Frank talk about Larry Craig

I've been casting about for a point of entry into the Larry Craig controversy. Today, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank gave me one. In an interview with Robin Young on WBUR's "Here and Now" — most of which was about the mortgage crisis — Frank explained (fast-forward to 14:25) why he didn't think Craig should resign:

Well, I condemn his hypocrisy, and I think the hypocrisy is a valid reason for people not to vote for him. I think that when you set yourself up to make rules for people and then don't follow them yourself, you're committing a very grave error, and that's a reason not to vote for you. But when you've been elected, it seems to me you serve out the term unless you have been shown to be misusing your office.

Look, we have a senator from Louisiana, Senator [David] Vitter, who has acknowledged that he was patronizing this prostitution ring. People haven't asked for him to resign. Now, I don't think people should be soliciting sex in public bathrooms, and I certainly don't think people should be hypocrites. But we're not talking now about somebody who shot someone, or bodily injured someone, and the fact is that comparable infractions among heterosexuals haven't led to demands to resign.

Frank went on to observe that Craig is up for re-election next year, and that he assumed Craig would either not run or would be defeated in a Republican primary.

A lot of good sense there. Not that it matters — it looks like Craig will be gone by the end of the day.

Menino's and/or the Globe's faux pas

Sharp-eyed Media Nation reader R.S. passes this along, from Boston Globe columnist Adrian Walker's piece on the fire in West Roxbury that claimed the lives of two firefighters:

"They always put their needs before our own," Mayor Thomas M. Menino said at a press conference. "But it doesn't make it any easier to deal with the tragedy."

R.S.'s take: "I wouldn't be surprised if Menino said it, but Walker and the Globe copy editors thought it was OK???"

Not OK.

Saturday afternoon update: Given the amount of interest sparked by this item, I went searching for video of Menino speaking. No luck so far. For what it's worth, the city's official Web site has Menino saying that "they always put our needs before their own."

Update: Kenneth Foster is spared

Kenneth Foster, whose death-penalty case I wrote about for The Guardian last week, has been spared by Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports.

A couple more drips

Yes, I know I said I was going to try to hold off on the daily updates, but it just keeps on coming, doesn't it?

The Cape Cod Times today moves the focus of the story up to where it really belongs: on the Big Money folks behind the plans to build a casino in Middleborough. Stephanie Vosk reports:

Sol Kerzner, one of the top investors for a proposed Mashpee Wampanoag casino, was accused in 1986 of bribing a government official in South Africa to obtain exclusive gaming rights.

Kerzner was never convicted and the charge was dismissed in 1997, but it has followed him each time he has tried to back a casino, both here and abroad.

Gov. Deval Patrick, who may or may not have already made up his mind about casino gambling, needs to understand that this is what life is going to be like if he says "yes." Tribal leaders resigning in disgrace; hazy ties to imprisoned sleazeballs like Jack Abramoff; unproven charges against shadowy financiers; and a constant drumbeat of questions for elected officials about how much they knew, and how much they should have known. Is this really what you need, Governor?

Also, Steve Bailey has a terrific column in the Boston Globe. A highlight: "This has always been less about sovereignty than about the rush by the tribe and its deep-pocketed financial backers, just as elsewhere around the country, to cash in on the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, one of the worst pieces of legislation ever to come out of Congress." Yes indeed.

Update: The Times' George Brennan reports on another member of the Mashpee Wampanoags — Maurice Foxx, chairman of the state's Commission on Indian Affairs — whose bio had once falsely claimed he'd served as a Marine in Vietnam. Foxx says he's not sure how the bogus information ever made it into the record. Funny how that happens.

My standard disclosure.

The casino just got deader

Since I already believed the Middleborough casino was dead, I suppose it would be silly of me to argue that it somehow got deader today. But it did.

The Enterprise of Brockton and The Standard-Times of New Bedford report that the Pokanoket Wampanoag tribe, based in Rhode Island, has sent letters of protest to Gov. Deval Patrick and the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs contending that the proposed Middleborough pleasure palace — which would be operated by the Mashpee Wampanoags — encroaches on their own tribal lands.

The Pokanoket are seeking federal status as a tribe, which the Mashpee won earlier this year. If the Pokanoket succeed, I think we can assume that the lawsuits will start flying.

Kyle Alspach writes in The Enterprise:

Clyde Barrow of UMass-Dartmouth said the Bureau of Indian Affairs will definitely take the claims into consideration.

At the very least, this will add extra time to the approval process, he said.

"The BIA will have to determine whether or not [the claims] are accurate," said Barrow, who studies casinos through his Center for Policy Analysis.

So what about it? Do the Pokanoket and Mashpee lands overlap? Here is David Kibbe, writing in The Standard-Times:

Last year, legislation was filed in the Rhode Island General Assembly supporting their [the Pokanokets'] recognition. The bill said the tribal community "has existed in the vicinity of their ancestral lands in North-Central and Eastern Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts since prior to the first European contact.... The Pokanoket Tribe of the Wampanoag Nation entered into treaties and warred with the colonial governments, in particular the Great New England War of 1675-1676 aka the King Philips War."

Middleborough, in case you didn't know, was a major battleground in King Philip's War.

My standard disclosure: I'll be making an unpaid speaking appearance at a fundraiser this fall for Casinofacts.org, an anti-casino group based in Middleborough.

Today's casino update

Except for major developments, this should be the last one for a while.

• The video from yesterday's "NewsNight" is now online.
• The Cape Cod Times interviews new tribal chairman Shawn Hendricks. More to the point, the paper reports that about 150 dissident tribal members are moving ahead with an effort to recall the entire leadership, including Hendricks.
• According to the Boston Daily blog, the casino money guys never did a background check on disgraced former tribal chairman Glenn Marshall. According to the Times, they won't do one on Hendricks, either.
• Peter Kenney has a moving account of Monday night's tribal meeting, and of the return to the fold of the five members whom Marshall had ordered "shunned."

Finally, Steven Bingham, a formerly shunned member who is adopting a high profile in the wake of Marshall's implosion, says something very intriguing, according to The Enterprise of Brockton. Reporter Alice Elwell writes:

He said the federal land trust for a reservation could be in jeopardy if any illegal acts are uncovered.

"Everything has to be questioned at this point," Bingham said.

Bingham said he does not want to stop a casino, but the contract with Middleboro only benefits the investors, "not the tribe, not Middleboro."

Presumably nothing can be done about that without voiding the agreement with Middleborough and starting over. Isn't that interesting?

Update: I missed this, but Bingham has already said that if the recall of tribal leaders succeeds, the agreement with Middleborough is null and void. And let's not forget that three of the five selectmen are facing recall next month.

A disclosure: I've accepted an invitation to speak at a fundraising event being organized by Casinofacts.org, the anti-casino group in Middleborough. It hasn't been scheduled yet, but I thought I should disclose that immediately. For the record, there's no speaking fee.

A victory for free speech

Tufts University president Lawrence Bacow deserves a lot of credit. Earlier this week, he issued a ringing endorsement of freedom of speech on campus by reversing the punishment that had been handed out to a conservative student publication by a faculty-student committee.

According to the Boston Globe, Bacow overturned a decision that required editors of The Primary Source to put bylines on all articles and editorials. Unfortunately, he left in place a ruling that the publication had engaged in "harassment" and "creating a hostile environment" by running racially insensitive materials. But that's symbolic. Anonymous speech, on the other hand, is a crucial right.

