Cullen on the Celtics

As Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen has been much in the news of late, you may be interested to know that he's written a Web-only piece on the Celtics.

It's a smart, historically minded take on how the Celtics morphed from the most racially progressive team in the NBA in the 1960s; to a team so dominated by white stars in the 1980s that it was spurned by African-American youths in Boston (despite the presence of coach K.C. Jones); to the current incarnation, a team that routinely puts five black players on the floor.

Go Celtics!

Rosen on McClellan's self-awareness

For several years now, Jay Rosen has been advancing the theory that former White House press secretary Scott McClellan was not just unusually inept and uninformed; rather, he was part of a deliberate strategy on the part of the Bush administration to "de-certify" the press. Forcing journalists to rely on someone as buffoonish and out of the loop as McClellan, Rosen argued, was a way of underscoring the media's unimportance in the Bush-Cheney worldview.

In the end, it didn't work, and the White House was eventually compelled to hire a more conventional press secretary, Tony Snow, and grant him the kind of access and influence that press secretaries traditionally have. But when President Bush was at the height of his political powers, the McClellan strategy worked just fine.

Now Rosen — like McClellan — is back. And what Rosen finds stunning is that McClellan himself seems to have adopted Rosen's analysis. That is, McClellan now understands that he was a mere pawn in a much larger game. And despite his still-evident shortcomings, he has come to realize that he doesn't like it one damn bit. After all, it was he who was transformed into a fool, along with the media. Journalists still don't understand that (or maybe they do, given their hostile response to Stephen Colbert's epic performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2006). McClellan, though, understands it all too well. Rosen writes:

I never expected McClellan to write a book about being the jerk at the podium for Bush, or to make connections between his experience and the larger wreckage of the Bush presidency. He's not only done that; he's clearly ready to hit the circuit and explain himself.

Watching Keith Olbermann interview McClellan last night about McClellan's book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," it was striking to see McClellan's self-awareness, something you never would have imagined when he was working for Bush. He is clearly in the midst of a sea change in his political thinking, as he told Olbermann he may even support Barack Obama for president this fall.

I wish I'd caught all of Olbermann's interview, but I'm not going to miss McClellan's appearance on "Meet the Press" this Sunday. Memo to Tim: Ditch the slides showing he said one thing then and another thing now. We already know that. The man's got a story to tell. Let him tell it.

Photo (cc) by Dave Winer and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Casino gambling's "Energizer Bunny"

As recently as last Friday, the Boston Globe editorial page was still whining over Massachusetts House Speaker Sal DiMasi's finest moment: his staunch opposition to Gov. Deval Patrick's casino-gambling proposal, which helped ensure its defeat earlier this year.

Now Common Cause of Massachusetts reports that pro-casino forces gave nearly $1.5 million to state legislators between 2002 and 2007, according to David Kibbe, who covers the Statehouse for The Standard-Times of New Bedford and the Cape Cod Times. Gambling interests also spent $8.2 million on salaries for lobbyists between 1998 and 2007, Common Cause found. Kibbe writes:

"Money clearly hasn't bought results," said Pam Wilmot, the executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts. "What it does buy is a never ending campaign that will always be back and back and back, sort of like the Energizer Bunny."

Ms. Wilmot added: "Without somebody like Sal DiMasi, it probably would have gone through."

Indeed. This is the kind of muscle that DiMasi — who reportedly received death threats because of his opposition to casinos — was up against. Twisting a few arms in the face of such opposition is pretty weak stuff by comparison.

The Common Cause report (PDF) includes a great quote from Scott Harshbarger, speaking in 1996, when he was the state attorney general:

I think the reason we don't have a casino today in Massachusetts is because, in fact, the people have decided.... The only people that won't accept it are the people who want the casinos. Because they figure they can stay at this longer. The Legislature and the governor move on to other issues, but they never stop. They're constantly focused with highly paid lobbyists — the best in the state — whose job it is to stay focused on one central goal: to get that door open.

The gambling interests are still pushing on the door. Harshbarger, to his credit, is still trying to hold them back. And DiMasi, who's taking a pounding over his own questionable ethics, deserves our thanks for standing up to this assault on our quality of life.

Columnist smackdown!

Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen responds to John Gonzalez's Boston Magazine piece, making up for any perceived bile shortage in rather spectacular fashion. And Boston Magazine blogger Amy Derjue responds to Cullen's response with applause, urging Cullen's metro-columnist stablemates, Yvonne Abraham and Adrian Walker, to get similarly worked up.

A note to the Globe's Web folks: If Cullen thought Gonzalez's critique was worth expending 660 words, don't you think you should have linked to it?

Reporters won't testify in Entwistle case

The trial of Neil Entwistle, accused of murdering his wife and baby daughter, is sure to be a spectacle. But here's one spectacle you won't be seeing: Judge Diane Kottmyer today ruled that two reporters will not be called to testify during a pre-trial hearing, writes David Frank of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.

Laurel Sweet and Michele McPhee reported in the Boston Herald in November 2007 that Entwistle had written a suicide note while in jail. Sweet, who's still with the Herald, and McPhee, now a talk-show host for WTKK Radio (96.9 FM), got off the hook when prosecutors said they have no plans to introduce the suicide note at Entwistle's trial. Call this an ever-so-slight victory for the First Amendment.

McPhee's got a book coming out on the case next Tuesday.

Fox News' underpublicized sick joke

I saw this on Talking Points Memo yesterday, and note that it's been picked up by the New York Times editorial-page blog as well. Have a look at Fox News Channel contributor Liz Trotta as she jokes that it would be just great if Osama bin Laden and Barack Obama — and eh, who can tell them apart, anyway? — were both killed:

The question of the day is why Trotta's sick joke hasn't generated more outrage. After all, MSNBC's Chris Matthews had to apologize publicly after he said Hillary Clinton's political success was based on her husband's "messing around."

I'm tempted to say it's because no one takes Fox News seriously, but certainly Media Matters, the liberal media-watchdog group, has been quick to pounce on Fox for other offenses. Perhaps it was because Trotta expressed her sick thoughts in the middle of a holiday weekend.

