Now, though, the Herald gets cocky. This is understandable — it’s won the front-page battle two days running — but also regrettable. The Herald brain trust apparently think they can own the story long term, so on page two, they indulge in a little boasting (“BostonHerald.com broke the story of the Big Dig ceiling collapse at 2:18 am yesterday…. The Herald was the only Boston newspaper to completely remake its front page to reflect this tragedy…. For the latest news — 24 hours a day, seven days a week — rely on BostonHerald.com to tell you just what you want to know when you need to know it”). Elsewhere, the concept of saturation coverage gets taken to the extreme: Wednesday’s Herald features more than two dozen Big Dig–related articles, columns, illustrations, and sidebars, most flagged with a Pilgrim hat, the symbol of the Mass Pike — a nice aesthetic touch that links and brands the coverage nicely. The Globe has half that many stories.
A GIANT PLANT: The Globe can credibly argue that, after a slow start, it's been more effective than its crosstown rivals |
Maybe Ken Chandler & Co. wanted to make their rivals at the Globe look shiftless; maybe they dreamed of a flood-the-zone Pulitzer, à la the New York Times post-9/11 or the Eagle-Tribune after several children drowned in Lawrence. But here’s the problem: there’s just not enough news to go around. The rule of thumb seems to be: never do one story if you can do two. For example, why not combine the story tagged “The backlash” (which details Attorney General Tom Reilly’s financial ties to Big Dig contractors) with “The governor” (which does the same for Governor Mitt Romney)? And how about merging “The commute” with “Lost time,” which chronicled commuter woes?True, more stories mean more little Pilgrim hats. And some of the material is riveting — notably this account, from an unnamed Big Dig worker, of safety inspections in unidentified tunnels: “There were guys on a scissor lift banging the fasteners out with a hammer. If it didn’t pop out, they were on to the next one. I asked one of the guys, ‘Is that it?’ He goes, ‘Yup, that’s it.’ ” (This same story contains an intriguing but vague revelation: in 2004, a $500,000 change involving the installation of “adhesive anchors for the ceiling struts” was approved near the accident site.)
Ultimately, though, this pastiche-like approach impedes understanding. The Big Dig is a vast, unwieldy subject to begin with; after Del Valle’s death, it has become even more confusing and flat-out terrifying. One of a newspaper’s most valuable functions in a situation like this is to help the public make sense of the chaos they’re confronted with. But the Herald’s prismatic method comes perilously close to doing the opposite.
Think that’s an exaggeration? Consider this list of story tag lines: “The disaster,” “The rescuers,” “Embattled builder,” “The probe,” “The oversight,” “The reaction,” “The grief,” “The legalities,” “The risks,” “The backlash,” “The commute,” “The chairman,” “The governor,” “Lost time,” “What you pay for,” “The tongue lashing,” and “The bloggers.” And that doesn’t include the columnists — like Howie Carr, who notes that Turnpike chairman Matt Amorello is fat, or Joe Fitzgerald, who connects the tunnel collapse and gay marriage. (Fitzgerald does it again on Saturday, too. The man’s a machine!)
