July 23, 2008
No, this doesn't mean that John Tomase is leaving the Herald. But according to Herald sports editor Hank Hryniewicz, Tomase probably is leaving the Patriots beat.
"That posting is for Rob Bradford's spot," Hryniewicz tells the Phoenix. "I reserve the right to change my mind, of course, but the best guy I see out there to replace Rob on the Red Sox beat is John Tomase.
"John Tomase's still a valued member of the staff here," he adds. "We're just trying to use our people in the best possible place, where they can be more effective. And looking at what's out there, it's most reasonable to replace Bradford with someone of John Tomase's caliber."
If covering the Sox is your dream job, this might seem unfair: Tomase breaks a huge story that turns out to be factually false, then gets rewarded with what might be an even better job. Still, it strikes as a smart move on the Herald's part. His big gaffe notwithstanding, Tomase is a talent--but he wasn't going to be able to cover the Patriots effectively anymore. This way, Tomase gets something of a fresh start. And he's rewarded for his willingness to serve as the Herald's Spygate scapegoat, rather than blaming his editors or the Herald's editorial processes for the story in question.
Best of luck to Tomase in his new gig. Between his unfortunate claim to fame and the general rabidity of Red Sox fans, he'll need it.
July 21, 2008
First off--and by way of a disclaimer--let me say that I'm usually a big Boston.com fan. I think the site's well-presented, and getting more so; I'm a frequent reader; and the Big Picture blog, about which I'll be writing later this week, is just outstanding.
All that said, this Boston.com feature--"Where in the world are the sexiest people?"--is a total hoot. Based on two separate lists of sexy males and females drawn from Matador Nights, the Boston.com write-up does three things. It explains where the sexy people are. It explains why they're sexy. And then, for good measure, it offers examples of sexy individuals from the places in question.
By way of example, I give you the men of Manila.
Here's the explanation: "If you're looking for some old-fashioned romance, the men of Manila, Philippines, are as sexy as they get."
And here's a glimpse of Manila's special brand of sexiness:
Also recommended: the women of Seoul ("Seoul style is singular and unique and shows the East Asian beauty"); the women of Tokyo ("With big beautiful eyes, sleek raven hair, and legs to die for, Japanese women from Tokoyo make the list"); and the men of London ("While Londoners are often perceived as cocky, stuffy and just plain
unromantic, lads from London prove the stereotypes wrong with their
witty jokes").
One more thing, just by way of an FYI: Matador Nights' original write-up of the world's sexiest ladies came from this guy:
Viva the Web! And let's hope that the absurdist humor of Boston.com's rewrite is totally intentional.
July 18, 2008
And the winner is...Republican congressional candidate Nathan Bech, for comedically misrepresenting the comments of his opponent, Democrat John Olver, in a press release titled "Olver to Citizens Facing Cold Winter: Stop Whining."
Check out the first two paragraphs, and you'll see what I mean:
Congressional candidate Nathan Bech (R-West Springfield) criticized Rep. John Olver (D-Amherst) for the incumbent's recent comments on energy. In a June 25th floor speech before the House, Olver blamed his constituents for the high price of gas. "For America, the only certain solution to the high price of gasoline is to reduce the consumption of gasoline. We can drive slower. We can drive less. We can carpool. We can use public transportation when it's possible. We can develop 'work from home' wherever and whenever that's feasible as an option. We must start pursuing all of these strategies immediately."
Bech lambasted Olver for his comments, saying "John Olver has finally admitted that he has no solution to the energy crisis. In his world, citizens stop going to work, farmers ride a bus through the fields, and the elderly pedal bikes to the doctor." [emph. added]
What really impresses me about this crappy spin--beyond that bit about the old folks biking to their check-ups--is that it's crappy on two levels. First, Bech's gloss on Olver is just flat-out wrong. Second, the press release highlights this fact by putting Olver's quote and Bech's rebuttal side by side for easy comparison.
Take a bow, Nathan Bech!
July 15, 2008
Just ask Alex Beam's son.