Fangs for the memories

Boston Magazine's John Gonzalez writes that the Boston Globe's three metro columnists — Adrian Walker, Kevin Cullen and Yvonne Abraham — seem more intent on writing inoffensive feature stories than in drawing blood.

Personally, I'd like to see more outrage. But I suppose the last thing the Globe needs right now is for pissed-off readers to call up and cancel their subscriptions.

Just recently I was thinking about how I'd like to see the metro columnists redeployed, and I came up with an old-fashioned idea that I think might work. (Keep in mind even having metro columnists is pretty old-fashioned.)

I'd station one at the Statehouse, one at City Hall and one at Boston Police headquarters, and instruct all three to write reported pieces with opinion, attitude and, yes, an occasional sense of outrage. Not to be too narrow — they'd be allowed to stray from their beats, but not often.

If you're thinking that's not the way to draw in a new generation of twentysomething readers, well, I guess I'd have to agree. But it would certainly make me happy.

Born-again secularism

In my latest for the Guardian, I observe that John McCain, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have all paid dearly for the sin of inflicting religion upon the voters. Could we be witnessing the beginning of the end when it comes to political pandering on matters of faith?

No gold at the end of the rainbow

The Day of New London, Conn., reports that the Mashantucket Pequot tribe is eliminating 170 government jobs because the Foxwoods gambling casino isn't pulling in money like it used to:

King has said Foxwoods generates about 99 percent of the tribe's government funding, but the casino has weathered months of reduced revenue because of increased competition in neighboring states and an uncertain economy.

And that's without any casinos opening in Massachusetts.

Making sense of Clinton's senseless remark

Trying to make sense of Hillary Clinton's truly bizarre reference to Robert Kennedy's assassination? Good luck. The New York Times' Katharine Seelye put up a comprehensive blog post last night that's full of insight — yet she can't seem to make sense of it, either.

Seelye seems to accept Clinton's explanation that she was referring merely to the fact that the Democratic primaries had extended into June in 1968, and that she was not trying to suggest that, well, gee, maybe Barack Obama will get shot just like Kennedy, so she ought to stick around.

Yet Seelye also opens her post by referring to Friday as possibly "one of the worst days of Senator Hillary Clinton's political career." And she closes by wondering whether Clinton's remarks were so toxic that she may have even alienated those who want to help her find "a graceful way out" of the presidential race.

Perhaps most telling, Seelye embeds a lengthy commentary by Keith Olbermann that is, as she says, "tough beyond measure." Suffice it to say that Olbermann does not give Clinton the benefit of the doubt as to whether she had deliberately evoked Kennedy's assassination.

Personally, I'm not sure what to think. Like Seelye, I believe Clinton was trying to make a point about the timing, not the assassination. But her remarks were tasteless and grotesque nevertheless. This may be one of those situations in which what Clinton was trying to say is being deliberately distorted, and she deserves it.

Patrick and the politics of symbolism

I'm not quite sure what to say about Casey Ross' story in today's Boston Herald reporting that Gov. Deval Patrick has increased spending on his own office by 80 percent. I agree with Ross that new positions such as a "director of grassroots governance" are "questionable," but what follows from that is I'd like to see someone ask the questions: What is it? How will we benefit? Will we benefit? The governor's staff tells Ross that we will, but in very non-specific terms.

What's crystal-clear, though, is that Ross has dug up more evidence, if any were needed, that Patrick is an unusually poor practitioner of the politics of symbolism. And symbolism matters. At a time when the economy is in the tank, gas and oil prices are skyrocketing and cities and towns are straining to make ends meet, Patrick should not be trying to launch non-essential — if desirable — programs that we've somehow managed to live without up until now. Civic engagement? Nice. Funding for schools or for his long-promised property-tax relief? Quite a bit nicer.

The drapes. The Caddy. The book-contract signing while his casino bill was going down to defeat. All evidence that Patrick's got a tin ear.

It depends on the question

Jon Keller delivered a sneering commentary this morning about the supposed fear our political leaders have of "democracy." His main example: House Speaker Sal DiMasi's abortive suggestion that an advisory question about casino gambling be placed on the statewide ballot this fall. As Keller noted, neither side is enthusiastic about the idea, and it seems all but certain to be dropped.

Keller's commentary hasn't been posted on the WBZ Radio Web site yet, but you should be able to find it here later today.

Well, I'm one casino opponent who wouldn't mind seeing a question go on the ballot. But what would the question be? Here's a simple, fair and neutral question that I think gets to the heart of the matter: "Would you support a gambling casino's being built in your city or town?"

That is really the only question that matters. Various polls have showed mixed results or mild support for casino gambling when those being surveyed are not required to focus on the possibility that it's their community that will be affected. The results are quite different, though, when the issue is literally brought home.

Two examples:

• Last summer, Middleborough residents attending the town meeting that approved a casino deal with the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe immediately turned around and voted overwhelmingly against a casino's being built in their town. This nonbinding vote, all but ignored by the media, stands as the only occasion that people in Middleborough have expressed their true feelings about the issue.
• Several months ago, a poll of Massachusetts residents showed that two-thirds were opposed to a casino's being built in their community. Most news reports focused on mixed results regarding the abstract idea of casinos. But what does that matter if no one wants one next door?

Let's be clear — this isn't NIMBYism, because we don't need to build a casino anywhere. Call it NIABYism — Not in Anyone's Back Yard.

Beating the press

I'm on "Beat the Press" this week. We'll be talking about media coverage of Ted Kennedy's illness, among other things. The show will be broadcast today at 7 p.m. on WGBH-TV (Channel 2).

Ready, aim, fire(d)

Memo to Barry Nolan: Going after Bill O'Reilly is a great publicity stunt only if your employer is on board.

Thoughts on Ted Kennedy's illness

In my latest for the Guardian, I try to explain what it's like for Ted Kennedy to be one of our senators rather than a world and national symbol — and how it feels to be preparing for his passing.

