ADAM REILLY

The good soldier

ADAM REILLY — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:45:20 GMT

In Minnesota, Mitt keeps the faith
It can’t be easy being Mitt Romney nowadays.

It's all okay with Mitt, even though he’s been upstaged by a sportscaster turned one-term governor.

BLOOMINGTON, MN — It can’t be easy being Mitt Romney nowadays. Imagine: you find your place in the Republican firmament, make a serious run at the GOP’s presidential nomination, earn frequent mention as a possible running mate for John McCain — and then watch as McCain picks an obscure, untested, deeply flawed hockey-mom-cum-Alaska-secessionist for the job.

Maybe, deep down inside, our former Massachusetts governor rages at the injustice of it all. But rather than retreating to Belmont to lick his wounds, Romney is here in Minnesota for the Republican National Convention, doing his darndest to get McCain and Sarah Palin elected in November. Speaking to the Massachusetts GOP delegation over brunch on Tuesday, Romney offered some insight into how he does it.

“When you lose an election, lose the nomination, if you think the election is just about the person — one person — then of course you have sour grapes,” Romney said. “You don’t get involved with the new person. But if you believe, as I do, that the election is about a series of beliefs and values you think are important — for your constituency, for your state, and for your nation — then when one person loses and the other person wins, who shares those values and those views, then you jump on that team and work just as hard as you did the first time.”

Bless his heart, Romney seems to be doing just that. There was no sense at Tuesday’s exhortatory breakfast that Mitt was going through the motions. He was earnest, animated, alternately humorous and heartfelt. Take, for example, this little joke, which was delivered with characteristic Romney aplomb.

“The story is, John McCain and Barack Obama, the race’ll be so close that neither the voters nor the Electoral College will be able to decide it. So it’ll be determined — the next president — based upon an ice-fishing contest in Minnesota, right here! And the person that catches the most fish over four days wins.

“They separate them on different lakes. On day one, John McCain comes in; he’s got 10 fish, Barack Obama’s got none. Day two, John McCain has 20 fish, Barack Obama has none. Day three, [Senate majority leader] Harry Reid goes to Barack Obama and says, ‘It’s clear John McCain is cheating; go spy on him and find out how he’s winning!’ So Barack Obama goes and watches John McCain, and he comes back to Harry Reid and says, ‘You won’t believe what John McCain is doing. He’s cutting a hole in the ice!’ ”

RNC 2008 Wrap-Up

ADAM REILLY — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:48:32 GMT

Protest-to-podium coverage of the Republican National Convention from our reporter in St. Paul

Laurels for a Boston media vet

ADAM REILLY — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:29:25 GMT

Breaking down barriers
Congrats to Boston University journalism professor Caryl Rivers, who’ll receive the Society of Professional Journalists’ Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Fiedler on the spot

ADAM REILLY — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:11:12 GMT

Having taken the reins of BU’s contentious College of Communication, Pulitzer winner Tom Fiedler learns to navigate the thorny world of academia
As jobs in journalism-education go, Tom Fiedler’s new gig isn’t bad. Quite the contrary.

Paper chase: The counterintuitive, durable case for journalism education. By Adam Reilly.

As jobs in journalism-education go, Tom Fiedler’s new gig isn’t bad. Quite the contrary. Fiedler — the ex–Miami Herald executive editor who took over as dean of Boston University’s College of Communication (COM) back in June — gets to run an institution that’s already graced with a high-powered faculty and which, though not quite elite, might be the best of its sort in New England. He’ll be operating in Boston, a city with perennial appeal for prospective students and professors. And he’ll be implementing a vision that he himself crafted as head of the external-review committee that sized up the state of the college in 2007.

But Fiedler’s also inheriting some serious headaches. As COM’s run-down building on Comm Ave suggests, the college is strapped for cash. It’s also a factionalized, turbulent place where the three departments — journalism; mass communication, advertising, and public relations; and film and television — don’t always get along. Plus, Fiedler, who got a master’s degree from COM in 1971, has a vision of journalism education that’s sure to ruffle some feathers. Throw in the fact that he’s a relative newcomer to academia — where, as Henry Kissinger famously observed, the arguments are so bitter because the stakes are so low — and his seemingly cozy new perch suddenly looks like it should come with a complimentary flak jacket. Welcome to town!

I’m not Dick Cheney
Fiedler wasn't supposed to end up running his alma mater. Instead, as head of the external-review committee that took stock of COM following the scandal-tinged September 2006 resignation of Dean John Schulz (more on that in a bit), he was going to chart a course for COM’s future, and then step aside.

Then the plan changed — but not, Fiedler emphasizes, in a Dick-Cheney-nominates-himself-for-veep sort of way (our analogy, not his). In the fall of 2007, a few months after the external-review committee issued its report, Fiedler was contacted about the dean’s job at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, and asked BU president Robert A. Brown if he could use him as a reference. (At the time, Fiedler was also a BU overseer; he’s since resigned that position.)

Paper chase

ADAM REILLY — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:17:08 GMT

The counterintuitive, durable case for journalism education
On the face of it, this isn’t a great time to study journalism.

