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:
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Seriously, have you read McClatchy's big expose on post-9/11 detainees? Because you really should.
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.
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.
That, according to two Globe employees, was one big question raised at the Monday "town meeting" at the paper's Morrissey Boulevard headquarters.
When a possible sale of the Globe by the NYT Co. came up, one employee says, Arthur Sulzberger replied: "As you can imagine, we can't get into that whole thing.... We can't go down that road.
That's the goal described in the June 18 letter from Globe senior VP Gregory L. Thornton, president of the Boston Newspaper Guild, that officially proposed a 10 percent wage cut for most Globe employees.
"As we shared with you and other union leaders [at a June 3 presentation], despite constant and relentless cost cutting, Globe revenues continue to decline and continue to be less than needed to support the expense load of our current organization," Thornton wrote.