What? Mike Barnicle is writing for the Herald again? Wasn't he getting ready to march triumphantly back into the Globe newsroom when his buddy Jack Welch took over that paper and fired everybody (even Alex Beam)? Guess not.
I know I'll sleep easier tonight, knowing that John Stossel has finally weighed in on the whole thing:
... The news media went wild, with television stations interrupting programs for alerts, and breathless TV reporters talking about the "terrorism threat." This went on all day. ...
Tough talk from a man who once did a breathless feature on dwarf tossing.
Mats Tolander fact checks our boy Bri today: Seems that in his zeal to fawn over Boston's $1.5-million shot-sound-spotter thing, McGrory may have left out a few inconvenient truths, which Tolander provides.
This reminds me why I don't watch Channel 25 news. I wonder if he was that upset about Curt Schilling promoting obesity and coronary disease when he got signed by the Sox.
New England Ethnic News aggregates "newz" (Whyz? Zs are trez cutting edge, I guezz) from New England's ethnic newspapers.
Today's Business Filter on teleconferencing says:
Save yourselves! Here is a great set of guidelines to help ensure you don't have a botched call.
But doesn't provide a link to said great guidelines. It's enough to set off a normally mild-mannered John Daley (who found the site and then waded through five pages of archives to find the guidelines):
Carpundit says the Globe's Royal Ford is no Mr. Auto Writer, at least when it comes to advice on tires:
I have long believed that newspaper auto writers don't know what they're talking about, so I usually don't read about cars in the paper. For some reason, over breakfast this morning, I decided to read Royal Ford's column in Automotive section of the Boston Globe. It's a Q&A today, and he put me off my food with the very first answer by getting it exactly wrong ...
Cruising YouTube for the latest Boston-related videos this afternoon, I found one video of Harry Potter going to Boston, where no one knows his name, and roughly 76,000 videos of people ranting about what chuckleheads we all are (I think this guy is the best). For some reason, somebody posted a clip of NBC's Brian Williams introducing a report on BOSTON TERROR SCARE that featured the following backdrop:
My first thought: Man, what'd they do to the Hancock? Look closely, though, and you can see the unmistakable conical hat of one of the International Place towers on the right. So it's downtown Boston, not Back Bay. But, huh? Downtown doesn't have an 80-story skyscraper. Oh, of course! They used a photo of downtown Boston from an artist's rendering of what the area will look like after the Tommy Tower gets built in Winthrop Square (photo via World Architecture News):
So what does Brian Williams know that we don't? Will the mooninites return in 10 or 15 years, after this tower is built? And will one of their first acts be to eat the TV tower on the left side of the building?
Oh, darn, I said I wasn't going to write anything else about the things unless something truly, spectacularly stooopid came out. But I can't help myself - swatting Brian McGrory around is like peanuts; once you start, you just can't stop. So here goes with a comparison of four local columns today: Read more.
You know, the first thing I thought when I woke up this morning was "Gosh, did Punxatawney Phil see his shadow this morning?" How did we ever survive without boston.com, which recognized the importance of this breaking news with a NEWS UPDATE banner right at the top of the home page? Let's see you top that, blogosphere.
Catching up with Brian McGrory's piece on Manuel Rivera yesterday: Sure, it sucks that our school superintendent left before he even got here, but boy, it also looks like he did us a real favor by staying in New York. What an arrogant piece of work.
And Bri, well done! See, you can be a good metro columnist (but maybe next time, try to resist the temptation to get any Red Sox allusions in, 'kay?).
New England Informer is a monthly and will, presumably, compete head-on with the weekly Bay State Banner for advertising.
Sam Allis writes an interesting Boston column for the Sunday Globe, which I bet most people miss because it's on page A2, and who looks for metro stuff there? Why isn't it in the City & Region section? More specifically, why did the Globe today take up the top half of its local news section with a story about Mitt Romney and his father's Nash Rambler, rather than using it for Allis's interview with Jerome Groopman, who at least really is local?
Dan Shaughnessy Watch is back in operation (although Michael Femia has certainly been doing yeoman work on the CHB beat of late).
As he waited for his ticket out of the Sox virtual waiting room today, the Broken Down Sawx Fan found time to read an article about the way Jerry Trupiano got dumped as an announcer at the end of last season. And he got disgusted at the way the Sox dumped the long-time "Wayyyy back" announcer.
Computerworld, a trade publication in Framingham, recently ran an article about some software the company's IT department installed to increase the uptime of its systems in one division. Now somebody claiming to be a John Hancock lawyer is threatening to sue Computerworld unless it takes the article off its Web site. Is it libelous? No. Does it reveal trade secrets?
Not that it really matters, but: What kind of phone do you think Dan Shaughnessy uses to call in his columns?
Michael Femia dissects today's ADD special so you don't have to:
Suppose Barry Bonds gets hot early. Suppose he's closing in on Hank Aaron when the Giants come to Fenway June 15. Highly unlikely, but just suppose . . .
Over the past month, four teenagers in the Boston area have been murdered.
David Scott doubts the Globe's foreign coverage is the only thing that will be changing at the paper, and provides some early indications that the sports pages a year from now might look different.
Ten years or so ago, the Bulletin was a small weekly in the small town of Norwood. But its owners have been slowly advancing northward and now they've got free weekly neighborhood newspapers across much of Boston.
Now the Bulletin is launching a weekly citywide paper - the Boston Bulletin - which you can get a taste of on the Bulletin Web site, which is already aggregating stories of possible citywide interest on the home page.
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