I wrote about the Tufts case in the Phoenix's "10th Annual Muzzle Awards" earlier this summer, picking up on previous work by Harvey Silverglate and Jan Wolfe. There's no question that The Primary Source's sins against political correctness — which began with the editors' publishing a mock Christmas carol called "O Come All Ye Black Folk" — were demeaning and sophomoric. But so what?

As the Tufts Daily editorialized at the time:

[H]olding others accountable must not mean threats, either implicit or explicit, of censorship; it must not mean tying funds to "behavior"; it must not mean dictating the style, format or attribution of content. The freedoms we treasure are most honored when we hold others accountable through words of our own, through debate and through the preservation of an open forum for ideas — even ideas we find objectionable.

Offended students were free to ignore The Primary Source, organize a protest or start their own publication. What they should not have done was haul the editors before a disciplinary committee, hector them and approve official sanctions against them. Bacow, at least, recognizes that.

Update: Silverglate and Wolfe praise Bacow for reversing the "no anonymity" provision, but criticize him for allowing the "harassment" finding to stand. They write: "An ominous sword of Damocles still hangs over the head of any Tufts student who wishes to make a social or political point by making fun of someone. Colleges need to learn that poking fun at a sacred cow doesn’t always mean the poor animal’s being harassed."

Robert Dushman

Robert Ambrogi's Media Law blog passes along word that First Amendment lawyer Robert Dushman has died of lung cancer. Dushman, just 59 years old, was considered one of the country's leading media lawyers, according to this obituary (PDF) from the New England Press Association.

Dushman represented the Boston Herald in the libel case brought by Superior Court Judge Ernest Murphy. The two most impressive people in the courtroom during the 2005 trial were the lead lawyers, Dushman and Howard Cooper, who represented Murphy. Dushman had the harder task — a tough case and an unsympathetic client.

One for the books

It takes a special way of thinking to work Chappaquiddick into the resignation of Alberto Gonzales. Amazing.

Talking casinos on NECN

I'll be on New England Cable News' "NewsNight" today at 7 p.m., talking about Glenn Marshall's meltdown and the fate of the Middleborough casino with host Jim Braude.

Here's your morning roundup of casino-related developments:

• Marshall is out as chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, with members refusing even to give him the 30-day grace period he had requested (Cape Cod Times).
• Marshall's legal woes continue (Cape Cod Times).
• His false claims of war heroism will be reported to the FBI (The Day of New London, Conn.).
  
• More questions about how tribal funds were spent (Cape Cod Today).
  
• Officials of neighboring towns ask the Patrick administration to move slowly on the casino (Boston Globe).
• But Gov. Patrick blows the biggest decision of his tenure, reportedly deciding to endorse casino gambling (WBZ-TV). Perhaps this is just a pre-Labor Day trial balloon?
  
• Hal Brown spins like crazy (Casino-friend.com).

Obviously the Middleborough casino will never be built. The big-money players will move on once they realize that this will be tied up in the courts for years. Dissident tribal members are already suing in federal court. Middleborough casino opponents vow to keep fighting. The Jack Abramoff connection must be explored more deeply. In that context, New Bedford's going to start looking better and better.

But casino gambling will be bad news anywhere, and I hope Patrick comes to his senses before making this official.

Update: This is hilarious. WBZ Radio (AM 1030) reports that Patrick's office is denying that the governor has made up his mind, but WBZ-TV (Channel 4) is standing by its story.

More on the Abramoff connection

Boston Magazine has posted on its Web site a profile of disgraced former Mashpee Wampanoag leader Glenn Marshall, slated to appear in the September issue.

Tough timing — the article went to press before last week's implosion. But writer Geoffrey Gagnon does have more on Marshall's ties to Jack Abramoff, the former Washington lobbyist now in prison for his corrupt dealings. Gagnon writes:

Marshall doesn't apologize for the fact that some of his efforts involved questionable characters, chief among them the notorious Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, with whom the tribe signed on in 2003....

Never major political donors before then, the Mashpee and their lobbyists started giving generously to select congressmen. Following Abramoff's lead, they donated at least $20,000 to California Congressman Richard Pombo, who had taken over the committee charged with managing tribal issues. They also secured some face time with North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan, who, in his capacity as vice chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, pressed the Interior Department in the fall of 2003 to finally rule on the long-delayed status of the Mashpees' application.

Abramoff is now serving time in federal prison for bilking other tribes and corrupting public officials. (The Mashpee were never implicated in any wrongdoing.) And though Abramoff himself became political kryptonite for the lawmakers and organizations he did business with, a couple of his lieutenants, Kevin Ring and Michael Smith, still work with the Mashpee.

Fortunately for Ring and Smith, they get a good character reference — from, uh, Marshall. "Kevin and Michael are very bright young men," he tells Gagnon. "If they had done anything wrong, they would have been indicted — they wouldn't be working for us. These are good guys."

Of course, Ring's and Smith's reputations shouldn't be smeared just because of their former association with Abramoff. But the Abramoff connection is something that needs to be thoroughly investigated before anyone breaks ground on a casino in Middleborough.

Who is the "Great Gadfly"?

Peter Porcupine offers some insight into Peter Kenney, the Cape Cod Today reporter/blogger who broke the story about disgraced Mashpee Wampanoag leader Glenn Marshall last week. Why didn't the mainstream media get there first? "It took a curmudgeon with a long memory to do that," writes Porcupine. Wish we could get Kenney's local-access show up here in Media Nation.

I talked with Kenney in 1997, when I was reporting a story on the late auto magnate Ernie Boch's hate radio station on Cape Cod. Kenney had been fired by the station's general manager, Cary Pahigian, for whom he had some choice words. Still does.

Food fight

The Boston Globe today runs a nauseating front-page story on sloppy restaurant inspections — reported by Northeastern students and edited by my colleague Walter Robinson, former editor of the Globe's Spotlight Team. Good stuff. But don't read it on a full stomach.

Tribal politics threaten casino

Middleborough Selectman Adam Bond and others who think the casino is still on track should take a look at today's Cape Cod Times. K.C. Myers reports that long-simmering anger over the way disgraced tribal leader Glenn Marshall has managed the Mashpee Wampanoags' finances and cast out those who disagree with him is about to explode at a special meeting tomorrow night.

Marshall's dealings with "wealthy investors" to bring a casino to Middleborough are also the subject of a federal lawsuit brought by dissident Wampanoags. That suit was almost certainly given new life because of what's happened over the past week.

In the Boston Globe, Christine Wallgren reports that officials from 17 surrounding communities and two regional planning agencies will meet tomorrow with Gov. Deval Patrick's economic-development czar, Dan O'Connell, to ask that Patrick make no decision on casino gambling until the issue has been thoroughly studied. From the context, I'd say they want it studied to death. Good.

At Cape Cod Today, Peter Kenney keeps pounding away at Marshall, and opines that he's still calling the shots behind the scenes. Well, maybe not after tomorrow night.

What's next for the casino?

The attention this morning is right where Middleborough casino supporters want it: on Glenn Marshall. After all, the tribal leader is gone now, so learning that his long list of misdeeds also includes a cocaine conviction and falsely claiming to have been a police officer (as reported by the Boston Globe, which got the only interview) doesn't really matter.