Boston University's College of Communication

Fiedler on the spot: Having taken the reins of BU’s contentious College of Communication, Pulitzer winner Tom Fiedler learns to navigate the thorny world of academia. By Adam Reilly.

On the face of it, this isn’t a great time to study journalism. Consider, for example, the ongoing bloodletting in American newspapers: earlier this month, Mark Potts, the author of the Recovering Journalist blog, reported that a whopping 6300 employees at the 100 biggest American newspapers had lost their jobs — either by layoff or buyout — in the past year. Granted, the status quo is bleaker in newspapers than in radio or TV. But with the Web cannibalizing those forms of media, too — as well as rendering the old notions of national and regional readerships, viewerships, and listenerships obsolete — the future looks ominously uncertain everywhere in the news business.

And yet, counterintuitively, the schools charged with training the next generation of journalists keep pumping out graduates. In 2007, for example, nearly 50,000 students received bachelor’s degrees in journalism and mass communication, according to the 2007 Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates, which was conducted by the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. Meanwhile, the number of master’s students was close to 3800. (By way of comparison, the 2003 numbers were approximately 46,000 and 4100, respectively.)

True, they didn’t all want to be journalists: the 2007 Annual Survey also found that more new bachelor’s recipients sought work in PR or advertising (about 24 percent) than at daily newspapers (about 21 percent) or in broadcasting (also about 21 percent). Still, given the bleak realities of the journalistic marketplace, isn’t this steady output of embryonic journalists a bit irresponsible?

Not necessarily. For starters — and despite the angst that currently pervades newsrooms around the country — the job market for new journalism grads actually isn’t all that bad. According to the 2007 Annual Survey, for example, 71.7 percent of new bachelor’s degree recipients with news/editorial specializations have full-time work. The job market was better before the dot-com boom went bust: in 1999, that number peaked at 80.4 percent. That said, the 2007 employment rate is better than 2003 (63.5), 2004 (68.8), and 2006 (69.9) — and, somewhat surprisingly, 1990, as well (66.1). Employment for new bachelor’s holders who specialized in broadcast specialists is up too: 67.3 percent of them have full-time jobs — the best figure in seven years, and (once again) an improvement over 1990 (63.4).

In harm's way

ADAM REILLY — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:59:21 GMT

The tragedy of Rakan Hassan and the impossibility of a Hippocratic Oath for journalists
Most of the job-related fears that keep journalists up at night are relatively mundane, but on rare occasions, a more ominous scenario presents itself.

Most of the job-related fears that keep journalists up at night are relatively mundane. We worry about getting scooped, making factual errors, pissing off the occasional source or story subject. But on rare occasions, a more ominous scenario presents itself — namely, the possibility that our reporting could cause actual harm to someone we cover.

In a grim front-page piece published in the Sunday, August 3, edition of the Boston Globe, columnist Kevin Cullen wrestled with just this concern. Cullen’s subject was the death of Rakan Hassan, a 14-year-old Iraqi boy who was brought to Boston for medical treatment in 2005, after a mistaken attack by US soldiers killed his parents and left him paralyzed.

Cullen had written about Hassan before, in a series of stories that detailed his evacuation from Iraq, recuperation at Massachusetts General and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospitals, and return to his home city of Mosul. Those pieces — published in 2006, before Cullen was tapped as a metro columnist — were models of great feature writing: highly readable, packed with evocative detail, touching but never maudlin.

This story was different. Hassan, Cullen told his readers, had been killed earlier this summer, in a bomb blast at his family’s home. As the story progressed, Cullen explored whether Hassan’s Boston caretakers should have allowed him to return to Iraq — and whether the Globe’s coverage of Hassan’s story might have somehow led to his death.

“All of us who cared about this boy, who loved this boy, are left to wonder: did we do something, however unwittingly, that got him killed?” Cullen wrote. “Did somebody somehow read Rakan’s story, maybe online, and set out to kill him and his family, to prove that anybody who takes sweets or help or anything from the Americans is a collaborator who shall die the death of an infidel?”

After mentioning other potential factors that may have made Hassan a target (his treatment by US Army physicians stationed in Iraq; his brother-in-law’s security job with the Iraqi government), Cullen concluded that the motivations of Hassan’s killers might never be known. But then, a few paragraphs later, he found himself returning to the question: “Would he still be alive if I didn’t write about him? If Michele McDonald’s beautiful photos of him never appeared in this newspaper?”

The Night James Brown Saved Boston

ADAM REILLY — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:33:59 GMT

Documentary that situates the concert in a larger context
The memory of what Brown and White accomplished 40 years ago should endure.

Leggo my ego!

ADAM REILLY — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:50:31 GMT

The GOP is smearing Obama as a narcissist. So why is the press playing along?
If Barack Obama loses the presidency this November, it won’t be because of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, or “Bitter-gate,” or sundry other vulnerabilities.

If Barack Obama loses the presidency this November, it won’t be because of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, or “Bitter-gate,” or sundry other vulnerabilities. Instead, it’ll be because the public — and the pundits who tell them what to think about politics — has decided that Obama is a bit too big for his britches.

