In today's Boston Herald cover story, reporter Hillary Chabot writes:

Barack Obama’s divided and poorly timed convention has given him no boost in tracking polls, leaving him in danger of trailing Republican John McCain by the time the GOP conclave ends next week....

Polls showing McCain holding down Obama in the polls despite the nationally televised convention, and no bounce from Obama’s long-awaited running mate pick - an event that pollsters say ususally draws at least a two-percentage point gain....

Obama and McCain are neck and neck in the national polls despite three days of glowing speeches about the Illinois senator during a highly publicized convention viewed by 22 million people. [emph. added]

Okay: if you're an Obama supporter, the lack of a bounce from the Biden pick is worrisome. But intentionally or not, Chabot is being a bit slippery here.

Exhibit A for her claim that Obama and McCain are neck and neck "despite three days of glowing speeches" about Obama is the latest Gallup Daily poll, which shows Obama with a 45-44 lead among registered voters. The problem with linking this claim and this poll is that the Gallup survey comprises Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday--in other words, two days of the DNC, not three. [Update: A DQM reader notes that, unless Gallup was calling people after 11 p.m. on Tuesday, those numbers only reflect one day of the convention. Even worse.] Chabot also cites the most recent Rasmussen Reports poll, which was released yesterday at 9:30 AM--i.e., also after two days of the convention.

This gets us to the bigger problem with Chabot's story. She's basically calling the convention a bust at its halfway point--and before Obama, who's previously proven himself to be a pretty good orator, has actually addressed the gathering. (Chabot acknowledges the fact that Obama hasn't yet spoken, but doesn't let it get in the way of her analysis.)

The usefulness (or lack thereof) of the DNC to Obama is a perfectly reasonable subject. But this strikes me as a botched job.

In today’s Boston Herald, columnist Margery Eagan touches on an interesting point:

This mess just won’t end.

And if it doesn’t end soon--like today--the Democrats will lose in November. Again.

The mess I refer to? Hillary supporters’ continued up-the-ante demands for respect and validation, for hurt feelings to be soothed, voices to be heard, etc.

Mostly they’re middle-aged women, like me, and I’m feeling embarrassed by association.

Is this really about Hillary and politics, or some deeply resented dissing by a husband, ex-husband, ex-boyfriend or boss?

Hillary’s disgruntled supporters may or may not be projecting, but their pique carries a real cultural risk. It bolsters the pernicious, age-old stereotype of the over-emotional female--and that, in turn, could make things miserable for the next female presidential contender.

Here’s political theorist Mika LaVaque-Manty's description of how this stereotype has previously been used to justify women’s exclusion from politics:

There is a common tendency to discount or even ignore political action that seems to issue from strong emotions or just appears “emotional.” For example, many local grassroots movements, especially those led largely by women, have had to struggle simply to get standing as agents in political processes. They have been dismissed as “hysterical housewives,” too emotional and thus too myopic to engage in what political action requires, namely, reason and reasonableness....

A related and sometimes indistinguishable way of dismissing other actors’ agency is to make claims not just about the grounds of engagement--“They’re being emotional, not reasonable!”--but to shut out others by claiming they are simply incapable of what it takes to engage in politics. Where in the previous case, “mad women” are ignored, in one instantiation of this phenomenon all women are ignored because they are, “by nature,” mad, or emotional, or whatever. [emph. in original]

Those female Hillary backers who remain piqued by her defeat may honestly believe that if they don't aggressively support Barack Obama--or if they go even further and vote for John McCain--they’ll be striking a blow for feminism. But they should at least consider the possibility that they'll be doing just the opposite.

Time really does heal all wounds. Twenty years ago, after Ted Kennedy helped pass legislation that forced Rupert Murdoch to sell the Boston Herald, the paper smacked the senator in a front-page editorial that read, in part: "Kennedy's attitude seems to be: 'To hell with the political process, to hell with the First Amendment, to hell with my integrity, and to hell with The Herald and its readers.'"

Ouch! But today, following up on Kennedy's dramatic DNC speech last night, the Herald gives us this:

The subhed, in case you can't read it: "AILING TED K RISES TO OCCASION, GIVES ROUSING SPEECH IN DENVER."

So: what gives, Kevin Convey? Have you and the rest of the Herald brass made a formal decision to lavish favorable coverage on Kennedy in the wake of his grim brain-cancer diagnosis? 

Not so, says the Herald's editor. "We haven't sat down and said, Now that the guy is hurting, let's covering him in a different way," Convey tells DQM. "I think our natural inclination, as a tabloid, is to pull for the underdog--and certainly in his fight with cancer, the senator is that.

"I think there were some very hard feelings between the senator and the paper when he forced Murdoch to divest himself of us. And I'm sure there have been hard feelings on the senator's part about some of the positions we've taken and the way we've played things. But you know, in the end, it's the opposite of Irish Alzheimer's, where only the grudges remain. In the end, you just sort of let that stuff go and follow the story wherever it takes you.... My sense is that if you went back over our Kennedy coverage over the last 10 years, you'd see that within the last 4 or 5 years, there's been a general warming toward Kennedy as old grudges were basically forgotten." 