(ADDENDUM: one DQM reader apparently thought that the above motorist is actually Christopher Beam. It is not. As the title of this post and the link provided herein suggest, the photo is a metaphor.)
July 14, 2008
Remember AP reporter Glen Johnson's showdown with Mitt Romney?
At the time, I assumed that Johnson went off on Romney because he was 1) tired and/or in a bad mood and 2) fed up with Romney's shtick. But after reading this fascinating Politico piece on the AP's ongoing re-invention, and the role Washington Bureau chief Ron Fournier is playing therein, I'm not so sure.
With Fournier leading the charge, writes Michael Calderone (via Romenesko), the AP is
scrapping the stonefaced approach to journalism that accepts politicians’ statements at face value and offers equal treatment to all sides of an argument. Instead, reporters are encouraged to throw away the weasel words and call it like they see it when they think public officials have revealed themselves as phonies or flip-floppers. [emph. added]
Whether you loved or hated what Johnson did, he was certainly calling it like he saw it. This could explain why Johnson acted as he did, and why neither he nor the AP ever publicly apologized to Mitt.
July 14, 2008
A couple staffing changes worth noting over at Morrissey Boulevard: First, the paper has hired Jenifer McKim to take over the residential real-estate beat previously covered by Binyamin Appelbaum. McKim is currently a Nieman Fellow at Harvard; she previously worked at the Orange County Register, where she led an investigation into lead-tainted Mexican candy that was up for a Pulitzer in 2005.
Second, photographer Dominic Chavez is leaving the paper to work on several book projects related to global public health. Chavez has worked on a number of big stories for the Globe, including September 11 and its aftermath, the Iraq War, the drug war in Central America, and AIDS in Africa. (You can see his work here and here.)
When I asked Chavez if his departure stems from the Globe's diminished foreign presence, he said no. "The Globe has been a family to me, and I've been very proud to wear this badge of honor around," he said. "And I've loved being a photojournalist. But I've been doing global health for at least 15 years, and every year when I take a vacation, I do some sort of global health-related project.... For me, being a journalist comes down to one word: responsibility. And over the years, global health has just touched me in a different spot. So why not focus on the passion and step up to the plate and be responsible?"
July 10, 2008
As you may have noticed, today's Herald cover story whacks
MBTA general manager Dan Grabauskas for commuting to work in an
SUV--one that's T-owned!--even as the T urges people to ditch their
cars for public transit:
Now, I understand that there's an enticing hypocrisy angle here--especially for a scrappy tabloid. Still, Grabauskas's decision to commute via SUV really isn't much of a scoop. Here, for example, is a quote from a January '06 Globe magazine story on the commuter-rail system:
Even Grabauskas, the MBTA's general manager who lives in Ipswich, a
town served by commuter rail, usually drives to work. "Where I live in
town is right off the highway," he says, "and my schedule is erratic
enough that it tends not to be convenient for me."
And here's a description of Grabauskas's commuting habits from a '06 CommonWealth magazine profile of Grabauskas:
Grabauskas rides the T to get around town for meetings and events, but
it’s not how he gets to work. He drives every morning to the
Transportation Building, in Park Square, from the home in Ipswich he
shares with his partner, Paul Keenan, a Harvard University associate
dean. “I live about as far from the Ipswich [commuter rail] station as
you can get,” Grabauskas says. In addition, his 12-to-13-hour workdays
don’t fit well with a train schedule, he says. But before moving to the
North Shore in 1997, he says, he commuted to Boston from Arlington by
bus and Red Line for about 10 years.
The question then becomes: is Grabauskas's continued use of the T noteworthy? Maybe a little, since the T has ramped up its ditch-your-car rhetoric of late. But putting it on the cover seems excessive. Also, while I admire the hustle displayed by Herald reporter Hillary Chabot and Herald photographer Mike Adaskaveg--who've apparently been staking out Grabauskas for seven weeks (!) to document his T non-ridership--I'm guessing that a simple phone call to Grabauskas's office would have sufficed.
July 09, 2008
In which I argue that Globe management's proposed ten-percent wage cut for union employees just might happen. Plus, I take a look at HBO's new Iraq-war miniseries, Generation Kill.