Yeah, that’s a strange assessment of someone who’s running for president. (“Why . . . he’s acting like he could be the leader of the free world!”) But in recent weeks, it’s become accepted political dogma. On July 18, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer outlined the Obama-as-narcissist case in a piece titled “The Audacity of Vanity.” Obama is a man of profoundly limited achievement, Krauthammer claimed. Yet he wants to speak at the Brandenburg Gate, put a faux presidential seal on his lectern, told Americans to learn a second language, and speaks of himself, using the royal “we,” as a harbinger of great change. “Who does he think he is?”, Krauthammer asked. “We are getting to know. Redeemer of our uninvolved, uninformed lives. Lord of the seas. And more.”

Leaving aside the obvious problems with Krauthammer’s argument — e.g., Obama’s use of “we” is a rhetorical device aimed at making his supporters feel like they’re part of a movement, not just a campaign — the fact that he made it hardly came as a surprise. Sneering conservative partisanship is, after all, Krauthammer’s whole shtick. And Krauthammer was merely following the lead that his candidate, John McCain, offered in February 2008 after the “Potomac Primary.” (McCain’s line: “I do not seek the presidency on the presumption that I am blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save my country in its hour of need.”)

The avidity with which the rest of the press has embraced this line of reasoning, however, is a bit more unexpected. Two days after Krauthammer’s column ran, for example, Joan Vennochi, the fine Boston Globe columnist, cited (among other things) Obama’s trip to Europe, his upcoming nomination-acceptance speech in the Denver Broncos’ 75,000-seat stadium, and Michelle Obama’s purported affinity for Jackie Kennedy–esque dress as proof that “Obama has a crush on Obama.” (Pity the women whose husbands run for president. Judith Steinberg Dean was too shy and dumpy; Michelle Obama is so stylish and attractive that she’s proof of Obama’s Kennedy complex.)

Head case

ADAM REILLY — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:06:40 GMT

Media coverage of a State House sex scandal reveals the pitfalls of reporting on mental illness
Who is Jim Marzilli, exactly? Is he a predatory letch? Or is he a deeply troubled man who needs to be kept from harassing women — but also from hurting himself?

STOP THE INSANITY: Bipolar disorder could have something — or nothing — to do with State Senator Jim Marzilli’s sexual-harassment charges. But the press is making its own diagnoses.

Who is Jim Marzilli, exactly? Is he a predatory letch? Or is he a deeply troubled man who needs to be kept from harassing women — but also from hurting himself?

If you live in Massachusetts and follow the news, you’ve probably pondered this question at some point during the past few months. In April, Marzilli, a Democratic state senator from Arlington, was accused of sexual assault by a woman who claimed he’d inappropriately touched her in an early-morning incident at her home. A month later, Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone announced that his office was dropping that case due to insufficient evidence.

But then, on June 3, Marzilli was arrested in Lowell after allegedly harassing four different women over the span of several hours, bombarding them with inappropriate sexual overtures and attempting to grope one’s crotch. Approached by police, he gave a false name, then fled on foot; as officers subdued him with pepper spray inside a parking garage, he wept and said that his “life was over.” And this past week, two more women accused Marzilli of sexual harassment in a suit filed in Middlesex Superior Court.

While Marzilli has said that he won’t seek re-election, he hasn’t been found guilty of any crime. In the court of public opinion, however, he’s already been convicted and sentenced. Calls for his resignation have come from the Boston Herald, the Lowell Sun, the Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise, and Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi. For its part, the Massachusetts Republican Party has launched a new Web site called Marzilli Watch — motto: “Taxpayers Working for a Senator That’s Not” — aimed at mustering up public outrage that Marzilli, who hasn’t done his job in more than a month, is still receiving a state paycheck.

Which brings us to the reason Marzilli hasn’t been at work. On June 5, the Associated Press reported that Marzilli had entered McLean Hospital, the famed psychiatric facility in Belmont. The Herald subsequently reported that Marzilli had taken a leave from the State Senate and was being treated for symptoms of hypomania, a condition linked to bipolar disorder. And on July 10, the Globe published a piece in which Marzilli’s attorney, Terrence Kennedy, confirmed that his client had received a bipolar diagnosis. Since then, Marzilli’s diagnosis and/or treatment at McLean have been cited in practically every story that’s been done on his situation.

Unkindest cut?

ADAM REILLY — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:03:13 GMT

How a proposed pay cut surprised the Globe newsroom — and why it might actually happen
There’s probably no good way to learn that your employer wants you to do the same amount of work for less money. But the manner in which the editorial staff of the Boston Globe made this discovery was especially awkward.

There’s probably no good way to learn that your employer wants you to do the same amount of work for less money. But the manner in which the editorial staff of the Boston Globe made this discovery was especially awkward.

