Media

Channel 4 has dispatched its news chopper to keep us in the loop on this developing story.

No word yet if the horse is stuck with a frog on a log in that bog at Ponkapoag.

In 2008, Boston.com launched locally-focused YourTown pages for specific Boston neighborhoods and surrounding cities and towns.

They are now redesigning the pages, one by one, in a manner that de-emphasizes Boston.com and Globe content in favor of links to external news sources and tweets. All of the Boston neighborhood pages are still in the old format, but many of the surrounding cities and suburbs have been converted.

What's your opinion of the changes? Here are some 'old' and 'new' pages to compare:

Old: Arlington, Concord, Newton, Roslindale, Waltham

New: Belmont, Brookline, Cambridge, Somerville, Lexington

Once we've collected sufficient comments here, I'm going to point David Dahl of the Globe at this post. He is in charge of both the existing YourTown pages and the ongoing redesign.

Yes, it's time for the Globe metro columnist's annual fantasy-sportswriter camp, and this year, the focus is on how much he hates the 2012 Sox.

A problem at one of those giant Needham towers has knocked several Boston TV stations off the air - although they're still available to cable customers.

Channel 5 reports "a likely transmission line or antenna fault at the Needham community tower site" Sunday night took down several stations.

Channel 5 says it's back on the air, but at reduced power, via an auxiliary tower. Channel 4 reports both it and sister station Channel 38 are off air.

UPDATE: The actual Globe article ran Aug. 17, 1956. Here's a copy; the Globe has taken down the version that cause all the furor with the March 17, 2012 date.

Yeah, just because it's on the IntarWebs doesn't mean it's true. The Globe printed this droll little piece about the city banning beer in seats at Fenway, possibly as part of their big Fenway package from yesterday, possibly as an April Fool's joke, although with a weird March 17, 2012 date on it.

Just not true. How to be sure? It mentions Boston Licensing Board Chairwoman Mary Driscoll. Driscoll was chairwoman back in the 1940s (bonus fun fact: She was beaned in the noggin by a foul ball at Fenway in 1947). Current Chairwoman Nicole Murati Ferrer has yet to express an opinion about seated beer swilling at Fenway.

Production problems mean delayed delivery of the Boston Globe across the region today. The Herald is, of course, also affected. On Beacon Hill, residents faced their own existential crisis, as Emily Gullickson reports:

Sunday Times delivery is late, leaving everyone in Beacon Hill to drink their coffee without the paper.

The Globe Web site opened up free versions of its e-edition, but too many people took it up on the offer or something and www.bostonglobe.com crashed. Meanwhile, on Channel 7, Michaela Lynn informs us, a reporter alerted viewers:

The Globe says that you can read the Globe online, or just watch the news here.

Adrian Walker reports on being stopped by a cop Thursday afternoon while he walked down Tremont Street by the Suffolk Law School, and what that's like in this post-Trayvon Martin world:

Of course, I was never in any danger. But that didn't make it feel any better to get stopped for fitting our culture’s all-purpose description of a suspect: a black man.

Being a Globe columnist, of course, when he contacted BPD to find out what's up, the second in command of the whole department returned his call. Walker reports that Daniel Linskey told him police had tracked a cell phone signal to the area of Tremont Street.

What Walker didn't print, however, was that that information proved to be accurate, that police had reason to be searching for the suspect along Tremont Street - they found him around 2 p.m. at at the Saint Francis House on Boylston Street, a short walk from where Walker was stopped.

State Rep. Gene O'Flaherty of Chelsea blames Kevin Cullen for making him resign as co-chair of the Judiciary Committee.

Will continue on 6 p.m. newscast.

CommonWealth details the suburban media chain's latest financial filings, which warn of possible bankruptcy but reassure us that should that happen, the top two executives - one of them our own Kirk Davis - will get nice severance packages.

Meanwhile, the list of local editors who have left or are soon to leave includes Managing Editor Kat Powers, Gail Spector at the Newton Tab and Jillian Fennimore at the Somerville Journal. That's in addition to Greg Reibman, streamlined out of his job as local publisher last November.

