Media Nation

Barring a major development, I’m taking a rest from the Theo wars. But I do want to remind you that, this Sunday, Boston Globe ombudsman Richard Chacón is supposed to weigh in with part two of his take on the business relationship between the New York Times Co. and the Red Sox, and how that affects the Times Co.-owned Globe. Forget the sports section — go straight to the editorial page.

Part one, I thought, showed some guts: Chacón opined that Globe publisher Richard Gilman and president Richard Daniels should give back their World Series rings “to protect the paper’s credibility.” But the larger problem isn’t that Gilman and Daniels accepted the rings — the issue is that they are business associates of the Red Sox, which quite naturally led them to believe there was nothing wrong with taking the jewelry in the first place. This is about high-stakes business ties, not rings.

Mind you, the contretemps of the past week strike me more as having to do with the Globe’s being the dominant newspaper in town than it does with any ownership connection, and with the scrappy Boston Herald’s being in a position to pounce on the Globe’s missteps. Still, what people at the Globe — and the Times Co. — have to realize is that every time something like this happens, critics are going to beat them over the head with the ownership issue.

Silly me — I always thought the real problem would be when the Red Sox tried to move ahead on the business side, putting the squeeze on city and state officials for land and money. The Globe’s perceived interest could potentially become a huge problem in a situation like that, even if the paper’s coverage was properly fair and neutral.

Baseball? Well, that’s just fun and games. Except when it isn’t.

Sorry, Mr. Mayor. Theo’s not staying.

Mayor Tom Menino was dropping hints on WRKO and WEEI this morning that Theo Epstein would announce at his news conference later today that he’s staying with the Red Sox.

Would Menino know? If he has a team source, wouldn’t it mostly likely be (gasp!) Larry Lucchino?

It would be great news. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

And here is the Bill Simmons piece everyone is talking about. I read it last night, and found myself nodding my head. Yes, Theo is overrated. But no, he can’t go. (Except that he did.)

The Phoenix’s Mike Miliard absolutely unloads on Dan Shaughnessy — and on Larry Lucchino, too.

While you’re mocking the Globe for its report yesterday that an Epstein deal was in the bag, you might want to take a look at this from one of its Boston.com partners, Boston Dirt Dogs. It ran beneath a headline that read “Done Deal.”

Not that the Dogs have any inside information — they’re just feeding off the Globe story. But still.

And Bryan calls it, right down to what Dan would say. I listened for a couple of minutes before deciding it was time to do some actual work.

David Scott does a cut-and-paste at the end of his own commentary. It adds little to what we already know, but there you go.

Jay Fitzgerald’s got most of the relevant links this morning, so I’m not going to repeat them all. There seems to be little doubt that Dan Shaughnessy’s column in the Sunday Globe was a major factor in Theo Epstein’s decision to quit as Red Sox general manager. For support, I cite a neutral observer, Sean McAdam of the Providence Journal, who has an analysis today at ESPN.com. McAdam writes:

A column in the Boston Globe on Sunday, which Epstein deduced had been leaked by Lucchino or others on the CEO’s staff, intimated that the general manager had been at fault when a proposed multi-player deal with the Colorado Rockies fell through at last summer’s trade deadline.

(In truth, ownership made Epstein cancel the agreed-upon deal, though Lucchino reportedly later blamed the mess on [Epstein’s then-assistant Josh] Byrnes in talks with Rockies ownership.)

The column further stated that Lucchino had accepted public blame for the fallout to spare his general manager further embarrassment.

This incensed Epstein and, along with other anecdotal evidence, caused him to reconsider working under Lucchino for another three seasons. By late morning Monday, he had made up his mind: His tenure with the Red Sox was over.

This isn’t spin from the Globe’s archrivals over at One Herald Square. And it makes laughable Shaughnessy’s assertion today that “it seems pretty ridiculous that Theo would break away from a man he worked with for 14 years because of a few lines he read in a column in the Sunday Globe.” In fact, that’s a grossly oversimplified version of what McAdam is reporting. It wasn’t the column that made Epstein quit; rather, it was the fact that the column contained clear evidence that Epstein’s rift with Sox president Larry Lucchino couldn’t be mended.

Which leaves us with some questions:

1. Even if you accept that Shaughnessy’s column helped push Epstein out the door, does it then follow that this has something to do with the reality that the Globe’s parent company, the New York Times Co., is a 17 percent owner of the Sox? That’s what everyone seems to think at the Herald and on WEEI Radio (AM 850), but I’m not sure how one follows from the other. Shaughnessy, after all, just did a huge amount of damage to the Times Co.’s investment.

Lucchino obviously likes to suck up to the Globe — but that could be more because the paper is New England’s dominant media institution than because they’re business partners. Still, this is an awkward relationship given that such questions inevitably come up at times like this. Naturally, the Herald can’t resist doing a sidebar today on the “Cozy Sox-Globe ties.”