"Our idea with today's coverage was that Kennedy's speech was by far the most dramatic thing that happened yesterday," Convey adds. "And it was magnificent--particularly considering what we're not hearing about what he had to go through to deliver the speech. We go where the drama goes."

UPDATE: It's worth noting that in 2006, before Convey replaced Ken Chandler as editor, said drama involved a National Enquirer story on an alleged Kennedy love child that was apparently fed early to the Herald--and subsequently attracted plenty of readers. Unfortunately, that story was wrong. So whether Kennedy is experiencing Reverse Irish Alzheimer's is very much an open question.

Amalie Benjamin is taking over for Gordon Edes as the paper's Red Sox beat writer. Also, Tony Massarotti is jumping from the Herald for a new online-focused job. Plus, Boston.com gets a new sports reporter!

Here's the memo* sports editor Joe Sullivan sent this afternoon: 

We have some very exciting changes to announce in the sports department.

Amalie Benjamin will succeed Gordon Edes as the Red Sox beat writer. As everyone can see, she's already on the job and ready for a pennant race.

Tony Massarotti will join the Globe from the Herald in the first week of September. Tony's job is a newly created position as he will become the face and voice of boston.com sports, featured prominently on the sports home page. Tony's insights and unique style will also appear in the print edition.

Chad Finn, a part-time copy editor on the sports desk, has been named to the newly created position of sports news reporter for boston.com. Chad, who will begin his duties the first week of September, will keep the website updated with fresh and interesting items during the day. The rest of the Globe staff will continue to contribute to the sports blogs on the site.

Corey Allen, a former all-star co-op in the sports department, will join the sports desk as a part-time copy editor, replacing Chad.

Wish them all good luck.

As a non-Sox fan, it's tough for me to judge the Benjamin hire. Any Sox-centric readers care to offer their thoughts on Benjamin's coverage? 

P.S.--I should have offered a quick take on Massarotti. While I found his post-Tomasegate column baffling, I tend to like his stuff when I read it--and when I interviewed him for a sports bloggers v. MSM sports reporters piece a few weeks back, he struck me as a smart, thoughtful guy. As for Chad Finn, he's obviously landed himself a terrific job. 

*NOTE: I originally omitted the beginning and end of Sullivan's memo because I didn't have them, but now the first and last grafs have been added. Let the record show that Sullivan is not a weirdly brusque email writer. 

A strong case can be made for today's effort. First, there's the "Crockefeller" headline, which is just perfect. Then there's the main image. At first, it seems attention-grabbing but somewhat random. Then, though, you read the caption and understand: here's an actual photo of "Clark Rockefeller" acting--which he's been doing his entire life.

Throw in the "Kerry and the Cuties" plug, and the Herald has itself a real doozy. Kudos.

Granted, my look at coverage of Jim Marzilli and mental illness in general is no longer "hot off the presses." But it was fairly recently! So please: take a look if you haven't already.

In a post yesterday, I implied that the Boston Globe was the first to report the Herald's big upcoming wave of layoffs. In fact, the Boston Business Journal got there first--last Friday, to be precise. My apologies.

On the April 25 installment of Beat the Press, in a segment on recent departures from the Boston Globe, ex-Globie Mike Barnicle had some harsh words for the New York Times Co., which owns the paper. He described the Times Co. as "journalistic car strippers." And he accused the Times Co. of turning the Globe into "the Herald with more people."

You might think that the Herald--which occasionally publishes Barnicle's work--would take umbrage at this description, which is pretty clearly predicated on the idea that the Herald sucks. And maybe the Herald brain trust did. Still, Barnicle is back in the paper today, offering his thoughts on Ted Kennedy's grim diagnosis.

On another Herald-Kennedy note: given today's boosterish Herald cover, and the paper's uncharacteristic efforts (scroll down) to weed out offensive reader comments posted online, it'll be interesting to see what--if anything--noted Kennedy hater Howie Carr says about the senator in his next column. 

As Dan Kennedy notes, today's much-aniticipated apology/explanation from John Tomase totally avoids the role Tomase's editors played in getting his bogus-Patriots-videotaping story into print. So I asked Herald editor Kevin Convey, who's usually pretty forthcoming, if he could discuss that subject.

"I'm going to take a rare pass," Convey said. "The reason is, I kind of feel like we've said much more about what was done [pre-publication] than any newspaper has. It doesn't do any good to us to go any further into our deliberations or anything else."

Now, there's no question that the Herald (and Tomase, and Convey) have emphatically accepted responsibility for the story. But--to cite a recent example involving much higher stakes--the New York Times did discuss editorial culpability when it critiqued its pre-Iraq War coverage back in 2004. Here's how the paper addressed the topic:

Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on individual reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that the problem was more complicated. Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper.

Given the billing Tomase's story got on today's Herald front page, this reticence is disappointing. Remember, though, that any discussion of editorial oversight could pose legal risks for the paper, especially if that oversight was sorely lacking.

What's more, the lack of backroom detail may also be smart management. Right now, public ire is focused on Tomase. A broader admission of culpability within the Herald newsroom (which could include sports editor Hank Hryniewicz and Convey himself) might make Tomase's situation a bit more bearable. But it could also demoralize a bare-bones staff that must already be extremely dispirited.