On Monday, June 23, Arthur Sulzberger and Janet Robinson — the chairman and president/CEO, respectively, of the New York Times Company, which has owned the Globe since 1993 — dropped by the paper’s Morrissey Boulevard headquarters. The impetus for their visit was a retirement party for Al Larkin, the Globe’s outgoing executive vice-president and spokesman; prior to Larkin’s shindig, they spoke with newsroom department heads and held a paper-wide “town meeting” in the Globe’s William O. Taylor Room. The latter session was strikingly well-attended — people were reportedly sitting in the aisles and standing in the doorways — and a number of subjects came up: the advertising department’s ongoing struggles selling boston.com; the possible closure of the Globe’s printing plant in Billerica; the question of whether the Times Company will keep the Globe or try to sell it.

Most notably, however, there was the awkward topic of a possible wage cut. How, asked Globe mailroom employee Dan Caplette, can you justify management’s proposal to slash union salaries by 10 percent? In response — and as the Globe’s editorial employees wondered what the hell the mailroom guy was talking about — Globe publisher Steve Ainsley, who was also present, stressed that the wage-cut request was part of a broader collective-bargaining process. Despite “significant financial pressure” on the paper, he added, nothing had been decided yet. Sulzberger’s reply, when it came, featured the dreaded catch phrase of 21st-century journalism. “We’re trying to do more with less,” he explained. “We have to redefine what the Boston Globe is in a new universe.”

All of which raises a couple questions: first, why did the mailroom guy know more about the state of the paper’s labor relations than its reporters did? And second, is the Globe really about to pluck a few thousand dollars out of each of its union employees’ pockets?

Holding on, moving forward
The answer to the first question is pretty simple: union representation. The Globe’s mailroom employees are represented by the Boston Mailers Union, Teamsters Local 1, Boston, which Caplette heads. The editorial staff, by contrast, is represented by the Boston Newspaper Guild (BNG), the largest union at the paper. And despite being informed of the wage-cut proposal in a June 18 letter from Globe senior V-P Gregory Thornton, BNG president Dan Totten still hadn’t informed his members one week later. Which meant that they finally learned about the prospective salary reduction either when Caplette brought it up, or when they saw a quote from Totten in the June 25 Boston Herald, or when Totten finally e-mailed his members the same day the Herald story ran.

Criminal intent

ADAM REILLY — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 22:10:29 GMT

Ed Burns on writing Iraq
Ed Burns — former Baltimore homicide detective, Vietnam vet, and long-time writing partner with David Simon, both on the The Wire and on Generation Kill , spoke with the Phoenix about the new series.

GET YOUR WAR ON: The response Dave Simon (left) and Ed Burns (right) wanted from Iraqi vets was: “They got it.”

The wages of war: The creators of The Wire take on Iraq in Generation Kill. By Adam Reilly.

Ed Burns — former Baltimore homicide detective, Vietnam vet, and long-time writing partner with David Simon, both on the The Wire and on Generation Kill, spoke with the Phoenix about the new series. Here’s some of what he had to say.

What kind of response have you gotten from the Marine Corps? Because this is definitely a warts-and-all portrayal of the Corps and its members.
First of all, we viewed for the Bravo 2 and Bravo 3 guys from First Recon [the two platoons focused on in the film]. They loved it; they thought it was their story. At Camp Pendleton [the Marine Corps base in Southern California], a lot of the enlisted officers were at first reluctant to get involved. Then, when they saw it, they gave us the thumbs-up. That was a big test. We did this with that audience in mind, just the way we did The Wire with cops and drug people in our mind as the audience.

Watching the film, I was repeatedly reminded that for a lot of people — including me — this is an utterly alien world. Is that something you were cognizant of, and if so, how did it affect the creative process?
Well, this is an opportunity to go into a world that you don’t have access to. In that sense it’s very much like The Wire. If you invest in this, you’ll see the elite of the young men who’ve been committed to war. And the opportunity to present this was a challenge that David [Simon] and I really enjoyed. We were writing to get those Marines to look at each other knowingly and say, “They got it.”

That’s all we can do. Then it’s up to the audience, as they come to it, to make their own assessments of what they’ve seen. In The Wire, you can decide these people are getting a bum rap and something should be done — or you can decide that these people are lazy and they deserve what they get. Evan Wright’s book [Generation Kill, on which the HBO series is based] can be read, I think, as a sort of anti-war book. But the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation gave it an award. It’s what you bring to it. Our job — if you’re going to invest in the series — is that we want it to be as close to reality as possible, so your investment isn’t cheated.

The wages of war

ADAM REILLY — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 22:04:39 GMT

The creators of The Wire take on Iraq in Generation Kill
The Iraq War poses a strange problem for the American public.

ON SITE: Generation Kill transforms Iraq from a theoretical problem into something you feel in your gut.

Criminal intent: Ed Burns on writing Iraq. By Adam Reilly

The Iraq War poses a strange problem for the American public. On the one hand, whether and how to exit Iraq — and what lessons to draw from the invasion and its aftermath — are crucial political, cultural, and moral questions. On the other, a broad swath of the citizenry has zero personal stake in what’s happening there. Most of us have never come close to fighting in Iraq; neither have our family members or our friends. We know that Iraq is a critical issue. But we also feel that it’s somebody else’s issue.

