Asks a Media Log reader:

Don't you think it's odd (and noteworthy) that the NY Times has not written one word on the Abe Foxman mess over the Armenian slaughter? It's about 10 days old and the Times has not seen fit to cover a story that's involved the govt [sic] of Turkey and one of the most prominent Jewish leaders in the US.

That does seem strange--and it's not just the Times: the Washington Post seems to have ignored the story as well.

Having said that, I'd add that the Globe's coverage of the issue was excellent, and that the Globe is part of the New York Times Company. (By "issue," I mean 1. Watertown's exit from the ADL-sponsored "No Place for Hate" program over the ADL's refusal to label Turkey's early-20th c. slaughter of Armenians "genocide"; 2. the firing of New England ADL head Andrew Tarsy, who criticized the ADL's position, and subsequent pushback by Boston-area Jewish leaders; and 3. subsequent reversal [or almost-reversal] by national ADL director Abraham Foxman.) But the Globe isn't America's paper of record. The Times is.

It's possible that the Times (and the Post) are leery of playing up a development which, as the Jewish Press reported today, has already strained Israel's strategically vital relationship with Turkey. But concern for Israel's well-being needn't preclude critical reporting on the Armenian-genocide debate, as this excellent New Republic piece recently demonstrated. The Boston ADL revolt and its aftershocks are a major national and international story; the Times ought to treat it as such.

8/29/2007 2:57:36 PM by Adam Reilly | Comments [2] |  

From "The Politics of God," Mark Lilla's lead story in today's NY Times Magazine, which posits a sort of Clash of Religions Civilizations separating the West from the Islamic world:

Though we have our own fundamentalists, we find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still stir up messianic passions, leaving societies in ruin. We had assumed this was no longer possible, that human beings had learned to separate religious questions from political ones....

Islamists, even if they are learned professionals, appear to us primarily as frustrated, irrational representatives of frustrated, irrational societies, nothing more. We live, so to speak, on the other shore. When we observe those on the opposite bank, we are puzzled, since we have only a distant memory of what it was like to think as they do. We all face the same questions of political existence, yet their way of answering them has become alien to us. On one shore, political institutions are conceived in terms of divine authority and spiritual redemption; on the other they are not. And that, as Robert Frost might have put it, makes all the difference. [emph. added]

From President George W. Bush's State of the Union Speech on January 28, 2003, roughly two months before the invasion of Iraq:

Americans are a resolute people who have risen to every test of our time. Adversity has revealed the character of our country, to the world and to ourselves. America is a strong nation, and honorable in the use of our strength. We exercise power without conquest, and we sacrifice for the liberty of strangers.

Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity.

We Americans have faith in ourselves, but not in ourselves alone. We do not know -- we do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history. [emph. added]

May He guide us now. And may God continue to bless the United States of America.

Lilla's book--The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics and the Modern West--comes out next month. Perhaps there's still time for some pre-publication tweaks?

8/19/2007 12:41:17 PM by Adam Reilly | Comments [1] |  

From today's Globe report on a foot-fetishist currently running amok in Cambridge:

Yoga instructor Annie Carter, 27, showed the stranger who complained of foot pain a few stretches when he wandered into her studio last Friday afternoon. But after he snatched her sock off, focused his cellphone camera on her toes, and tried to hug and kiss her neck she shoved him out the door....

In [an] April incident...a man wandered into Neena's Lighting on John F. Kennedy Street asking for a "foot light." He took off his shoe and pointed to his foot. When she did the same, he began to massage her foot, a police report said. He made a sexual remark and then moved toward her...

"Talk about a foot fetish," said [store employee Mika] Nakafuji.... "Who does that kind of thing?"

One possible answer: somebody who has their own laminated copy of the Globe's July 5 story on women who like their shoes way more than they should. (That's my description; Globe staffer Christopher Muther didn't pass judgment.) From Muther's article:

"Is this the Shoe Club?" asks Michelle Wilder as she strolls into the room in a pair of gravity-defying wedges, complete with matching red blouse....

