Tag Results for Boston Globe

The Boston Herald's media critic Jessica Heslam has an interesting item on the recent story about sexual assaults at local colleges produced by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting at Boston University and ran on the front page of the Boston Globe.

Heslam points out that not only did the story fail to include Boston University in its investigation of how sexual assaults reported on campus rarely result in disciplinary action, but NECIR-BU ended up getting scooped by the BU student paper, the Daily Free Press.

The two longtime investigative journalists who run the investigative center, former WBZ reporter Joe Bergantino and former Boston Herald reporter Maggie Mulvihill, say they based their report on federal statistics reported by colleges that receive Justice Department grants in return. Those schools included Salem State College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern, Tufts, and UMass Amherst, but not Boston University, Boston College, or Harvard.

Yet the Daily Free Press was apparently able to report a similar story outlining a similar problem at BU, using information that was voluntarily disclosed by the university. What's more, Heslam quoted a BU spokesman saying the same infomation was given to NECIR-BU.

In a brief telephone conversation earlier today, an unhappy Bergantino said that criticism of the story was premature, and that NECIR-BU had always intended to address the issue at BU in a follow-up article. According to a statement he released to Heslam, that article will be reported by the Free Press and published jointly in the student paper and on the NECIR-BU web site.

The statement also contained a litany of reasons why the BU information was not included in the piece that ran in the Globe, including the fact that the Justice Department data was more recent, the fact that it had never been published before, and a need to "focus" the story.

What's missing from both the article and the statement, however, is any attempt to address the glaring appearance of a conflict of interest involved when a university-based journalism organization decides not to include its own host university in a controversial story. And that's particularly true given the fact that NECIR-BU has acknowledged being given at least some relevant data by Boston University - even if it was of a different vintage and represented less of a "scoop" than the Justice Department information.

NECIR-BU is a worthy endevour that has done some good work, but this is a regrettable and puzzling error. Investigative reporters should know better than anyone that the media is in the perception business, and that appearances count.

Trying to figure out where the Boston Globe stands in the New York Times Co. firmament is a little like analyzing the ins and outs of the old Soviet Politburo based on their position on the podium during the May Day parade.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but be struck by a story in today’s Times (it also appears in the Globe) reporting that Times content will soon be featured on 850 screens in public places in five cities — including Boston.

The content, according to the story, by Times media reporter Richard Pérez-Peña, will be shown on screens owned by RGM Networks in places such as coffee shops, casual restaurants and newsstands at airports.

Last year, of course, the Times Co. tried to sell the Globe after months of angst, including a threat to shut the paper down, if the paper’s unions wouldn’t agree to $20 million in givebacks. The sale was called off amid reports that neither of the two bidders was willing or perhaps able to come up with sufficient cash.

The Globe remains the Times Co.’s second-biggest paper. So you’d think that the company would avoid doing something that would benefit the Times at the expense of the Globe.

Not to make too much of this. It’s a modest venture, and it’s not as though the Times Co. never promotes its flagship in Boston. But it does play into the notion that, once the economy improves, Arthur Sulzberger and company will put the Globe on the market once again.

Who could have reasonably hoped during last year’s angst over the future of the Boston Globe that it would still be allowed to spend money and compete with its dominant corporate sibling, the New York Times? Yet here we are, and the Globe and the Times both have long, all-known-facts takeouts today on the bizarre case of Amy Bishop.

The Times is better at explaining why Bishop didn’t get tenure at the University of Alabama at Huntsville: apparently she just wasn’t that good. The Times, though, doesn’t mention Bishop’s years in Ipswich, an episode in her life on which the Globe is strong. The Globe quotes a neighbor named Arthur Kerr: “When she moved out everyone said, ‘Those poor people in Alabama.’ Little did we know.”

The Boston Herald runs a shorter piece focused on the immediate aftermath of Bishop’s fatal shooting of her brother, Seth, in 1986. It ends with a rather astonishing piece of information: Thomas Pettigrew — whose tale of having been ignored by authorities after Bishop allegedly pointed a gun at him 24 years ago has emerged as a key element — is being ignored once again.