Generation Kill (HBO, premiering July 13 at 9 pm and running for seven consecutive Sundays) doesn’t change this reality. But the new Iraq War mini-series from writers/producers David Simon and Ed Burns, the team behind The Wire, does destabilize it, by providing a vivid, troubling portrait of what the soldiers unlucky enough to serve in Iraq experienced at the war’s beginning. If, like me, you’re fortunate enough to have been insulated from the human costs of the invasion and occupation, you’ll find that watching Generation Kill transforms Iraq from a theoretical problem to something you feel in your gut.

At the outset, the Marines of the First Reconnaissance Battalion aren’t an overly sympathetic bunch. Waiting for the invasion to start, they trade homophobic barbs, jerk off to Hustler, and rhapsodize about how awesome it would have been to drop the bomb on Hiroshima. Early in the first episode, a batch of earnest letters from American schoolkids arrives, and there’s a hopeful one that floats the possibility of peace. Corporal Ray Person (James Ransone), the mouthiest of the Marines, orates an immediate and eloquently obscene response: “Dear Frederick: Thank you for your nice letter. But I am actually a U.S. Marine who was born to kill, whereas clearly you have mistaken me for some sort of wine-sipping, commie dick-suck. . . . Peace sucks a hairy asshole, Freddy. War is the motherfucking answer.”

Is anybody paying attention to McClatchy's powerful Guantánamo exposé?

ADAM REILLY — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:31:34 GMT

An old-media triumph sheds new light on Bush’s terror policy
Even before its 2006 acquisition of Knight Ridder, California-based McClatchy had a reputation for putting out some of America’s best mid-level dailies.

Even before its 2006 acquisition of Knight Ridder, California-based McClatchy had a reputation for putting out some of America’s best mid-level dailies. The Knight Ridder purchase, when it occurred, didn’t just add powerhouses like the Miami Herald and Charlotte Observer to McClatchy’s stable; it also gave McClatchy access to Knight Ridder’s Washington, DC, bureau, which had distinguished itself with commendably skeptical coverage prior to the Iraq War.

Now with this past week’s publication of a series on the Kafka-esque detention of thousands of foreign nationals following 9/11, the hybrid McClatchy–Knight Ridder DC operation is enjoying its biggest achievement to date. The subject matter of “Guantánamo: Beyond the Law” wasn’t new, exactly — the abuse of prisoners, the questionable criteria used to put them behind bars, and the dubious legal framework crafted to justify their ongoing legal limbo have all been covered elsewhere. But the depth of McClatchy’s treatment was unprecedented, and its conclusions were startling. For one thing, most prisoners at Guantánamo had “no intelligence value in the war on terror.” For another, by radicalizing formerly apolitical detainees, Guantánamo may actually have made Americans less safe, not more.

In the course of their research, reporters Tom Lasseter and Matthew Schofield talked to 66 former detainees who’d been held at Guantánamo and elsewhere; the fruits of their eight-plus-month investigation were published, by design, on the heels of the Supreme Court’s ruling that Guantánamo’s inmates can challenge their detentions in civilian court. (The series also appeared the same week that McClatchy announced its latest round of cutbacks; more on that in a bit.) The vast scope of Lasseter and Schofield’s reporting makes it more likely that their findings will hold up in the future. And, as an added bonus, it gives the public a vast trove of anecdotal evidence, which has been skillfully packaged online at mcclatchydc.com/detainees. There’s a photo gallery, video interviews with 10 former prisoners, and miniature profiles of every single detainee interviewed for the series. Sometimes the old saw about “journalism being the first draft of history” makes you feel sorry for the historians. Not here.

But is “Guantánamo: Beyond the Law” getting the attention that it should? That’s hard to say. As Editor & Publisher noted this past week, pickup and play inside the McClatchy chain itself has been outstanding. (McClatchy’s papers aren’t obligated to use material generated by the chain’s Washington bureau.) Several non-McClatchy papers, including the Oregonian and the Denver Post, have run part or all of the series, too. And according to Roy Gutman, McClatchy’s foreign editor, it’s been discussed on CNN (by Christiane Amanpour) and NPR (on Talk of the Nation, All Things Considered, and The Diane Rehm Show).

Bad sports

ADAM REILLY — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:06:51 GMT

While old and new media are mending many fences, they’re still squaring off in jockland
When historians trace the rise of the blog as the dominant journalistic form of the 21st century, they’ll pay close attention to two recent developments.

When, sometime in the future, historians trace the rise of the blog as the dominant journalistic form of the 21st century, they’ll pay close attention to two recent developments:

1) In February 2008, Joshua Micah Marshall, founder of the left-leaning political blog Talking Points Memo, won a Polk Award for legal reporting. Previous Polk Award winners include such revered media luminaries as David Halberstam, Seymour Hersh, Mary McGrory, and I.F. Stone.

2) Two months later, in a joint appearance on Bob Costas’s HBO show, Buzz Bissinger — who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Philadelphia court system, but is best-known for Friday Night Lights, his fantastic book on Texas high-school football — squared off with Will Leitch, founding editor of the irreverent sports blog Deadspin. In the ensuing one-sided exchange, Leitch was cast as a harbinger of the coming journalistic apocalypse. “I think you’re full of shit,” Bissinger told Leitch at the outset; things went downhill from there.

