Boston Globe

Specifically, in not finding the nearest dumpster and tossing a certain Globe columnist into it headfirst after said columnist (one guess which one) accused him of taking steroids because, after all, he's old and Dominican (yes, he went there). Not linking to the column because I don't feel like giving him my two cents worth of Web traffic, but it should be easy enough to find for anybody who can log into bostonglobe.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.

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.

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.

The Boston Business Journal reports the car dealer is looking at putting in a bid for the Globe.

First, Ken Doctor at Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab, estimates the sale price of the Globe at $100 million to $150 million - yes, about a tenth what the Times pad for the paper (and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette) in 1993; takes a look at some of the Globe's strengths (a publisher who gets digital; a still robustly sized newsroom) and weaknesses (revenue).

And now, some highlights from #WhenIBuyTheGlobe, which was trending yesterday on the local Twitters:

Bloomberg News reports the Gray Lady has hired an investment firm to find a buyer for its New England unit, which also includes the Worcester Telegram and Gazette. The Times paid $1.1 billion for the papers in 1993 - about $1.7 billion in today's money.

Times press release.

Some insta-reaction via Twitter (also see: #WhenIBuyTheGlobe):

It's no longer creepy and pathetic to be obsessed with your cat.

Next week, an exclusive look at that Gangnam Style craze sweeping the nation.

Poynter interviews new Globe editor Brian McGrory, who says the current boston.com/bostonglobe.com dichotomy is too confusing and that he plans to make people pay for all in-depth reporting on bostonglobe.com, while making the free boston.com "more social media, more community bloggers, hopefully edgier content."

People are either loving the nod to Thomas Pynchon (specifically, the first line of Gravity's Rainbow) or hating it.

One person took issue not with the Pynchon reference, but with the subhead: "But it was not a huge meteor."

Interestingly, online, the Globe went all boring, replacing the Pynchon with "Meteorite alarms residents in Russian city."

MIT's Center for Civic Media has started analyzing Globe datelines and presents some preliminary results.

H/t Bostonography.

Oh, snap: The Globe cautioned readers of its story about the Notre Dame football player with the fake dead girlfriend that

Now, it appears Te'o's inspiring story was a hoax. According to a report on Deadspin.com, a website that has broken some high-profile stories but not an outlet regarded for journalistic standards, Kekua never existed.

Of course, the Globe was as invested in the Te'o story as every other media outlet in the country, but really?

This year, the Globe named Olympians Aly Raisman of Needham and Kayla Harrison of Marblehead as its "Bostonians of the Year." Both are outstanding athletes and, no doubt, role models for us all, but Raisman lives in Needham and Harrison comes from Marblehead.

Past winners have included US Attorney Carmen Ortiz, who at least works in Boston; Scott Brown, who, granted, famously campaigned in South Boston; Elizabeth Warren, whom I once saw in Roslindale; Paul Pierce, who plays basketball in Boston; and Bruce Marks, who helped build low-income housing in Boston.

Ed. note: After I tweeted about this, Doug Most at the Globe replied: "Just to be clear. Under your premise, as "The Boston Globe," we should only cover Boston's 21 neighborhoods. Not an inch more." No, there's a wider world out there, but just to be clear, Marblehead is not Boston. How about "Globe Person of the Year"?

Ladies and gentlemen, your new Boston Globe editor: Brian McGrory.

John Carroll, who still gets ink on his fingers, reports on a new classified-ad-like thing in the Globe's G section: "Blog" posts from advertisers, complete with underlined blue hyperlinks (sadly, the Globe has yet to perfect that print-to-Web interface or figured out QR codes, so you'll have to type the URLs in yourself).

The Globe reports Editor Marty Baron is leaving the Globe for the Washington Post.

UPDATE: File this under: Hello, Sweetheart, Get Me Rewrite. The headline on the online version of the story, which is what set me off, is "New T manager underwent professional counseling in Atlanta," which has a much different tenor than the print headline: "T's pick for chief faced scrutiny."

