According to a story in today's Boston Herald, Boston Newspaper Guild president Dan Totten is determined to fight Globe management's request for a 10 percent reduction in employee wages."The Boston Newspaper Guild has given enough in the name of company equity," Totten told the Herald. "Globe and New York Times management must now give back."

Earlier today, the Boston Globe reported that the Boston Herald will be laying off up to 160 people and outsourcing its printing. But it wasn't clear--at least to me--whether those layoffs would be hit the editorial side or not.

According to Herald editor Kevin Convey, it's the latter. "The answer is, no editorial layoffs--none now and none contemplated," he tells the Phoenix.

As I narcissistically keep tabs on who's saying what about my story this week--i.e., the one on the old media-new media sportswriting feud--I'm noticing a theme: there's a lot of disagreement out there about what, exactly, "blogs" and "bloggers" are. By way of example, here's a comment posted to a column by Salon.

Godspeed to Boston magazine senior writer John Gonzalez, who's leaving that post to write a sports column for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

It's a great move for Gonzalez, who'll be joining his hometown paper in an extremely high-profile position. But it's a real loss for the Boston media market. When he was on--and he usually was--Gonzalez may have been the most entertaining writer in the city.

As you've probably noticed, there's some serious blog flux going on over at Phoenix HQ. The good news is that, if you're reading this, you've found the new Web home of Don't Quote Me, nee Media Log. Also, after disappearing for a few days, the last few months of posts have returned.

Now for the bad news. DQM's fancy new logo--which had been visible over the last few days at the old URL, thephoenix.

Last summer, Slate's Jack Shafer wrote a very funny column about Russia: Beyond the Headlines, a cheesy newspaper-style advertising supplement that ran in the Washington Post and was packed with Soviet-style propaganda.

Judging from the inaugural issue of Moscow Open City, which arrived at the Phoenix earlier this week, not enough people in the Russian P.

Big loss for the Boston Herald: Casey Ross, who's done a fine job covering the State House for the past year and half, is leaving that paper to join the Globe.

The Herald-to-Globe path is pretty well worn: current Globe staffers who've followed it include metro columnist Kevin Cullen, magazine writer Charlie Pierce, and legal reporter Shelley Murphy

A few weeks back, I urged the political press to pursue 10 John McCain stories--including the dissolution of his first marriage and its implications for the McCain Myth.

This story from Britain's Mail on Sunday does exactly that. The whole piece is worth reading, but here's a lengthy excerpt:

McCain likes to illustrate his moral fibre by referring to his five years as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam.

Granted, today's Sidekick centerpiece is a lite little affair aimed at updating the rivalry between Boston and Los Angeles. But it still seems weird that the first thing Mark Shanahan cites in Boston's favor is...Whitey Bulger.

Here's Shanahan's homage:

All of the great LA gansters--guys with noir names like Mickey Cohen, Jack Dragna, and Jimmy "The Weasel" Fratianno--are long dead.

--Tony Massarotti: he made a heroic return from injury.

--Basketbawful: he got freaked out and then realized he was actually okay.

--Bill Simmons: maybe that, or maybe he was genuinely hurt, but whatever.

--Bill Plaschke: he's a shameless exaggerator.

--Jalen Rose: ditto (click "NBA Finals" and "Paul Pierce: Hurt or Injured?")

Let me be clear: right now, I wouldn't want State Senator Jim Marzilli within 100 feet of any female family members or friend.

Having said that, I'm struck by the fact that there's almost no media discussion of the fact that Marzilli's ongoing implosion could be linked to a serious mental problem. Jim Braude alluded to this possibility on his WTKK show today; Howie Carr mocked it in today's column; and there's an ongoing discussion at Blue Mass.

As an obsessive reader of TrueHoop, ESPN's fine basketball blog, I was somewhat dismayed by author Henry Abbott's initial response to Boston:

Anyone who has lived in New York, I suspect, finds Boston to be unbelievably ... tidy. New York is a city where respectable upper class people have favorite graffiti artists. It's also a place where you can hardly go a block without hearing an epithet or two.