Tag: Boston Globe

Gordon Edes to leave the Globe

Alert Media Nation reader O-Fish-L reports that Boston Globe baseball writer Gordon Edes’ on-again, off-again move to Yahoo Sports is on again. (Via Scott’s Shots, which has some quotes from Edes.) Thus we see the continuation of a trend, as sportswriters flock to sports outlets.

I like Edes a lot, but I won’t miss him — as long as I remember to bookmark Yahoo’s Major League Baseball page, that is.

Apparently there was some unpleasantness over Edes’ departure. As I understand it, Edes tried to take the buyout the Globe was offering, but management refused on the grounds that Edes was too valuable. (He was.) So now he’s leaving anyway, with the fate of his buyout reportedly subject to an appeal.

Photo of Edes (cc) by ADM, and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

The Globe takes the GOP’s bait

The Boston Globe takes dictation from the Republican National Committee today, turning an innocuous remark by a Barack Obama adviser into evidence that Obama is so arrogant he’s already acting like he’s president.

I’ll work backwards. In a brief item, the Globe’s Foon Rhee notes that the RNC was gleefully passing around a story from the Politico yesterday in which an Obama adviser described the candidate’s speech in Berlin, scheduled for Thursday, as the sort that a president might deliver. Here’s Rhee:

… Republicans are highlighting any perceived hint of Obama arrogance. The Republican National Committee yesterday sent out a report by the Politico website about an exchange between reporters and an Obama adviser about Obama’s speech tomorrow in Berlin that is expected to draw thousands.

“It is not going to be a political speech,” the adviser said. “When the president of the United States goes and gives a speech, it is not a political speech or a political rally.”

“But he is not president of the United States,” a reporter replied, according to Politico.

That’s how the item ends. But it looked fishy to me, and I was right. Next stop: the RNC’s Web site, which highlights the exchange under its “Audacity Watch,” an ongoing feature dedicated to the proposition that Obama is so insufferably arrogant that he believes he might actually be elected president this November.

Finally, going back to the source, here is the Politico story that got the Republicans all excited. You will not be surprised to learn that their faux outrage is derived entirely from a crucial omission. Here’s what the Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown actually wrote:

At a morning background briefing, reporters parried with senior advisers on the characterization of Obama’s speech Thursday in Berlin as a campaign rally. The outdoor speech at the Victory Column could draw thousands of people, similar to the size of Obama events in the United States.

“It is not going to be a political speech,” said a senior foreign policy adviser, who spoke to reporters on background. “When the president of the United States goes and gives a speech, it is not a political speech or a political rally.”

“But he is not president of the United States,” a reporter reminded the adviser.

“He is going to talk about the issues as an individual … not as a candidate, but as an individual, as a senator,” the adviser added….

After the briefing, Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki offered a statement from [Obama campaign head David] Axelrod to reporters: “The answer is that, of course, any event outside of a [congressional delegation trip] is a campaign event. But it is not a political rally. He will not engage his American political opponents. It is a speech to our allies and the people of Europe and the world. And as such, we wanted it to be open to the public and not just invited guests.”

In other words, the Obama campaign, far from claiming presidential prerogatives, was trying to answer criticism that Obama’s Berlin speech will be a campaign rally held on foreign soil. The anonymous adviser tried to draw an analogy to a presidential speech, got cut down and quickly corrected himself. Axelrod then clarified.

If you want to criticize Obama for holding a campaign rally in Berlin, well, be my guest. But the Republicans are dead wrong to label this affair as evidence of Obama’s arrogance, and they made their case through dishonestly selective quoting. The Globe should have taken five more minutes to determine whether the attack was fair or not.

Radio’s challenge to print

You may have heard that two Boston Herald sportswriters, Rob Bradford and Michael Felger, are leaving the paper to join WEEI.com as full-time sports bloggers. The move hasn’t gotten much attention, but I think it may prove to be pretty significant in terms of how the media continue to change.

The buzzword for what this is about is “disaggregation.” What it means is that the one-stop package that is the daily newspaper — hard news and automobile ads, obituaries and sports, political analysis and comics — is coming apart, with niche media better able to give people what they’re looking for.

