BostonNOW

Paul Levy photographs some detritus from the Icelandic-owned BostonNow: A box dumped by the Green Line tracks at Longwood:

... Too bad, too, that they couldn't at least have picked up their trash before they folded.

There's a fun mini-battle in the comments section of the We're Dead story on BostonNow. A post urging salespeople to contact the HR person at the Quincy Patriot-Ledger is followed by:

Attention Sales Staff. Why join another Daily we all know they are dying. The Bulletin Newspapers, Inc. is looking for sales people to join our weekly newspaper group. Contact Paul DiModica ...

Meanwhile, at least one BostonNow blogger plans to keep blogging, although somewhere else.

Associated Press gets the scoop: BostonNow is kaput.

Some 52 full-time and 100 part-time employees now out of work. Hmm, I wonder what happens to all the blogs on their site?

The Missus explains why. Jeans are involved.

Boston Mag staffers are unanimous: A BostonNow soduku puzzle today starts out with a swastika. However, they are not willing to assign malicious intent because of the paper's glorious, albeit short, history of missing the obvious.

Jon Milkman limns the BostonNow hawker at Porter Square who clearly takes pride in his work, even to the point of coming up with a catchphrase:

... [T]o me as i bolted through the porter T entrance late to work and aimed myself at the escalator: "alright, on the run, here we go!!!" (holding out a paper to me like he was passing off a baton in a relay race)

he's kind of awesome.

Apparently, at BostonNow, not much.

Also, check out Yelp reviews of BostonNow, especially the one from the guy who tries to give a copy of the paper back to a hawker at Copley.

It's good the Globe has a transportation reporter again, maybe they'll stop getting scooped by BostonNow by a month. Compare today's Globe story on how Dan Grabauskas says the T is broke with BostonNow's Jan. 9 story on how Dan Grabauskas says the T is broke.

But speaking of our bankrupt transportation authority, the Outraged Liberal says it's time to stick a fork in Grabauskas. TJIC doesn't express much sympathy for him, either.

Amy Derjue poses the question after reading a report on a 600% (!) increase in Massachusetts since 2005 and then following that up with a BostonNow report that the Massachusetts economy is doing just fine.

BostonNow is the Daily Show of Boston newspapers: It's put to bed too early in the day to get actual election results, so they just make stuff up. Or, as Jason Feifer remarks on today's cover story: Dewey defeats Clinton:

Somehow, Boston Metro was able to get the real story in print.

The Outraged Liberal wonders how the editors of a paper called BostonNow decided to lead with the Omaha shooting rather than the fireball that incinerated an Everett rotary:

... Memo to staff: Everett is a working class community in the Boston area. Omaha is in Nebraska. Nebraska is not Massachusetts. ...

BostonNow editors did discuss the Everett story at their Wednesday story conference, at least.

QUICK: Which paper is from Boston?

Props to the Nowians for moving their site to Drupal, which is a great community and publishing platform (I will admit to being biased - I use it both here and at work)

Both their news and user blogs are now Drupalized, which could lead to some interesting things if they look at Drupal's aggregation and social-networking capabilities (oh, ho, of course I'm geeking out here).

But, guys, you might want to look at the site in Internet Explorer. Read more

Charles Blandes photographs a battle in our local free-paper war.

Adam Reilly looks up the coverage by Boston's dailies (all four of 'em) and concludes you'd need to go elsewhere for coverage of today's city-council preliminaries in Allston/Brighton and Roxbury and state-rep race in East Boston.

He also finds it curious that neither paper is covering this week's trial of a man accused of killing two people in an Allston/Brighton apartment last January.

For election info:

East Boston: Hubster candidate interviews.
Allston/Brighton: Brighton Centered | Allston Brighton Community Blog
Roxbury: Um, anybody know?

Eeka points out terminology problems in a story about people with disabilities and so helpfully copy edits the story.

Newsroom shakeups combine with the Ron Jeremy incident to create a crashingly bad story at Boston's newest free daily, Jason Feifer reports.

EnuhCork has a solution to a vexing T issue: Sitting down next to an empty seat covered in free newspapers and then getting the hairy eyeball from people who get on the train after you who think you're a slob of epic proportions:

I took both of the papers, folded them up, and put them on the floor. I stepped on them so they wouldn't go anywhere.

And then at his stop, he picked them up and put them in a recycling bin.

EnuhCork reports a singing BostonNow hawker is beginning to get on his nerves:

... He sings out to people as they approach the station. I'll do my best to describe it here through extending words by repeating vowels:

"Goooood Morning Everybody...Get Your Boston Noooooooooooooooooow!"

The "now" part of the song is really nasally.

Today, I saw a guy take a paper from the singing hawker and responded with a little tuneful, "Thank Yooooooooooooooooooooooou!" ...

Should Patrick take the Metro or BostonNow?

Adam Reilly wonders how BostonNow came to do a puff piece on Scientology tutoring in Roxbury (part 1 of a 2-part series, apparently).

EnuhCork: wonders:

Is it just me or have the Boston Now paper distributors become more aggressive over the past few weeks? It's getting to the point where papers are being forced in front of me and I need to swat them away to get by. ...

Non-disclosure disclosure: I'm no longer writing a weekly column for the Globe, so I don't have to post a disclosure anymore when I write about competing newspapers.

BostonNow? More like BostonYesterday. Today's paper has not a word about last night's Dorchester shootout in which both a cop and a suspect got shot. Metro, at least, managed to get three paragraphs and a photo on the front page.

More headline goodness: Spatch analyzes the front pages today of all four of Boston's dailies.

My standard newspaper disclosure.

Dan Kennedy attended a forum at the BPL last night on "restoring trust in the media" and captures an interesting exchange between John Wilpers of BostonNow and Ellen Hume, director of the Center on Media and Society at UMass Boston:

Wilpers said the paper killed a proposed government story because somebody watching the paper's live editor's conference messaged that the story was too boring and editors realized he was right and that most government stories are boring. Hume retorted that she found that somewhat "creepy" because papers shouldn't just cater to the lowest common denominator - some of the most important stories seem boring at first. Wilpers then replied that, no, he would never kill a story just because of what a blogger said, that in this case, editors simply realized the person was right, the story wasn't worth pursuing.

Meanwhile, Mike Mennonno, who did not attend the session, explains why, if BostonNow were a literary banquet, he'd likely starve.

Like Kennedy, I attended the forum, but do you think I could post about it?

Hey, gang, they're hiring a copy editor.

Via Sean McCarthy, who, at no charge, copy edits the mistakes in the ad.

I've done enough copy editing to last me a lifetime, thank you very much.

Earlier:
Bosotn Now: The Paper Of Rceord.

Susan Kaup of Exploit Boston is moving to BostonNow to help manage the paper's community efforts.

Lisa Williams, who helped put Watertown on the online map and who has been doing some consulting at boston.com, reports she'll have some big news to report next week at a publisher's confab in Miami:

... It's bigger than HAM! Bigger than CHEESE! Bigger than HAM AND CHEESE COMBINED! AND TOASTED! ...