Tag: Boston Globe

Michael Paulson leaves Globe for Times

Michael Paulson

If you are a weekend Romenesko reader, then you already know that Boston Globe city editor Michael Paulson is leaving for the New York Times, where he’ll edit stories about local politics and religion for metro editor Carolyn Ryan — herself a former Globe reporter and editor. (Both are alumni of the Patriot Ledger in Quincy as well.)

It still seems strange to refer to Paulson as the Globe’s city editor because, before that, he was a very good religion reporter — among the best working for a general-interest publication, in my opinion. He shared in the Globe’s Pulitzer-winning coverage of the sexual-abuse scandals within the Catholic Church, but he also excelled at covering religion-as-religion.

You can read the memo from Globe metro editor Jen Peter at Romenesko. Below is another memo, from Ryan at the Times:

Folks

I am very happy to tell you that Michael Paulson, city editor at The Boston Globe, will be joining us as Political Editor in Metro.

Michael has a dazzling array of journalistic gifts: he is imaginative, endlessly energetic, insightful and intelligent.

He was an outstanding reporter, who covered local politics, city hall, Washington, and religion — and helped lead the Globe’s coverage of clergy sex abuse in the Catholic Church, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

But Michael is also a natural editor, of expansive curiosity, sly humor and engaging manner. On the Globe’s metro desk, he has overseen a range of subjects, including transportation, the mayoral election and higher education.

Patrick Healy, a colleague of Michael’s at the Globe, described him as “a rare breed — both tenacious and thoughtful, competitive and determined.”

Michael began his reporting career at the age of 21 amid the cranberry bogs and jaywalking wild turkeys of Halifax, Massachusetts, covering a town of 6,000 people and one traffic light for The Patriot Ledger. He then went to the San Antonio Light in Texas, where he covered politics, and from there moved to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, serving as city hall reporter, state house bureau chief, and, ultimately, as the paper’s correspondent in Washington, D.C.

He joined the Globe in 2000 to cover religion, and wrote with nuance and depth about the intersection of faith, culture and politics. He spent several weeks in France researching Mitt Romney’s experience there as a Mormon missionary and traveled to Dearborn to write about Muslims and Arab Christians in the 2008 election. He also captured the complicated role of the Catholic Church during the same-sex marriage debate in Massachusetts. Michael will oversee our religion coverage, in addition to New York politics.

Michael has many ties to New York. His paternal grandparents were born and raised in Brooklyn; the Paulsons moved to Boston in the 1930s when his grandfather, a hosiery salesman, got a job there.

Michael already has a fair number of fans here at the Times.

Diego Ribadeneira, another Globe alumnus, praised Michael’s “wonderful combination of keen intellect, intense curiosity and reassuring temperament.”

He inspires confidence, respect, and affection among his colleagues. I am thrilled we will be partners again.

Michael will join us in April. He can be reached at xxx.Please join me in welcoming him.

Carolyn

 

Bella English’s long ride back

Not long after my bicycle accident last Sept. 19, I heard that Boston Globe reporter Bella English had crashed on her bike the same day. I know Bella a bit. We’ve been in touch off and on over the years, and we even had lunch at India Quality in Kenmore Square once. So I reached out to her via Facebook.

It took a while for her to get back to me, and I heard from others that her injuries were much more serious than mine. Now she has told her story — about her fractured skull, her memory loss, vertigo and cognitive difficulties, and her rehab for multiple broken bones.

Best wishes to one of the Globe’s stalwarts. The good news is that Bella is on her way to a full recovery. Amazingly, she says she may hop back on her bike again. Not me.

The Taylors make another run at the Globe

News that Ben and Steve Taylor have signed on to businessman Aaron Kushner’s bid to buy the Boston Globe has changed the dynamic. The Taylors, of course, are prominent members of the family that owned and ran the Globe for more than 100 years. Ben was the publisher before he was ousted in 1999. Steve was executive vice president.