In one corner sits 23-year-old Alyson McEleney of Brookline. Her leg has been in a cast for five months, but the cast was recently removed, and this is the first night she has been able to wear heels. Technically, she really shouldn't be in heels yet, but because it's Shoe Club night, she's ignoring doctors' orders for the sake of fashion and camaraderie.

Shelley Hachman, wearing faux snake Anne Klein pumps, is telling the story about how the Shoe Club helped her through a difficult patch in her life last winter. Both she and her husband thought they had lost their jobs. Hachman, a Billerica mother and shoe fanatic, was devastated and feeling hopeless. Then she heard about the Shoe Club.

"It was like a sign from God," she says....

Oh yeah--here's the online photo gallery that accompanied Muther's piece. And here's the photo that ran in the paper:

8/17/2007 10:10:05 AM by Adam Reilly | Comments [2] |  

Pretty much everyone who writes a lot develops little tics--patterns you fall into when you're being lazy or just not thinking. Ideally, you realize what your tics are and try to avoid them when possible.

And if you don't? Well, you end up like Herald columnist Joe Fitzgerald--who, according to Boston magazine's Joe Keohane, has a troubling tendency toward hero worship. Explains Keohane, writing on BoMag's shiny new blog:

Fitz’s column yesterday—titled "The counsel of heroes stays with you for a lifetime"—did it again. We thought this called for a two-year retrospective. Here then, is Fitz’s Hall of Heroes:

8/20/05: “Millie was a hero to a lot of people.”

9/7/05: “Tom Reilly has a chance to be a hero to a lot of disenfranchised people, and all it would require is for him to do the right thing.”

10/8/2005: “More than a few of them, he was told, came to regard him as a personal hero. ‘It’s interesting you use the word hero,’ he said. ‘I believe one of the things young people still need is heroes, and frankly I’m not sure some of the heroes they’re looking at today are going to be the true heroes of their future, the ones they’re going to want to thank when they look back years from now.’”

12/7/05: “Two Boston homicide detectives had called on his behalf, asking if he could meet his hero, Reggie Lewis, the late Celtics star.”

1/16/06: “If you want a crash course in what made [ML] King a personal hero at this address, read Taylor Branch’s ‘Parting The Waters,’ a breathtaking biography.”

1/23/06: “That column was followed by a piece on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a personal hero at this address.”...

If you're a Joe Fitz connisseur, Keohane provides many, many more examples.

8/16/2007 10:39:19 AM by Adam Reilly | Comments [2] |  

Over at Slate, Christopher Hitchens has only nasty things to say about those of us who keep harping on the difference between Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda in Iraq.

As the title of his piece suggests, Hitchens thinks we're trafficking in "foolish myths." But that term could be applied to his own critique. If I've cut through Hitchens' verbiosity correctly--and I'm not entirely sure I have--this is his gist: if you harp on AQ-AQI distinctions, you are, basically, a defeatist who A) thinks it's generally pointless to fight terrorist organizations and B) doesn't fully recognize just how nasty AQI is.

Allow me to propose a third option, Chris: you could also C) dislike the fact that the Bush Administration routinely conflates the two groups in an attempt to rewrite history and paint the Iraq War as a logical and necessary response to September 11. Consider this chestnut from the president's July 10 speech in Cleveland, uttered in reference to the ongoing carnage in Iraq:

The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is the crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims, trying to stop the advance of a system based upon liberty.

Even if that were true today--and the president himself has acknowledged it's not--it wasn't then.

When Hitchens' outrage is justified, I'm a big fan. This isn't one of those times.

8/14/2007 3:51:41 PM by Adam Reilly | Comments [0] |  

Fascinating journalism scandal brewing at the Orange County Register. Here's the Cliffs Notes version:

--Last week, Orange County Register front-page editor CP Smith was caught on camera picking his nose while Register reporter John Gittelsohn gave an interview to KOCE, the local PBS affiliate.

--Kevin Roderick of LA Observed interpreted the nose-pick as a kind of guerilla protest ("running layoffs [are] hacking at morale," he wrote, adding that Smith recently applied for a buyout). He also obtained a memo from KOCE news director Michael Taylor in which Taylor accuses Smith of repeatedly misbehaving when the KOCE cameras are rolling.

