Meanwhile, the Globe gets as close as it ever will to flooding the zone. The fallout from Del Valle’s death gets front-page billing (MASS. CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE — not as good as the Herald, but not bad), and three stories begin on page A1: one synoptic, one focusing on structural issues, and one recreating the accident through Angel Del Valle’s eyes. There’s also a large graphic of the type of ceiling support that may have malfunctioned in the collapse, with far more detail than in a similar Herald illustration. Coupled with the structural story — which was written by Scott Allen and Sean P. Murphy — this marks the point where the Globe’s treatment of the technical side of the story begins outpacing the Herald’s. (Allen and Murphy focus on a 1998 Massachusetts Inspector General’s report raising concerns about similar bolt-epoxy supports in another tunnel; the IG report gets only a superficial mention in the Herald.)
Inside the Globe, there are five more stories (subjects include the high bar facing AG Reilly as he weighs bringing a negligent-homicide charge and the failed rescue attempt launched by passing motorists), as well as columns by Eileen McNamara, Joan Vennochi, and Steve Bailey. The big score, though, is a three-photo sequence capturing a Tuesday confrontation between Romney and Amorello. The Herald doesn’t have it.
Thursday, July 13
By now, the Herald seems to recognize that its earlier pace is unsustainable; there are just 10 Pilgrim hats today, compared to 17 on Wednesday. Some of the accompanying pieces are quite good. One highlight: a Brett Arends–authored package critical of Bechtel, the San Francisco–based engineering outfit that ran the Big Dig and has laid low since Del Valle died. Another highlight: political reporter Kim Atkins whacking Mitt Romney for hustling back to his New Hampshire vacation home Wednesday. The indisputable lowlight: a voyeuristic description of Milena Del Valle sitting at home in her pajamas, massaging her husband’s feet, on the night of her death. It feels almost pornographic.
The Globe scales back a bit, too. But it also gets its biggest scoop, albeit one that’s buried on page A19: Scott Allen reports that James Bruno, the top engineer during the completion of the I-90 connector, questioned the use of three-ton ceiling panels like the one that killed Del Valle. But when “senior Big Dig officials” indicated they didn’t want to use lighter panels, Bruno dropped the subject. “When I came to the job, it was roughly 30 percent done,” he tells the Globe. “They were already doing it this way…. So I stepped in and said OK.” Too bad Bruno didn’t fight a bit harder.
Friday, July 14
At this point, the story is becoming borderline routine. The Herald looks to break news in a story tagged “The bombshell,” which focuses on the 2001 discovery of deficiencies in something called a “clevis,” a constituent part of the failed ceiling-support mechanism implicated in Del Valle’s death. Seems splashy, but it doesn’t pan out in subsequent days. Instead, the must-read is an interview (conducted by the Costa Rican publication La Nación) with Milena Del Valle’s elder daughter, Raquel Ibarra Mora. Not a Herald original, but still a nice pick-up. Elsewhere in the paper, Howie Carr lays into Amorello yet again — apparently he’s fat — and one commuting story gets split into two.