Ted Kennedy has brain cancer

Associated Press reporter Glen Johnson writes that Sen. Ted Kennedy has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Though the prognosis is uncertain, this is truly bad news both for the Kennedy family and for Massachusetts.

According to Johnson's story, the usual course of treatment is radiation and chemotherapy, with survival ranging from less than a year to five years or more. Obviously it's way too soon to tell whether Kennedy might be able to return to a vigorous and effective Senate career, but it's a real possibility.

Sen. Arlen Specter, for one, has served while battling various forms of cancer, including a brain tumor, since the early 1990s.

Photo (cc) by diggersf and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

The amazing Jon Lester

If you were writing the fictional story of Jon Lester's comeback from cancer, you might ponder how you wanted it to end. Do you have him winning the last game of the World Series? Or pitching a no-hitter?

How about both?

Correcting a correction

Can't editors at the New York Times check their own archives before subjecting one of their reporters to the ignominy of a published correction? On May 14, Times sportswriter William Rhoden wrote a column about the New York Knicks that contained the following passage about former coach Isiah Thomas:

No coach in recent Knicks history was treated as harshly as Thomas. From the moment Thomas was named team president to the moment he was forced to coach the team he assembled, Thomas was the object of an intense dislike that, near the end, bordered on hatred. Some old-timers in the news media never forgot his comment about Larry Bird (if Bird were black, he would be regarded as just another player).

But you'll no longer find the passage about Bird in the online version; it's been expunged, as though the Times fears you'll go blind if you read it. There's now a correction at the bottom that says:

The Sports of The Times column on Wednesday, about the harsh environment surrounding the Knicks while Isiah Thomas was the coach, erroneously linked Thomas to a racially charged comment about Larry Bird when both men were top N.B.A. players. It was Dennis Rodman — once a teammate of Thomas's — who famously suggested that Bird would have been regarded as an ordinary player had he been black.

Trouble is, Rhoden got it exactly right. After the Detroit Pistons lost to the Boston Celtics in the 1987 playoffs, both Rodman and Thomas, then the team's star players, made the incisive observation that Bird was, you know, white. Here's how the Times' Ira Berkow described it on June 2, 1987:

In the visiting and losing team's locker room Saturday afternoon in Boston Garden, Isiah Thomas, the Detroit guard, said he didn't want it to sound like sour grapes, and that there was no question that his team got beat, and that they came up short, but he harbored a resentment.

In regard to Bird, he [Thomas] said, ''I think Larry is a very, very good basketball player. An exceptional talent, but I'd have to agree with Rodman. If Bird was black, he'd be just another good guy.''

Dennis Rodman, the teammate to whom Thomas had referred, had said that Bird was ''overrated,'' and that the only reason he had won three straight league most valuable player awards (until this year, that is), ''is because he's white. That's the only reason.''

So, yes, Rodman spoke first. But Thomas agreed with him, and used language that was just as offensive, if you're inclined to be offended. Rhoden was not using quotation marks, so there was no reason for him to capture Thomas' quote word-for-word. But it strikes me that Rhoden's construction comes closer to Thomas than to Rodman. Gee, he must have done his research.

The simple fact is that Rhoden got hung out to dry by editors who apparently couldn't have been bothered to dig out what really happened 21 years ago. Heck, I remember it, which is why I started diving into the archives. Anyone who was following basketball in 1987 remembers Thomas' crass comments — more so than Rodman's, since Thomas was a nationally known celebrity.

Rhoden should demand a retraction.

Zoned out

Recently Miss Media Nation bought a DVD from Amazon UK with her allowance money. She tried to play it on our iMac, and encountered a message that we were in the wrong zone. I switched it for her, but that was hardly an ideal solution for two reasons:

• You can only switch back and forth a few times before the drive locks forever.
• Though she can now watch her British-origin DVD, she can't watch anything else unless I switch it back. See my first complaint.
  

Nor does the DVD play on the unit connected to our television.

As I understand it, this is supposed to be some sort of protection against piracy or trafficking in early-release movies or something. All I know is that my daughter bought a legitimate product, legally, and now she's limited in how she can use it.

There are fixes, but they're more daunting than anything I want to tackle. To say this is abusive treatment on the part of the movie studios is an understatement.

Walking through the fallout

Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan puts the Boston Herald walk-through fiasco in perspective today by pointing out the obvious — that Patriots coach Bill Belichick has forever branded himself as a cheater. Ryan writes:

How could anyone not feel sorry for Bob Kraft?...

His was said to be a model organization, where the owner owned, the personnel people found the right players, and the dour defensive genius coached 'em right up to championships, or close to 'em.

And now?

And now he has to live with the reality that he presides over the most despised and reviled franchise in all of contemporary American sport, and all because the coach he trusted has betrayed him.

In the New York Times, Mark Bowden offers a different sort of perspective, arguing, essentially, that it's not a big deal and that everyone does it.

Bowden compares the Patriots taping scandal to, among other things, Gaylord Perry's spitball. Not to condone what Perry did, but, somehow, I don't buy the comparison. I'm with Ryan on this one.

Ted Kennedy's illness

Sen. Ted Kennedy has fallen ill, and Media Nation extends its best wishes. Meanwhile, there are signs of early media confusion over what's wrong.

The Boston Herald reports that Kennedy experienced "stroke-like symptoms." The Cape Cod Times, whose account of Kennedy's illness is otherwise thorough, makes no mention of the nature of the senator's illness. (Those two links via Universal Hub.)

By contrast, the Boston Globe, relying on an anonymous "official briefed on the situation," tells us that Kennedy suffered a seizure, then a second as he was being transported by helicopter to Massachusetts General Hospital.

Not that the Herald and the Globe couldn't both be right.

Instant update: The Herald's Casey Ross has more details, and describes Kennedy's "stroke-like symptoms" as "mild." And the AP, among others, is also using the phrase "stroke-like symptoms."