The Dig reports Banner Publisher Mel Miller sits on the board of directors of OneUnited Bank, a fact the paper failed to note in an editorial charging supporters of the church would set back civil rights in the US if they succeed in winning a new repayment plan for its mortgage.

Yes, of course, Ernie Boch Jr., we learn today from his house organ.

The Supreme Judicial Court this week approved a new rule that for the first time will let "citizen journalists" photograph trials and other court proceedings on a routine basis.

Who's going to be the first reporter to bend down, gather up some snow, make a snowball and toss it?

Both pitchers apologized yesterday for last September. Allan at Joy of Sox provides the round up to show that the media has decided whom we should pat on the head and murmur "there, there" to and who should be banished to that ratty old couch in the basement until he apologizes some more:

The Globe's Nick Cafardo began his article by saying "We're not here to rate the mea culpas of Red Sox pitchers Jon Lester and Josh Beckett yesterday at JetBlue Park." Then he spent most of his time rating the mea culpas of Red Sox pitchers Jon Lester and Josh Beckett yesterday at JetBlue Park.

Callum Borchers interviews David Jacobs, publisher of the Boston Courant, on why he sees no need for a Web site.

Fenway Pastoral has started chronicling chicken references in stories about the Red Sox.

Jay Fitzgerald contemplates the controversy surrounding Steve DeOssie and his pre-Super Bowl denunciation of the Pats:

The most annoying thing, besides his bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you behavior: The thick New York accent he employed.

Oops, they did it again. The New York Times, which hates when people post copies of its work, posted a copy of a Boston Review article without permission. The Phoenix's Carly Carioli, who called out the Gray Lady for posting a story now owned by the Phoenix just the other day, does the honors again:

How many more examples of this hypocrisy will we have to uncover before the Times begins to acknowledge that the problem isn't merely piracy -- the problem is a copyright law written so stringently that not even a newspaper with the resources of the New York Times can comply with it? As several commenters on our original post have pointed out, under some of the proposed language for SOPA and PIPA, a website that engaged in copyright infringement equivalent to the Times's hosting of our article could be blocked from the DNS registry.

That was the entire point of my first post: that the copyright fundamentalism advocated by big-media barons like Keller and the Times is counterproductive -- even to newspapers like the Times.

Channel 4 reports.

Dave Maynard introduces Sarah Silverman on Community Auditions:

Jim Romensko reports a new "chief content officer" will reduce full-time and freelance budgets and call for greater emphasis on easily churned out content:

The editorial emphasis is now on "easy, quick-hitting, cookie-cutter copy," including mandatory "Best Of" features (i.e., best coffeeshop, best burgers, etc.) that compel businesses and readers to visit and participate in the Patch directories. (Each Patch has a directory of local businesses, organizations, churches, etc.)

OMG, Matt Light and Gronk went to a party after the Super Bowl! Clutch those pearls closer to your chest, Mabel! Or as David Robichaud asks, as he wipes away a tear:

What do you think about this? Should they have been celebrating after a crushing defeat?

The New York Post reports the Irish Voice has bought the Boston-based Irish Immigrant.

The acquisition leaves the Boston Irish Reporter as the only locally owned Irish-focused newspaper in New England.

Disclosure: I do some Web work for the owners of the Reporter.

Staffers at the Suffolk Journal this week learned one of the most important rules of print journalism: If you put in a joke headline, you're going to forget to take it out and it will run and boy are you going to regret it.

In today's issue of The Journal, we published an inappropriate sub-headline in the article "SLI Involvement Fair a success." We want to apologize profusely for the mistake and make it clear that we in no way harbor ill feelings towards the Student Leadership and Involvement Office, nor any of the students and staff that work there. The sub-head was put in as a joke, by editors, that unfortunately slipped through our editing process later in the night. We want to make it clear that the reporter who wrote the article had no idea or anything to do with the subhead.

And just what did they write? See for yourself.

H/t, Dan.

The Herald has completed its move to the South Boston waterfront.