I do enjoy the Cape Cod Times' reference to Marshall's protean ethnicity ("He always talked about being Portuguese," a high-school classmate tells George Brennan). But that's tame stuff compared to a post written recently by the "Great Gladfly," Peter Kenney, who spoke with Amelia Bingham, an 84-year-old elder in the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe. Kenney, who says Marshall had an earlier incarnation as "a Cape Verdean activist," wrote:

Bingham say she remembers Marshall when he was in school with her children, "He wasn't an Indian then. He used to tease my kids and bully them because they were Wampanoags. He was a mean kid and he is a mean adult."

Given that Marshall is no longer the issue, what's next? In the Boston Herald, reporter Scott Van Voorhis gets at a key point that needs to be explored in the days ahead: Marshall's role as a mere tool of the moneyed interests that are calling the shots. Van Voorhis only scratches a bit at the surface, but he's picked the right place to scratch.

And here's the best part: This is all tied up with Jack Abramoff, the superlobbyist now in prison, who dealt with Indian tribes on gaming matters across the country. Kenney wrote about it in January 2006, but was pretty much ignored at the time. It won't be now. Even if the tie-in proves to be tenuous, it would behoove state officials to look very, very carefully at this.

A final observation. In reading the coverage since yesterday morning, I haven't found one solitary reference in the mainstream media to Peter Kenney's work. Is it really that difficult to credit a blogger? He had a good chunk of the story out there last Monday, and reporters are still working off his leads.

Yes, the media had to do their own reporting and verify everything. But it seems to me that Kenney is a crucial part of this story, and he should have gotten a mention.

Update: Good piece by David Kibbe in The Standard-Times on the political fallout.

Right now, casino supporters are insisting that Marshall's implosion doesn't matter, and opponents are hoping they're wrong. I realize that predictions are cheap, but I think the casino plans are now going to crumble very quickly. We are going to learn more — much more — in the days and weeks to come.

The truth about Glenn Marshall

This past Monday, Peter Kenney reported on his blog that Glenn Marshall, a leader of the Mashpee Wampanoags and the prime mover behind the proposed Middleborough casino, may have lied about his record as a war hero in the Marines — a record that purportedly included five Purple Hearts and a Silver Star. I didn't link to it before today because I was uncomfortable with Kenney's decision not to try to reach Marshall for comment. But now it's all coming out — and it's even worse than Kenney initially reported.

The Cape Cod Times today publishes a headline for the ages: "Marshall's record includes rape, lies." The story, by George Brennan, reports that Marshall "raped a 22-year-old visitor to the Cape in the summer of 1980, according to court records and the Times' archive." Marshall was sentenced to five years in state prison, but served just three months — in part because his lawyer cited his alleged war heroism and the trauma he had suffered.

Oh, yes. About that war record: Marshall has claimed several times, including in an appearance at a congressional hearing in 2004, that he fought at Khe Sahn during the Vietnam War. Brennan reports that it now turns out Marshall was a senior at Lawrence High School, in Falmouth, during Khe Sahn.

What does Marshall have to say about all this? "Repeated attempts to reach Marshall yesterday through a tribe spokesman and on his cell phone were unsuccessful," Brennan writes. "Tribe spokesman Scott Ferson said Marshall would have not comment until today." I can't wait.

Question: What do you suppose the Middleborough selectmen would have done a few months ago if they knew they were negotiating with a convicted rapist who'd lied about his war record?

Question: What do you suppose Middleborough voters would have done if they knew about this before approving a casino deal with Marshall in July?

I don't imagine Marshall's being exposed constitutes legal grounds to undo the vote. But certainly it's all the more reason for Gov. Deval Patrick and other state officials to stop this insanity now.

Let's return to our narrative, shall we? This all began Saturday, when The Day of New London, Conn., published a profile of Marshall. Written by Patricia Daddona, the story included this, in the second paragraph: "The former U.S. Marine, fisherman and self-described man of 'the woods, weeds or water' earned five Purple Hearts and a Silver Star in three tours of duty in Vietnam."

Daddona also quoted Adam Bond, the Middleborough selectman who has worked most closely with Marshall, as saying:

I think Glenn Marshall is what you see: there's not a deception, it's not a façade. He strikes me as a professional, intelligent leader. Like everyone else, he has a little bit of the politician in him. That's not a bad thing — to put on the right suit for the right occasion.

Enter Peter Kenney. On Monday, the "Great Gadfly," as he calls himself, blogging on Cape Cod Today, wrote that there was no record of Marshall's ever having won a Purple Heart (never mind five of them) or a Silver Star. He seemed to have the goods, but, as I said, I hesitated because of the way Kenney ended his item: "No effort has been made yet to contact Marshall or tribal spokesman, Mr. Ferson of Boston."

Kenney was back yesterday with another must-read story. This time, he said he made several attempts to talk with Marshall and/or Ferson, and that Ferson refused on the grounds that Kenney is not a journalist. Well, Kenney deserves huge kudos — he drove this story, and it's doubtful that the truth about Marshall would have come out were it not for Kenney's work. For good measure, Kenney levels an accusation that, so far, the media have not followed up on — that there is also no record of Marshall's having served as a police officer with the MDC, as has been claimed.

Finally, what is the deal with those medals? The Day runs an odd follow-up, also written by Daddona, that includes this:

Marshall's legal adviser and lobbyist, James Morris, supplied the information about Marshall's medals during an in-person interview with Marshall in Boston. Morris is a lawyer with Quinn & Morris of Boston.

Marshall and Morris were with the reporter for three hours in private and Statehouse interviews. Marshall was leaving the room at the tribe's public relations firm, The Liberty Square Group, and did not appear to be aware of Morris' disclosure. Morris, who said Marshall is sensitive about discussing his war record, wrote the information down in the reporter's notebook.

Marshall did not personally inform The Day of the details of his military service for the Aug. 18 story.

So it sounds like it's still to be determined whether Marshall ever personally claimed to have earned the Purple Hearts or the Silver Star. As Brennan notes in his Times story, if he did, he could go to prison for six months.

Daddona also has another priceless quote from Adam Bond:

I don't believe that that has any bearing on the negotiations he had with the town and the sincerity and honesty with which he dealt with us. And until I see something more, I don't think there's anything more I can say about it. But I'm not uncomfortable. I still trust the man.

Presumably Bond's assessment was based solely on the news that Marshall had lied about his military record, not about the rape, which The Day doesn't mention. But it's been obvious from the beginning that Bond has been in way over his head.

Scott Van Voorhis reports in the Boston Herald on efforts by the Massachusetts Council of Churches, as well as civic leaders like former attorney general Scott Harshbarger and former John Hancock chief executive David D'Alessandro (who wrote this Globe op-ed recently), to prevent a casino from being built anywhere in the state.

I'd say their efforts just got a major boost.

Update: Adam Bond doesn't care about the rape conviction, either, according to this story in The Enterprise of Brockton. Bond: "I think it is irrelevant to the issues. This is about the man. It is not about the casino." Amazing. (Via "Gladys Kravitz," who also posts a hilarious photo illustration.)

Afternoon update: Marshall's out, the Boston Globe reports. "Like a lot of veterans from that era, I realize I have my own demons that I need to deal with," he's quoted as saying. Really.

This isn't close to being over. If Shawn Hendricks, who's replacing Marshall, and Adam Bond think they can just pick up and move forward on the casino, they're mistaken.

Alberto Gonzales, angel of death

My latest for The Guardian is up. It's on the new death-penalty powers that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is about to receive, and why his record in Texas shows that he's particularly unsuited to wield such powers.