Read the lead story in the Globe today and you're left with the impression that the Globe is like: OMG, we just hired a crazy lady to run the T!

What the Globe only sort of explains, though, is just what sort of counseling the Business Psychology Company LLC does. Fortunately, even on a Sunday morning, any joker with an Internet connection can use the Googles for research. And here's what one joker found:

Or as media wags would say: Thank God We're a Two-Newspaper Town (tm). Yes, the latest circulation figures are out.

The Globe says God, we're awesome - our numbers are so strong it's like we took a double dose of Cialis.

OK, OK, yeah, technically, dead-tree circulation continued to drop like a rock tied to an anchor, but, hey, digital subscriptions count now, and they're up, and we're up, so knock it off. Real shame about the losers over at the Herald, the Globe adds:

The Boston Herald's daily circulation fell below 100,000 in the period. The tabloid's circulation declined by 14.9 percent to 96,860, compared to same period a year ago, according to the bureau. The Herald's Sunday circulation was 77,764, down 9.4 percent.

Over at New Wingo Square, though, the Herald advises the Globe to shut the frick up: Herald sees readership spike:

The reach of the Boston Herald is greater than ever before as the brand of its quality journalism is showing strong growth across digital platforms.

The numbers tell the story: Print readership up 15 percent daily over last year to nearly a half-million. A whopping 47 percent growth in weekly e-edition readers. An impressive 2.6 million unique visitors a month to bostonherald.com, an 18 percent spike over last year.

The scrappy tabloid adds:

The shift in the media landscape has the Herald counting broadcast and digital platforms as top competitors in the new marketplace as opposed to the Boston Globe, which dropped 11 percent of daily readers in Scarborough Research comparisons.

The Herald, natch, loves it some schadenfreude over a spat between Dennis Lehane and the Globe over a review - which the Globe corrected - that originally took Lehane to task for portraying a character in a new book as a magical Negro, when, in fact, the character is white.

Boston Sports Media Watch dissects the latest column by a Globe sportswriter about how those damn kids have no respect at all, not like in his day.

Last week:
The Globe writer who hates bloggers.

Huffington Post reports the Mass. GOP barred a Globe reporter from a vote last night on whether to adopt a state platform that would include a call for ban on all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest, and which would come out against same-sex marriage.

Some Republican muscle is quoted as saying he strongarmed the Globie out of the vote to make sure a Worcester Telegram and Gazette reporter had a fair shake at covering the debate, in what must have been a telephone booth or cardboard box in which there just wasn't enough room for the media horde of, um, two reporters. As these things so often do nowadays, the debate moved onto Twitter, where the Republican bouncer said the Globe reporter (and the Phoenix's David Bernstein) should just go work for Elizabeth Warren.

In the end, it seems, our little Party of Lincoln tabled the whole thing.

Mark Levy analyzes a Globe story that purports to find a growing "backlash" against tech development in the city, based largely on the fact that the Forest City project got defeated:

"The backlash has caught the notice of biotechnology leaders, who are asking whether the industry is still welcome in Cambridge," Robert Weisman wrote on Saturday.

This would indeed be an interesting story - if there were any examples in this story of biotechnology leaders asking that. There aren't.

Proto-feminist crusader.

Somehow, in the crush of events, we missed the return of the Globe trend story based on no particular trend, in this case, a Wednesday opus on how expensive mixers are now a feminist hallmark. In case you, too, missed it, the Globe alerts us to "the strange allure of the stand mixer:"

Mostly retiring after 44 years:

So why now? It's time; that’s all. I’ve covered the events I wanted to cover. I reached a goal with the Bruins' Stanley Cup run in 2011 to have covered championships in all four primary pro sports. I've covered 29 Final Fours. London has been my 11th Olympics. I even did a dog show. I am fulfilled.

But there is something else. I occasionally come across some things I wrote years ago, and I say to myself, "I did that?" And I know in my heart I really couldn't match that effort today. That's all a writer needs to know.