Threatening "the voice of Black Boston"

Interesting story in the Dorchester Reporter on "TOUCH 106.1 FM," a pirate radio station serving the black community that's been targeted for elimination by the FCC. Managing editor Bill Forry writes:

Touch FM (officially LP-WTCH Boston) — which sprang from the bosom of the Grove Hall Neighborhood Development Corporation offices in the fall of 2005 — is unlicensed. They admit it. They're pirates.

And they are unrepentant, even in the face of the most recent broadside from the government: A May 7 forfeiture order from the FCC that levies a $17,000 fine on station founder Charles Clemons. The ruling stems from a pair of site visits made to the suspected TOUCH offices at the corner of Cheney Street and Blue Hill Avenue in 2007. The order accuses Clemons of "willfully and repeatedly" using the frequency without a license and for "failing to permit a station inspection."

This is the Catch-22 of radio. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 destroyed local commercial radio and gave rise to corporate-owned, lowest-common-denominator pap.

Touch FM's 100-watt signal — broadcast from an undisclosed location — puts it between WMJX (106.7 FM) and WROR (105.7 FM), two stations owned by Greater Media, which also employs the likes of right-wingers like Jay Severin and Michael Graham on another of its stations, WTKK (96.9 FM). Who's doing more to serve the local community, TOUCH or Greater Media? Does the question even need to be asked?

Last June I covered a hearing by the FCC on localism in broadcast media. The agency claims to be very concerned about local content. Well, if officials would like to travel to Dorchester, they will find some.

Duxbury's Afghan connection

Here's something you don't see every day. The weekly Duxbury Clipper recently sent columnist Bruce Barrett to Afghanistan to cover the opening of a girls school funded by the Duxbury Rotary Club. Barrett did his reporting in the form of a blog, complete with photos, video, a map of the area, even a real-time weather report from the Afghan capital of Kabul.

An excerpt from Barrett's final dispatch:

Kalashnikovs. In Duxbury, a band of men armed with assault rifles attending the opening of an elementary school would make the national news. But the Zabuli School for Girls isn't in Duxbury. It's in Deh Sabz, Afghanistan, a gritty town of 1,000 families on the outskirts of the capital city Kabul. Out here, standing among men armed to the teeth is calming, not frightening. It means that security is strong. Fear comes when standing among men who have turned their attention toward you, and you can't see their weapons. More unsettling, perhaps, are the moments when you can see their weapons and the barrels are pointed up. That's when they're ready for action.

Not only is the series evidence of some terrific enterprise on the part of Barrett and the Clipper, but the online implementation is state-of-the-art.

Number two with a bullet

McCainiancs nervous over the prospect that their man might pick Mike Huckabee as his running mate needn't worry — Huckabee took himself out of the running earlier today by making a grotesque joke about Barack Obama, guns and assassination. Reuters reports:

Former Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee, interrupted on Friday by a loud crash as he spoke to the National Rifle Association, joked that the noise was Democratic candidate Barack Obama falling off a chair as he dodged a gun aimed at him.

"That was Barack Obama. He just tripped off a chair. He was getting ready to speak and somebody aimed a gun at him, and he dove for the floor," Huckabee told the NRA convention in Louisville, Kentucky, in comments that aired on CNN.

What a sense of humor, eh?

He's sorry, too

I took John Tomase's column to be an apology, but a few people — including Dale Arnold on WEEI Radio (AM 850) — have picked up on the lack of the words "I'm sorry." Tomase has made amends on his blog. (Via Boston Sports Media.)

Deconstructing Tomase's deconstruction

There has been, as some media observers have noted, a question as to why the Boston Herald's apology on Wednesday referred to John Tomase's "sources" when his original story referred only to a "source." Today Tomase puts that to rest. In fact, he had no sources, if by "source" you mean someone who gives you information that you can use in a story.

Look, the Herald has apologized. Editor Kevin Convey has offered a personal mea culpa. And Tomase himself writes, "Turns out I could not have been more wrong. I regret it, and that's something I'm going to have to live with for the rest of my life." So there's no need to unload on the guy. He says he's going to keep covering the Patriots. It will be interesting to see how that works out.

Still, there are a few things in Tomase's piece that are worth highlighting and questioning.

1. What stopped Tomase from tracking down a first-hand source? Tomase says he wishes he hadn't relied on anonymous sources for such an important story. But the anonymity isn't as troubling as his admission that he didn't talk with a single source who had direct knowledge of the Patriots' videotaping the Ram's walk-through before the 2002 Super Bowl. This section screams out:

One that I trust said he had been told the walkthrough was taped. A second said he had been told the same thing, but neither had seen a tape.

So Tomase talked with two sources who said they were "told" about the incident. Well, who told them? Wouldn't they have been the keys to the story? He says he was under some competitive pressure from the New York Times, but shouldn't he have kept trying to get an eyewitness account — especially when his sources were suggesting that they had heard such an account?

2. No, Tomase shouldn't violate his promise of confidentiality. A few critics, including me, have suggested that Tomase and the Herald should consider outing Tomase's source if they conclude that the source had deliberately fed him misinformation. Tomase turns that self-righteously on its head, writing:

There has been a clamoring for me to identify the sources used in my story. This I cannot do. When a reporter promises anonymity, he can't break that promise simply because he comes under fire. I gave my word, and the day I break that word is the day sources stop talking to me.

Given Tomase's description of the way the story unfolded, then no, of course he shouldn't reveal his sources, because they weren't trying to set him up. They were passing along rumors that they apparently believed to be true — indeed, as I've already said, they weren't even sources in the proper sense of the word. It was Tomase's decision to type up those rumors before he had finished checking them out.

3. Where were the editors? Convey's "Editor's Note" is solid and unequivocal, but also detail-free. What if any role did he play before Tomase's story was published? What about the sports editor, Hank Hryniewicz? Did they know how thin Tomase's sourcing was? Did they think about hitting the brakes — or did they pour on the gasoline instead? And what steps have they taken to make sure a story this unsourced doesn't make its way into print again?

Significantly, the Patriots saga is still playing out. Matt Walsh is flapping his gums, and Sen. Arlen Specter is flapping his arms. If Tomase is still the Patriots beat writer, how is he going to cover that?