The strange case of Amy Bishop (photo) is rapidly morphing into the biggest Boston news story in many years — the biggest, perhaps, since 20 years ago, when Charles Stuart murdered his pregnant wife, Carol, and jumped to his death as authorities were closing in.

At first, the story appeared neither to be local nor all that atypical as such things go. Bishop reportedly shot three colleagues to death at a faculty meeting at the University of Alabama, supposedly in response to not having received tenure.

But soon the Boston Globe broke two mind-boggling stories — that she had killed her brother with a shotgun when she was just 18 21 years old, and that she had come under suspicion in the attempted mail-bombing of one of her professors at Harvard University.

I’ve been thinking hard about whether there has been a bigger local story in the post-Stuart years. Yes, the 9/11 attacks began at Logan Airport, but that angle was quickly subsumed into the larger national story. Louise Woodward? A big one, yes, but not nearly as big as this may become.

*Note: Commenter Coco asks about the sexual-abuse scandal involving Boston's Roman Catholic Archdiocese. Great point, and I wish I'd thought of it before I wrote this item.

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An alert reader sends along this story from the Armenian Mirror-Spectator about barely retired retiree Steve Kurkjian of the Boston Globe. Given how often his byline still appears, you might be puzzled to learn that Kurkjian took an early-retirement buyout a couple of years ago. He explains:

People need this stuff, and I know how to do it. People out there return my phone calls when I say "I’m Steve Kurkjian from the Globe." In both cases [stories about former Massachusetts House Speaker Sal DiMasi and Partners HealthCare], the source said "I will only deal with you. I’m not going to give it to anybody else."

A good read about a local legend.

Our friend and guest panelist Adam Reilly has an intersting series of posts on his Don't Quote Me blog over at the Boston Phoenix about some careless Globe-bashing by the Herald's Howie Carr.

Globe-bashing has always been a key component of Carr's schtick. Repetition and low blows have usually been on the menu when he's taken on the "Boring Broadsheet," but at least you could say he usually got his facts straight.

But yesterday Reilly wrote that he couldn't find any references in the Globe to Scott Brown's supporters being "thugs" and "goons," an accusation Carr made in his Wednesday column. 

Howie weighed in with a response, but Reilly wasn't buying in a follow-up post today.

According to the post, Carr said the term "goons" (his quotation marks) came from an Alex Beam column that mentioned "afternoon sports goons" supporting Brown, but Reilly says that column was clearing talking about sports talk hosts, not the 1.1 million ordinary voters who sent Brown to Washington.

Reilly writes that Carr then made an even more dubious claim that the term "thugs" came from the Globe's message boards. Web comments on newspaper sites are designed to be a wide-open public forum and there's been plenty of invective of both the anti-Brown and anti-Coakley varieties.

Oh, wait, now Carr has weighed in with another response. This could go on all week ...

Memo to Martha Coakley: When the conventional media narrative is that your opponent is gaining steam, it's a bad time to have the wheels come off your campaign.

The political media loves a horse race, which is why there's been so much more attention to the US Senate campaign in Massachusetts since polls (albeit internal ones reported through anonymous sources and suspect ones that rely on robo calls) show the race tightening.

Imagine the extra delight over the last 24 hours then, as the race has seemed more like NASCAR than Suffolk Downs.

Fresh of what many perceived as a lackluster performance in Monday night's last televised debate, Democratic candidate and state Attorney General Martha Coakley released her first attack ad against Republican State Representative Scott Brown, only to have to embarrassingly pull it down because someone spelled her home state "Massachusettes" (sic) in the fine print at the end.

Then last night, a reporter from the conservative magazine and web site The Weekly Standard, was following Coakley down a Washington D.C. sidewalk, videotaping her and asking questions. Reporter John McCormack he says he was bumped into a low metal railing and fell, ripping his pants in the process.

McCormack blamed Democratic campaign operative Michael Meehan for "pushing" him into the railing. Meehan has denied any intentional pushing. A videotape of the incident - classily titled "Coakley Thug Roughs Up Reporter" by The Weekly Standard - shows mostly the aftermath of McCormack's fall and his subsequent interaction with Meehan.

Roughs up? Um, no. Sorry. The tape clearly shows Meehan helping McCormack up and asking if he's "alright." But then, disturbingly, Meehan continues to block McCormack from following Coakley down the sidewalk, demanding his identification and credentials - an action that is clearly out-of-bounds given the normal rules of media engagement on a public sidewalk.