It’s a loaded juxtaposition, of course. In terms of winning mainstream recognition, Marshall’s Polk Award represents perhaps the blogosphere’s finest moment. And Bissinger’s screed against Leitch and sports blogs in general was unique in its ferocity.

But Marshall and Leitch’s disparate receptions from journalism’s old guard point to a bigger, somewhat bizarre phenomenon. For the most part, the pre-Web media establishment is slowly making its peace with the very technology that will either destroy journalism (if you’re pessimistic) or utterly reshape it. The Boston Globe editorial page prints a regular blog round-up; the mainstream media chase the dubiously obtained scoops of Huffington Post muckraker Mayhill Fowler; Riazat Butt, religious correspondent for the Guardian, reflects that “I thought online journalism wasn’t journalism because they would just read the wires and rewrite it. Now it means more to me to get stories onto the Web than in the paper.”

March to war

ADAM REILLY — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:55:17 GMT

Why isn’t the press paying more attention to a possible attack on Iran?
During the course of two weeks in May, America’s top-ranking military officer went from warning that war with Iran could cripple the US military to rattling his saber at Tehran.

During the course of two weeks in May, America’s top-ranking military officer went from warning that war with Iran could cripple the US military to rattling his saber at Tehran.

That’s one interpretation, anyway. In an interview with Israeli TV that was broadcast on May 5, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, struck a glum note when asked about the possibility of preemptively striking Iran’s nuclear facilities. “I actually am very hopeful that we don’t get into a position where we have to get into a conflict,” Mullen responded, according to Reuters. “It would be a very significant challenge for the United States right now to get into a third conflict in that part of the world.”

But on May 20, testifying before the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, Mullen sounded far more combative. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the US designated a terrorist organization in 2007, is “directly jeopardiz[ing]” peace in Iraq, said Mullen, according to the Associated Press (AP). And then: “Restraint in our response does not signal lack of resolve or capability to defend ourselves against threats.”

That seems like a major shift — but what did it mean? Did Mullen really rethink his assessment of whether the military could handle a new conflict? Did he backpedal after concluding that his earlier remarks could undercut diplomatic efforts to limit Iran’s budding nuclear program? Or might one of the Bush administration’s most hawkish members — someone from Vice-President Dick Cheney’s office, perhaps — have pointedly told Mullen that attacking Iran was still very much an option?

Oddly, there didn’t seem to be much interest from the media in finding out — or even in asking the question. The AP report on Mullen’s congressional testimony didn’t note his change in rhetoric. Neither did the New York Times, which made only passing reference to Mullen’s testimony. (The Times story, which focused on the Jerusalem Post’s claim that the US plans to attack Iran this year, was buried on A13.) And the May 21 Washington Post didn’t mention Mullen’s testimony at all.

To be fair, this dearth of coverage didn’t come on a slow news day. The Times’ front page, for example, featured stories about Barack Obama winning a majority of Democratic delegates, Ted Kennedy’s brain-cancer diagnosis, and a fragile peace in Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood. The top story in the paper’s “International Report” section, meanwhile, was a follow-up on the Sichuan earthquake.

Open book?

ADAM REILLY — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:37:25 GMT

Sal DiMasi is an embattled politician. His wife is an aspiring talk-show host. Welcome to New England Cable News’ ethics problem.
On any given day, New England Cable News features more smart, substantive politics coverage than any other Boston television station.

On any given day, New England Cable News (NECN) features more smart, substantive politics coverage than any other Boston television station. But right now, the station is facing a thorny little conflict-of-interest problem involving Massachusetts House Speaker Sal DiMasi, whose embattled status happens to be the story of the moment on Beacon Hill.

Some background: on May 1, the Boston Globe ran a front-page story on how legislative moves by DiMasi have benefited his friend, developer Jay Cashman. In 2006, DiMasi killed a bill that would have blocked a liquefied-natural-gas (LNG) construction project in Fall River, paving the way for a real-estate deal that netted Cashman more than $14 million. And in 2007, he backed legislation that could lead to the construction of a wind farm in Buzzards Bay — where, it turns out, Cashman hopes to build one.

As the Globe’s Frank Phillips noted, the DiMasi-Cashman connection isn’t limited to the two men; their spouses, Debbie DiMasi and Christy Scott Cashman, are currently collaborating on a TV program. Open Book Club, a sassy, half-hour literary confab, is produced by Saint Aire Productions LLC, a production company that Christy Scott Cashman runs. It’s taped in the Cashmans’ Back Bay manse. And as of May 4, it’s broadcast monthly on NECN.

Phillips’s story was about DiMasi’s ties to Cashman, not whether NECN’s link to the two men’s spouses is problematic. But that’s a natural follow-up question. On the one hand, NECN has to cover DiMasi and the turmoil threatening his Speakership, including the question of whether he’s used his position to benefit Cashman. On the other, NECN is involved in a business partnership with DiMasi’s and Cashman’s wives — and perhaps, depending on Saint Aire’s ownership structure, with Cashman himself. (Tom Kiley, the Cashmans’ attorney, didn’t respond to a request for comment, but both Jay and Christy Scott Cashman’s names appear on paperwork filed with the state.)

