Media

Joel Brown analyzes the local context of WGBH's purchase of Public Radio International, which distributes shows such as "This American Life" and the 'BUR-produced "Here and Now."

Despite all the nice talk abut how the WGBH deal isn't going to affect [WBUR's relationship with PRI], it's impossible to believe that 'GBH won't have an inside track to get national shows like "This American Life" the next time the contract comes up. And to get their own shows syndicated. They'll all deny it now, but just watch. And if you were running WBUR, would you want to entrust your own shows to a syndicator controlled by your crosstown rival?

Dan Kennedy has some of the details on buyouts and layoffs at the Globe.

They're going to find out in Haverhill.

Margery Eagan is outraged beyond belief that Robert Kraft made that cheesy demo tape to help out his possible girlfriend. Why, why, why, she sputters, the horny ol' goat has demeaned his children and his saintly late wife.

Not that some rich guy needs any help, but how dare she.

Did Kraft abuse this woman? Did he solicit her in a men's room? Is this woman underage? A Russian spy? A known typhoid carrier?

I don't know anything about the Krafts, but if Myra Kraft was as good a person as she seemed in public, I'm going to doubt her last dying wish was that her husband crawl into a shell and never come out after she was gone. Based on what we now know, Robert Kraft didn't break any laws or commit any grave acts of moral turpitude. Is he being silly? Unseemly? Even if the answer is yes, so what? He's an adult, the woman in question is an adult and Margery Eagan is just some pearl clutcher who probably needs to carry around a vial of smelling salts to help her recover from all the horrid, horrid things she spies.

Most journalism students don't walk right into their dream jobs, but I suspect if they did, most probably wouldn't find a reason to whine about it.

Joy of Sox reports on an effort to shame the shameless during the series against the Yankees:

Four games, on four networks. Bring your anti-Boston Sports Media signs to the ballpark! Or make them once you're inside. The media's ego has exploded, and they're making not only themselves but us look like morons. It's time to let them know that they don't represent Red Sox fans, that it's not all about them, and that they need to leave the players alone and let them play ball!

UPDATE: No right-wing wankfest - station will a Mike 93.7 successor.

The Phoenix reports the station it's selling to Clear Channel might be about to become Boston's new home of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Jimmy Severino, at least, if you follow where talk1017.com leads to.

The Globe announced today it's hired former WFNX staffers Henry Santoro, Julie Kramer and Adam 12 and former program director Paul Driscoll to build an alt-music streaming service that will be available both through the Web and mobile apps.

A launch date and program details will be announced later this summer.

NotloB reports WGBH-FM is letting one jazz host go and scaling back the other's hours, possibly as it moves to add even more talk and news, because if there's one thing Boston needs, it's a second talks and news NPR affiliate.

Yes, some people still prefer their news on paper. South Ender Michael Ratty reports he didn't find a copy of the Globe outside his apartment this morning and his neighborhood 7-Eleven didn't have any, either.

When you mess up my morning newspaper and coffee routine, you deny me everything. EVERYTHING!

UPDATE: At 9:30, the Globe tweeted: "We apologize for the late papers today. Due to a production problem last night the paper is late for home and retail."

ICANN, the group that decides on Internet domains (such as .com, .net, etc.) recently solicited bids for a whole new generation of "generic top-level domain names." Dan Rowinski notes that our very own Globe has applied to set up and run a domain of .boston (see all the applications).

If approved, the Globe would win the right to act as a domain-name registrar, doling out Internet addresses to anybody who wants a .boston address. Or as the Globe puts it in its application:

NPR reports Tom and Ray Magliozzi are retiring this fall from the locally produced show that gave them - and their accents - national prominence.

"Car Talk" will continue to air, but only with repeats from 25 years of car-advice call-ins, recorded at WBUR's studios. Hopefully, they'll keep their Dewey, Cheetham and Howe offices in Harvard Square.

Although you have to wonder if a seat on the city council is a step up or down for the Dorchester state rep. And then you have to wonder who was sleeping at the Globe, where this appeared today. From Michael Ratty, who reads the Globe on paper so you don't have to.

Earlier:
Those school officials all look alike.

WBZ announced today that the longtime overnight talk host is retiring at the end of the week. In a statement, WBZ NewsRadio Director of News and Programming Peter Casey said:

The Globe today uplifts us with a report on lax bros, those young Masters of the Universe in training in the leafy suburbs frequented by their Globe-reading parents, who are apparently now busy disposing their income on lacrosse sticks, gloves, helmets and, of course, flat-brim hats for their kids, whom they give names like Beau, Cameron and Zander:

"You check the way the kids carry themselves," said Tommy Lee, a father of two lax bros who coaches a Brookline Youth Lacrosse team of fifth- and sixth-grade boys. "It has become a really cool thing. It's like walking around with a little swagger."