You can already see this with television sports journalism. The sports segments on TV newscasts have been shortened because the true fans are watching ESPN. Now it’s coming down to the local level, with WEEI (AM 850), a phenomenally successful all-sports radio station, taking the first step toward competing with the sports pages of the Herald and the Boston Globe.

This is going to be a challenge for Bradford and Felger in that there is virtually no adult supervision at WEEI. They’re going to have to provide their own journalistic standards, and no doubt there will be occasions when they’ll have to stand up to management and say “no.” In a larger sense, though, I’m fascinated at the notion that a radio station is going to try to fill at least part of the role traditionally held by newspapers.

In that respect, the WEEI move is more significant than Sacha Pfeiffer‘s decision to switch from the Globe to WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) earlier this year. Pfeiffer’s new job, after all, is to be a radio reporter, not a print reporter who writes for the station’s Web site. It has more to do with a first-rate reporter moving to a medium whose non-profit business model, built on a foundation of listener contributions and corporate underwriting, is more solid than the newspaper industry’s.

Yet here, too, there are developments that bear watching. Every day I receive an e-mail from WBUR with the latest world, national and local news, complete with photos, AP wire copy and sound clips. It is a reasonably comprehensive wrap-up of the day’s news, even if it’s not quite as detailed as what I find in the Globe.

Currently the Globe offers a six- or seven-minute podcast that is little more than a teaser for what’s in the paper. But if WBUR is going to publish what is, in effect, an online newspaper, why shouldn’t the Globe compete with a half-hour podcast consisting of a reasonably complete news report, with paid advertising?

If digital convergence gives radio stations the power to become newspapers, then newspapers ought to consider what it would take to become radio stations. In the current environment, no one can afford not to experiment.

More: Dave Scott has some thoughts on what Felger’s move means for the local ESPN Radio outlet at AM 890, where Felger had hosted a show, as well as further background on the Bradford-Herald situation.

A non-disclosure disclosure

The Boston Globe today runs an op-ed piece urging passage of a free-trade agreement with Colombia. The piece, by Marc Grossman, is reasoned and nuanced, celebrating Colombia’s rescue of 15 hostages last week while acknowledging that the government of President Álvaro Uribe must continue to improve its human-rights record.

But there’s a hidden agenda. The tagline states that Grossman is a vice chairman of the Cohen Group, and is a former undersecretary of state. That’s a pretty weak disclosure. In fact, a little Googling reveals that the Cohen Group, founded by former secretary of defense William Cohen, helps private clients do business internationally. Here’s the lowdown, taken directly from the Cohen Group’s Web site:

The Cohen Group (TCG) assists clients to navigate the political and business landscape in Latin America.

Secretary Cohen and TCG principals have developed and maintain strong ties with political, business, military, and media officials throughout Latin America that can help to accomplish client business objectives in the region. Our understanding of and relationships in the region have enabled TCG to assist numerous firms in the U.S., Spain and elsewhere in Europe that have business interests in Latin America….

Ambassador Marc Grossman, as Under Secretary of State until 2005, worked directly with leaders from across the region on a broad range of political, economic and security issues. For his efforts to promote democracy and fight narcoterrorism in Colombia, he was awarded Colombia’s highest civilian honor, the Order of San Carlos.

An opinion piece such as Grossman’s is worthless if it’s not independent. The Cohen Group would benefit mightily from a free-trade deal with Colombia. Surely there are experts who could have made the case as effectively as Grossman without being tainted by their future earnings being tied up in the outcome of the free-trade debate.

Moving on at the Globe

Adam Reilly has a column in this week’s Boston Phoenix that attempts to put talk of a 10 percent wage cut at the Boston Globe in a larger context of union contracts, obsolescence and the future of the newspaper business.

What interested me, though, were the words of an unnamed newsroom insider, who demonstrated that there are some people at 135 Morrissey Boulevard who get it, and who are ready to move on:

It’s weird having white-collar and blue-collar workers in the same union, because they think differently. They’re trying to preserve something that’s dying. We understand it’s dying, and we don’t want to hang on to it. We want to go forward.

I’m not sure if this is the same source talking, but this, from later on in Reilly’s piece, is interesting nevertheless:

There’s no financial model that’ll stop the bleeding. We deliver a product whose business model doesn’t work. Printing a newspaper on paper and delivering it to people is not sustainable.

