Photocolumn.org has tracked down the Wall Street Journal’s missing photo blog.
Tag: Boston Globe
Credit where it’s due
Where does Rupert get his ideas?
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.”
Hazardous hiking in the White Mountains
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.
Tony Mazz jumps to the Globe
Two developments coming out of the Boston Globe sports department, courtesy of Adam Reilly.
In the non-surprise department, Amalie Benjamin succeeds Gordon Edes, now with Yahoo Sports, as the Globe’s Red Sox beat reporter. Interesting and good that the Globe would put a woman in that high-profile slot. Even better, it represents a long-overdue generational shift. If this Wikipedia bio is accurate, Benjamin is 26 years old.
In the big-surprise department, the Boston Herald’s Tony Massarotti is leaving One Herald Square to join a beefed-up Boston.com sports operation. Massarotti is a leading reason to read the Herald, so this is a huge, huge loss. It also tells me that Globe sports editor Joe Sullivan is at least as concerned about competing with the newly ascendant WEEI.com as he is with the Herald. (Sullivan is also promoting part-time copy editor Chad Finn to a new job as a sports reporter for Boston.com.)
Unless the Globe loosens its WEEI ban [see tweak below] , it also means one of the station’s most recognizable voices will no longer be heard. Of course, now Massarotti can appear on New England Sports Network, a corporate cousin to the Globe.
The best news about all of this is that job creation continues at 135 Morrissey Boulevard, shifting from the print edition to the Web site.
Friday tweak: According to the Joan Vennochi column I linked to last night, as well as to a piece I wrote in April 2001, I glossed over the ban just a bit too glibly. Former Globe editor Matt Storin banned his people from appearing on “The Big Show,” in the afternoon, and later extended it to “Dennis & Callahan” as well. WEEI retaliated by announcing that Globe writers had been banned from all of its programs. So it’s kind of a mutual ban.
Rakan Hassan’s tragic end
You don’t need me to tell you what a heartbreaking story Kevin Cullen offers us in today’s Boston Globe on the death of Rakan Hassan. I’ll just add this: the original series on Rakan, by Cullen and photographer Michele McDonald, was so moving, so deeply reported and deftly executed, that I’ve exposed several classes of journalism students to it.
Remembering Elizabeth Neuffer
Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen offers a heartfelt tribute to the late Elizabeth Neuffer today. Neuffer and her Iraqi translator, Waleed Khalifa Hassan Al-Dulaimi, were killed in a car accident in Baghdad in 2003.
Cullen notes the occasion of accused war criminal Radovan Karadzic’s arrest to remind us that Neuffer made her deepest, boldest mark as a foreign correspondent when she covered the genocide in the former Yugoslavia in the mid-1990s.
The International Women’s Media Foundation, which offers a fellowship in Neuffer’s memory, puts it this way:
Her coverage of the Balkan wars of the 1990’s was vivid and intense. And when a tentative peace finally came to Bosnia, she risked her life to track down those responsible for genocide as they returned to civilian life. Her dispatches, sent to members of Congress by human rights groups, helped persuade the U.S. government to make the arrest and prosecution of war criminals a top priority.
The Globe could pay tribute to Neuffer’s memory by restoring her coverage of the Balkans to its Web site. The paper does have a nice page here, gathering her Iraqi coverage. But with the Yugoslav tragedy in the news again, it’s time to dig into the archives.
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.