Tag: Herald

Raj makes the Herald

Dan Gillmor coined the oft-quoted citizen-journalism aphorism “My readers know more than I do.”

Casey Ross of the Boston Herald certainly thinks it’s true when it comes to Media Nation. In today’s “Monday Morning briefing,” Ross dips into this blog for some wisdom on Gov. Deval Patrick’s proposal to let cities and towns raise certain local taxes, such as the meals tax:

The blogosphere was busy this weekend assessing the governor’s budget and tax proposals. While legislative leaders have resisted his proposal for local-option meals taxes, others don’t see what the fuss is about. One blogger on Dan Kennedy’s Media Nation wrote: “The stranglehold by the state on local mechanisms for raising revenue is ridiculous. I’m from the midwest, and local-option taxes are the primary means by which they raise revenue, not the property tax.”

Nice going, Raj.

Patrick and the press

I’ve been holding my fire on Gov. Deval Patrick’s personal spending spree (with our money) because I’m not sure exactly what to think. I thought the story about his helicopter rides to official events was genuinely stupid, but my ears perked up over his state-funded Cadillac. Since then, we’ve learned that he spent a fortune redecorating his office, and — most egregious, IMHO — has approved a $72,000-a-year chief of staff for his wife, a downtown lawyer.

And it’s not as though all this is obscuring the great news Patrick is making on other fronts. Indeed, as this was unfolding last week, he was quietly floating two ideas to raise taxes. This from a guy who said during his gubernatorial campaign that he had “no plans” for a tax increase. Well, not then, anyway.

I’m still not sure how big a deal any of this is. Faux-populist stories like these are a dime a dozen, and if Patrick’s tastes are more expensive than those of his predecessors, such is life. But his news conference yesterday is another matter. Patrick demonstrated such a just-doesn’t-get-it streak — and not for the first time — that it makes you wonder whether he has the basic political instincts needed to be an effective governor.

Essentially, Patrick apologized, even going so far to say he’d “screwed up”; announced that he would return some of the money; and then undid all the good he might have done by blaming it on the media. (Globe coverage here; Herald coverage here.) By all means, take a look at Jon Keller’s report on WBZ-TV (Channel 4). I also recommend Adrian Walker’s column in today’s Globe, which includes this:

I’m on record as not giving a hoot what the governor gets driven around in. I still think people place too much emphasis on symbols over substance. At the end of the day, a leased Cadillac is a ridiculous barometer to measure Patrick by.

What is troubling, though, is Patrick’s inability to think any problem of his has anything to do with him. If everyone could just be as high-minded, as substantive as he is, everything would be fine.

Over at Patrick headquarters, a.k.a. Blue Mass Group, Charley Blandy wags his finger at the media:

All of the local media geniuses who have smelled blood on the caddy stuff need to get a clue, and start focusing on things that matter. This is page B3 stuff at best. Media outlets aren’t struggling just because of their business model; they’re struggling because they’ve abdicated their vitality and relevance, and become just as focused on gossipy crap like the DeVille, or whether Scott Brown has a potty-mouth, or whatever. [Blandy’s emphasis.]

Blandy also denounces “the obvious racial subtext to all of this: Deval as Pimp.” Well, you know what? I’m not going to say there’s no racial subtext. There always is when you’re talking about an African-American in a position of power. But let’s not get carried away here.

Patrick needs to understand that, yes, he ran a mistake-free campaign for governor, but he also had plenty of luck, beating two extremely weak candidates in the Democratic primary and running virtually unopposed in the general election. For all his smarts and knowledge, he’s still got a lot to learn about politics.

Are the media pushing all this too hard? Probably. Yesterday, though, Patrick had a chance to put this string of stories behind him. He only partly succeeded — at best.

Elsewhere: The Massachusetts Liberal is more impressed with Patrick’s apology than I am. Jay Fitzgerald: “Individually, the various stories don’t push my outrage buttons. Collectively, well, they add up.” And the Herald’s Inside Track has a hilarious account of a dust-up between two reporters for WHDH-TV (Channel 7), Andy Hiller and Sean Hennessey, as they were jockeying for position at Patrick’s news conference.

More: Emily Rooney comes to Patrick’s defense.

Anti-Semitism in Portland

The Boston Herald’s Laura Crimaldi reports that the Portland Press Herald published an ad placed by a credit union that’s straight out of the early Nazi era. And this from a newspaper that’s still red-faced over an ad for a sermon by a Baptist minister titled “The only way to destroy the Jewish race.”

Not only did Press Herald publisher Charles Cochrane decline to speak with Crimaldi last night, but there doesn’t seem to be anything on the paper’s Web site by way of apology today, either.

No word on when the Press Herald intends to begin serializing “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

Update: An alert Media Nation reader found this. Here’s how it begins:

Leaders of Southern Maine’s Jewish community, executives at the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram and the creators of a newspaper advertisement criticized as anti-Semitic met this morning at the paper’s Portland headquarters and issued a joint statement about the controversy.

The statement said that the ad in Wednesday’s newspaper developed by PeoplesChoice Credit Union and a Freeport marketing firm was not intentionally anti-Semitic but it’s [sic] portrayal of a bearded “Fee Bandit” eager to collect fees from bank customers “perpetuates a negative stereotype that has been used to defame Jews for centuries.”

Not to parse this too finely, folks, but the reason the ad was “criticized as anti-Semitic” was because it was, well, anti-Semitic.