One correction to the Globe piece: I wrote, incorrectly, that Dan Totten--president of the Boston Newspaper Guild, the Globe's largest union--works in travel advertising at the paper. Totten worked in travel advertising until 2005; now he's a full-time union head.
July 09, 2008
Yesterday at Media Nation, my friend and former colleague Dan Kennedy argued that the Beverly Citizen erred in posting video footage of the Beverly Horribles parade, which contained some pretty off-color references to the ongoing Gloucester teen-pregnancy story. (By "pretty off-color references," I mean, among other things, a giant squirting penis and signs reading "G.H.S. girls went to band camps/came back pregnant tramps" and "She smelled like tuna/I shoulda pulled out sooner.") Here's the video in question; things get interesting around 2:20:
As Dan notes, the Citizen's written coverage of the parade was rather restrained. (In a news story, the giant squirting penis was described "as large, realistically shaped phallic symbol spraying water from the front of a truck"; in a blog post, Citizen editor Dan MacAlpine said he wouldn't get into describing the signs, calling them "lewd at best.") This restraint is the basis for Dan's argument that the Citizen shouldn't have posted the video:
Look, it happened. Hundreds of people saw it. Hundreds more heard about
it. There's no sense in pretending otherwise. But if they didn't think
they should quote from the signs, then they shouldn't have showed them
in the video. As for the penis — well, let just say I think the written
description was sufficient.
I disagree. The video should be our basis for saying whether the Citizen's written coverage was appropriate, not the other way around. The video, after all, is the rawest, most objective representation of what happened in Beverly this past weekend. And if the good people of Beverly really want to ponder what some of their neighbors did in the Horribles parade, they need all the information they can get. An argument can definitely be made that the Citizen's written coverage was too prudish. But if it was, the posting of the video was a much-needed corrective.
(Quick disclosure: the Citizen is now owned by GateHouse Media, which purchased Community Newspaper Company in 2006. When the Citizen and CNC were owned by Pat Purcell, I worked at another CNC paper, and know MacAlpine slightly.)
July 01, 2008
Yesterday in this space, I praised the Washington Post's story on misinformation circulating about Barack Obama in Findlay, Ohio. But the Findlay Courier didn't like the story one bit. Here, via Romenesko, is the heart of the paper's editorial on the subject:
[Reporter Eli] Saslow crafted a picture of credulous,
rumor-swallowing bigots, even though several of his interviewees said
they just weren't sure what to believe.
In what's perhaps the
most offensive sentence in this entirely offensive story, Saslow wrote:
"When people on College Street started hearing rumors about Obama — who
looked different from other politicians and often talked about change —
they easily believed the nasty stories about an outsider."
But
nobody he quoted said anything about Obama's race or appearance. Nobody
mentioned his calls for change. And Don LeMaster's comment a couple
paragraphs later is a strong indication that he doesn't "easily
believe" whatever he hears. He said, "(Obama's) a good speaker, but
you've got to dig deeper than that for the truth. Politicians tell you
anything. You have to look beyond the surface, and then there are some
real lies."
To us, that's a fairly rational viewpoint, but not to the Post.
So: are the good people of Findlay just a bunch of healthily skeptical "heartland" voters who've been wronged by the elite liberal media?
Not quite. Here, for example, is the sentence after the sentence pegged by the Findlay Courier as "most offensive":
"I think Obama would be a disaster, and there's a lot of reasons," said [Leroy]
Pollard, explaining the rumors he had heard about the candidate from
friends he goes camping with. "I understand he's from Africa, and that
the first thing he's going to do if he gets into office is bring his
family over here, illegally. He's got that racist [pastor] who
practically raised him, and then there's the Muslim thing. He's just
not presidential material, if you ask me."
Note that, contrary to what the Findlay Courier is claiming, Pollard does say something about Obama's "race or appearance." Namely, he says Obama's from Africa, and will kick off his presidency by illegally importing his African family into the U.S.