Romney switches on abortion — again

You wouldn't think it was possible, but Mitt Romney has changed his position on abortion rights yet again.

Just two weeks ago he said he favored a constitutional amendment to ban abortion nationwide. Now he says he's wants to see Roe v. Wade overturned, after which the matter would be left up to the states.

The Romney campaign, naturally, denies that there's any inconsistency here. And there isn't: You never have any idea what position he's going to take, and he's been absolutely consistent about that. (Via the Weekly Dig.)

Roger Ailes' latest war

Robert Greenwald, maker of the documentary "Outfoxed," has put together a three-and-a-half-minute clip of agitprop from the Fox News Channel in which Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and company push for war against Iran.

As Greenwald shows, the rhetoric is almost identical to what Fox was saying in the run-up to the war in Iraq. Have a look:

You can learn more about "Fox Attacks Iran," and sign a petition, here. Media Matters is on the case as well. This is scary stuff. As Christiane Amanpour observers in the clip, Fox's warmongering on Iraq had a huge effect on how other media outlets behaved. Could it happen again?

Genocide? Yes.

Not to turn Media Nation into the Jeff Jacoby report, but his analysis of the controversy over the Armenian genocide and the Anti-Defamation League in today's Globe is exceptionally well-researched and -reasoned. Read it.

A tip from the Cardinals

This is not going to be a good day for Red Sox pitching coach John Farrell. The Herald picks up an item from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on why Joel Piñeiro is doing so much better with the Cardinals than he did with the Red Sox. Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan says he's got the answer.

Here's an excerpt from the Post-Dispatch story, published Monday:

"You don't have the kind of stuff like he has and get hit like he did," Duncan said. "You start looking for why. Why is he getting hit? ... It was so obvious."

It took less than Pineiro's first start as a Cardinal for Duncan to pinpoint what he believes was a big part of Pineiro's problems: He was tipping his pitches. The righthander and his coach say an adjustment to his delivery erased the flaw that Duncan believes allowed "people to make it difficult on him."

Pineiro has pitched 14 innings since, allowing two earned runs and no walks, and takes a winning streak into today's scheduled start against the Cubs.

OK, so Piñeiro didn't pitch that great on Monday. But this is intriguing, no?

Farrell tells the Herald that Duncan is wrong, but Jason Varitek doesn't exactly give him a vote of confidence, saying, "We usually have guys who are watching the game on the side who usually pick up on that stuff pretty well." Yeah, usually.

Piñeiro cost the Sox $4 million, and they got next to nothing when they dealt him to the Cards.

Not to whine. The Sox are up six games today, they've got the best record in baseball, Farrell must have something to do with the great pitching, etc., etc., etc. But it sounds like Farrell may not have done a good job of protecting this particular investment. Unless Duncan is blowing smoke.

My guess is that Theo is going to be talking to Farrell. Maybe he already has.

The joys of anonymous comments

The Globe's Christine Wallgren reports that Casinofacts.org, which opposes the idea of a casino coming to Middleborough, has apologized closed its comment section after an anonymous poster made a lewd remark about casino supporter Selectman Adam Bond's 2-year-old daughter.

Obviously way out of bounds. Of course, it would also be nice if Casino-friend.com would apologize for comparing casino opponents to the Ku Klux Klan, but I suppose that's expecting too much.

L'affaire Skube

I took a pass on the imbroglio over Michael Skube's stunningly uninformed Los Angeles Times column on the shortcomings of bloggers, other than posting a brief comment on Jay Rosen's PressThink blog. So if you're unfamiliar with what I'm talking about, I recommend Dan Gillmor's wrapup, a nice summary with all the links. Skube's interaction with Josh Marshall is mind-blowing.

Let me repeat what I said on PressThink. There's only one way to complete the sentence "All blogs are ..." And that is this: "All blogs are published on the Internet." Anything else is an intellectually dishonest generalization.

A teaching moment (II)

Today's Globe editorial on lagging test scores among minority teaching candidates takes a sensible approach:

Inadequate preparation, not cultural bias, is the most likely explanation for the high failure rate among black and Hispanic candidates. Similar to the achievement gap problem between white and minority students, a solution requires educators to target the academic deficiencies of prospective teachers and provide them with remedial support.

No talk of doing away with the test, which was one of the subthemes of the Globe's Sunday story. Good.

How's that trade working out? (XV)

Wily Mo Peña, who's off to a fast start with the Nationals, pays tribute to the Red Sox and their fans, according to a statement that appears in today's Herald:

To my sisters, brothers and fans of the Red Sox Nation. I want to take a moment to thank you and the entire Red Sox organization for your support during my time in Boston. Your constant passion for baseball and your beloved Red Sox is unmatched and has touched me deeply. I will always consider you with a special place in my heart.

The Red Sox organization deserves only the best and the Red Sox Nation is just that. Peace in life, Wily Modesto Peña.

No regrets over this trade, no matter how well he does in Washington. The only way Peña can develop into a serviceable major-league player is to play every day, out of the spotlight, and that wasn't going to happen here. Give him this: If you sent up Wily Mo to pinch-hit with the game on the line, you can be sure he'd at least swing at something — unlike, say, J.D. Drew.

Meanwhile, Bronson Arroyo is now 6-13, with a 4.58 ERA. This one ends with a whimper.

RSS woes

RSS can be a great time-saver, but the glitches make it less than a complete solution. Here are a few examples:

• My Mac-based newsreader, NewsFire, does not recognize the feed coming from Boston Magazine's newish Boston Daily Blog. My first assumption was that the BoMag geeks were doing something wrong. But no. Because Google Reader tapped into the feed just fine.
• So I started playing with Google Reader. Great interface, good organizational scheme, and I've been signing over more and more of my life to Google anyway (mail, calendar). But I quickly discovered that Google Reader is fantastically slow in updating — even items from days ago don't appear, regardless of whether I bang away at the "refresh" button. It reminded me of another Web-based newsreader, Bloglines, which I abandoned for that very reason.
• Too many blogs I like to check in on still aren't using RSS, such as the Weekly Dig's, although I'm told that should change in the near future.

I'd be interested in hearing your RSS tales of woe — as well as any possible solutions.

More: I've been playing around instead of making the calls I should make, and I've found that fiddling makes a difference. For instance, the RSS feed for Media Nation seems to work better than the Atom feed. But the opposite is true at a couple of Phoenix blogs, Talking Politics and Don't Quote Me, where switching from RSS to Atom brought me right up to speed. Obviously some standardization is needed.

The sagacious Dick Cheney (II)

Jon Garfunkel has some thoughts on the 1994 Dick Cheney tape. There's a lot in here, including some ramblings from the conspiracy-minded left as to whether the media are deliberately ignoring evidence that George W. Bush is prematurely senile. But Garfunkel does get to the heart of the matter with this about the Cheney tape:

[W]hat's remarkable is that no one found this earlier — five years ago would have been a good time. Vice President Cheney appeared on Meet the Press with Tim Russert on September 8, 2002 and then on March 16, 2003, three days before the Iraq war. Russert asked him reasonably tough questions. In the March interview he showed a video clip from Cheney's appearance on the the show during the 2000 campaign. Cheney had said in 2000 that they didn't go to Baghdad on the advice of the neighboring governments in the coalition. What had changed, to Cheney and the war's supporters, was the world on 9/11. But while the specter of global terrorism may have changed the urgency for war, it could not have changed the expectations about the quagmire. Either the 1991 NPR clip or the 1994 C-SPAN clip would have brought that more directly.

