Media

Well, the Times and real-estate brokers, that is. Look at the new name for Boston's southernmost neighborhood, though and tell me that isn't pretty close to how the locals already pronounce it.

Yesterday:
Death before SoBo.

Like Globies Shelley Murphy and Kevin Cullen, the Herald's Howie Carr can also watch the Bulger trial from the public seats, judge rules. Meanwhile, Bulger's lawyers want the trial delayed so they can investigate whether State Police gave a witness the same sort of protection Bulger allegedly got from the FBI.

I'm glad @fox25news reads their mail on-air. Good to know their viewers are even dumber than their talking apes. #mapoli #bospoli

— Chris Faraone (@Fara1) June 5, 2013

I'm going to guess Chris Faraone is, at least in part, talking about Doug VB Goudie, a former producer for Howie Carr. Doug is now a commentator, interviewer and advocate for conservative ideas on the Fox 25 Morning News on WFXT.

Carr gave Doug the nickname "Virgin Boy" or "V.B." His on-air co-workers refer to him as VB most of the time. Do they know it stands for Virgin Boy? Is Fox 25 trying to be as dumbed down and vulgar as possible? I ask because I didn't think there was an audience for dumbed-down in Boston.

John Berg notes the Globe put its story about police shooting and killing a bear in Newton yesterday on page 1, while it put its story about police shooting and killing a man in Dorchester yesterday on page B1.

Because either they're not going to let the Globe and Herald dominate that part of the commentosphere any longer or they want to do a story on the ghastly people who post those horrid things.

Remember when talk-show hosts mostly weren't all angry, spitting screamers? The Orlando Sentinel reports the former WRKO host - and one-time Libertarian presidential candidate - died today in San Francisco. He was 72.

A group of grateful Bostonians are throwing a party to thank local reporters who covered the Marathon bombings:

While CNN and Fox News were fumbling the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, Boston's print, radio, and television reporters gave us accurate, up to date reports. National news rushed to be first, but Boston's locals beat them to the facts, reflected our collective strength and, most importantly, showed resolve in the face of stress, exhaustion, and overwhelming emotion. While we were stuck in our apartments, they eschewed rest and made us proud of our city.

It's Thursday at 6 p.m. at Lir, with the $10 cover going to the One Fund. Working local press get in for free.

Former Phoenix staffers Liz Pelly and Faye Orlove last week launched the Media, which they hope can alt up the Hub again, initially online, maybe some day in print. Even though they're online, they'll be following a print-like publishing schedule:

[S]oon you'll find photo essays and video footage documenting creative communities around Boston; zine reviews from librarians at the Papercut Zine Library; a forward-thinking "Know Your Rights" column covering everything from dealing with bad landlords to throwing house shows. We'll have horoscopes, comics, and mixtapes.

Pelly adds:

David Bernstein reports on himself. Can a Best of Boston Politicians list be far behind?

A disgusted citizen complains about W. Dedham Street in the South End:

News organizations left their trash and tape all over our sidewalks following coverage of POTUS visit to the Cathedral. Please fine all and have them clean up. Multiple tv stations are in violation and can be identified easily as this picture shows.

Leave it to the Boston Herald to use the recent tragedy of the Boston Marathon bombing for politics, the politics of transitional assistance also known as welfare. Say what? What does domestic terrorism and welfare have to do with each other?

Well, yesterday the legislature on Beacon Hill was debating a budget and Republicans are, once again, trying to use welfare as a wedge issue. Also yesterday, Chris Cassidy at the Boston Herald broke a front page news story that deceased Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a welfare recipient. Sounds bad, right?

Daily Show on the scoop by Dorchester native John King: The most busted name in news.

The Onion: Internet Comes Up With 8.5 Million Leads On Potential Boston Bombing Suspect.

Boston Sports Media Watch reports on how Pete Sheppard ended his career at WEEI this evening.

Peter Kadzis at WGBH and Carly Carioli at Boston.com.

