God bless the Track Gals...

...But Gayle and Laura, you're full of shit!

Quoth said Gals in their Herald column today:

Both  Dan Kennedy  of  Media Nation and The Phoenix’s Adam Reilly  got worked up this week over 24/7 Wall Street’s inclusion of the B.B. on a list of the 10 newspapers most likely to go belly up in the coming year. (The Globe rang in at No. 5.)

Kennedy, while admitting that 24/7 blogger Douglas McIntyre is “a smart, knowledgeable guy,” then dismisses him as “a provocateur.”

“Can we please get real?” Kennedy demands.

Reilly seconds that emotion, writing that “there’s reason to question” McIntyre’s “dire assessment.”

Oddly, neither Reilly nor Kennedy does any actual reporting to dispute the contention. And neither contacted the Globe, which has been strangely silent on the subject. [emphasis added]

Well now. If Laura and/or Gayle had called me before writing--i.e., done the sort of "actual reporting" they seem to prize--I might have told them that I did contact the Globe, though I probably wouldn't have divulged what transpired. 

But they didn't even need to do that. All they had to do was actually read my blog post, which explained quite clearly that my caveats were based on an email exchange with Douglas McIntyre (i.e., "actual reporting"), who told me 1) that the numbers on his list didn't really mean anything and 2) that he refused to even consider the $192 million valuation of the Globe recently reported by the Boston Business Journal.

I should also mention that Dan's comment re: "get[ting] real" involved the erroneous claim, made by the Herald's Jessica Heslam and others, that the list in question came from Time magazine. (Heslam's mistake remains uncorrected online.)

Call or email next time, ladies. I'd be happy to chat. 

P.S.--If, as Dan suggests, today's Track item is supposed to be a correction of Heslam's error, look for another passive-aggressive mea culpa in the next few days. Fee and Raposa say McIntyre's list names the 10 papers "most likely to go belly up in the coming year." It's actually the ten papers most likely to shut down or go online only.