Garfunkel makes an important point here. After I posted my earlier item, several Cheney defenders wrote comments saying, essentially, So what? Lots of politicians change their minds. Look at John Kerry! Karl Rove said the same thing yesterday in his appearance on "Meet the Press," telling substitute host David Gregory:

He [Cheney], he was describing the conditions in 1994. By 2003 the world had changed. It changed on 9/11, and it became clear — it should be clear to every American that we live in a dangerous world where we cannot let emerging threats fully materialize in attacks on our homeland.... [P]eople are entitled over time to look at the conditions and change their mind, and that's exactly what Dick Cheney did.

Well, yes. But, as Garfunkel observes, changing your mind about the threat posed by Iraq is one thing (John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"), but changing your mind about the consequences of war is quite another. We now know that Cheney got it exactly right in 1994. We have no idea why he later decided the invasion and its aftermath would be a cakewalk. Did Ahmed Chalabi really hold that much sway?

Not that it could have stopped the war, but it's a shame that Cheney's 1994 words couldn't have been thrown in his face in 2002 and '03, before the invasion. Forcing him to explain why he no longer believed the war would lead to a quagmire would have been a useful exercise. It's nice that it's come out now, but at this late date it only confirms what most Americans believe about a vice president they detest and a war they no longer support.

Update: The Telegraph quotes Media Nation.

A teaching moment

This, from the top story in today's Boston Globe, is a very strange lede:

More than half the black and Hispanic applicants for teaching jobs in Massachusetts fail a state licensing exam, a trend that has created a major obstacle to greater diversity among public school faculty and stirred controversy over the fairness of the test.

Are diversity and fairness really the first things we ought to think about when we encounter such information? No, I didn't think so.

Monday morning quarterbacking: An anonymous commenter thinks I'm being unfair to the Globe because the news hook was, in fact, a state investigation into why minority teaching candidates are faring so poorly on the test. A fair point, but in the main I disagree. In this case, the Globe shouldn't have bought into the state's notion of what's newsworthy.

What's news is that many teaching applicants are failing a basic state licensing test — and that, in the case of black and Latino applicants, at least some advocates are saying we should do away with the test. If all the questions are as easy as the two examples offered by the Globe, then blaming the test is ludicrous.

Smearing Al Gore again (and again)

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby today offers a newish twist on the old "Al Gore claimed he invented the Internet, har, har, har" canard — he quotes Gore accurately but twists the meaning. Jacoby's intent is to mock Gore on global warming. He writes:

In the worlds [sic] of Al Gore, America's leading global warming apostle: "There's no more debate. We face a planetary emergency.... There is no more scientific debate among serious people who've looked at the evidence."

But as with other claims Gore has made over the years ("I took the initiative in creating the Internet"), this one doesn't mesh with reality.

Yet as the incomparable Bob Somerby has meticulously documented, Gore's claim meshes perfectly with reality. It was Gore, more than any member of Congress, who pushed for the funding and provided the vision needed to lift a tiny, military- and university-oriented network called the ARPANET into the communications tool we have today.

If, after all these years, you still have any doubts, read this Somerby post. Don't worry about what might strike you as Somerby's partisan tone — look at the evidence he's dug up. Here's a taste, in the form of an excerpt Somerby found in the Guardian from 1988, 12 years before Gore made his comments to CNN:

American computing scientists are campaigning for the creation of a "superhighway" which would revolutionise data transmission.

Legislation has already been laid before Congress by Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee, calling for government funds to help establish the new network, which scientists say they can have working within five years, at a cost of $400 million.

Also note that none other than Newt Gingrich, among others, has acknowledged the truthfulness of Gore's claim. I'm not sure we've ever had a major political figure as frequently and casually lied about as Al Gore. This phenomenon surely cost him the presidency in 2000, and I imagine it's got a lot to do with why he won't get into the race this time.

By the way, Jacoby also quotes NASA administrator Michael Griffin's controversial comments that global warming is nothing to get excited about. But he seems to have missed Griffin's subsequent apology. Keep in mind that Griffin has never denied the reality of global warming. Thus his personal view that we shouldn't do anything about it has no more value than my personal view that Terry Francona ought to give Jason Varitek more days off.

Monday update: David Bernstein expertly analyzes Jacoby's anti-global-warming case. "Surely," Bernstein writes, "if nine oncologists tell Jacoby that he needs a growth removed, and one tells him that the evidence of malignancy was not as strong as the others suggest, he would demand a strong argument for listening to the one over the nine."

Judge Murphy's latest money grab

Is there no end to Superior Court Judge Ernest Murphy's greed? Apparently not. Murphy is now suing the Boston Herald's insurance company for $6.8 million merely because it allowed the paper to defend itself against the judge's libel suit, and then allowed an appeal of the jury's $2 million-plus verdict (Globe story here; Herald story here). Absolutely incredible.

Murphy had already managed to squander nearly all of the goodwill he'd garnered as a victim of the Herald's sensationalistic, flawed reporting about him — first by sending bizarre, threatening letters to publisher Pat Purcell, and then, more recently, by trying to grab a disability pension to which Gov. Deval Patrick rightly concluded he wasn't entitled. Now this.

When this all started a few years ago, I was sympathetic to Murphy, though not to his lawsuit. As a public official, he had the platform he needed to speak out and defend himself against charges he believed were unfair and inaccurate. No need to turn it into a libel case.

Unless, that is, he saw this as a chance to cash in right from the beginning.

Analyzing the online news audience

The Shorenstein Center, at Harvard's Kennedy School, has issued an intriguing new study on user trends at news sites. You can read the whole thing (pdf) here, but let me offer a few observations and comments.

1. The study, titled "Creative Destruction: An Exploratory Look at News on the Internet," prepared by Shorenstein's Tom Patterson, shows that a trend we've already seen with newspapers' print editions is happening online as well: the national newspapers (the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal) are doing much better than large and medium-size regional dailies, whose growth is stagnant. In fact, the study finds that the Times now accounts for "well over 10 percent of the online newspaper audience."

This is serious — but not, I would argue, quite as serious as it might appear at first glance. Nor do I think it represents any major diminution in people's interest in local news. Consider:

• In most parts of the country, the national papers (especially the Post) are not as easy to get in hard copy as they are online. The Web sites of the national papers represent huge growth potential that simply isn't available to regional papers, since getting the Baltimore Sun or the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (to name two of the papers included in the study) in print is easier and more convenient than reading it on the Web.
  
• Readers outside a regional paper's coverage area aren't all that interested in what that paper has to offer. Nearly all of a regional paper's target audience already has the option of easy home delivery. An exception that proves the rule: the Globe's Boston.com might be the most popular regional news site in the country (depending on whether you consider the Los Angeles Times to be a regional or a national newspaper). And a lot of that, Globe insiders will tell you, is because of the "Red Sox diaspora."
• Most regional papers' Web sites fall far short of the Times' and the Post's, which are models of how to do online journalism. Thus readers have an additional incentive to stick to print.

2. Shorenstein reports that the Web sites of PBS and local public television stations are losing audience. I'm not sure what to make of that, but I will point out that news is not the dominant programming paradigm on public television. Perhaps what this really means is that "Arthur" and "Sesame Street" aren't as popular as they used to be. Certainly "The NewsHour" site is looking pretty good these days.