A great journalist once told me, "Access is overrated." I suspect that Tomase is going to be putting that maxim to the test.

Beating the press

I'll be back on "Beat the Press" tomorrow (7 p.m., WGBH-TV, Channel 2). Among other things we'll be talking about you-know-what. Because I'm on the show most of the time, I usually don't bother to take note of it here. But I've occasionally been asked to, so I'll try to remember.

More questions about the Herald

My Northeastern colleague Steve Burgard, director of the School of Journalism, poses a couple of questions in a letter to Romenesko:

1. Why did the Herald's apology offer so few details about what went wrong, forcing us all to wait until John Tomase has his say on Friday?

2. Given the questions that are swirling around this story, why did the Herald let Tomase cover the Arlen Specter angle?

Perhaps we'll find out all tomorrow. Or perhaps not.

No videotaping this walk-through

Can't get enough of the John Tomase story? Oh, I can. I do want to see what he has to say about the whole walk-through mess, but we'll have to wait until Friday for that. Meanwhile, here are a few tidbits while we wait for his version of what happened, whether he got used by a source and what comes next.

— The Boston Globe reports today that the Patriots are unlikely to sue the Boston Herald for libel as Patriots owner Bob Kraft has pronounced himself to be satisfied with the Herald's apology. With U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter demanding further investigation into whether the Patriots have cheated, it's no doubt best for the Krafts not to take action that would require opening themselves up to a bruising discovery process.

— Herald editor Kevin Convey weighs in with an "Editor's Note" in which he adds his personal apology to yesterday's unsigned mea culpa, but goes on to say that he stands behind the sports department in general and Tomase in particular. Convey closes by saying that Tomase will offer his version of events in tomorrow's Herald.

— Herald columnist Tony Massarotti writes a belittling, defensive piece today that, given the timing and the circumstances, is ill-advised. Which is why you should read it. It's highly entertaining in its institutional self-pity. Tony Mazz: "The media is a sordid business." If that's his world view, well, reader beware.

— David Scott writes a long analysis at Boston Sports Media that Patriots junkies might find interesting. (I'm in the camp that believes the condition of Curt Schilling's arm is a more important sports story than, say, the Super Bowl, but that's just me.) Scott's always a good read, but I don't know why he questions the sincerity of the Herald's apology. It seems pretty abject to me.

— Specter's news conference, at which he demanded an "objective" investigation of the Patriots, makes the front page of the New York Times and the sports front of the Washington Post. The Herald's role in this gets a quick brush-off in both stories. Perspective, folks.

— In reading Scott and a few others, I learned that Tomase was briefly celebrated/reviled in June 2005, when he wrote a column for his then-employer, the Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence, questioning Manny Ramírez's heart. Click here, scroll down, and there it is. Scott also points to this, which suggests that Tomase's criticism of Ramírez was off-base. I'll call a foul on Tomase for the phrase "a contract that could have inspired Coleridge to poeticize albatrosses," but maybe he's gotten better since then.

— A lot of folks have made much of the Herald's admission, in its apology, that the paper "neither possessed nor viewed a tape of the Rams' walkthrough before Super Bowl XXXVI, nor did we speak to anyone who had." That's bad journalism, needless to say, but it's hardly a revelation.

Tomase's original Feb. 2 story makes it clear that he never "possessed" or "viewed" the tape. As for whether his source had seen the tape, the story is ambiguous. But it should have been perfectly obvious that this story was never properly nailed down.

Tomase to speak

The Herald football writer says:

I just wanted to make one thing clear — I know I screwed up on the Rams taping story and I don't intend to hide behind today's apology or an editor's note. In Friday's Herald I will explain as clearly as I can where that story went wrong and begin the journey of restoring your trust in my reporting.

I'm glad hasn't been thrown under the bus — and I can't wait to see what he's got to say.

NECN appearance

I appeared on New England Cable News earlier today to talk about the presidential race.

Can't we all just get along?

There is something truly weird about reading the vicious, hateful comments (422 at this moment) to the Herald's apology — and, at the bottom of every page, seeing a come-on that says, "Join the BostonHerald.com community." Yes — sign up today and you, too, can post an illiterate attack.

More on the Herald apology

Smart stuff from Adam Reilly of the Phoenix and Paul Flannery of Boston Magazine. Also, Jon Keller of WBZ-TV (Channel 4) interviewed me for a story he's doing.

As I told Keller, one of the big problems the Herald faces is that its sports section is a prime reason that people plunk down 50 cents rather than simply grabbing a Metro.

Today, angry Patriots fans are demanding blood and threatening a boycott. Unlikely to happen, but this is nevertheless a scary moment for Pat Purcell and company.

Rough play

After Peter Lucas, then a columnist for the Boston Herald, erroneously reported in 1983 that Mayor Kevin White would seek a fifth term — "WHITE WILL RUN" was the front-page headline — his unnamed source turned out to be none other than Kevin White.

Lucas offered to resign anyway, but the editors were not about to let him be punished for falling victim to a dirty trick.

This morning it looks as though the Herald is trying to close the books as quickly as possible on its erroneous Feb. 2 report about the Patriots' having videotaped a St. Louis Rams walk-through before the 2002 Super Bowl, running an apology that's teased in huge type across the front and back covers.

In a perverse twist, the Globe runs the covers online, while, at least at the moment, they are not available on the Herald's Web site.

The theme of the day seems to be whether the Herald reporter who wrote the walk-through story, John Tomase, should be fired. That's what they're talking about on WEEI Radio (AM 850).

But Bruce Allen of Boston Sports Media remains struck by the specificity of Tomase's story. "The situation isn’t as cut-and-dry as it might appear at a casual glance," Allen writes.

Let's get a grip. It's not like Tomase wrote false, anonymously sourced stories that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But I would like to know more. I keep thinking about what happened to Peter Lucas, and wonder if the reason Tomase got it so wrong was because his source was so good.

If Herald editors have reason to believe that Tomase's source was not acting in good faith, will they out him? Today's apology would seem to preclude that. But, like Paul Flannery of Boston Magazine, I hope we haven't heard the last of this.

