Tag: Boston Herald

First thoughts on the Herald redesign

As you can see from the page image at left, at least one late edition of today’s Boston Herald included the Red Sox’ heart-thumping win over the Angels. But not the one I bought on the North Shore at 3 p.m.

I’d be perfectly happy if the Herald switched to Web-only distribution. But I can’t imagine this is what Pat Purcell had in mind when he outsourced printing to Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal plant in Chicopee.

Herald editor Kevin Convey tells the Phoenix’s Adam Reilly there are still some bugs to be worked out:

In the early going, we’re being extremely conservative about our press times and deadlines to make sure we get the paper out on the street. As time goes by, I expect that our ability to put complete information in more papers will increase to a considerable degree.

As promised, the paper looks a lot better, even though it has shrunk vertically by quite a bit. Photos, including color, are sharp both inside and out. The stories were already so short that making them a bit shorter still shouldn’t make much difference.

In the current confused media environment, it’s hard to say with whom the Herald is competing. Mainly, it’s competing for people’s time. If I had 20 minutes to while away, I’d much rather drop 75 cents on a new, slick-looking Herald than, say, pick up a free Metro Boston, because the Herald’s got more and better content. And now it looks better, too.

On that basis, the new Herald is a success.

Presses stop, Herald continues

Boston Herald columnist Peter Gelzinis weighs in with a nice take on the end of an era, as the paper’s ancient presses grind to a halt. Starting tomorrow, the printing of the Herald will be outsourced to a plant in Chicopee.

Herald reporter Jay Fitzgerald says goodbye to the presses on his blog.

Just because this is a smart move doesn’t mean there isn’t a certain sadness associated with it, especially for the employees who’ve lost their jobs.

About 10 years ago, publisher Pat Purcell gave me a tour of the subterranean presses. Back then, he wanted to let people know that the Herald wasn’t moving because, among other things, it would be too difficult to relocate what was a significant manufacturing operation.

But times have changed. No doubt within a year or two, the Herald, shorn of its presses, will have moved to a much smaller space.

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.

Nameless mom whacks nameless paper

How much anonymity can you load into one column? The Boston Herald’s Joe Fitzgerald tried for a Guinness record yesterday, attacking a newspaper he can’t bring himself to name (if you haven’t guessed, it’s my esteemed former employer, the Boston Phoenix) with the words of an alleged hard-nosed reporter-turned-mother whom he won’t identify. Pretty gripping stuff, eh?

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.

Reporters won’t testify in Entwistle case

The trial of Neil Entwistle, accused of murdering his wife and baby daughter, is sure to be a spectacle. But here’s one spectacle you won’t be seeing: Judge Diane Kottmyer today ruled that two reporters will not be called to testify during a pre-trial hearing, writes David Frank of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.

Laurel Sweet and Michele McPhee reported in the Boston Herald in November 2007 that Entwistle had written a suicide note while in jail. Sweet, who’s still with the Herald, and McPhee, now a talk-show host for WTKK Radio (96.9 FM), got off the hook when prosecutors said they have no plans to introduce the suicide note at Entwistle’s trial. Call this an ever-so-slight victory for the First Amendment.

McPhee’s got a book coming out on the case next Tuesday.

Walking through the fallout

Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan puts the Boston Herald walk-through fiasco in perspective today by pointing out the obvious — that Patriots coach Bill Belichick has forever branded himself as a cheater. Ryan writes:

How could anyone not feel sorry for Bob Kraft?…

His was said to be a model organization, where the owner owned, the personnel people found the right players, and the dour defensive genius coached ’em right up to championships, or close to ’em.

And now?

And now he has to live with the reality that he presides over the most despised and reviled franchise in all of contemporary American sport, and all because the coach he trusted has betrayed him.

In the New York Times, Mark Bowden offers a different sort of perspective, arguing, essentially, that it’s not a big deal and that everyone does it.

Bowden compares the Patriots taping scandal to, among other things, Gaylord Perry’s spitball. Not to condone what Perry did, but, somehow, I don’t buy the comparison. I’m with Ryan on this one.