3. But we also learn that NPR and local public radio stations, which are far more news-oriented than public television, are losing online audience as well. And though I don't pretend to know why, I do wonder whether podcasting has something to do with it. If you go to the podcast directory at the iTunes Store, you'll see that NPR programs do very well. (Actually, so does the aforementioned "NewsHour.") It could well be that the most Net-savvy of public radio's listeners are going straight for the podcasts and not bothering to visit the Web sites. Podcasts are powerful; streaming audio (and video) is a loser.

Besides: I'm willing to bet that more than 90 percent of public radio is consumed in people's cars. Even though public stations like Boston's WBUR (90.9 FM) are trying to beef up their Web presence, the Web-print synergy that exists in the newspaper world has no analogue when it comes to radio.

4. The Shorenstein study finds that the growth of Digg.com is off the charts. The report describes Digg as an aggregator not much different from Google News or Yahoo! News, but that's not quite right. Digg is a social-networking site that allows users to submit news stories that the community then votes on. Those that get the most votes rise to the top.

The readers' choices tend to be tech-oriented, and those that aren't can often be pretty juvenile. But the Internet, especially in its Web 2.0 incarnation, is all about community, conversation and participation, and Digg.com has found a way to apply that to news. There are lessons to be learned from that.

Update: GateHouse Media's Howard Owens calls the Shorenstein report "seriously flawed," and points to this for another perspective.

Debating the debates

The New York Times asks six people how to stage a real new-media debate. Zephyr Teachout's response — many hours of one-on-ones, the footage from which could then be mixed and edited by anyone as he or she sees fit — is the most useful. Tom Brokaw and Matt Bai play it for laughs. Anyway, have a look.

You go first, Mr. Cohen

Don't you feel completely reassured now that the state has told us the feds are wrong about the Zakim Bridge's being on the verge of collapse?

OK, I exaggerate — but not by nearly as much, I suspect, as state transportation secretary Bernard Cohen was when he told the Globe's Scott Allen, "It is not a safety issue, but rather a defect associated with the installation."

Of course, the loose bolts in the tunnel were not a safety issue unless you happened to be driving through it when one of them let go.

This is exactly the kind of story that can have a far bigger impact now, following the collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis, than it normally would. Bridge- and road-safety stories can have a quality of abstractness to them unless readers have a clear picture in their minds of people plunging to their death.

I assume — I hope — that the Globe is going to keep hammering away at this. No doubt Cohen and his boss, Gov. Deval Patrick, are freaking out at the prospect of another multizillion-dollar repair job. But people will have to understand that it wasn't the Patrick administration who oversaw this shoddy project, and that it's worth any price to prevent what happened in Minneapolis from happening here.

Yesterday, the Outraged Liberal argued for a higher gas tax instead of an increase in tolls. Unfortunately, we may need both. As well as lawsuits against the responsible contractors from here to eternity.

Photo of Zakim Bridge (cc) by Ron's Log. Some rights reserved.

The last "D&C" update

Pending any real news (and certainly Entercom's acquistion of half of WCRB (99.5 FM) qualifies as real news), I'll let David Scott round things up one more time. Bottom line: It's now clear that no one — not Scott, not the Herald, not the Globe and certainly not yours truly — had any idea of what was really going on until the agreement was announced yesterday afternoon.

Perhaps Entercom and Nassau can now cut a deal that would allow John Dennis and Gerry Callahan to take over the morning show on WCRB. No disrespect to Laura Carlo, but wouldn't you love to hear Dennis introducing one of the "Brandenburg Concertos" while Callahan wonders out loud if Bach was an illegal immigrant?

What's wrong with casinos

Retired John Hancock CEO David D'Alessandro offers compelling personal testimony in today's Globe on the malignant effects of gambling — and, by extension, on why state officials should do what they can to make sure no casino is built anywhere in Massachusetts.

I love this: "I have faith in Deval Patrick. While untested, he strikes me as a man of courage." Translation: If the governor moves ahead with casino gambling, he'll do so knowing that he's made a powerful enemy.

In this week's Boston Phoenix, David Bernstein analyzes the politics of casino gambling.

Double standard

My latest commentary for The Guardian is up. This week I write about conservative outrage over The New Republic's dubious reporting on American misbehavior in Iraq — and the right's total silence on The Nation's far better documented reporting on the same subject.

Wilpers checks in

Former BostonNOW editor John Wilpers has responded to my request for comment on his semi-departure earlier this week. Here's what he's got to say.

Thank you for your e-mail and offer to post my answer:

Regarding BostonNOW, I will be consulting with them and the group's management on their Internet initiatives and expansion.

I also will be launching an effort to export the concept I pioneered at BostonNOW — introducing greater relevance and community to a newspaper's print and online editions through blogger recruitment, participation and publication.

The BostonNOW experience convinced me that mainstream newspapers can rejuvenate themselves and find tomorrow's readers today by inviting the community into the paper.

The hundreds of tech-savvy BostonNOW bloggers, most of whom had no use for an old-fashioned newspaper, are excited about being published in a product seen by tens of thousands of readers every day. Those bloggers are seeing their profiles rise dramatically in the market, and as a result, the potential for previously unimagined levels of traffic on their websites rises as well. That kind of mutually beneficial relationship is appealing to both parties — the newspapers and the bloggers.

I intend to take that message on the road to help other newspapers learn how to develop those relationships and build the new audiences that will rejuvenate their franchises....

(And, yes, the plan includes pay for bloggers. I have even met with the National Writers Union to talk about contract templates and to get advice on compensation plans. They're very excited about the potential for their members and non-members alike.)

BostonNOW's melding of print and the Web is far more interesting as an idea than as a news product. Frankly, the paper is pretty bad, although there's no reason to think it won't get better. This Boston Magazine piece on BostonNOW by Jason Feifer — "The Rag That Would Save Newspapers" — captures the good, the bad and the ugly.

As for Wilpers, whom I've known since the early 1980s, when we competed against each other, the guy is a survivor. He'll be fine.

Update: This isn't nice, but it's funny.

"D&C" headed to WCRB?

David Scott reports that "Dennis & Callahan" may be headed for classical station WCRB (99.5 FM), which could become the hub of a regional sports network. He rounds up Globe and Herald coverage as well.

Stunt or not?

Bruce Allen of Boston Sports Media offers five reasons why the "Dennis & Callahan" lockout might be a stunt, but says he really doesn't think that it is. Among other things, he cites Entercom sources who claim John Dennis and Gerry Callahan are looking for as much as $1.5 million apiece annually. Not much laugh potential there.

I doubt it's a stunt, too, but you never know. Allen points to the time that Mike Adams locked himself inside the studio in order to demand a contract, an incident that was later revealed to be a hoax. But that was at least semi-amusing. What's happening now isn't funny or even all that interesting, my own incessant posting on the subject notwithstanding.

A $2 million reward (II)

The Globe reports that the Mashpee Wampanoags have acquired an option to purchase another 205 acres in order to build a casino in Middleborough.

Not to pick on Christine Wallgren, who's done some good work on this story. But telling us that the sellers are "the Gates family" tells us nothing. As previously reported by the Enterprise of Brockton, we're talking about Middleborough Police Lt. Bruce Gates and his two siblings, and they stand to make as much as $2 million from the land deal.

Bruce Gates was in charge of security at that fiasco of a town meeting where voters approved a deal with the Wampanoags, then turned around and rejected the casino itself. The latter vote is non-binding, but it's a good indication of how townspeople really feel.

