Geoff Edgers – Media Nation

The Globe’s Erin Ailworth heads for The Wall Street Journal

In addition to the Geoff Edgers move that I mentioned earlier, I understand that Boston Globe business reporter Erin Ailworth is leaving for The Wall Street Journal. Ailworth has been a stalwart on the Market Basket story.

Apologies for not having much in the way of details. But the fact that papers like the Journal and The Washington Post are hiring suggests that the journalism-jobs logjam of recent years is starting to break free — at least at a few of our largest news organizations.

https://twitter.com/ailworth/status/494961200846094336

Geoff Edgers leaving Globe for Washington Post

A big loss for The Boston Globe: Geoff Edgers, the paper’s arts and culture reporter since 2002, is leaving for The Washington Post. Edgers is a talented and versatile journalist — a filmmaker as well as a traditional reporter — and he will be hard to replace. The move will reunite Edgers with Post executive editor Marty Baron, who hired Edgers when he was editor of the Globe.

Geoff was a colleague at The Boston Phoenix in the mid-1990s, and his wife, Carlene Hempel, is now a colleague at Northeastern. Yes, Boston is a small town.

The following is a memo to the Globe staff from arts editor Rebecca Ostriker and Janice Page, deputy managing editor for features. As always, Globies, keep those memos coming.

When Geoff Edgers arrived at the Globe in 2002, he carved out a new beat: covering the region’s key arts institutions and individuals with the drive and focus of a hard-news reporter. Smart, enterprising, energetic, and resourceful, Geoff has simply excelled. He’s written nearly 200 page 1 stories on everything from Boston Symphony Orchestra maestro James Levine’s health woes to the Institute of Contemporary Art’s gleaming new waterfront home, plus scores of other pieces that brim with life and make even the most complex subjects accessible. One of our favorites was when Geoff captured the debacle of a Mass MoCA exhibition that involved installing a 35-foot oil tanker, a two-story house, a carousel of bombs, and an old movie theater — all of which never opened to the public. Then there was Christian Marclay’s 24-hour video “The Clock’’ at the Museum of Fine Arts, which our department covered tag-team-style. Of course Geoff signed up for the toughest, most yawn-inducing stretch — midnight to 4 a.m. — and came up swinging, with some sharp insights on video licensing and a filmmaking crew “big enough to work the Indy 500.”

On the subject of film, Geoff knew what he was talking about: In his spare time, he’s produced a full-length documentary, “Do It Again,” which captured his quixotic quest to reunite the rock band the Kinks (and gave him a chance to duet with Sting), and hosted the Travel Channel series “Edge of America,” crossing the country to try such stunts as tackling alligators and competing in a haggis-eating contest. And Geoff has brought his impressive filmmaking knowhow to the Globe, teaming with the talented Darren Durlach to earn a New England Emmy Award for a video about the soprano Barbara Quintiliani, and to create the Boston Marathon documentary “5 Runners,” which recently premiered at the JFK Library and aired on NESN.

When there’s a story, Geoff wants to be — and almost invariably makes sure he is — the guy who gets it. Which makes it all the harder to announce that he’ll be getting those stories somewhere else in the future. Geoff has accepted a job as national arts reporter for the Washington Post. He’ll be covering cultural stories across the country, from museum and opera controversies to the latest trends in pop music and web culture. Geoff says he relishes the opportunity to take what he’s learned at the Globe and apply it on a broader stage. This is a new position, he notes, as the Post aims to compete with The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. (He’s assured us that any competition with the Globe should not be taken personally.)

Happily, Geoff will be doing all of this from a base in Boston. So although his last day at the Globe is Sept. 12, and we’ll toast him before he goes (details to come), he’s not really leaving us. And if the Kinks someday reunite in a Boston venue, we’ll celebrate with him there.

Rebecca and Janice

Globe makes move into TV with ‘5 Runners’

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlTtKlwuWGY&w=560&h=315]

This story was previously published at WGBH News.

When Boston Globe arts reporter Geoff Edgers and multimedia producer Darren Durlach proposed making a documentary about five runners who were crossing the Boston Marathon finish line at the moment that the bombings took place, editor Brian McGrory’s reaction was: Why not?

“What do you need? Two weeks?” McGrory recalled asking them.

As it turned out, it took Edgers and Durlach eight months, thousands of miles on the road and, as McGrory put it, “God knows how many dollars” to make “5 Runners,” which premiered before a crowd of several hundred people at the JFK Library Thursday evening.

The 25-minute film, which McGrory called “the first full-fledged documentary that theBoston Globe has ever produced,” will debut on NESN on Monday. It’s an early sign that a strategy to move into television, which Globe owner John Henry announced earlier this year, is beginning to take shape — although Edgers and Durlach began working on the film before Henry bought the paper. (Henry is also the principal owner of the Red Sox, which controls a chunk of NESN.)

The film, which grew out of a story Edgers wrote last April 21, follows the runners’ quest to return to the starting line of the 2014 marathon. I won’t give away how many make it. But “5 Runners” is deeply felt and unusual in its focus on how athletes — ordinary men and women who were well off the pace of the elite runners — were affected by the terrorist attack.

In a panel discussion after the film moderated by Globe deputy managing editor for features Janice Page, Edgers talked about the difficulties he and Durlach faced in staying in touch with their subjects. One of the runners, Volker Fischer, simply stopped responding, so Edgers sent him a card that read: “Volker — call me.”

When Edgers finally was able to connect with Fischer and visit his home in Illinois, he saw the card, unopened, on the refrigerator. “‘I liked the stamp,’” Edgers recalled Fischer telling him, explaining: “It was a Johnny Cash stamp.” (Disclosure: Edgers and I worked together at The Boston Phoenix in the mid-1990s. His wife, journalist Carlene Hempel, and I are colleagues at Northeastern University.)

