Tag: Boston Globe

A big to-do over Reese Who?

Memo to Boston Herald editor Kevin Convey: When leading with a celebrity-arrest story, make sure the arrestee is an actual celebrity. It’s always tough to go with one of these stories when you have to give over a good part of it to explaining who Reese Hopkins is. I mean, was.

At least us old-timers have heard of Bob Gamere, the former television sportscaster who’s been arrested on child-pornography charges (Herald coverage here; Globe coverage here).

A friend of Media Nation asks if it really makes sense to lock up Gamere. Since Gamere is innocent unless found guilty, let me change the question: Does it make sense to lock up a 69-year-old man if he’s been distribuing child pornography via e-mail? Of course, I’m talking about a theoretical 69-year-old man, strictly in a hypothetical sense.

Answer: Hell, yes. This is not mere possession, which probably shouldn’t be punishable by prison. Anyone who would do what our hypothetical 69-year-old man has been charged with doing is a danger to society.

OK. Off to look at the redesigned Boston Globe. More in a bit.

A weird, sad tale comes to an end

At least one chapter in the weird, sad tale of Tania deLuzuriaga has come to an end, as she has resigned from the Boston Globe. As you may know, deLuzuriaga was recently found to have exchanged inappropriate e-mails of a sexual nature with a high-ranking school official when she was a reporter for the Miami Herald.

Journalists know they can’t secretly carry on an affair with people they cover. At the Miami New Times, Kyle Munzenrieder reminds us of the great Abe Rosenthal rule: “You can fuck an elephant if you want to, but if you do you can’t cover the circus.” DeLuzuriaga’s ethical breach was a serious one.

But to the extent that some people at the Globe agitated for her to leave, as Christine McConville reported in the Boston Herald last week, I think her situation raises an ethical question for management, too: Should wrongdoing in a previous job be held against someone if she is performing competently and without incident in her current job?

I’ve done no independent reporting on this, and there may well be issues about which I’m not aware. But assuming deLuzuriaga kept her personal and professional lives separate while she was at the Globe, it strikes me that that should have been good enough.

Gender hypocrisy raises its ugly head, too. As Amy Derjue notes at Boston Daily, and Rick Sawyer observes at Bostonist, deLuzuriaga’s erstwhile and extremely married alleged paramour not only has paid no penalty, he just got a promotion. Nice.

Time out on OT

The Boston Globe keeps adding to its roster of niche publications, which is smart. It plans to charge 50 cents for its new sports weekly, OT, which may not be so smart.

I could see something like OT being a howling success with advertisers if it were freely available. But I’m not sure people are going to lay out money for sports news that is not substantially different from what’s on the Web — even if OT is better written and more insightful, which it may well be with the likes of Charlie Pierce and Tony Massarotti writing for it.

We’ll see.

The Red Sox’ first Latino superstar

In today’s Boston Globe, Keith O’Brien writes about the diminishing number of Latino players on the Red Sox — and compares the current team to the all- or mostly white teams of the past.

Point taken. But O’Brien steps in it when he refers to a “team whose stars typically looked like Ted Williams or Carl Yastrzemski” in describing those mostly white line-ups. The problem here is that Williams, as many knowledgeable fans know, was only the greatest Latino star in baseball history.

Williams’ mother, Micaela “May” Venzor, was the daughter of parents who were born in Mexico, Pablo Venzor and Natalia Hernández. In his 1969 autobiography, “My Turn at Bat,” Williams, who himself was born and grew up in San Diego, writes of his mother:

Her maiden name was Venzor, and she was part Mexican and part French, and that’s fate for you; if I had had my mother’s name, there is no doubt I would have run into problems in those days, the prejudices people had in Southern California.

May Venzor Williams was a volunteer for the Salvation Army, an avocation that kept her away from home most of the time, and about which her son complains bitterly in “My Turn at Bat.”

O’Brien’s mistake is not unusual. In 2005, the New York Times groused that Williams had been left off Major League Baseball’s list of “Latino Legends.” Williams’ Latino background is not well-known. But that makes it no less real.

He still can’t write about it

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.

Dan Wasserman’s paean to punditry

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.

Correction TK?

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?