Stomach-churning details

The Boston Herald’s page-one stunner today is uncorroborated, but it’s on the record — and revolting. Jessica Van Sack’s interview with James McGonnell and Kelly Williams about Michael Riley, charged with murdering his 4-year-old daughter, Rebecca, with prescription medication, is stomach-churning. (McGonnell is Riley’s brother-in-law; Williams is McGonnell’s fiancée.)

As for Department of Social Services commissioner Harry Spence’s yet-again defense of his agency (Globe story here; Herald story here), my head tells me that he might be right, but my heart tells me that we’ve heard enough excuses over the years. Sorry, Mr. Spence, but Gov. Deval Patrick ought to personally escort you from the building by the end of today.

Of Mooninites and pipe bombs

There’s a good Peter Gelzinis column in today’s Herald that places the stunt-gone-bad in the context of those two fake pipe bombs. Gelzinis interviewed Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis and writes:

Until those guerrilla marketeers at Turner Broadcasting finally owned up to their Mooninite shenanigans late Wednesday afternoon, Davis said that the chorus of law enforcement agencies had no choice but to assume that gag devices had been systematically planted all over town as a distraction for “real” ones that had also been placed.

In other words, the police weren’t quite as punk’d as all those “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” hipsters out there in the blogosphere would lead you to believe. It wasn’t those LEDs tacked onto all those circuit boards that police worried about, as much that guy with no light on upstairs, running away from what looked a helluva lot like a pipe bomb.

“Had we simply found these cartoon characters stuck here and there,” Davis said yesterday, “I can assure you this thing would have been tamped down in pretty short order.”

“But what troubled us was the discovery of those other two devices that looked very real indeed. And it wasn’t until the people from Turner took responsibility for what they had done, that we could think about the coincidence of what had taken place.”

Is Davis putting two and two together after the fact in order to make himself look good? Maybe. But his comments strike me as sensible and credible.

Over at the Globe, Steve Bailey has some very smart things to say, and Brian McGrory, well, doesn’t. And Seth Gitell makes a few good points in defense of Mayor Tom Menino, his former employer.

Media Nation bombs out

Yesterday’s bomb scare is the worst kind of story for a media critic to take on, because it’s hard not to sit, slack-jawed and vacant, and agree with what everyone else has already said. I don’t have much to say, but I’ll try to venture a few observations. (Globe coverage here; Herald coverage here.)

First, I basically agree with those who say the perpetrators and their corporate masters at Time Warner were stupid to do this, and city officials were stupid not to pick up immediately on the fact that this was a guerrilla marketing campaign. I think when both sides are stupid, the tie goes to the good guys.

Perhaps we’ll all change our minds when we cool off, but right now the idea of throwing a few people in prison for a couple of months sounds pretty reasonable. As long as the buck doesn’t stop with local suspects Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens. As my man Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once said, the First Amendment does not protect anyone from “falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” That’s exactly what happened yesterday.

Second, is this Herald sidebar, by Michele McPhee and Laura Crimaldi, not a significant scoop? According to the report, police have confirmed that two devices that looked like pipe bombs were found yesterday at Tufts-New England Medical Center and stuck onto the Longfellow Bridge were not part of the marketing campaign. Good grief. By tomorrow, this could prove to be the bigger story.

Third, the Herald editorialist who calls for Ted Turner to be thrown into the hoosegow apparently doesn’t realize that Turner’s had nothing to do with Turner Broadcasting for years, and that he left the Time Warner board entirely, under less than happy circumstances, in May 2006. (Sorry to rely on Wikipedia for such an important point, but the article matches my memory.)

On second thought: I don’t need a few days. I’m cooling off already. Although I’m sympathetic to the police and other public-safety officials who took this seriously, I can easily see how the perpetrators thought this was absolutely no different from gluing posters to news boxes promoting an upcoming concert. So no, I don’t think anyone should go to jail over this.

Thank God we’re a two-newspaper town*

From today’s Globe:

If he pleads guilty in federal court to obstruction of justice as expected this morning, Massachusetts Biotechnology Council president Thomas M. Finneran would become a felon and could face disbarment — but could also survive as president of the state’s top life-science lobby….

Yesterday, members of the biotechnology council’s board were wrestling with how to deal with a possible guilty plea, forcing them to weigh Finneran’s clout as a leader against the public-relations cost of keeping him as chief spokesman for their industry.

From today’s Herald:

Disgraced former House Speaker Tom Finneran’s expected guilty plea to obstruction of justice charges today will keep him out of jail but has jeopardized his job, pension and future as an attorney.

Sources told the Herald Finneran will leave his $500,000-a-year post at the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council as a result of his pending felony conviction. It was unclear last night whether Finneran will resign or be forced out of the post.

*With apologies, as always, to Boston Magazine, even though it hasn’t resuscitated the feature in quite some time. And thanks to Media Nation reader T.W. for the tipoff.

Discovering Japan

This is a hoot. The Boston Herald announces that it’s offering Japanese-language pages on its Web site to appeal to Japanese baseball fans who want to follow Daisuke Matsuzaka and the Red Sox.

“Readers on the Herald’s Web site can now click onto the Japanese flag icon associated with selected stories and view a Japanese translation of the story,” the paper says.

Here’s an example.

For years, the Boston Globe published Spanish-language stories the day after Pedro Martínez pitched at Fenway Park. Why this was done only after home games is still a mystery.

Anyway, the Herald’s move is very smart, leading me to wonder if the Globe, the Providence Journal and others — including the Red Sox themselves — will follow suit. (Via Romenesko.)