — well, I have no idea what to say except that it’s interesting.
  • Dow Jones, Purcell’s possible savior, owns several community dailies in the area through its Ottaway division, including the Standard-Times of New Bedford, the Cape Cod Times and the Portsmouth Herald. The Patriot Ledger and the Enterprise are owned by GateHouse Media, which also owns about 100 papers, mostly weeklies, in Eastern Massachusetts. So there’s an additional rivalry.
  • Except that Murdoch might sell off his community papers, which don’t seem to fit any grand strategy. And the most likely buyer would be GateHouse. Does it matter that James Ottaway positioned himself as Murdoch’s not-so-mortal enemy? Damned if I know.
  • Which would leave Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. (CNHI), better known as the Alabama state teachers’ pension fund, isolated and alone on the North Shore and in the Merrimack Valley. CNHI owns the Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence, the Salem News, the Gloucester Daily Times and the Daily News of Newburyport. And guess what? Michael Reed, chief executive of GateHouse, used to be chief executive of CNHI.

Murdoch’s victory could be just the beginning for local newspaper readers.

Oh, my. Jim Cramer, the screaming loon of CNBC, hopes Murdoch will push the Journal so that it finally matches the relevance of, yes, the New York Post business pages. By the way, the Post’s business coverage is quite good. But come on.