All this would be awkward enough. But on May 2 — one day after Phillips’s exposé was published — “Names,” the Globe’s gossip column, featured a big photo of NECN head Charles Kravetz at the Open Book Club launch party, which also took place in the Cashmans’ home. In the photo, Kravetz was flanked by Christy Scott Cashman and Debbie DiMasi. He looked delighted; so did they.

So much unknown
The question, obviously, is this: should NECN pull the plug on Open Book Club?

Straight talk

ADAM REILLY — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:44:46 GMT

It’s time to cover John M c Cain again — and here are ten good places for the media to start.
It’s been a very quiet spring for John McCain.

It’s been a very quiet spring for John McCain. The last big hit the Arizona senator took, media-wise, came this past February, when the New York Times ran a story on McCain’s relationships with lobbyist Vicki Iseman and communications mogul Lowell W. Paxson — a piece that ended up much worse for the Times than for McCain, who looked victimized by the paper’s insinuations of adultery. Since then, the press has focused almost exclusively on the protracted Democratic grudge match between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Both candidates have been covered in exquisite detail for the past few months; so have their campaigns, their spouses, and sundry other subjects of debatable relevance (Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Clinton’s Bosnia fib, Obama’s flag-less lapels). It’s been easy to forget that McCain even exists.

But now, following Obama’s win in North Carolina and close loss in Indiana, the campaign has entered a new phase. Clinton is still a candidate, but it’s harder than ever to imagine a scenario in which she’ll win. And the press, as former Phoenix staffer Dan Kennedy noted in a recent Guardian online column, is finally switching into general-election mode. This means it’s time to start covering McCain again — not by trotting out the usual war-hero-turned-blunt-maverick narrative, but by taking a hard look at the strengths and weaknesses he’d bring to the presidency.

Of course, McCain has a well-documented knack for charming the press into submission. So here, for the men and women who’ll be spending long hours on the Straight Talk Express, is a handy list of 10 McCain stories worth pursuing over the next few months:

1) It’s the economy, Senator
This past January, the Huffington Post reported that, in a meeting with the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, McCain said he “doesn’t really understand economics.” McCain denied the report. But as his then-rival Mitt Romney noted in a subsequent press release, McCain actually has a long history of such remarks. (One example, drawn from a December 2007 Boston Globe story: “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should. I’ve got [former Federal Reserve chair Alan] Greenspan’s book.”) How does McCain assess his economic knowledge now? And what concrete steps, beyond a wide array of tax cuts, would he take to keep America’s economic woes from worsening?

Hardball

ADAM REILLY — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:14:56 GMT

How Herald publisher Pat Purcell could pitch inside — and brush back the Globe
Once upon a time, two daily newspapers battled in Boston.

HIS BACK PAGES: Herald publisher Pat Purcell could tackle the Globe with a beefed-up Sports section.

Once upon a time, two daily newspapers battled in Boston. The big one had more money and staff and circulation. But the smaller one had moxie, dammit, and its reporters hustled their way to scoop after scoop. Meanwhile, their rivals at the bigger paper sat lazily at their computers, writing under-reported odes to Big Government.

That, at least, is the tale that Boston Herald partisans tell about the tabloid’s ongoing competition with the Boston Globe. (This narrative even had a starring role in a recent column by Washington Post media writer Howie Kurtz.) But it doesn’t jibe with reality. Consider, for example, recent press coverage of dubious deeds by Massachusetts House Speaker Sal DiMasi. When, this past week, a “Herald review” (hyped on the front page!) cited cases in which House legislation had benefited personal friends of DiMasi, every example the paper mentioned had already been reported — by the Globe.

The problem is simple: because the Herald has a bare-bones news staff — and because the Globe’s reporters are far better than Herald loyalists tend to admit — the Herald’s victories (e.g., State House reporter Casey Ross revealing that Democratic representative Charles Murphy cast seven votes from the Virgin Islands), are destined to be the exception, not the rule.

But on one key battleground — the sports pages — the playing field is nearly level. The Globe currently has 20 sportswriters, a number that includes columnists and reporters. The Herald has 14, proof that sports coverage is already seen as key to the paper’s survival. (By way of contrast, Ross is the Herald’s only full-time State House reporter. The Globe has three.)

What’s more, the Globe Sports section, like the rest of the paper, is currently seeing an exodus of talent. Columnist Jackie MacMullan and NBA writer Peter May both applied for and received the paper’s latest buyout offer. Reid Laymance, the Globe’s second-ranking sports editor, is leaving for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. And Gordon Edes, the paper’s lead Red Sox reporter, is reportedly poised to jump to Yahoo! Sports. (Both Joe Sullivan, the Globe’s sports editor, and Edes himself declined comment on the Edes-to-Yahoo! rumors for this story.)