--Top Register editor Ken Brusic then writes his own memo asserting that Smith's pick was misconstrued and accusing the misconstruers of bad journalism. ("Somehow in this fast-moving post-it-now and move-on world, some people forgot to check the facts. They didn't ask the person involved for his side of the story. And someone was hurt.")

Brusic may be right, but I wonder. Take a look at this screen grab:




Then consider this background detail from Taylor's memo:

I've spoken with Register Broadcast Engineer Don Nebel about this individual. Don has stated that when the lights for the camera go on and we begin interview segments, this individual makes it a point to be loud, disruptive, and perform antics for the camera. Don has "waived him off" on numerous occasions, however he continues to disrupt our segments and has now escalated his attempts to embarrass both KOCE and the Register.

Then consider Taylor's description of the event in question:

During an interview... another Register employee walked over to the interview area, intentionally stood behind John, faced the camera, picked his nose, and wiped it on his shirt. [emph. added]

A bit fishy, that. [Via Romenesko]

8/13/2007 11:28:54 AM by Adam Reilly | Comments [2] |  

Click on this link to get there.

8/9/2007 7:57:16 AM by Adam Reilly | Comments [0] |  

Barring some kind of weird falling out between Pat Purcell and National Development, it looks like the Boston Herald is going to ditch its Harrison Ave. digs sometime in the next six years. (Here's the Herald's write-up; here's the Globe's.)

Obviously, this raises the question: by the time the paper relocates and sundry staffing changes play out, what's the paper going to look like?

Based on what's admittedly a minimum of information--today's stories on the impending move, reporter Jessica Fargen's reassignment to a web-focused reporting position, the prospect of Murdoch's Dow Jones printing the Herald in Chicopee--here are my reckless predictions.

1. The paper's reporters will be based in Boston, but the rest of the operation--HR, the Web side, advertising, printing--will be relegated to a cheaper suburb or suburbs.

2. The Herald's printed product will be smaller than it is today. It'll also be free, and delivered to targeted areas of Boston, a la the San Francisco Examiner--something Dan Kennedy suggested two years ago.

3. The print Herald will also be handed out in large numbers to T and commuter-rail riders.

4. BostonHerald.com will become a 24-hour news operation, a la LATimes.com, rather than an online delivery mechanism for the paper, thereby giving the paper (or "paper") a chance to beat the Globe on a regular basis.

 Any other ideas?

8/8/2007 2:53:33 PM by Adam Reilly | Comments [0] |  

First the bad news: the Weekly World News is folding at the end of this month.

Now the good: this homage by Washington Post writer Peter Carlson is the best send-off imaginable. A sampling:

The most creative newspaper in American history, the Weekly World News broke the story that Elvis faked his death and was living in Kalamazoo, Mich. It also broke the story that the lost continent of Atlantis was found near Buffalo. And the story that Hillary Clinton was having a love affair with P'lod, an alien with a foot-long tongue. And countless other incredible scoops.

None of these stories was, in a strictly technical sense, true, which explains why the Weekly World News never won a Pulitzer Prize. But in its glorious heyday in the late 1980s, the supermarket tabloid amazed and amused a million readers a week.

But that was then. Now, with circulation plunging below 90,000, American Media, which owns WWN, has pulled the plug. The Aug. 27 issue will be the last. After that, the Weekly World News will be as dead as Elvis, maybe deader.

WWN's cult followers are mad. How mad? Almost as mad as Ed Anger, WWN's perpetually enraged right-wing nut-job columnist. Anger started every column by announcing exactly how angry he was. "I'm madder than Batman with a run in his tights." Or: "I'm madder than a gay football hero on a date with the homecoming queen." Or his favorite: "I'm pig-biting mad."

"I'm pig-biting mad at the demise of Weekly World News," says Joe Garden, features editor of the Onion, a satirical newspaper much influenced by WWN. "They really knew how to take hold of a premise and go as far as humanly possible with it. It was beautiful."

Adieu, WWN. And thanks for making long supermarket lines a lot more bearable.