Gates has said he got nowhere near a ballot box that day, and I believe him. But it was his police who reportedly barred anti-casino pamphlets from the meeting while allowing casino supporters to enter wearing pro-casino T-shirts and caps.

The Enterprise promises more tomorrow.

Wednesday morning update: Wallgren gets it right in today's Globe, and notes that the secretary of state's office is reviewing complaints filed about Gates' alleged conflict of interest.

The sagacious Dick Cheney

I'm late to this, but offer it as a public service in case you haven't seen it yet:

If only President Bush had advisers as wise and cautious as Dick Cheney was in 1994.

Wilpers out (or not) at BostonNOW

Well, that didn't take long. The Herald's "Inside Track" reports that John Wilpers is semi-out as editor of BostonNOW, the free weekday tab started by Tab founder Russel Pergament earlier this year with (I'm not making this up) Icelandic money.

Wilpers is supposedly sticking around to consult on the paper's blogging initiatives and overall strategy, so this doesn't sound like your classic "pack up your stuff and get out of here" move. I've asked Wilpers to respond, and will post if I hear from him.

"Dennis & Callahan" non-update

There is absolutely nothing new on the "Dennis & Callahan" front this morning, so I'm not going to pretend otherwise. The roundup of coverage begins with David Scott. From there, move on to the Herald (here and here), the Globe and, finally, Save WRKO, which pores over a line supposedly excised from the Herald like a Roman priest examining sheep entrails.

For my money, the most insightful commentary today comes from Media Nation's own Amused but Informed Observer, even though I disagree with him (her?) that this is nothing more than a stunt. For the record — to borrow a wonderful phrase from Curt Schilling — I also disagree with Amused about Scott's inherent toolness. But there you go.

John Edwards, private and public

Charlie Pierce has a good story on John Edwards in Esquire. I've never been a fan of Edwards' public persona, but it's always seemed that the private Edwards — the father of a son killed in an accident and the husband of a wife with incurable cancer — was more impressive. Pierce's account confirms that.

I'd still like to see someone ask John Kerry about the truth of Bob Shrum's poisonous allegation regarding Edwards' willingness to exploit his son's death. Typical of the political media, Shrum has been treated like a sage, appearing on "Meet the Press" and the like without anyone challenging him on it.

Entercom's latest disaster

It's one thing for Entercom to screw up its fading Boston talk station, WRKO (AM 680). It's quite another for the company to mess with its highly successful sports operation, WEEI (AM 850). But that's exactly what has happened.

Boston Sports Media's David Scott got the scoop late last night, reporting that WEEI's top-rated morning hosts, John Dennis and Gerry Callahan, have been locked out over a contract dispute. The Herald's Jessica Heslam and Laurel Sweet follow today with a story that actually leads the paper. (Callahan is also a Herald columnist.)

Now, consider the ill-fated moves that have brought Entercom to this impasse. The big one took place last fall, when the company negotiated a deal with the Red Sox to move most of their games from the sports station to the talk station. Yes, some games are still on WEEI. The schedule is determined, as best as I can tell, by the phase of the moon. Fortunately, those of us who live in Media Nation are able to hear all the games on a non-Entercom affiliate, WBOQ (104.9 FM).

The residual effects: WEEI now has a talented host, Mike Adams, trying to do a sports show that competes with the Red Sox, an impossible task. WRKO's Howie Carr (like Callahan, a Herald columnist) is said to have been furious over having his show cut short by Sox games, thus helping to precipitate his move — pending the resolution of lawsuits he and Entercom have filed against each other — to rival WTKK (96.9 FM). Finally, both WRKO and WEEI have had their identities fuzzed up (a talk station with the Red Sox? a sports station without the Sox?), which is deadly for marketing.

In the case of "Dennis & Callahan," there is an additional drama. Callahan has been off the air for months, recovering from what Scott describes as "multiple surgeries to his throat." Supposedly Callahan was going to return to the airwaves today and explain, finally, what was at the root of his health problems. Scott also writes that "D&C" may not return to WEEI at all:

The final bit of intrigue in this whole complicated mess is the multiple reports we are receiving that D&C are being coveted by a completely separate broadcasting entity that would use the pair as its cornerstone to build a New England regional sports talk network. While some industry insiders are telling us that is a real, viable possibility others are more skeptical and assume it is a ploy on behalf of D&C's representatives to drive up their clients value on the open market.

Shots can confirm that a regional player fitting the description does have the infrastructure in place to build such a network, but whether or not the group would be able to guarantee the kind of money that Dennis and Callahan are looking for is open to debate.

Personally, I wouldn't miss "Dennis & Callahan," which trucks in low-rent populism, homophobia and — in one notorious incident — out-and-out racism. I think you could move the vastly superior "Dale & Holley" show into the morning drive-time slot without missing a beat or a ratings point.

But "D&C" is the number-one radio show among men between the ages of 25 and 54. I wouldn't think Entercom executives Jason Wolfe and Julie Kahn would want to take the chance of losing them.

Then again, maybe Tom Finneran can do sports.

Virtual Dennis: If you click on the WEEI home page right now, you might see a virtual John Dennis talking up the Jimmy Fund radiothon.

Casting a misspell

At the beginning of each semester, I tell my students that I have a rule about spelling: botch a proper name — person, place or thing — and it will cost you a letter grade. Even so, I often find I have to temper justice with mercy, lest I risk failing someone for the course despite turning in work that is otherwise quite good.

Apparently it's not much different at the New York Times, whose public editor, Clark Hoyt, weighs in with a piece today on misspelled names. He writes:

The fact is, The New York Times misspells names at a ferocious rate — famous names, obscure names, names of the dead in their obituaries, names of the living in their wedding announcements, household names from Hollywood, names of Cabinet officers, sports figures, the shoe bomber, the film critic for The Daily News in New York and, astonishingly and repeatedly, Sulzberger, the name of the family that owns The New York Times.

Pretty amazing, and I'm not sure why it's so difficult. Hoyt thinks the Internet might have something to do with it, as it's become all too easy for reporters to pass on other people's mistakes. But that doesn't make sense, because any reporter ought to know enough to visit an authoritative Web site.

A small example. One day in the early '90s, when I was working for the Boston Phoenix, a fellow copy editor and I were trying to figure out how "Dunkin' Donuts" ought to be rendered. One of us ended up walking to Kenmore Square in order to look at the sign outside a DD. Today, all we would have needed to do was click here.

When I was going to journalism school, one of my professors, Bill Kirtz (now a colleague), used to say that if you couldn't be trusted to get the little things right, then you couldn't be trusted to get the big things right, either. It's a credo I've tried to live by, even as I've gotten my share of things wrong, both little and big.

Media Nation on hiatus

I'm leaving tomorrow morning for a six-day, 50-mile backpacking trip in the Berkshires with the Boy Scout troop I help lead. I would ask that you not try to post any comments during this time, since I'm keeping moderation on and won't be able to approve them until I get back late next Thursday.

I did consider quietly turning moderation off. But the last time I went away, Blogger got hit with a bot attack, and I was glad I had kept the gates up.

Digging out

One day after I tweaked the Weekly Dig for its ongoing Web non-presence, the paper unveils a new site. I'm running out the door and won't be around next week, so it will have to go unremarked-upon by me. But, on first glance, it looks pretty good.

Million Dollar Howie?