If the Globe is to survive, it needs to move quickly to an all-online or mostly online model, with the print edition subordinate to the Web. There are still a lot of smart people at the Globe, and I don’t doubt that they know this, starting with editor Marty Baron.

What we may be witnessing now, with the losses continuing to mount, is one of those turning points at which a slow transition suddenly becomes a stampede.

Questions about a 22-year-old’s death

Boston Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham does an exceptionally good job of framing the questions over the death of David Woodman, the reveler who stopped breathing while in police custody following the Celtics’ victory, and who died over the weekend.

As Abraham points out, there is a lot we don’t know. Which means that Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis’ approach — announcing there was no excessive force even before the investigation gets under way — is wrong.

File away Shelley Murphy and Christopher Cox’s story on the fact that all nine officers involved in Woodman’s arrest went to the hospital to be treated for stress, leaving it to an officer who wasn’t there to write the report. It could be meaningless, or it could prove to be a key to understanding what happened that night.

The Globe and the Pentagon Papers

Former Boston Globe editor Matt Storin writes about the Globe’s role in publishing the Pentagon Papers.

Given that the case led to a landmark Supreme Court decision extending freedom of the press, it’s interesting to ponder the note on which Storin closes. He quotes Daniel Ellsberg, the Defense Department employee who stole the documents and gave them to the press, as saying that today he’d simply upload them to the Internet.

Where, indeed, you will find them now.

Tania deLuzuriaga’s illegal smile

I’d be interested to know from Media Nation readers whether Boston Globe reporter Tania deLuzuriaga was violating the state’s motor-vehicle laws in her test drive of a Vespa.

Let’s start by asking whether a Vespa is a scooter or a motorcycle. If it’s a scooter, then she was definitely violating the law. It’s illegal to drive a scooter fast than 20 mph, and the operator must stay to the right-hand side at all times.

DeLuzuriaga makes it clear that she was prepared to go as fast as 35, the Vespa’s top speed. Also, the photo of her on the front of City & Region — not online, for some reason — shows her on the left side of the right-hand lane, nearly on the dividing line, with a motorcyclist to her right.

But that’s just throat-clearing. For legal purposes, the Vespa is probably considered a motorcycle. And here’s what she writes in her lede:

It was an all-too-familiar situation: Ahead, a red light glared, and bumper-to-bumper traffic stretched as far as the eye could see. Taxis honked. Drivers sighed. Nobody was happy — except the reporter on the white Vespa who slipped into the space between the lanes and nimbly passed among the cars. Pedestrians stopped to watch, and drivers’ eyes gleamed with irritation and envy as the reporter made her way to the front of the line, turned right, and zipped off on her way.

As I understand it, it’s illegal for the operator of any motor vehicle, most definitely including motorcycles, to wiggle between lanes of traffic. I think this is the relevant law, although it doesn’t seem quite to get at it:

When any way has been divided into lanes, the driver of a vehicle shall so drive that the vehicle shall be entirely within a single lane, and he shall not move from the lane in which he is driving until he has first ascertained if such movement can be made with safety. The operators of motorcycles shall not ride abreast of more than one other motorcycle, shall ride single file when passing, and shall not pass any other motor vehicle within the same lane, except another motorcycle.

In addition, the state Registry of Motor Vehicles advises motorcyclists, “Never weave between lanes.” The RMV’s advice tends to be the law.

Finally, Media Nation’s Grammar and Style Police have ruled that when writing a first-person story, you should use “I” instead of referring to yourself in the third person. Unless you’re Wade Boggs. Which deLuzuriaga is not.

Second-best Celtics team ever?

That’s what Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan says in today’s tour de force: his ranking of the top 10 Celtics teams of all time. He places this year’s winners right behind the fabulous 1985-’86 team.

Ryan’s list is sure to be controversial. Given that the Celtics have won 17 championships, it seems odd that he’d pick three losers among his top 10 — including the 1972-’73 squad, his only entry from the Dave Cowens era. Also, even at my advanced age, I’ll have to take his word for it on the great Bill Russell teams.

But this, kids, is why it’s important that papers like the Globe retain some institutional memory as they desperately seek to downsize their way to profitability. No one else in Boston could have written this piece. Good thing Ryan didn’t take the buyout.