Sour grapes at the Herald? With bonus gratuitous quote from some lawyer making accusations with no apparent facts behind them:

If he was a reporter on deadline and he's distracted and making phone calls and texting, then that's something that adds to his fault. You're not supposed to be distracted in a cab, you're supposed to focus fully on your job," said Douglas Sheff, a Boston personal injury lawyer and president-elect of the Massachusetts Bar Association.

Does the esquire have any proof the reporter was on deadline and making phone calls and texting right before the crash? If so, he and the Herald failed to produce it.

NPR and WBUR are announcing that the locally produced "Here and Now," hosted by the locally grown Robin Young, is expanding to four hours on July 1 - although she'll be joined by a co-host:

When the expanded program launches July 1, she will have a co-host, Jeremy Hobson, currently host of Marketplace Morning Report. Hobson began his career in journalism at the age of 17 as an intern on NPR’s All Things Considered and since then has gained deep experience as a producer, reporter and now host. Meghna Chakrabarti, co-host of WBUR's Radio Boston, will be the program's primary back up host.

Of course, something has to give with the extra hours - and that something is "Talk of the Nation," which will disappear into the ether.

The moves are part of a "strategic partnership" between NPR and WBUR.

The 31-year-old LGBT newspaper says it's been hit by the decline in newspaper advertising revenue just like every other print outlet and hopes contributions could let it continue to offer print and online versions without a fee.

Update: Headline changed; see comment below from publisher Sue O'Connell.

Robert Ambrogi reports that WBUR's Open Court is no longer streaming live video from Quincy District Court. No money, natch.

Jill watched yesterday as some guy went down Mass. Ave. in Cambridge, hauling away Phoenix boxes.

You can read articles from what would have been this week's issue on the Phoenix site (scroll past the big box where the PDF of the print issue would have been).

But wait, bonus extra good news that's so marvelous we can hardly stand it! Ron Newman alerts us that while the money-losing news and arts stuff is gone, the sex ads in the back live on!

No worries - BOSTON AT NITE IS HERE TO STAY! You can still pick up your free copy of Boston's best adult listings every Thursday in the big black box!

Charles Pierce remembers the Phoenix:

What's the prayer of thanksgiving for a hundred days of fellowship, drunk on words, all of us, as though there were nothing more beyond the next word, the next sentence, the next paragraph locked into place? Please say that the muse is something beyond the balance sheet, something beyond technology. Tell me that she’s alive the way she once was when you'd feel her on your shoulder as one word slammed into the other, and the story got itself told, and you came to end and realized, with wonderment and awe, that the story existed out beyond you, and that it had chosen you, and you were its vehicle, and the grinning muse had the last laugh after all.

Pre-glossy. See the last cover.Both the Dig and the Globe report the Boston Phoenix is shutting down immediately.

The Phoenix itself tweets:

Thank you Boston. Good night and good luck.

The Phoenix has been around since 1966. It had been hard hit in recent years by the decline in print advertising and had sold off its radio station and merged the newspaper with Stuff magazine in an attempt to stay afloat.

Jim Romanesko posts a copy of publisher Stephen Mindich's memo to his staff:

EVEN UPDATIER UPDATE: Last week, boston.com ran a bogus item about Paul Krugman declaring bankruptcy.

UPDATE: It was the electronic edition of the Globe in which the story ran twice; not the ink-on-your-fingers paper edition.

Dan Kennedy reports today's Globe has a story about the fight over same-sex marriage that it also ran on March 8, 2012.

Clear Channel's WXKS, 1200 AM, turns into Bloomberg Radio on Friday.

In addition to national and international financial news, Bloomberg Radio says it will provide "local news, traffic, weather and sports."

Why didn't they run that book excerpt about Whitey Bulger in Love on Valentine's Day? Who doesn't love a good romantic yarn? OK, one in which the protagonist was busy choking one girlfriend to death in front of the other until an underling pulled him off her, but still.

The beleaguered Hub tabloid continues to schadenfreude it up with today's epic adjectivally rich broadside at its competing broadsheet that ends with a quote from would-be publisher Ernie Boch Jr:

I feel it has lost its way over the last few years. I feel I have the right recipe to put it back on track.

Sadly, the little tabloid that could ran out of space before it could explain what his recipe is. Maybe in tomorrow's installment.