8/7/2007 4:27:12 PM by Adam Reilly | Comments [1] |  

While catching up on my Universal Hub reading, I found an astute Aug. 3 post by blogger Steve Garfield, who notes that Boston's paper of record will print the word "penis" but not the word "dick."

Now, it just so happens that I was struck by another (albeit less complex) case of Globe prudery this weekend. It came in the Ideas section, in a review of Plain Secrets: An Outsider Among the Amish, by Joe Mackall. The Globe editor(s) didn't take issue with anything reviewer Todd Montgomery-Fate had to say; instead, the problem was language used by Mackall himself. From the review:

In one section Mackall describes a buggy ride with Samuel on a hot July day to a nearby Home Depot to pick up supplies. It takes them 90 minutes to go 10 miles. Mackall is uneasy as the cars roar by: "We roll along at five miles per hour when the horses are walking, ten to twelve when they begin a trot. . . . The rush and power of the cars flying by frightens me and, quite frankly, [infuriates me]. Although I have done it thousands of times myself, I'm angry that people out here pass buggies like they're not even there, ignoring the danger and frightening the horses. [Emph. added]

Now, "[infuriates me]" could be a replacement for "chaps my hide," "busts my hump," "drives me fucking crazy," etc. But my best guess is that it's a stand-in for "pisses me off"--which really doesn't seem all that shocking, even for a family newspaper.

So, readers: are there any other phrases that Morrissey Boulevard has deemed too risque? (Please keep your responses fact-based, natch.)

8/6/2007 4:56:52 PM by Adam Reilly | Comments [3] |  

This is very odd: Cynthia Tucker, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's editorial-page editor, says the paper shouldn't worry about whether letters it publishes are factually accurate.

Here's Tucker's explanation, which comes in a piece by public editor Angela Tuck:

Editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker once believed all letters should be factually accurate, but now she's more likely to let readers have their say and let others decide whether the letter writer is indeed stating facts.

"I believe there is such a thing as an objective truth, but a lot of readers have an objective truth that differs from mine," she said. [emph. added]

"We live in such a politically polarized age that not everybody agrees on the facts. My letters policy tends to be a bit looser than those of some other editorial page editors. I believe as long as they are willing to sign their names to it, and it's not violent or libelous, we should print them."

Tucker says the AJC has printed many letters from readers insisting that PeachCare has run out of money because so many illegal immigrants are on the rolls. "That's not true, but if we don't print those letters, those readers will believe we're biased," she said. [emph. added]

In other words: Tucker is willing to print assertions she knows are untrue because she doesn't want people to accuse her or the ed page of being liberal.

That's depressing stuff.

8/6/2007 3:56:39 PM by Adam Reilly | Comments [0] |  

This is where it's at.

8/2/2007 4:56:09 PM by Adam Reilly | Comments [1] |  

The Minneapolis bridge collapse was on the front page of today's Globe, Herald, Times, and Boston Metro. It's also the top story on every national-news outlet--which made Boston Now's failure to write anything about the event especially striking. For the record, here's today's Boston Now's cover; it'd be a good front page on most days, but not this one:



In light of today's ommission, editor John Wilpers says, B-Now will be making some big changes.

"It was a deadline issue--we have an early 7:30 pm deadline," Wilpers explains. "We are now going to replate both the front page and the nation page. What we're going to be doing in the future is monitoring the news through the evening, up until about 11, so if something like this happens we can actually change the pages from home-put up the story, put up photos, change the front page.... This won't happen again."

Nor should it. Ceding huge late-breaking stories to Metro is no way to win a newspaper war.

8/2/2007 3:41:09 PM by Adam Reilly | Comments [2] |  

Yesterday, I argued that there was no hard evidence that Boston's reputation for racism had given new Celtic Kevin Garnett pause  about accepting a trade from Minnesota.

In today's Globe, basketball writer Shira Springer quotes Garnett on the subject of race relations in Boston:

In the most serious moment of his interview, Garnett answered a question about the "racial climate" of Boston, which has been considered inhospitable to black athletes but now boasts several major black sports figures.

