By Dan Kennedy • Tracking the future of local news and other passions since 2005
David Filipov discovers that his piece about visiting Ground Zero for the first time touched a chord. He even hears from a woman who talked with his father at Logan Airport the morning of the terrorist attacks.
He writes: “The conversation went just as I had always imagined it: Dad talked her up, told him the story of his life, and bragged about his three sons.”
What struck me about David Filipov’s account in today’s Boston Globe of his first visit to Ground Zero is that he still can’t bring himself to write about his father’s death on Sept. 11, 2001.
That’s what his piece is purportedly about; but it isn’t, as he instead interviews a security guard, two young women from Kazakhstan, a student — anyone, really, who pulls him away from his grief.
It’s a moving piece, because it’s a reminder of how difficult Filipov and thousands of others still find it to come to terms with what happened on that day.
The online version includes a link to a Filipov piece that was published in the Globe on Oct. 11, 2001, which he filed from Afghanistan.
Driving to work this morning, I started thinking about how much it seemed as it did seven years ago — clear and cool, a perfect September day. It’s become a cliché, but it’s the truth: Just as all people in our parents’ generation know exactly where they were and what they were doing on Dec. 7, 1941, so will all of us remember what happened seven years ago today.
Department of Defense photo by Denise Gould.
Good news for those of us who couldn’t figure out why the Boston Globe was splitting its arts and entertainment coverage between Living/Arts (or whatever they’re calling it these days) and the tabloid Sidekick: it’s all being moved into a new weekday tabloid to be called “G.” Joe Keohane explains. (Via Universal Hub.)
We all love Dan Wasserman (and I’m loving his new blog, Out of Line). But this is what happens when you get immersed in the spin. Wasserman’s Boston Globe cartoon today makes sense if you listen to the pundits, who have been salivating over the prospect of open warfare between the Clintons and the Obamas all week. It might even make sense if you talk to disgruntled Clinton delegates.
But what, pray tell, have the Clintons actually done to undermine Barack Obama at the convention? Both Hillary and Bill gave emphatically pro-Obama speeches. Delegates have cheered the Clintons. Delegates have cheered the Obamas. HRC released her delegates to vote for Obama, then moved that Obama’s nomination be made unanimous.
Is it all choreographed? Of course. Or to be more precise: It’s a television show. At least according to some news reports, the two families don’t like each other. But they’re playing their parts. And though the Clintons may not be heartbroken if John McCain wins this November, since that would give HRC another chance to run in 2012, they don’t want to be blamed for Obama’s defeat, either.
Bottom line is that not a single thing has taken place at the podium, or in any of the Clintons’ or the Obamas’ public utterances, to support Wasserman’s take. At best, he’s channeling unhappy Clinton fans. At worst, he’s suffering from pundit overdose.
The New York Times Co. reports that ad revenues at its New England Media Group, which includes the Boston Globe (along with Boston.com and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette), were down 24.5 percent in July compared to the same month a year ago. (Via Adam Reilly.)
The Newton Tab blog says that a Boston Globe reporter may have quoted the wrong Baker when he wrote a story about the arrest of a Newton firefighter on heroin-possession charges. Greg Reibman, who’s been following this for most of the day, links to all the relevant background.
Newton Board of Alderman president Lisle Baker was originally quoted as saying that the arrest pointed to the need for mandatory drug testing of public-safety workers. But the Globe then removed the quote, at least from its online story. Baker insists he never spoke with the Globe. Supposedly a correction is going to appear tomorrow.
Good thing the Newton Fire Department is otherwise quiet. Oh, wait. A bag of pot was found inside the 62-year-old fire chief’s car. The chief says he has no idea of how it got there.
Saturday morning update: Here’s the correction. The Globe did reach the wrong Baker. I’m scratching my head. How is it that Mr. Wrong provided exactly the sort of quotes you might have expected from Mr. Right?
Photocolumn.org has tracked down the Wall Street Journal’s missing photo blog.
After Alan Taylor launched “The Big Picture” on the Boston Globe’s Boston.com site earlier this year, he told an interviewer, “I know it’s totally copy-able.”
No kidding. Last week, the Wall Street Journal — not exactly known for its photojournalism — started a photo blog that was, well, identical to what Boston.com has been doing: a blog featuring huge photos of stories in the news and off the news.
The Journal even took the same name, “The Big Picture.” If you go there now, you’ll see that it’s been changed to “Photo Journal.” But I found last week’s version in Google’s cache, and I’ve reproduced it above. And “thebigpicture” remains part of the URL.
It’s a terrific concept: huge photos, mostly from the wires, of the sort that you’re bombarded with every day, but that you probably don’t really notice because they’re too small. “The Big Picture” invites you to look. As Melanie Lidman wrote in the American Journalism Review, “What sets his blog apart is its simplicity. Taylor lets the photos speak for themselves, one at a time, encouraging the viewer to scroll slowly down the page to take in the images.”
The Journal’s act blog thievery did not go unnoticed. Check out some of the comments, which, to the Journal’s credit, have been left intact:
I think it’s sad that a major news outlet like the WSJ lacks the creativity to come up with a blog name that isn’t already in use by another newspaper.
Agreed. If you’re going to lift someone else’s concept the least you can do is come up with an original name for it.
You couldn’t even change the name slightly? How about, “The Large Picture”? A hella-wicked ripoff, I tell ya! LOL!
“The Big Picture” is a great idea, and there’s no reason other news organizations can’t copy it. But for the Journal to steal the entire concept, right down to its name, without so much as a hat tip to the Globe and no original features of its own, seems like a bit much.
At least someone read the comments and changed the name.
Update: In a bit of irony, I discovered late today that I wasn’t the first to report this. See “Credit where it’s due.”
Click on photo for slideshowMark Pothier’s Boston Globe Magazine story on amateur hikers who get into trouble in the White Mountains inspired me to post photos from my last hike up Mount Washington, in August 2003.
My son, Tim, his friend Troy, Troy’s mother and I hiked to Mizpah Spring Hut on a muggy Friday afternoon, along the Crawford Path to Lakes of the Clouds Hut on a clear, cool Saturday. The next day it was up and over Mount Washington in a cold wind. We descended via the Jewell Trail.
For me it was a nostalgia trip, because it was largely the same route I followed on my first hike up Washington, with my Boy Scout troop in September 1968 at the age of 12. Back then, you were still allowed to camp above treeline, and we pitched tents by the shore of Lakes of the Clouds under full cloud cover. (I’ve still got photos from our return trip the following year. I should scan them in and post them someday.)
The next day we hiked to the summit in a howling wind, surrounded by clouds and rime ice-covered rocks. My guess is that, today, our leaders would have been denounced as lunatics for taking a bunch of out-of-shape kids to the summit under such conditions. But we all came through it fine. We did have winter coats, gloves and hats, so it’s not like we weren’t prepared.
I was glad to see Pothier make mention of Nicholas Howe’s excellent book, “Not Without Peril,” which documents 150 years of fatal accidents in the White Mountains. In my much younger days I also liked to read the accident reports in the Appalachian Mountain Club‘s journal, Appalachia. Invariably, the victims would head up into the mountains wearing shorts, T-shirts and little else, only to be overwhelmed by winter-like conditions regardless of the time of year. Cell phones and GPSs may have increased the stupidity quotient, as Pothier writes, but it’s nothing new.
Unfortunately, I never managed to hit the trail this summer. Tim and I talked about doing a five-day 50-miler in Vermont, but the summer got away from us, and then I sprained my ankle while running in a downpour a couple of weeks ago. Maybe we can get away for a couple of days during Columbus Day weekend.