By way of explanation, Meehan said he was concerned that McCormack was an operative from a rival campaign and followed up with this curious statement to the Herald: “Reporters get to ask questions. That’s totally legit. Republican operatives can’t chase a candidate down the street.”

Seriously? Gee, Mike, I had no idea that private campaign consultants had legal authority to control the actions of US citizens on a public sidewalk. Thanks for setting me straight on that one.

As if it's not bad enough for Coakley that the incident plays into Brown's narrative that she's aloof and part of the elitist Democratic establishment, the situation is entirely of her own making. Memo to Martha Coakley Part II: If you don't want to be videotaped or asked questions on a public sidewalk, get someone on a cell phone and have the car meet you at the door.

And of course the incident took on a different character depending on what media prism you viewed it through.

Globe: A campaign aide to Democratic US Senate candidate Martha Coakley has acknowledged that he acted too aggressively in an incident Tuesday night in which he jostled a reporter for a conservative magazine ... and the reporter fell to the ground.

Associated Press: A reporter trying to question the Democrat seeking to replace Edward Kennedy in the Senate has been involved in a scuffle with one of her advisers.

The Herald: Bay State Attorney General Martha Coakley blamed GOP “stalkers” today for triggering tensions outside a Washington, D.C., fund-raiser last night where a Weekly Standard reporter said he was roughed up by a Coakley campaign volunteer.

But no matter how this particular incident is percieved, Coakley's campaign is creating the impression that she's unable to handle even a minor bit of adversity. And a wounded Coakley fits squarely into the conventional horse-race narrative that political reporters and editors have been dying for during this campaign.

It's a narrative that, accurate or not, we're going to have to live with for the next six days.

Former Boston Newspaper Guild president Dan Totten (photo) signed another union official’s name on his paycheck in order to circumvent a dispute involving unauthorized expenses Totten had rung up on his union credit card, according to an audit conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor.

The results of the audit were laid out in a Nov. 17 letter from the Employment Standards Administration of the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) in the Department of Labor’s Boston office. The letter was sent to Patrice Sneyd, Guild treasurer. The Guild is the largest union at the Boston Globe, and was involved in a months-long dispute last year with the Globe’s corporate owner, the New York Times Co., over a management demand for $10 million in union givebacks.

The Guild removed Totten on Dec. 2 after allegations of improprieties arose. (See previous posts.) Totten has appealed his removal and maintained he did nothing wrong. The Department of Labor letter is a public document, but it was missing from the agency’s Web site until recently. (Read the entire letter.)

Although the letter lays out numerous deficiencies in Totten’s administration of union business, one of the more intriguing unanswered questions has involved allegations that Totten signed someone else’s name on his paycheck — an issue in the Guild’s decision to remove him. The letter offers an explanation.

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Beat the Press panelist Kara Miller’s Boston Globe Op-Ed, comparing the study habits of international and American college students, touched a nerve and made her part of the story. 

If you'd paid attention to the horrifying forecasts of the last year, you might have predicted we'd head into 2010 with no newspapers at all, either in print or online. Among the papers threatened with closure were the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle and even — in the fevered imagination of former Wall Street bad boy Henry Blodget — the mighty New York Times.

But though 2009 was indeed a very bad year for the newspaper industry, it didn't live up to the hype — a development for which we should all be grateful. In my latest commentary for the Guardian, I try to figure out what went right. And I identify three possible reasons:

• Corporate debt at chains like Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, made newspapers look sicker than they really were. In fact, most papers are still taking in more money than they spend — just not enough to pay for all the borrowing incurred by their empire-building overlords.
• Much as it pains me to say it, newspapers are still well-positioned to keep cutting their newsrooms, given the unprecedented growth many of them experienced during the golden years of 1960 to 2005. For instance: Did you know that the Washington Post employed fewer than half as many journalists during the glory days of Watergate than it does today?
• Publishers are finally getting smart about innovative ways to extract money from readers and advertisers. Electronic distribution through non-Web outlets such as the Kindle and GlobeReader, and talk of an alliance between newspaper companies and Microsoft's Bing, could make for a better 2010.