Durlach said that the runners were “hesitant” about putting themselves forward when so many others had died or were wounded. “People were killed. Why do you want to spend time on my story?” is the way Durlach characterized their reaction.

Also joining the panelists was one of the five runners, Mary Jenkins of Ohio (spoiler alert: she’ll be running this year’s marathon), who said she will “probably be a basket case” during the race.

“It’s going to be hard, I think, Marathon Day, but I think it’s going to be exciting, too,” she said.

Edgers and Durlach plan to be at this year’s marathon as well. Their goal, they said, is to keep covering the story, and to expand “5 Runners” into an hour-long film.

Globe versus Herald: Brad Delp edition (II)

Two days after the Boston Globe published a lengthy story by arts reporter Geoff Edgers questioning the Boston Herald’s defense in a libel suit brought by Tom Scholz, leader and founder of the band Boston, the Herald has struck back.

Edgers’ article, based on court documents, centered on the notion that Boston lead singer Brad Delp committed suicide in 2007 because he’d been caught placing a camera in the bedroom of his fiancée’s sister, Meg Sullivan. Scholz sued the Herald after Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa, the paper’s Inside Track gossip columnists, wrote that Delp’s ex-wife Micki Delp blamed the suicide on Scholz’s abusive behavior. (Last year a judge dismissed Scholz’s suit against Micki Delp, ruling she had done no such thing.)

The Herald’s Joe Dwinell today counters Edgers’ story with a statement from Sullivan blasting the Globe and Scholz:

The article printed recently in the Boston Globe seems to imply that Brad took his life because he was so horrified at the idea of confessing to my sister what he had done. The article neglects to print the fact that Brad had already told her about the incident. Quite contrary to what the article implies, Brad’s fear of the repercussions from the event between us was not the reason that he decided to end his life. They had discussed it and were dealing with it together as the loving couple they were….

Based on what I know, what I observed, what Brad told me before he took his life, what Brad told others before he took his life and several pretty clear facts, I do not believe that this incident was what led Brad to take his life. I am sorry, and I am outraged, that Mr. Scholz has treated Brad’s family and friends the way he has in the 5 years since Brad’s death, filing lawsuits, threatening lawsuits, serving subpoenas and forcing all of us to relive one of the most traumatic events of our lives. Whether he does this in order to obtain publicity, out of a penchant for bullying those without the resources to fight back, or for other reasons, I do not pretend to know.

Dwinell also writes a sidebar noting that Edgers appeared on television to discuss the case in February 2011 and, according to Dwinell, “seemed to endorse Scholz’s claims against the Herald.”

Since Edgers’ journalistic integrity is now being questioned, I should note that I worked with him at the Boston Phoenix some years back and considered him to be a good, reliable reporter. I now work with his wife, Carlene Hempel, at Northeastern.

Dwinell does not dispute the accuracy of Edgers’ reporting on court documents regarding the hidden-camera incident. And Edgers himself noted on Sunday that Sullivan believed Scholz had contributed to the depression that caused Delp to engage in such behavior.

As I wrote two days ago, “Libel suits contain many twists and turns.” The only thing we can be sure of is that if this ever goes to court, it’s going to be one hell of a trial.

Earlier coverage.

A troubling libel suit against the Herald

Geoff Edgers’ story in Sunday’s Boston Globe on the troubled life of Boston singer Brad Delp raises some interesting questions about libel law. The most important is this: If a newspaper publishes a report that is accurate, what obligation does it have to verify that it is also true?

Following Delp’s suicide in 2007, the Boston Herald’s Inside Track reporters, Laura Raposa and Gayle Fee, wrote that Delp’s ex-wife, Micki Delp, blamed Delp’s death on his troubled relationship with Tom Scholz, Boston’s founder and leader. According to court documents examined by Edgers, the Tracksters also relied on e-mails from Micki Delp’s sister Connie Goudreau. (Here’s some more background on the case and its principals.)

Scholz, in turn, sued Micki Delp and Connie Goudreau for defamation, and in 2010 filed a libel suit against the Herald as well, charging that the Herald should have known Micki Delp had a personal vendetta against Scholz. Goudreau has settled with Scholz, but the other cases remain unresolved.

Edgers presents powerful evidence that Delp’s suicide should not be blamed on Scholz. Delp had suffered from depression for years, and his relationship with his fiancée, Pamela Sullivan, was troubled. Still, who knows what could drive a person to suicide?

In simple terms, the legal question is whether the Herald was obliged to go beyond accurately reporting what Micki Delp and Goudreau were telling its reporters and determine whether their accusations against Scholz were actually true. Was Delp as upset with Scholz as his ex-wife and sister-in-law claimed? Did that so traumatize Delp that it could have contributed to his suicidal state of mind?

A verdict against the Herald would be very bad news for the press. Because Scholz is a public figure, he would have to prove that the Herald knew or strongly suspected that its reporting was false. Even if Fee and/or Raposa knew Micki Delp had it in for Scholz, it doesn’t necessary follow that they thought she was lying.

In the relevant Supreme Court case, Harte-Hanks Communications v. Connaughton (1989), the court found in favor of a public official who’d been maligned after it was proven (among other things) that the managing editor of the local newspaper literally ordered reporters not to interview a source or examine documents that might contradict the story she wanted to publish.

That is not remotely what’s at issue in the Scholz case. Based on Edgers’ article, it seems to me that not only did Fee and Raposa not doubt they’d gotten the story right, but that Scholz would have a very difficult time proving they’d gotten it wrong in any definitive way.

Photo (cc) by Craig Michaud via Wikimedia Commons and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.