A different kind of fight?

The quick pundit take seems to be that Hillary Clinton vowed to fight and fight and fight some more, all the way to Barack Obama's inauguration next January and perhaps into his second term as well. But I thought I heard something else. Check this out, from her victory speech in West Virginia tonight:

And our nominee will be stronger for having campaigned long and hard, building enthusiasm and excitement, hearing your stories, and answering your questions. And I will work my heart out for the nominee of the Democratic Party to make sure we have a Democratic president.

No, she's not giving up. Yes, she told her supporters that she still thinks she can win. But she's obviously not stupid. She can do the math, even if Mark Penn can't. This brief acknowledgment of reality means something.

Media Nation on NECN

I'll be on New England Cable News tomorrow at about 9:15 a.m. to talk about the latest on presidential race.

Tapping the brain trust

I'm looking for an easy, free way to turn an RSS feed into a widget that I can embed into a Web site. Thoughts?

The Clinton-Kennedy split

In my latest for the Guardian, I ponder Ted Kennedy's decision to throw Hillary Clinton over the side of the yacht last week — a far more significant move than his endorsement of Barack Obama earlier this year.

An old lie recycled

Unexpectedly, it's turned into Charlie Pierce Week here at Media Nation. Why? Because conservative media critic Tim Graham is smearing Pierce with a five-year-old lie — a lie that Graham had a hand in spreading in the first place.

Pierce has a story in the new Esquire on the presidential campaign. Graham doesn't like it very much. Fair enough. But Graham, writing for NewsBusters, begins with this:

Charles Pierce is the infamous Boston Globe writer who tried to insist in 2003 that if Mary Jo Kopechne had survived Chappaquiddick, she would enjoy all the senior citizen benefits provided by Ted Kennedy's beneficent policies.

Graham links to an old item at his own organization, the Media Research Center, which later bestowed on Pierce its "Quote of the Year" for what it considered his extreme liberal bias.

I've written about this several times before, and I don't feel like doing it again; just read this and this. As you will see, Graham deliberately misconstrues what may be the single meanest thing ever written about Ted Kennedy (by a liberal, anyway), strips out the irony and sarcasm, and then pretends that Pierce is tastelessly using Kopechne's death to praise Kennedy.

Since the record has been corrected several times, Graham is no longer mistaken. Now he's lying.

Younger and cheaper (III)

Yet another knowledgeable source tells me that there will be some external hires at the Globe. My judgment is that this source supersedes the previous source.

What we've got here is the eternal blogger's dilemma. Standard blogging practice is to post information as it becomes available. When stuff like this happens, though, I find myself wishing I'd done it the old-fashioned way — make calls, and hold off until I have the whole story.

Anyway, I'm now confident that I do have the whole story. Start polishing those résumés, kids.

Younger and cheaper (II)

A knowledgeable source tells me that the Globe job listings are all internal moves — outsiders need not apply.

Piercing talk radio

Charlie Pierce is on a talk-radio rampage. Last month he went after WTKK (96.9 FM), and specifically Don Imus, Michael Graham, Jay Severin, Laura Ingraham and Michele McPhee, whom he doesn't actually name, referring to her only as "a woman who sounds like she's shouting her program off the back porch of a three-decker in Revere."

Now he's back, targeting Tom Finneran of WRKO (AM 680) as host of "one of the lamest shows in the history of the electric radio device."

I can't say I disagree, except to note that McPhee doesn't actually shout. It only seems that way.

JFK's posthumous terrorist-coddling

Why is it that hardly anyone bothers to notice that the Hamas spokesman who "endorsed" Barack Obama did so by comparing him to John Kennedy? I mean, it's weird, and Obama is right to label Hamas a terrorist organization. But by embracing Obama, Hamas is clearly trying to portray itself as reasonable and moderate. Which makes John McCain's attempt to exploit this all the more deplorable. This is about Hamas trying to change its own image, nothing more.

Joe Lieberman has jumped in, too.

Younger and cheaper

Check out these job postings for six reporters (including Charlie Savage's replacement) and an assistant metro editor at the Boston Globe. (Thanks to Media Nation reader T.W.)

That didn't take long*

John McCain's Burma-coddling convention chairman, Doug Goodyear, is gone.

*I just noticed that Josh Marshall used the same headline. I wrote mine before I read his. Honest!

McCain's Burma shave

Newsweek's Michael Isikoff reports that John McCain has chosen a convention chair who once worked as a lobbyist for Burma's repressive government.

"It was six years ago," protests Doug Goodyear. Well, gee, he's got a point. In 2002, the military junta had only been in power for 40 years.

Even better: According to Isikoff, Goodyear got the call because the other guy McCain was considering had once represented Ferdinand Marcos as well as the corrupt former prime minister of Ukraine.

Spyware versus spyware

Hmmm ... within the last 20 minutes, I started getting a message that my Mac has either a virus or a spyware problem whenever I try to access a Blogspot blog. The message, from Google (which owns Blogspot), begins:

We're sorry ... but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now.

It happens with both Firefox and Safari, but I have no problem accessing non-Blogspot sites. I could install a spyware-wiping program, but this review says wiping out all my private data, including cookies, should accomplish the same thing. Which I just did. No go.

Interestingly enough, I can't even view Media Nation, although I can get into Blogger in order to post, edit and moderate comments.

Thoughts?

11:25 a.m. update: Shhh! I just switched to a neighbor's WiFi connection, and everything works fine. I'll try rebooting our network later today.

1:15 p.m. update: Seems to be OK now, without rebooting.

The Monitor's hybrid strategy

Don Aucoin reports in today's Boston Globe that the venerable Christian Science Monitor might be heading down the road blazed by the Capital Times in Madison, Wis. — a hybrid Web/print model, with the print newspaper coming out just once a week.

According to Aucoin, at the moment the Monitor is considering only a modest tweak — a weekly edition to supplement the daily. But, reportedly, there is a possibility that the weekly might eventually replace the daily. If that happens, the print edition could conceivably become an example of "reverse publishing," a digest of the best content that's already been published online.

