Channel 4 has the initial details on the shooting at 470 Mass. Ave., which left one dead.
Props to Channel 4 for being the first with the most on the story. I went to them as soon as I fired my browser up at work, after listening to Carl Stevens report on WBZ-AM on the shooting.
OK, some of you get 80's pop tunes stuck in your brains until they explode; I get that damn Herald ad with the Rockette-like telephone operators singing out the Herald phone number stuck in my head. Can't somebody make it stop?
Anyway, the Herald claims that for about an hour yesterday, people clicking on a boston.com link got sent to bostonherald.com:
As so many print readers have learned, even if you start with the Globe you'll often wind up with the Herald.
Andy, who works at boston.com, described how links do or do not appear in online versions of Globe articles - specifically, that link to the Web site of the adult-video store, which caused all sorts of problems down at Morrissey Boulevard yesterday. As Dan Kennedy surmised, the link was the result of an automated process that looks for linkish-looking things, then links them:
Take that John Daley and all you other people (yeah, and you, too) complaining about how the Globe never hyperlinks to anything.
Forwarded by vigilant boston.com reader (and Network World multimedia guru) Jason Meserve. boston.com has since changed the wording of the alert, so the traffic must have cleared up out by Ponkopoag or the rings of Saturn.
Jonelle spotted it, too: You're gonna want to detour down Route 3, methinks.
No, of course I would never make a mistake like that - not even if they paid me.
Mark has details on a Globe proposal to put its online sports coverage behind a registration system (free for print subscribers, Heraldesque monthly fee for others). Among the possible enticements: Daily columns by Shaughnessy and other columnists, blogs by members of local players (ooh, can you imagine a blog by Manny or Foulke?), extra game coverage and access to Globe sports archives.
Nobody at Morrissey Boulevard ever tells me anything, but I still need a dislcosure.
It's constantly seeking to expand the definition of "local" to help us break out of our parochial mindset. Take, for example, this morning's lead item - yeah, sure, you'd think most Bostonians would care more about a quadruple murder in Dorchester than a possible subway strike 200 miles away, but geez, people, that kind of thinking will never get us world-class status.
Earlier:
Cupertino, Mass.
Boston.com: Bay State in massive landgrab
But the grapefruits remain neutral
boston.com is owned by the Boston Globe. Hence, this disclaimer.
Continuing its bold effort to redefine the meaning of "local" (and to overturn outdated notions of "grammar"), boston.com today gives us:
Earlier:
Boston.com: Bay State in massive landgrab
But the grapefruits remain neutral
Sure, circulation figures at both papers are dropping like stones. Dan, though, finds the silver lining - if you look at their online readership, they're not doing so badly.
boston.com's launched a New England travel site. Yay, boston.com. Let's see how Yankee Magazine responds.
Part of the site is MassachusettsBlogger, written by a Charlestown "supercomputer salesman" (not sure if he really sells supercomputers or he's just wicked good at selling PCs) who has such helpful tips as: Cape Cod is a really nice place to go in the summer.
Otherwise, seems to be a good portal to travel information.
According to the "Local" section of boston.com's News page this morning, Massachusetts now includes New Hampshire, West Virginia and Connecticut (where Charlie Rocket died, which is no doubt horrifying news for the five people who remember who he was, and where United Technologies reported a profit thanks to air-conditioner sales). In fact, as I type this, the only story from pre-expansion Massachusetts is about that dam in Taunton that's about to burst.
This headline is just so wonderful, I won't even ask why it is it was in the "local" news section at boston.com:
Even though he's completely underwhelmed by boston.com's organization, Dan reports:
Last night I did something I don't think I'd ever done before. I hadn't had a chance to spend much time with the Sunday Globe. But instead of grabbing the paper, I reached for my iBook. ...
If only they'd learn some design tips from their colleagues at nytimes.com, he sighs.
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