"I think it's an old cliché that's going to soon disappear, if it's not evaporating as we speak," said Garnett. "The proof is in the pudding. People say a lot of things, but to experience something is totally different. Antoine [Walker] didn't have to tell me all the good things that he had to tell me about the city. I think he was very honest along with Gary Payton, brutally honest about fans and the people here. Racism is universal . . . I haven't experienced it. I'm from the South. Things happen down there. It shouldn't be what Boston is known for. It should be these fans and their love, so I'm embracing that."

Interesting stuff, but ambiguous. If the "question about the 'racial climate' of Boston" was: Did you ask about Boston's reputation for racism before accepting a trade?, then Garnett's answer suggests the subject was very much part of his deliberations. If it was: What do you think of Boston's racial climate?, then I'd say that's not the case.

8/2/2007 12:54:18 PM by Adam Reilly | Comments [1] |  

Around 8:30 this morning, some guy whose name I didn't catch called up WEEI to bitch about the Celtics' acquisition of Kevin Garnett. One of his big complaints--I'm paraphrasing--was that, during yesterday's press conference, Garnett said he'd warmed to coming to Boston after asking a few other players (Antoine Walker, Gary Payton) about the city's racist reputation.

In fact, Garnett didn't say this. He did say he'd asked Walker and Payton about the city. But this was a secondary part of his explanation for why, after balking at a trade to the Celtics before the NBA draft, he'd eventually changed his mind. One  big reason, Garnett said, was dissatisfaction with the Minnesota Timberwolves' front office, which 1. had a vision for the team's future that he couldn't agree with and 2. hadn't reciprocated his loyalty to the team. Another big reason: the C's draft-day acquisition of Ray Allen.

Unfortunately, the 'EEI hosts didn't set the caller straight--and the myth of Kevin Garnett's dislike or distrust of (white) Boston continues to grow.

It's time to squash this. As far as I can tell, the idea that Garnett didn't want to come to Boston becuase of the city's racial history was first advanced by Washington Post sportswriter Michael Wilbon. Here's how TrueHoop's Kevin Arnovitz explained it earlier this month: "When Kevin Garnett announced that he wanted no part of a trade to the C's, Michael Wilbon speculated on Dan Patrick's ESPNRadio show that Boston's history might have played a part in Garnett's position." Wilbon also offered his take on Boston and race in a WashingtonPost.com online chat; here's a sample:

A great, great many of us -- black folks -- have had openly hostile and unpleasant experiences in greater Boston. I'm talking even physical confrontations. I've been called "Nigger" to my face in Boston Garden on two occasions, openly and publicly and to no great objection by the people sitting nearby...I can talk to just about any black person who spent time in Boston through the 1990s and get similar stories...So I'm not going into any more anecdotes. I have hundreds. Having said that, I've been in greater Boston recently and noticed what I feel is a huge change...

The Herald's Steve Bulpett subsequently asked Celtics coach Doc Rivers about Wilbon's claims. Rivers rejected them.

Fast forward to this past Monday, when Herald columnist Gerry Callahan, in a piece on Garnett's arrival in Boston, reminded readers of Wilbon's comments. Quoth Callahan:

In the past month, someone convinced Garnett that teaming up with Pierce and Allen would be his best chance to make his first trip to the NBA Finals. In June, Garnett's agent said it wasn't going to happen and Michael Wilbon of ESPN's PTI said it was because of the racial climate in this city.

Who says we're not making great strides in that department? A little more than a month later and Garnett is ready to sing along with the Standells and call Boston his home. Maybe Wilbon can fall on the fact that the Celts traded away everyone but Brian Scalabrine....

Just think, Kevin Garnett on Friday and Saturday nights; Randy Moss on Sundays. It's too bad our racial climate is so lousy. We might have been able to attract some athletes to this town.

Two things stand out here. First, in reiterating Wilbon's speculation to refute it, Callahan also links Garnett to Wilbon's arguments. Second, if any black athletes are reluctant to come to Boston, Callahan himself may be partly to blame.

Here's the bottom line: Garnett shouldn't be held responsible for Wilbon's commentary/speculation. And the local media has a responsibility to keep that from happening.

8/1/2007 10:55:57 AM by Adam Reilly | Comments [2] |