Carolyn Johnson reports in the Globe that Howie Carr last year made $790,000 from WRKO Radio (AM 680), the station from which he is now seeking a less-than-amicable divorce. If you figure in what he's making as a Herald columnist, I'll bet he's at $1 million or close to it — and that's not counting whatever he's making from his book, "The Brothers Bulger."

That ought to put things in perspective the next time he goes off on some poor bastard grasping for another $10,000.

Over on Cape Cod Today, Peter Kenney offers some thoughts and insight into the Carr-Cary Pahigian relationship. Kenney gets at something very odd: the propriety of Pahigian, an executive with one radio company, freelancing as an agent and messing with the star property of another radio company.

Howie's unusual agent

This is way inside baseball, but it's odd enough to mention. Both the Globe (which quotes me) and the Herald, in reporting on WRKO's countersuit against Howie Carr, note that Carr's agent is Cary Pahigian.

But Pahigian is a radio management guy of long standing. As recently as late June, he was oozing sincerity in front of the FCC in his capacity as president and general manager of Saga Communications' Portland (Maine) Radio Group. He's still listed in that capacity on Saga's Web site.

One of Saga's Maine stations, WGAN (AM 560), carries Carr's show from 3 to 5 p.m. every weekday. And in the late 1990s, when Pahigian was running a hate radio station on Cape Cod owned by the late auto magnate Ernie Boch, he carried Carr's show and provided airtime to Carr's then-sidekick Giles Threadgold.

So clearly there are ties between Carr and Pahigian. Still, it's pretty unusual for someone to walk both sides of the management-talent divide.

By the way, Howie was still doing his WRKO show yesterday. What a strange situation.

Patrick to Murphy: Uh, no

There's really nothing left to say about the saga of Middlesex Superior Court Judge Ernest Murphy, other than good for Gov. Deval Patrick for refusing to approve Murphy's request for a disability pension.

I don't consider myself a Murphy-basher. I don't doubt that he suffered terribly at the hands of the Herald's sensationalistic coverage of him — although Media Nation readers know I disagree with the libel verdict that he won, and that the state's Supreme Judicial Court upheld.

But surely the $3.41 million he pocketed recently, along with the regular pension he could receive by working for just three more years is enough — provided he doesn't get bounced for alleged misconduct over those weird letters he sent to Herald publisher Pat Purcell.

On the plus side

The Weekly Dig's Web site loads a lot faster than it used to.

You know, guys, there's this thing called Blogger. It's free, and you can set it up in about two minutes. You could use it to get some of your content online while you continue with the endless redesign. What do you think?

Adam Gaffin points out that it's not July anymore. But what I want to know is this: Isn't it kind of pushing things to run a vodka ad, complete with audio, on an "under construction" page?

Hope for journalism's future

My latest commentary for the Guardian is a response to Russell Baker's depressing take on the state of the news media, which appears in the current New York Review of Books.

A $2 million reward

Secretary of State William Galvin might want to take a close look at today's Enterprise of Brockton, which reports the following:

A town police lieutenant, who was in charge of security for Saturday's town meeting that approved a casino for Middleboro, and his family could score more than $2 million if the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe buys land they own near the casino site.

Middleboro Police Lt. Bruce Gates and two siblings own 204 acres of land off Precinct and Thompson streets. The land consists of a handful of parcels, which abut 125 acres already in the hands of the tribe.

The tribe is now negotiating with Gates and his family for their land, said Wampanoag spokesman Scott Ferson.

"We hope to have an agreement in the next week or two," Ferson said.

This, of course, would be the same Middleborough police department that reportedly refused to let casino opponents distribute their leaflets while at the same time allowing supporters to enter wearing orange T-shirts and white caps emblazoned with a pro-casino message.

In other casino-related news:

• Rich Young, director of the anti-casino group Casinofacts.org, makes his case on the op-ed page of the Patriot Ledger of Quincy. He writes:

The real story from Saturday's "vote" was that while a majority at the FedEx-style town meeting supported the warrant article dealing with the agreement, they also voted against the idea of a casino coming to Middleboro in the next warrant article.

This came as a surprise to no one. During the three-week campaign, hundreds of voters we spoke with did not want a casino, but they were afraid if they did not vote for the agreement, the casino was going to come anyway and the town would receive nothing in return.

• The Globe reports that a challenge is being made to the legitimacy of the town meeting vote, alleging a number of irregularities, including the presence of those orange T-shirts and a videotaped moment of what may have been ballot-stuffing.

The truth is out there.

Darkness falls

Ugh. I've already made my thoughts known about Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of the Wall Street Journal, both here and in the Guardian. So I've really got nothing new to say now that he's finally pulled it off. (Indeed, this has gone on so long that opinion-slingers like me have run through our ammo two or three times already.) But the Journal is well on its way from being a great, independent paper to a very good paper with a grasping, interfering owner.

I love Eric Alterman's take in The Nation. Alterman argues that because the Journal's news pages will be seen as less serious under Murdoch, so will its nutty right-wing editorial page. Alterman writes:

The silver lining of this takeover is that when Murdoch destroys the credibility of the Journal — as he must if it is to fit in with his business plan — he will be removing the primary pillar of the editorial page's influence as well. In this regard his ownership is a kind of poisoned chalice.

Locally, meanwhile, let the outsourcing (and selling?) begin. Last week, the Globe's Steve Bailey reported that Herald publisher Pat Purcell — who bought the Herald from Murdoch, his old mentor, in 1994 — would look to strike a deal for the Herald to be printed at a Dow Jones-owned plant in Chicopee should the Murdoch deal succeed. (Dow Jones is the Journal's parent company.) Purcell confirmed his interest in a Herald story two days later the same day.

The Herald's current property, next to the Southeast Expressway, is worth far more than its crumbling plant. A printing deal would presumably enable Purcell to sell the property and reduce his costs by vast sums, and might even ensure the long-term financial health of his paper.

Today the Globe reports that the Globe itself is in negotiations to print the Patriot Ledger of Quincy and the Enterprise of Brockton.

Now, follow the bouncing newspaper owners:

• The Globe, of course, is owned by the New York Times Co., and Murdoch's Journal is likely to emerge as the Times' principal competitor nationally. If the Globe's main print rival, the Herald, is getting help from Murdoch — well, I have no idea what to say except that it's interesting.
• Dow Jones, Purcell's possible savior, owns several community dailies in the area through its Ottaway division, including the Standard-Times of New Bedford, the Cape Cod Times and the Portsmouth Herald. The Patriot Ledger and the Enterprise are owned by GateHouse Media, which also owns about 100 papers, mostly weeklies, in Eastern Massachusetts. So there's an additional rivalry.
  
• Except that Murdoch might sell off his community papers, which don't seem to fit any grand strategy. And the most likely buyer would be GateHouse. Does it matter that James Ottaway positioned himself as Murdoch's not-so-mortal enemy? Damned if I know.
• Which would leave Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. (CNHI), better known as the Alabama state teachers' pension fund, isolated and alone on the North Shore and in the Merrimack Valley. CNHI owns the Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence, the Salem News, the Gloucester Daily Times and the Daily News of Newburyport. And guess what? Michael Reed, chief executive of GateHouse, used to be chief executive of CNHI.

Murdoch's victory could be just the beginning for local newspaper readers.

Oh, my. Jim Cramer, the screaming loon of CNBC, hopes Murdoch will push the Journal so that it finally matches the relevance of, yes, the New York Post business pages. By the way, the Post's business coverage is quite good. But come on.