Recently the Capital Times abandoned its paid daily edition in favor of two weekly free tabloids, a news-oriented product that comes out on Wednesdays and an arts-and-entertainment paper on Thursdays. At the same time, the online edition is being pumped up. This is a promising model likely to be emulated. A mostly online paper saves considerable printing and distribution costs without abandoning the print advertising market entirely.

I've tended to think of the Monitor as mainly a Web publication for some time now. I mean, where would you grab a print copy? At a Christian Science Reading Room? As long as the church remains committed to high-quality journalism, a shift to a mostly online paper might ensure the paper's survival.

The Monitor also enjoys an ideal ownership model. These days, papers as diverse as the St. Petersburg Times, the New Hampshire Union Leader and the U.K.'s Guardian are often held up as examples of possible salvation for the news business, as they are all owned by non-profit organizations. (Disclosure: I write a weekly online column for the Guardian.)

So, too, with the Monitor. Unfortunately, as Aucoin notes, the church blew an inordinate amount of money on failed ventures in television and radio about 15 years ago, and has never really recovered. Church ownership may be benign, but in this case it doesn't come with very deep pockets.

More than anything, the Monitor needs to carve out a new mission. In its heyday many decades ago, the Monitor thrived because it was the quality alternative — usually the only quality alternative — to the local rag. At a time when you can access any news source you want through the Internet, the Monitor must make a case for why you would want to read it instead of, or in addition to, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, et al.

In recent years, the folks running the Monitor have been pretty forward-looking in terms of moving past print. It's encouraging that they're still pushing in that direction.

Globe's Papelbon signs with Yankees

The Boston Globe has lost its second Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter this week, according to the Phoenix's Adam Reilly. And while the departure of Sacha Pfeiffer for WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) means only that we'll have to turn on the radio rather than pick up the paper, the latest loss — that of Charlie Savage, scourge of the Bush White House — is a rather different matter.

Savage is going to the New York Times. Given that he is only in his early 30s, this is like losing Jonathan Papelbon to the Yankees. Savage's reporting on the Bush administration's use and abuse of presidential signing statements showed that the Globe could still play on the national stage.

Globe editor Marty Baron and Washington bureau chief Peter Canellos tell Reilly all the right things. The good news is that Savage will be replaced. And, yes, people do move on, and, yes, the Globe would have had a hard time hanging on to a young, ambitious, talented reporter like Savage even before the newspaper apocalypse that's now under way.

But this is a tough loss to take, and it plays to warnings that, in the future, only a tiny handful of newspapers — principally the Times, the Washington Post and perhaps the Murdoch-ized Wall Street Journal — will have the resources to do serious reporting outside their own back yards.

Internet abusers target Internet abuse

This is surreal. Casino supporter Hal Brown, who has compared opponents to the Ku Klux Klan, and Middleborough selectman Adam Bond, who has compared them to Nazis, are going to talk about "the sociopathology of internet abusers and why they feel compelled to do it" at 11 a.m. today on Bond's radio show, "Coffee Shop Talk," on WXBR Radio (AM 1460).

It seems that Bond and Brown are very excited over this story in the Taunton Gazette about Michael Quish, a limousine-company owner and casino supporter, who whines that he's been harassed online. Hey, it's a tough world out there. I'm not condoning the kind of behavior he describes, but it's endemic to the medium, and the Gazette could have cited just as many examples on the other side. Quish, by the way, will be joining Bond and Brown.

Should be an interesting hour. You can listen live, and I'm going to try to do just that.

Update: Well, there's an hour of my life I'll never get back.

Reinventing the Herald

Part of a never-ending series! The Phoenix's Adam Reilly suggests that publisher Pat Purcell beef up the tabloid's already-good sports section so that it can claim bragging rights over the Globe.

The end of the media road

In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that Hillary Clinton has finally reached the end of the media road. The new narrative isn't that she's losing, but that she's lost, and that the only thing reporters want to know now is when she'll get out.

I made similar points this morning on New England Cable News.

Keller on Obama and Patrick

I'm ridiculously late to the party, but if you haven't read Jon Keller's Wall Street Journal piece comparing Barack Obama to Deval Patrick, you should. It's more timely than ever, given Obama's emergence today as the all-but-certain nominee.

As Keller notes (joining many others), there are numerous stylistic and rhetorical similarities between Obama and Patrick, and he wonders what that portends for an Obama administration, given Patrick's rocky stint (it's now officially too late to call it a rocky start) as governor of Massachusetts.

Personally, I've thought for some time that the similarities between the two men are exaggerated, mainly because they're both African-American. Their life stories couldn't be more different. Obama, who deliberately chose the life of a community organizer and state legislator, knows his way around the streets; Patrick knows his way around a corporate boardroom.

Then there's this nugget from an unnamed Republican analyst, dug up by Mickey Kaus and brought to my attention by Jay Fitzgerald: "Deval Patrick is an idiot. Obama is not an idiot." Oof. Pretty harsh. But the evidence thus far suggests that there may be something to it.

Media Nation on NECN

I'll be talking about the media and presidential politics tomorrow at about 9 a.m. on New England Cable News following tonight's big primaries in North Carolina and Indiana.

Aftermath of the Burmese cyclone

What is a cyclone? It's a hurricane, according to Wikipedia. According to the BBC, state media in Myanmar (Burma) are now reporting that the death toll has exceeded 22,000, a far cry from the 4,000 deaths that were claimed in the print edition of today's New York Times. With another 41,000 missing, it's certain that the body count will keep rising.

This Al-Jazeera English report is pretty interesting:


The cyclone could be a paradigm-changing event for Myanmar, once of the world's most closed and repressive regimes, as the ruling junta has apparently decided to accept international assistance. On the other hand, the Al-Jazeera report notes that the junta has not given the green light to non-governmental organizations, and that it plans to go ahead with a May 10 referendum aimed at strengthening its repressive grip.

