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John Henry's effort to force boston.com readers to subscribe to bostonglobe.com continues apace
By adamg on Wed, 01/14/2015 - 7:43am
Because assassination is always funny, amirite?
In its early days, Mad magazine used the tagline "Humor in a Jugular Vein." Apparently, boston.com is trying to adopt that, with the exception being that Mad was actually funny.
The question is: Would anyone have noticed? Stories about Boehner’s drinking have circulated for years. His drinking inspired a blog called DrunkBoehner, and in 2010 he brought booze back to Washington. Had he been poisoned as planned, perhaps his pickled liver could have filtered out the toxins.
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Comments
Wow
That's just trashy journalism... did Boston.com trade Editors with Star Magazine?
I mean I am absolutely no fan of Boner but come on.. this is just low.
I saw this "story" on BDC and
I saw this "story" on BDC and I really could not believe my eyes. I'm no fan of the Bone, either, but wow, that story is just not at all appropriate.
Dear Boston.com:
"You're not nearly as funny or as clever as you think you are. And if someone is telling you something different, please ignore them immediately. Seriously, if I wanted to read second-class Saturday Night Live skit rejects, I'll just go on Facebook. Sincerely, Please Pull Your Act Together."
(BTW, since the whole Chinese food place/T-shirt incident, there is a noticeable reduction in the snark-o-meter on this site, with more real news stories listed near the top. Maybe there's a crackdown, but regardless it's time I give up on this site altogether. Actually make that maybe a definite.)
Unbookmarked
Yeah, I unbookmarked them months ago, so I wouldn't even be tempted to grant BDC a pageview.
I Totally Agree
I Totally agree with CYBAH, this is trashy journalism, and no, there is nothing funny about assasination. Good Grief.
Speaker Boner
It's when you get naked and lean your private parts against the speaker and turn the volume all the way up.
http://cappyinboston.blogspot.com/
Not only is it in poor taste,
Not only is it in poor taste, it's racist against orange people.
ISOOL Thanks you
The International Society of Oompa Loompas and the Lollipop Gang thank you for pointing this out.
Variation on the headline
Would anybody notice boston.com, at all?
As far as I can tell, author
As far as I can tell, author Victor Paul Alvarez is a transplant washout from Baltimore who went from writing in real papers to blog blog bloging. Boston.com really sought out the best and brightest.
who went from writing in real
In other words, a journalist.
Writing garbage like this is
Writing garbage like this without adhering to standards is hardly journalism. You might as well Gawker Media journalism for posting fake stories and screencraps of tweets.
Hilarious
"Screencraps"! That's gold. Did you think of that all by yourself?
Adam fell for it
This article will generate "buzz" as the rightwingers forward it to all their friends to show how the "liberal media" treats conservatives and the most vapid democrats will pass it off to their friends as a joke. A few serious journalists will point to it as an example of what's wrong with the industry.
End result is a whole lot more page views then running the AP article on the real story.
The real question is if it's generating a profit. Seeing as how you only need a few low paid people and interns to run a site like that my guess is it at least covers rent.
Boy, I don't know
The pathetic shell of Boston.com vs. legions of screeching Michelle Malkin harpies? I don't honestly know who to root for.
Um, no
AdamG reads boston.com so we don't have to.
That said, he's a one man operation, and at least at one point he wasn't even doing it full time. If the newspaper of record for Boston cannot keep me up to date via their website, we're in trouble.
I did my small part, though
If you look at the source code, you'll notice I added rel="nofollow", which means they won't get any Google boost from me, at least.
I've learned to mostly ignore them (you'll also notice I didn't point to their exclusive a few days ago about the man with two penises), but when somebody e-mailed me a link to this and I took a look, I thought it worth noting just how low a site owned by a more or less respected local institution could go.
Nice job with the link
As I've said a dozen times, UHub is the polar opposite of something like Boston.com and is an example of the best of local journalism. This site represents the future of the industry -- filter the real news from social sites and supplement that with covering public affairs that other sources ignore. It's evident that Boston.com gets all their local content by skimming off this site.
The hope is that sooner or later Boston.com will lose enough money directly or via pulling down BostonGlobe.com that they'll just cut the site entirely and make it the real Boston Globe's homepage like it was a decade ago.
It is worth mentioning that the Boston Globe has gotten slightly better in the past year so perhaps Boston.com has served some purpose.
Gawker wannabes on Morrissey Boulevard
First that old money Sargent gal they hired for God knows why libels a Harvard professor and now this sad excuse for edginess. So voicey!
Yikes.
I guess this is what happens when you hire a bunch of kids with no journalism experience to run a major news outlet.
Headline changed, story edited?
The headline is now
Bartender’s Threat Against John Boehner Thwarted
and the sentence "Had he been poisoned as planned, perhaps his pickled liver could have filtered out the toxins." has been removed.
The story also now has this at the end:
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article made an unsubstantiated reference to health of Speaker Boehner.
which, I guess, means there is an editor somewhere on the premises.
Which is funny considering
Which is funny considering this Alvarez guy is also the editor.
An editor, not the editor
boston.com hasn't had one of those since that guy they hired from Brooklyn moved back to Brooklyn. It's been kind of funny watching David Bernstein's efforts to get somebody at Morrissey Boulevard to tell him who is the editor these days.
The writer's listed as "associate editor," which these days could mean almost anything, but I don't care enough to try to find out what.
My understanding is that the
My understanding is that the newsroom is broken down into small teams of writers, about 3-4 to an associate editor.
Or a lawyer.
Or a lawyer.
It's a shame how far downhill
It's a shame how far downhill boston.com has gone. That was my go-to website for local news for years. On the plus side, boston.com's decline led to me finding out about UHub.
Wow, with a headline like that
One would think Chris Faraone was the new editor over at BDC. After all, he did kill Breitbart.
Guy lives by his own rules.
Guy lives by his own rules.
Tacky and nonsensical
Assassination is about as funny as rape.
That said, why would Boehner's bartender want to kill him anyway? I'd think that bartender would be making a nice living.
Maybe he's a lousy tipper.
Maybe he's a lousy tipper.
Tired of Boston.com's
Tired of Boston.com's juvenile crap. Facebook > Unlike, Twitter > Unfollow
Oh how far they've fallen
Oh how far they've fallen from those lofty days of More Mush From The Wimp and Mike Barnicle.
The crush of deadline
Globe honchos blame a couple of issues, including being "amid the rush to post several items online" and the fact the site doesn't have an editor. Also, the CEO of John Henry's media wing admits:
The Herald, of course, gets a money quote from Boehner's office and dredges up some stuff from the boston.com comments section, which is kind of funny given the state of the Herald's own comments.
The Hat Trick
"And we hope to be hitting it more frequently in the future," Sheehan added.
Mostly because it is not possible for something that does not exist in the first place to suffer from erosion.
Why run a locally-written story about this at all?
If you're a strictly local news site, it's not germane so no story is needed.
If you're a general news site, just run the AP story.
In case you haven't noticed
all the local stories these days seem to come off the AP wire. Which could explain why all the local reporters are now writing about national stories under their own names.