Tag: miscellaneous

Goldman returns

Back when he was a prominent Democratic political consultant, Michael Goldman had one trait that endeared him to those of us who were young, unknown reporters working for small papers: He was every bit as willing to talk with you as he was a reporter for the Globe or the Herald. (Republican consultant Charley Manning, who does more corporate than political work these days, shares that admirable quality.)

Now Goldman, after working for the past few years as a talk-show host for Bloomberg Radio, is returning to the consulting wars. Check out the item at the end of Joan Vennochi’s column today.

I talked with Goldman this morning, and he was as frenetic as ever. And he had some excellent advice for those who are ready to write off Gov. Deval Patrick, recalling that Michael Dukakis, for whom he once worked, got off to an exceedingly rocky start in his first term (1975-’78), and that even Bill Weld — known for his smooth relations with the media — had to negotiate a pretty steep learning curve.

Welcome back, Michael.

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.

Counting on Anna Nicole

Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times writes that the death of Anna Nicole Smith may be among the first celebrity stories to land on the front pages of quality newspapers in large measure because of Internet traffic. Rutten explains:

Throughout the afternoon Thursday, editors across the country watched the number of “hits” recorded for online items about Smith’s death. These days, it’s the rare newspaper whose meeting to discuss the content of the next day’s edition doesn’t include a recitation of the most popular stories on the paper’s website. It’s a safe bet that those numbers helped shove Anna Nicole Smith onto a lot of front pages.

What makes this of more than passing interest is that serious American journalism is in the process of transforming itself into a new, hybrid news medium that combines traditional print and broadcast with a more purposefully articulated online presence. One of the latter’s most seductive attributes is its ability to gauge readers’ appetites for a particular story on a minute-to-minute basis. What you get is something like the familiar television ratings — though constantly updated, if you choose to treat them that way.

As someone who believes in the more interactive, “news as a conversation” model espoused by Dan Gillmor, Jay Rosen and others, I’m troubled by Rutten’s observation. This isn’t good, is it? And I say that as someone who believes Smith’s death probably deserved to be on page one — just not as a result of Web numbers.

Then again, this isn’t the inevitable consequence of greater interactivity — it’s less than that. As Rutten notes, this is a matter of editors emulating their television counterparts and following the ratings. And let’s not forget, though TV executives may know how to win any given night by going downscale, news audiences overall have been shrinking for more than 20 years. What feels good right now isn’t necessarily what succeeds in the long run.

Newspaper editors — the good ones, anyway — have traditionally aspired to something better. Unfortunately, being able to measure reader interest is going to make it harder to resist the urge to pander. (Thanks to Media Nation reader R.P. for alerting me to Rutten’s column.)

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.

The irony-deprived

That would be today’s Boston Globe editorial page. And MetroWest Daily News editor Richard Lodge. And Media Nation.

Think back over the past few days to how many people have defended the Mooninite pranksters on the grounds that they were promoting a well-known cartoon — well-known, at least, to a certain subset of teenagers and twentysomethings, a category that most definitely does not include, uh, me.

Does that mean that our governmental and public-safety officials must be expected to have an advanced degree in pop culture before deciding what to do about a bunch of circuit boards with batteries and wires sticking out? Such things have been known to blow up, you know.

How could we be so stupid? It’s simple. We don’t watch this stuff. We don’t know about it. We don’t have time. Sorry.

But Jay Fitzgerald is right — if Mayor Tom Menino tries to ban the “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” movie over this, then he really has lost his mind.

Molly Ivins, 1944-2007

The great Molly Ivins has died at the age of 62. The Austin American-Statesman runs a fine obit, but its registration scheme is truly odious. The Texas Observer, where she first came to fame, has put together a terrific tribute.

My first exposure to Ivins was in listening to her hilarious commentaries for NPR in the 1980s, a gig I don’t think she had for very long. After that, I read her first book, “Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?”, and was delighted, although I’ll admit I had not read her regularly in recent years.

Even so, I always considered her, along with Nat Hentoff, to be perhaps the finest columnist never to win a Pulitzer — and far better than many of those who did. I recall listening to the audio version of Ivins and Lou Dubose’s Bush bio, “Shrub,” just before the 2000 Republican National Convention. Among its best features was the fact that Ivins narrated it — she was as much a master of the spoken word as the written word. “Shrub” was tough but also fairly gentle in some ways, but that changed: She later called for Bush’s impeachment.

One memorable Ivins-ism that I haven’t seen brought up tonight is her description of then-governor George W. Bush’s ability to speak Spanish as well as English: “bi-ignorant.”

She was one of the greats.

Update: Here’s a link to Ivins’ last column, headlined “Stand Up Against the Surge.” “We are the people who run this country,” she wrote. “We are the deciders.” If only that were true.

Department of self-promotion

I’ll be on “The Paul Sullivan Show,” on WBZ Radio (AM 1030), tonight at 9 to talk about Wolf Blitzer’s question to Dick Cheney about right-wing criticism over the pregnancy of his lesbian daughter, Mary Cheney.

Also, in the new issue of CommonWealth Magazine I’ve got a profile of Joe Heisler and Chris Lovett of Boston Neighborhood Network, who specialize in grassroots-level local journalism.