Note, too, that Pollard makes one point that stands up to scrutiny--i.e., his description of Obama's now-former pastor as racist. The rest (with the exception of the "presidential material" assessment, which is open for debate) is bunk.
Along those same lines, consider this:
Does [Jim Peterman] trust a local newspaper article that details Obama's
Christian faith? Or his friend Leroy Pollard, a devoted family man so
convinced Obama is a radical Muslim that he threatened to stop talking
to his daughter when he heard she might vote for him?
"I'll admit
that I probably don't follow all of the election news like maybe I
should," Peterman said. "I haven't read his books or studied up more
than a little bit. But it's hard to ignore what you hear when everybody
you know is saying it. These are good people, smart people, so can they
really all be wrong?....
"I don't know. The whole thing just scares me," Peterman said. "I'm
almost starting to feel like the best choice is not voting at all."
And this:
Said Jeanette Collins, a 77-year-old who lives across the street: "All
I know for sure about Obama is that we're not ready for him."
And this:
[T]hose who have pushed the truth in Findlay have been rewarded with
little that resembles progress. Gerri Kish, a 66-year-old born in
Hawaii, read both of Obama's autobiographies. She has close friends,
she said, who still refuse to believe her when she swears Obama is
Christian. Then she hands them the books, and they refuse to read them.
The Findlay Courier editorial closes with a request for an apology and a rewrite from reporter Eli Saslow. But unless Saslow fabricated quotes or anecdotes, he's got nothing to apologize for.
June 30, 2008
I once got the following advice from a Globie: Every now and then, when it's warranted, point out something the paper's done well--and leave it at that. No asterisks, disclaimers, snide asides, etc.
Binyamin Appelbaum's* troubling examination of the housing projects in Barack Obama's former Illinois state senate district, and of Obama's relationships with the developers who've renovated and operated those projects, certainly deserved this treatment. But I didn't laud it when it ran last week--and now, unfortunately, there is a big fat asterisk. According to sources inside the Globe, Appelbaum (who still qualifies as a recent Globe hire) is leaving the paper for the Washington Post.
One Globe staffer who spoke with DQM linked Appelbaum's departure to the Globe's worrisome financial arc. A second disagreed, saying that the Post has had its eye on Appelbaum ever since his coverage of sketchy homebuilder Beazer Homes USA garnered the Charlotte Observer a Polk Award and a Pulitzer-finalist slot. I tried to reach Appelbaum earlier today, but haven't heard back; if I do, and if he's willing to discuss the reasons for his departure, I'll post them here.
UPDATE: "I've accepted a position as the Post's national banking reporter," Appelbaum says via email. "It's an exciting opportunity for me, not a reflection on the Globe. I am in journalism largely because I grew up reading the Globe, and I continue to be inspired by the journalism produced here."
* Not "Applebaum," as I originally (and incorrectly) wrote.
June 30, 2008
Read this excellent but depressing offering from the Washington Post's Eli Saslow, and then try answering that question.
Three years ago, Post columnist E.J. Dionne noted, quite astutely, that the same conservatives who love to attack postmodernism are co-opting it for their political ends. If McCain beats Obama this fall, it'll be conservative postmodernism's biggest triumph yet.
June 26, 2008
Seriously, have you read McClatchy's big expose on post-9/11 detainees? Because you really should.
June 25, 2008
Maybe you thought Barack Obama's fake presidential seal was just a stupid gaffe, kind of like Mitt Romney's podium screw-up back in 2006. But no! It's much, much more than that. Mickey Kaus, take it away:
[T]he faux seal was a disaster not just for the reason
I gave (that it suggested Obama is "stuck up"). It also carried this
counterproductive connotation: that there is a separate Obama Nation,
grown up in opposition to Bush's nation. Obama Nation has its own
insignia and its own reality. It is somewhat alarmingly devoted to its
leader. And this blue tribe is about to completely conquer the current ruling red tribe. ... Voters didn't much like this kind of revolutionary swagger in the 1960s. They may not like it now.
Whoa.
Even without the Dylan link, that's some wild shit.
June 25, 2008
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.