The Taylors, who are cousins, fell short in a bid to buy the paper back from the New York Times Co. in 2009. The reason was never announced, but the buzz was that their group was undercapitalized, and that the Times Co. would have had to accept a ridiculously low price in that year of economic crisis. The Globe would undoubtedly be worth more now, but how much more is hard to say.

The significance of the Taylors’ involvement is that there now will be support within influential circles for the Times Co. to return the Globe to local ownership.

Would Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger sell the Globe? By placing the Globe, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and their associated websites on the block in 2009, he made it clear that he would if the price was right and if he and other Times Co. executives were comfortable with the buyers.

I suspect the big question they’ll now have to answer is whether they can get the price they want — or if, instead, they think they can get more by hanging on to their New England properties for another few years.

The Globe first reported Kushner’s interest last October.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Boston.com boosts its political coverage

Later this year, the Boston Globe will move most Globe content off its free Boston.com site and onto a paid, redesigned BostonGlobe.com. Which raises a question: Will the still-free Boston.com include enough high-quality, original material to stand on its own?

We got an encouraging answer to that this week in the form of an announcement that veteran political reporter Glen Johnson will be returning to the Globe as Boston.com’s political editor. According to a staff-wide e-mail from deputy managing editors Jen Peter and Bennie DiNardo, Johnson —

— will oversee the expansion and redesign of the site’s political coverage leading into the 2012 presidential race and beyond, with a blog, videos, aggregated content, the smart display of original Globe stories, and any other creative ideas we can come up with.

You can be sure that Eric Fehrnstrom is thrilled.

Peter and DiNardo’s full statement follows:

We are thrilled to announce that Glen Johnson, most recently of the AP’s State House bureau in Boston, will be returning to Morrissey Boulevard to become boston.com’s political editor. In this role, Glen — who has covered Massachusetts politics for nearly two decades — will oversee the expansion and redesign of the site’s political coverage leading into the 2012 presidential race and beyond, with a blog, videos, aggregated content, the smart display of original Globe stories, and any other creative ideas we can come up with. He will draw on the expertise of our political staff, both locally and in D.C., to make the page a must-read for anyone interested in Massachusetts and New England politics. We will also look for opportunities to republish some of Glen’s politics blogs in the Globe, and we contemplate a regular presence for Glen in the Globe in the form of a regular political column that would be based on his reporting and analysis. With his deep knowledge of the local political scene, his agility as a writer, and his embrace of new media, Glen is the ideal candidate to fill this position. And it couldn’t come at a better time for us, as we prepare to strengthen our web presence with a two-brand strategy and gear up for a presidential primary in our backyard.

This is a homecoming for Glen, who worked for the Globe for more than five years, from 2000 to 2005, in between two stints at the Associated Press. He has covered four presidential races — including Paul Tsongas’ 1992 bid, when Glen worked for the Lowell Sun — and four administrations on Beacon Hill, stemming back to the Weld years. Most recently, he served as the AP’s lead Romney reporter in 2008. He lives with his wife in North Andover and has two college-age sons. He is an avid cook and observer of professional cooks (ask him about his stint in the kitchen at Thomas Keller’s Bouchon). Glen will join us on Jan. 31, and we couldn’t be happier to have him back on board. All cooking tips welcome.

Jen and Bennie

Glen is a good guy and a dogged reporter. A very smart move by the Globe.

The Globe goes deep on “The Other Welfare”

In case you haven’t seen it, the Boston Globe is publishing a three-part series on poor families that medicate their kids — sometimes for flimsy reasons — so that they can be classified as disabled and thus qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments.

The reporting, by Patricia Wen, is first-rate. And to point out the obvious, the series, titled “The Other Welfare,” is the sort of accountability journalism that is rarely done by any news organizations other than major newspapers.

What I especially like about the series is that, rather than blaming the families, Wen takes pains to point out the difficult circumstances under which they live. As one single mother, Geneva Fielding, puts it, referring to the medication her 10-year-old son is taking for impulsiveness:

Sometimes I don’t know why we get a check for this. But if someone says you have ADHD and you’re depressed and you can get a check, they’re going to try to get a check. The poor people will take that every time. It’s all about surviving.