More:
Is your child a lax bro?

The Banner has a few bones to pick with with Walker's columns about Roxbury Community College (for example):

Walker is better at fiction than solid journalism.

Peter Gelzinis has one common-sense observation in his column today - that hipsters who don't know where Roche Bros. is, let alone want to collect signatures there, pose little real threat to Tom Menino.

But not content to leave well enough alone, Gelzinis wraps that single thought in a giant blanket of old-coot "hey you kids, get offa my lawn!" grumbling about how whippersnappers who want to party until 5 a.m. are to blame for that poor Army vet's death in the Theater District and that if Boston weren't already so hip, people wouldn't be paying top dollar for "impish condos." Sounds like somebody needs a nap.

New York Magazine dishes up a tale of corporate intrigue that has it all: Feuding cousins, a new girlfriend, the Boston Globe.

Three years ago, the Times tried selling Boston Globe, its sister paper, but was unable to find a deal. Last year, the company began debating whether to try again.

This matter, it turns out, was the hinge point at which the Times' business failures, the family tension over the dividend, and the Nisenholtz and Gonzalez affairs would all conspire to isolate Sulzberger and force Robinson out.

To make the problem go away, the Times paid its now ex-CEO $24 million to leave, or just $4 million more than the amount of cuts the New York overlords made the Boston minions make under threat of shutting the whole place down.

Buried in the story: The Globe may be up for sale again.

Whoever stole a one-of-a-kind, artist-designed Weekly Dig news box had better hope they don't run into Joe Curtatone in a dark alley. He tweets tonight:

Surely someone can find some other piece of ironic furniture. Return Rawr!

The shrinking Phoenix Media Group still has one possible ace in the hole - a patent lawsuit against Facebook that, if successful, would give it ownership over one of the most fundamental parts of social networking.

At issue is a patent held by Phoenix subsidiary People2People on the concept of creating a personal page on a Web site.

The Boston Business Journal reports the Phoenix has sold WFNX to Clear Channel and that pretty much everybody but news anchor Ted Baxter Program Director Paul Driscoll has been let go. The station could go to Spanish or country and western.

Seems that when a big convention is in town, the MBTA runs special Silver Line service to the airport straight from the convention center, rather than making people carry their bags on that long walk to the nearest Silver Line stop and crowding onto a bus there.

Are you outraged? The Herald is, to the point of displacing its long-running Indian Joke of the Day series from the front page, which today features end-of-world fonts to accuse the T of stealing "all" its buses to service fat-cat conventioneers. Who, the Herald grudgingly admits, pay their fares just like rest of us - but only after the paper's crack investigative unit did some undercover surveillance:

On Friday, a Herald reporter and photographer observed people at the convention center paying regular fares to board the nonstop airport-bound Silver Line buses. The drivers did not take normal Silver Line routes or make any Silver Line stops before dropping passengers at Logan Airport. A driver said the buses provide conventioneers with rides to the airport. A bus tailed by the Herald did not follow the Silver Line’s dedicated bus route, instead driving directly to the Ted Williams Tunnel.

The horror!

Ed. derail question: Why is the convention center stop so far away from the convention center?

Globe editors have decided to stop using "yesterday," "today" and "tomorrow" in stories and will instead use specific days of the week for referring to happenings of past, present and future:

The reason for the change is that articles are no longer written only for the newspaper. Breaking news is posted immediately on the Globe’s websites; stories are then fleshed out, posted again, then put into the process for the next day’s paper and the next day’s web entries. With all that traffic, a reliance on "yesterday," "today," and "tomorrow" is an invitation for error.

The one print exception to the rule applies to headlines.

Or to rephrase Paul McCartney:

Wednesday, all my day references seemed so far away; now it looks as though they're here to stay.

Via Nieman Journalism Lab.

The week's Bochwhoring Index stands at 2.

Yesterday, of course, the Gals mentioned Boch Jr.'s celebrity roast and then, today, they used an on-air tiff between the roast host and some DJ we're relieved to see is still alive to play up the Norwood resident's name (in the headline, in a reference in the column, in an accompanying photo and, online, a clip from the roast - hmm, so should that make the Index a 6?).

As only the New York Post can.