2. Should Shaughnessy have refrained from writing his Sunday column, with its over-the-top spin in favor of Lucchino and against Epstein? I’m not going to suggest that Shaughnessy should consider his words carefully lest they damage the team. (That’s what he’d do if he really were concerned with protecting his employer’s business interests.) But Shaughnessy appears to have used his column in order to advance Lucchino’s version of events without taking into account the possibility that he was getting spun. Still, Bruce Allen is surely right when he says, “It is clear though, if Shaughnessy didn’t write the article on Sunday, someone else would have.”

3. Might Theo still be talked into staying? The line of the day goes to Toronto general manager J.P. Ricciardi, who tells the Globe’s Gordon Edes, “I’ll believe it when I’m at the general managers’ meetings next week in Palm Springs and he’s not in his chair. It’s like a Mafia hit. You don’t believe it until you see the guy at the funeral.”

4. Will Shaughnessy show up on Mike Barnicle’s radio program this morning?

5. What would I learn from Peter Gammons, whose wisdom would be available to me if only I were a paid subscriber to ESPN.com?

Tony Massarotti’s Boston Herald column of last Thursday looks huge following the stunning resignation of Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein. Massarotti accused Sox president Larry Lucchino of using the team’s chummy relationship with the Boston Globe (whose parent corporation, the New York Times Co., owns 17 percent of the Sox) to smear Theo.

I don’t pretend to know all the ins and outs of the Globe-Sox relationship, and it strikes me that Massarotti’s take is overheated in parts. But, hey, Theo’s gone, and Massarotti’s Herald colleague Michael Silverman now reports that Lucchino’s sweet nothings in Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy’s ear had something to do with Epstein’s decision to leave. Silverman writes:

Epstein had come close to agreeing to a deal Saturday evening but had not officially conveyed acceptance of it. On Sunday, he began having serious misgivings about staying on. A leading contributing factor, according to sources close to the situation, was a column in Sunday’s Boston Globe in which too much inside information about the relationship between Epstein and his mentor, team president and CEO Larry Lucchino, was revealed — in a manner slanted too much in Lucchino’s favor. Epstein, according to these sources, had several reasons to believe Lucchino was a primary source behind the column and came to the realization that if this information were leaked hours before Epstein was going to agree to a new long-term deal, it signaled excessive bad faith between him and Lucchino.

Here, by the way, is the Shaughnessy column in question. Among other things, Shaughnessy pokes fun at Massarotti without naming him. What a lovely little newspaper war. And check out Hub Blogger Jay Fitzgerald’s take. (Jay’s a Herald business reporter. Yes, Boston is a small town.)

The definitive take on the Sox and the Globe was written last summer by the Phoenix’s Ian Donnis. You can read it by clicking here.

It’s a good thing the Red Sox won the World Series last year. It’s starting to look like it will be another 86 years before they win again.

Unless there’s one more act to be played out in this drama. Can I hope?

Lawyer and journalist Robert J. Ambrogi, who writes the Media Law blog, has passed along the full text of a proposed Massachusetts shield law filed last week by state Senate president Robert Travaglini. I’ve uploaded the text as a PDF file; click here.

Ambrogi, who helped draft the proposed law, writes:

The bill is broad in its definition of who it covers, in order to include bloggers and freelance reporters. It defines coverage to include any person who “engages in the gathering of news or information” and “has the intent, at the beginning of the process of gathering news or information, to disseminate the news or information to the public.”

As I’ve argued before, this is the correct approach, as it protects journalism rather than journalists. If a blogger is engaged in journalism, she or he ought to have just as much protection as a staff reporter for a large news organization.

The proposed law would protect journalists from having to give up their confidential sources, notes, unused video and other materials they amassed in the course of doing their jobs. But the bill is also sensitive to the fact that the courts have never recognized a constitutional right for reporters not to testify in a legal proceeding. In addition to an exception for terrorism investigations, the bill lays out this balancing test that a judge would have to use before compelling a journalist to testify:

(1) the news or information is critical and necessary to the resolution of a significant legal issue before an entity of the judicial, legislative, or executive branch of the Commonwealth that has the power to issue a subpoena;

(2) the news or information could not be obtained by any alternative means; and

(3) there is an overriding public interest in the disclosure.

This is precisely the balancing test proposed by Justice Potter Stewart in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Branzburg v. Hayes decision in 1972. And it certainly ought to allay any concerns that a shield law would give the media too much power. For example, if the federal government had such a law in place, there’s little doubt that Judith Miller, Matthew Cooper, et al. still would have been compelled to testify.

At a moment when journalists behaving badly is a recurring theme, this is not an auspicious moment to be pushing for increased protections for newsgathering. Nevertheless, more than 30 states have some type of shield law on the books. It’s time for Massachusetts to join those ranks.