A chilling example of unintended consequences.

Globe publishes spiked Wasserman cartoon

Though it doesn’t seem to have made its way onto Boston.com yet, Boston Globe cartoonist Dan Wasserman’s poke at Bank of America and the Museum of Fine Arts — spiked last Sunday — is in today’s Globe, as he said it would be. It never should have been held in the first place, but there you have it.

What was missing from today’s Boston Globe

Dan Wasserman (at podium) speaks at JFK Library

How many trees had to die so that the Boston Globe could stop cartoonist Dan Wasserman from raining on the Museum of Fine Arts’ parade?

Earlier this weekend, Media Nation heard that the Globe had killed a cartoon by Wasserman that was scheduled to run on today’s editorial page. Sure enough, you will find a guest op-ed headlined “The tech-politics divide” where Wasserman’s cartoon ought to be.

Then, this morning, I received a PDF of the page — already printed — from an anonymous source. The cartoon is vintage Wasserman, poking vicious good fun at the MFA and at Bank of America. I asked Wasserman to tell me what happened, and here is the full text of his e-mailed response:

The cartoon was held but is scheduled to run next Sunday. The publisher [Christopher Mayer] was concerned that the MFA, on the day it was celebrating the opening of its new wing, was being nicked in a cartoon that was aimed at Bank of America. I was out of the office on Friday, and because of early weekend deadlines, the cartoon was coming off the presses before he could reach me to talk it through. I’m disappointed it was held. It’s a strong, timely cartoon.

Because Wasserman says the cartoon will run next Sunday, I’ve decided to hold off from posting the PDF.

The PDF is clearly a scan of a printed page. How many Ideas sections were printed and discarded after management decided to spike the cartoon? I understand it may have been quite a few, but I don’t have a confirmed number.

I also asked the Globe’s spokesman, vice president Robert Powers, for comment. He sent along the following statement a few minutes ago:

We do not comment on editorial decisions. Unfortunately, due to early printing deadlines, the section had already started to print.  No one outside of the news and editorial process for The Boston Globe is ever consulted about news and editorial decisions.

No question the Globe has invested a lot in its coverage of the MFA’s $500 million expansion. The paper published a 56-page color glossy magazine commemorating the event (we got two, since it was also included in the New York Times), featuring, among other things, a full-page ad from — yes — Bank of America. There’s an interactive special at Boston.com as well.

All good stuff. But there was nothing out of bounds or offensive in Wasserman’s cartoon. It should have run.

Photo (cc) by Tony the Misfit and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Conflicting reports on a possible Brown foe

Setti Warren

Is Newton Mayor Setti Warren saying different things to different reporters about his future political aspirations? Or does it come down to a matter of emphasis and interpretation? That’s what folks at the Newton Tab want to know.

After Matt Murphy of the State House News Service reported that some Democrats were hoping Warren would challenge Republican Senator Scott Brown in 2012, Warren told Tab editor Gail Spector there was nothing to it.

But Warren didn’t come off as quite so emphatic in a Boston Globe story today by Alan Wirzbicki, who wrote, “Warren said he was focused on his job, but did not rule out a run and attacked Brown’s record.”

Lacking the full transcript of either interview, it’s hard to know what’s going on. Warren’s quote in the Tab — “My intent is to finish my term” — isn’t exactly a denial. And the Globe quotes Warren indirectly, so we don’t know what he actually said.

My guess is that both stories are right. And that Warren will soon be issuing a clarification.

More: The Tab’s Spector follows up with Warren. And he won’t be pinned down.

Photo via the City of Newton’s website.

The center of the news universe

That would be Danvers, world headquarters of Media Nation and now the home of four — count ’em — news organizations battling it out for local eyeballs. The newest is our very own Patch, joining the Salem News, the Danvers Herald and the Boston Globe’s Your Town/Danvers site. Who says the news business is dead?