The good news, for the Globe, is that Bob Ryan and Dan Shaughnessy remain as marquee columnists. Even so — and even with a pool of young talent that includes football writers Mike Reiss and Christopher Gasper and recent hire Marc Spears, who’ll cover the NBA when May departs — the paper is still hemorrhaging must-read bylines.

High anxiety

ADAM REILLY — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:13:50 GMT

David Brashears’s Storm over Everest
On May 10, 1996, an unexpected and severe storm pounded Mount Everest, throwing three climbing teams into disarray and ultimately taking the lives of eight mountaineers.

On May 10, 1996, an unexpected and severe storm pounded Mount Everest, throwing three climbing teams into disarray and ultimately taking the lives of eight mountaineers. Since then, the storm and its aftermath have become part of pop-culture lore. Jon Krakauer, a member of one of the affected teams, made his name as a writer with Into Thin Air, a book-length account of the debacle. Other treatments have included Left for Dead, The Climb, and Climbing High.

If you’ve never been drawn to these accounts, it’s probably because (like me) you aren’t inclined to sympathize with people who embrace risks that seem downright foolhardy. The great strength of Storm over Everest, a Frontline documentary that debuts this Tuesday, May 13, at 9 pm on WGBH (Channel 2), is that it makes this dismissiveness feel cynical and even unethical.

That’s due in part to the film’s stunning cinematography. Director David Breashears — who was on the mountain that day as well, and who aided the rescue efforts — uses an array of sweeping, gorgeous shots of Everest to suggest mountain climbing’s primal appeal. After 10 minutes, you’ll want to go climb it yourself. But the recollections of the survivors interviewed by Brashears foster plenty of empathy as well. As it turns out, the cynical, obvious question — why do it? — has plenty of compelling answers.

Here, for example, is Beck Weathers (who was actually left for dead twice on Everest’s slopes) explaining why he went to the mountain in the first place: “I’d spent most of my adult life in profound depression. And I John Wayned it, so I never let anybody know about it. And I discovered that if you drove your body hard — when you did that, you couldn’t think. And that lack of thinking as you punished your body and drove yourself was amazingly pleasant.”

Weathers still bears the physical scars of his ordeal. Frostbite turned one of his hands into a three-pronged stump; the other hand is gone. His recollections pack a serious emotional wallop, and he quickly emerges as one of the film’s stars. The other — Taiwanese climber Makalu Gau — is more energetic and demonstrative than Weathers, and an even better storyteller.

If you’ve read anything about the tragedy, you may be slightly disappointed. Krakauer has written that guide Anatoli Boukreev was partly to blame for the disaster. Boukreev had climbed to the summit without extra oxygen; this, Krakauer suggested, left him weaker than necessary and led him to hurry back to camp rather than escorting stranded climbers back to safety. Boukreev and his supporters defended his actions; they suggested that Krakauer, who had passed Weathers while returning to camp, was actually the negligent one.

The trolley Svengali

ADAM REILLY — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:39:38 GMT

Why Dan Grabauskas might actually fix the T — if he can keep his job
When the T works, we usually don’t notice. But when it doesn’t, our reaction is swift and severe.

NOT EASY BEING ON THE GREEN: The line may be notoriously slow and crowded, but there have been some improvements of late.

Smells like T spirit!
Boston’s mass-transit system dates back to 1631, when sailboats ferried passengers from Chelsea to Charlestown. In the subsequent 377 years, service has become a teeny bit faster — but at a price that has put the MBTA in debt to a tune of more than $8 billion. With transportation issues getting renewed scrutiny under the Patrick administration, Phoenix staffers fanned out to kick the T’s tires.

• Trouble 'round the bend? MBTA workers have been without a contract for two years. Arbitration will settle the matter soon, but could stir an angry hornets’ nest for 2010. By David S. Bernstein
• Seven habits of highly effective T-riders: Keep your hands on the pole and not on your neighbor’s ass, bucko. By Sharon Steel.
• The T and the Tube: London’s Underground is seething with danger. Boston’s T has cuckoo juice. By James Parker.
• Underground art: Reviewing the MBTA’s subterranean aesthetic. By Mike Miliard.
• A sinking feeling: Leaky MBTA tunnels have been seeping Boston’s groundwater for years. Can a new plan prevent potential catastrophe? By David S. Bernstein
• State of hock: If the MBTA wasn't in debt, these items would be at the top of its new wish list. By Jason Notte.
• The Phoenix editorial: Is the MBTA on track?

When the T works, we usually don’t notice. But when it doesn’t, our reaction is swift and severe. Blood pressures rise; heads are buried in hands and hair is pulled out; anger and despair run rampant. And for those who seek a scapegoat, there’s an obvious choice: the guy who runs the damn thing.

For those who haven’t experienced this rail rage firsthand, here’s a case study. A few weeks ago, walking up the ramp to the Swampscott commuter-rail stop, I passed a woman walking down the ramp, toward the street; she was muttering to herself and seemed to be on the verge of tears. Up at the station, the LED message board suggested an explanation: the 7:25 and 7:55 am trains were both running about an hour late, and the former wasn’t taking any passengers. (Of course, this information would have been more useful if it wasn’t already pushing 9:30.)