Tag: Boston Globe

Fangs for the memories

Boston Magazine’s John Gonzalez writes that the Boston Globe’s three metro columnists — Adrian Walker, Kevin Cullen and Yvonne Abraham — seem more intent on writing inoffensive feature stories than in drawing blood.

Personally, I’d like to see more outrage. But I suppose the last thing the Globe needs right now is for pissed-off readers to call up and cancel their subscriptions.

Just recently I was thinking about how I’d like to see the metro columnists redeployed, and I came up with an old-fashioned idea that I think might work. (Keep in mind even having metro columnists is pretty old-fashioned.)

I’d station one at the Statehouse, one at City Hall and one at Boston Police headquarters, and instruct all three to write reported pieces with opinion, attitude and, yes, an occasional sense of outrage. Not to be too narrow — they’d be allowed to stray from their beats, but not often.

If you’re thinking that’s not the way to draw in a new generation of twentysomething readers, well, I guess I’d have to agree. But it would certainly make me happy.

Younger and cheaper (III)

Yet another knowledgeable source tells me that there will be some external hires at the Globe. My judgment is that this source supersedes the previous source.

What we’ve got here is the eternal blogger’s dilemma. Standard blogging practice is to post information as it becomes available. When stuff like this happens, though, I find myself wishing I’d done it the old-fashioned way — make calls, and hold off until I have the whole story.

Anyway, I’m now confident that I do have the whole story. Start polishing those résumés, kids.

Globe’s Papelbon signs with Yankees

The Boston Globe has lost its second Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter this week, according to the Phoenix’s Adam Reilly. And while the departure of Sacha Pfeiffer for WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) means only that we’ll have to turn on the radio rather than pick up the paper, the latest loss — that of Charlie Savage, scourge of the Bush White House — is a rather different matter.

Savage is going to the New York Times. Given that he is only in his early 30s, this is like losing Jonathan Papelbon to the Yankees. Savage’s reporting on the Bush administration’s use and abuse of presidential signing statements showed that the Globe could still play on the national stage.
Globe editor Marty Baron and Washington bureau chief Peter Canellos tell Reilly all the right things. The good news is that Savage will be replaced. And, yes, people do move on, and, yes, the Globe would have had a hard time hanging on to a young, ambitious, talented reporter like Savage even before the newspaper apocalypse that’s now under way.
But this is a tough loss to take, and it plays to warnings that, in the future, only a tiny handful of newspapers — principally the Times, the Washington Post and perhaps the Murdoch-ized Wall Street Journal — will have the resources to do serious reporting outside their own back yards.

Tom Palmer to leave the Globe

One of the unsung good guys is leaving the Boston Globe. Veteran reporter Tom Palmer, who’s been covering real estate and development for the past several years, is among those taking the early-retirement buyout.

Palmer tells Media Nation by e-mail why he decided now is the time after passing up previous offers:

I’m leaving a job — 13 different ones, really, over 32 years at the Globe — that I still love. But this was a generous offer that probably won’t be repeated. It’s time to go do something new. I won’t decide on anything until after I’ve left the Globe late in May.

Palmer is one of a handful of newsroom conservatives, as well as a Van Morrison fan of the first order. He will be missed.