Boston Herald

Perhaps it's time to move...

jscg — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:47:28 -0400

For the third time in a little over a year, residents of a Peabody apartment complex were forced to flee as their flame-plagued complex caught fire again.

A three-alarm blaze broke out on the roof of a building at the Highlands at Dearborn yesterday after a lightning bolt struck.

Oh, come on

adamg — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:01:24 -0400

Herald editor camped out at the Entwistle trial complains because when deliberations were over for the day, he had to drive home during the hailstorm:

Try sitting in a cramped court all day then driving away into traffic and some summer fury. This assignment ain't no picnic. ...

In media mess

adamg — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:39:21 -0400

Globe wants to cut reporter pay by 10%; Herald to lay off 160 and print in Chicopee.

Via Dan Kennedy.

Will Rodrick Taylor get on the front page?

adamg — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:50:18 -0400

Last night, I spoke to some graduate journalism students at Northeastern about, well, things such as Universal Hub. I told them there's a big opportunity for folks like them in non-traditional media because mainstream media, at least in Boston, just misses so much.

I asked them if they'd heard of Rodrick Taylor. Nobody raised their hands. Then I asked them if they'd heard of Neil Entwistle. Almost all of them raised their hands.

Gritty metro columns

adamg — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 13:02:38 -0400

Yvonne Abraham files a nice, simple, well told column on a Dorchester gangbanger who had an epiphany in jail and now is trying to get his life straight in college. Peter Gelzinis expresses angst about the really important things in life, but gets too tied up in knots and his head explodes in a paroxysm of random thoughts - at one point he started wagging his finger at us and telling us we all suck because we cared more about the Celtics victory parade than Curt Schilling's shoulder, which is enough to make the reader go "huh?" and wonder if maybe Gelzinis should stop downing entire six packs of Red Bull in a single sitting.

Some murder cases are more equal than others

adamg — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 11:35:52 -0400

On Friday, the front page of the Globe's City & Region section featured a color photo of Neil Entwistle crying and a long story about how distressed he was to see video of his dead wife and daughter (the online version has video for you to enjoy).

You had to turn the page to see one-paragraph rewrites of press releases from the DA's office about a former Army sharpshooter being convicted of first-degree murder for shooting a man outside a Fenway bar and about a mistrial for two guys accused of killing a woman (and shooting out the eye of her companion) in Dorchester.

Over at the Herald, Peter Gelzinis today compares the stop-the-presses coverage of the Entwistle case with the almost non-existent coverage of the Calvin Carnes case (only some guy who is charged with gunning down FOUR PEOPLE in a Dorchester basement) and the case of Rodrick Taylor, accused of killing a young woman from Milton, then taking her body to Franklin Park and burning it:

Regardless of how despicable or merciless the crime, it is easier to numb ourselves when it happens "over there," in those places police classify as "hot zones." There are no manicured front lawns, no entrances secured with push-button combination alarms, no two-car garages.

The irony, of course, is that a pair of overlooked inner-city human dramas now unfolding in two Boston courtrooms have far more to do with murder as it actually exists, day in and day out, than the made-for-TV-movie playing out in Woburn.

Hmm, wonder what the Powers that Be at the Herald think of this column? Might be kind of hard to ask them, though, since they seem too busy filing Entwistle dispatches every 10 minutes ("We all got to see Dan Bennett, assistant district attorney, in action as he rolled out Neil's eBay wheeling and dealing. I'm sure he has juicier Web work to come.")

Does the Globe need two transportation reporters?

adamg — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 10:37:33 -0400

In other words, did it just hire Casey Ross away from the Herald?

UPDATE: Yes, yes it did; but he won't be covering transportation.

That Howie is such a kidder

adamg — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:58:23 -0400

As Dan Kennedy notes, Howie Carr's column on Jim Marzilli today is your basic called-in faux-outrage piece about a pol in trouble. But read down to the last two sentences - man, Howie loves working at 'RKO.

What Herald reporters forget

adamg — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:12:11 -0400

UPDATE: They've fixed it online.

Hilary Chabot starts a Herald story today like this:

It was a game-changing moment no Celts fan could forget - Kevin McHale clotheslining L.A. Lakers bruiser Kurt Rambis in Game 7 of the heated 1984 playoffs.

Herald reporters, however, apparently could forget which game that happened in - it was Game 4 - and that's important because some would argue it changed the course of the series (hat tip to Peter Shanley).

The Herald does redeem itself with its right person in wrong place story on a guy murdered in South Boston on Saturday. The Globe's coverage so far consists of a news brief.

If the Herald were around in 1863

adamg — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 14:55:33 -0400

Ben Alper imagines its first letter about Lincoln's address at Gettysburg:

Hey Abe, where's my property tax relief? – Josiah, Woburn