Tag: Steve Bailey

The big news out of the Boston Globe today is that star columnist Steve Bailey is leaving the paper. Bailey — along with executive editor Helen Donovan and deputy managing editor Michael Larkin — are taking early-retirement incentives as the Globe goes through another round of downsizing.

The Phoenix’s Adam Reilly has a long memo from editor Marty Baron, who comes across as wistful and nostalgic. Uncharacteristic, but perhaps unsurprising. He’ll have been in charge seven years this summer. And though he’s had his share of triumphs, his regime has been marked by repeated orders from the New York Times Co. to cut. (Not that that makes the Globe different from any other paper.)

Insiders may feel the loss of Donovan and Larkin just as keenly as they do Bailey’s departure. But to readers of the paper, Bailey’s “Downtown” column has long been a highlight. Not the most graceful writer in the world, Bailey nevertheless is a relentless reporter who consistently breaks news. His voice comes pretty close to being irreplaceable.

“I was reflecting the other day on Steve’s career here,” Baron writes. “And it got me to thinking about how a single journalist can make such an enormous difference at a newspaper and in a community. Certainly, that is true of Steve, and it is true of all whose departures or new assignments are being announced today.”

Moving up are Caleb Solomon, who’ll be managing editor for news; Helen Ellen Clegg (I knew that; jeez), deputy managing editor for news operations; and Mark Morrow, deputy managing editor for Sunday and projects, all of whom will be doing more with less. As Baron puts it, “With these changes, we will be reducing the overall number of senior editors, just as we are reducing the total number of newsroom employees.”

Globe columnist Steve Bailey goes after “the loony gun lobby,” which has worked itself into a lather because a squishy gun deal he wrote about a few years ago — and talked about on the radio recently — turns out to have been charged to his Globe expense account. According to Bailey, authorities have now confiscated the gun. He writes:

This is how it works. Intimidation is the stock in trade of the National Rifle Association and all the NRA knock-offs out there. Dare to say we need fewer, not more guns in this country, dare to say we need a uniform system for monitoring gun sales in this country and you become a target to be hunted down. Democrats and Republicans have allowed themselves to be cowed by this one-issue bloc for too long.

Of course, in this case Bailey is referring to an NRA knock-off — the Second Amendment Foundation, whose leader, Alan Gottlieb, Bailey reports, has had some problems with the Tax Man that were serious enough to strip him of his own right to pack heat, at least temporarily.

More: I want to address the idiotic notion that Bailey was involved in an illegal “straw purchase,” which at least one Media Nation commenter has fallen for. What straw purchase? Bailey gave money to Walter Belair, a former prison guard, in order to buy a gun. Belair didn’t buy the gun for Bailey; he bought it for himself, and, indeed, kept it until it was confiscated by the feds.

The last I checked, you’re still allowed to give people money. Bailey had no responsibility for what Belair chose to do with the money unless he had advance knowledge that Belair was going to use it to break the law. In fact, Belair’s purchase was entirely legal — that was the point of Bailey’s 2005 column. It strikes me as a virtual certainty that the feds will soon be returning Belair’s property to him.