The Democratic Voice of Burma (via Global Voices Online) says that the authorities have done little to help beleaguered storm victims. One anonymous resident of Rangoon, the capital, is quoted as saying:

We don't know where they [the authorities] are, which corners they have gone to. It is not good to talk about it. They only know how to beat up people. In this kind of situation, we don't know where they are. These people only know how to beat up people.

Danny Schechter hails Laura Bush for speaking out, and adds: "I spoke with a veteran UN Correspondent last night who said that the infrastructure in Burma is in such poor shape [that] he doubted that they had the capacity to warn the public."

"Russert Watch" watch

Question: Would Todd Gitlin be capable of writing an interesting analysis of Tim Russert's interview with Barack Obama if he weren't trying to thread the needle of producing a weekly column for the Columbia Journalism Review called "Russert Watch" after having outed himself as an Obama supporter — a fact that he does not disclose even though it is still probably not widely known?

Answer: I have no idea. I do know that this certainly isn't interesting.

Right and wrong on a new casino poll

The Herald's Scott Van Voorhis rightly notes that a new UMass Dartmouth poll purporting to show an increase in support for casino gambling is undercut considerably by the fact that it "was commissioned by Northeast Resorts, a real estate firm that owns sites in Palmer and New Bedford that have been identified as possible casino sites."

But he's at least partly wrong in reporting that a March survey showed public opinion was split. That was indeed the lede, as reported by Stephanie Vosk in this story in the Cape Cod Times. Scroll down a bit, though, and you'll see that the key finding was that 57 percent of respondents were "strongly opposed" to a casino's being built in their community, and another 10 percent were "somewhat opposed."

Barbara Walters' twice-told tale

Barbara Walters must think that if you wait for everyone to forget, you can trot out an old affair and tout it as news. The media world is buzzing softly (very softly) over Walters' revelation that she had an affair with then-senator Ed Brooke in the 1970s. She is, of course, peddling a book.

Maybe it's because I'm old, but my first reaction was: "I knew that." It sounded very familiar to me when we talked about it on "Beat the Press" yesterday on WGBH-TV (Channel 2). When I started searching, I found this line from a March 5, 2000, Globe profile of Brooke by staff writer Sally Jacobs, referring to his life in the '70s: "A regular at the lavish parties at the Iranian Embassy, he did the hustle with Elizabeth Taylor and squired Barbara Walters about town."

There's also this, from a Feb. 17, 1980, story on Walters by then-staffer Marian Christy:

Walters has dated Alexis Lichine, the wine expert who was once married to Arlene Dahl. She used to count among her friends former Sen. Ed Brooke and Secretary General of the Organization of American States Alex Orfila. Both Brooke and Orfila are married now and, for some years, Walters' closest friend has been Alan Greenspan, the financial wizard.

Do we not understand the plain meaning of this? Especially that Brooke became a "former" friend of Walters after he got married?

Unfortunately, the Globe's online archives only go back to 1980, and this isn't exactly worth an afternoon in the microfilm room. But these two tidbits make me think I'm not hallucinating about having seen gossip items in the papers during the 1970s, when the Walters-Brooke affair took place.

I don't recall people as caring much back then. I can't imagine anyone cares now.

More: Media Nation reader Esther points to a New York Magazine item reporting that the Walters-Brooke affair made the Washington Post gossip column, "VIP," way back in 1975.

Can't get there from here

Let me stipulate for the record that I think ad-blocking software is evil. But I might just install some if the Boston Globe and the Weekly Dig can't figure out what's wrong with "a.collective-media.net."

Update: Better results with Safari than with Firefox today. What's that about?

Brian Williams protects his friends

That's not an accusation. NBC News anchor Brian Williams actually comes right out and says it in response to complaints that he's been silent about a recent New York Times article regarding retired generals and other military officers who analyze the war in Iraq for NBC and other news organizations.

To recap briefly — these officers are working as well-compensated executives for military contractors, which are, in turn, highly dependent on the good graces of the White House and the Defense Department. And Bush administration officials have not been not shy about telling the officers what to say.

Here's a chunk of what Williams writes on his blog:

I read the article with great interest. I've worked with two men since I've had this job — both retired, heavily-decorated U.S. Army four-star Generals — Wayne Downing and Barry McCaffrey. As I'm sure is obvious to even a casual viewer, I quickly entered into a close friendship with both men. I wish Wayne were alive today to respond to the article himself.

The "picking on the dead" motif is a nice touch, don't you think? Anyway, Williams goes on to say that he's seen no need to comment on the Times article because, in his view, the officers were "tough, honest critics of the U.S. military effort in Iraq."

And you know what? Perhaps they were, at least sometimes. But the thing about conflicts of interest is that viewers have a right to know what associations commentators have regardless of what comes tumbling out of their mouths. What Williams seems to be saying is that there was no need for such disclosure in these two cases because, in his personal opinion, neither man was susceptible to being spun. Is that the standard at NBC News?

In Salon, Glenn Greenwald notes that both Downing and McCaffrey were founding members of something called the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, headed by a slew of pro-war neocons such as Bill Kristol, Newt Gingrich and Richard Perle. According to Greenwald, this fact was never disclosed in Downing's and McCaffrey's numerous appearances on NBC. Here is a choice tidbit from the committee's stated purpose:

The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq will engage in educational and advocacy efforts to mobilize domestic and international support for policies aimed at ending the aggression of Saddam Hussein and freeing the Iraqi people from tyranny.

You can call this idealism. But it makes laughable Williams' assertion that his "friends" were independent. To make matters worse, Greenwald also documents the two officers' ties to the military industry, making it clear that they could have lost a lot of money both for themselves and their employers if they had gone too far in their "tough, honest" analysis.

Recently I called the Times' revelations "as sickening a media scandal as we have seen in our lifetime." I was wrong. The larger scandal is that folks like Brian Williams, whom I've always considered to be a straight shooter, have been allowed to sweep this story under the rug.

Thanks to Media Nation reader M.T.S. for calling my attention to Greenwald's piece.

Williams photo by David Shankbone, and republished here under a GNU Free Documentation License.