An intriguing loose thread

According to the FBI, state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson once celebrated receiving a $1,000 bribe by hightailing it to Foxwoods. A pretty amusing detail — and one that jogged my memory.

Last year, not long after Glenn Marshall stepped down in disgrace as head of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribal council, there was a meeting involving Wilkerson, D-Roxbury, that has never been explained. But it clearly had something to do with the tribe's fading hopes of building a mega-casino in Middleborough.

In a story broken by Peter Kenney at Cape Cod Today in September 2007, we learned that Amelia Bingham and her son, Steven Bingham, tribal members whom Marshall had ordered "shunned" for asking too many questions, met with Wilkerson in her office. Also present was Michael Morris, a top aide to Gov. Deval Patrick, and several advisers to the Binghams.

Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi later reported that Morris had not expected the Binghams to be present. That differed from Kenney's account, which claimed that Morris merely hadn't expected the Binghams to bring advisers with them.

Although the Binghams were fierce opponents of Marshall, they do not oppose the idea of building a tribal casino. Rather, they have criticized Marshall and his successor, Shawn Hendricks, for not cutting a lucrative enough deal for tribal members.

What is or was Wilkerson's involvement in all this? Who knows? Kenney believed it might have something to do with the Binghams' lawsuit against the town of Mashpee over property rights. That could lead to a casino's being built in Mashpee rather than Middleborough. The suit is still very much alive, and K.C. Myers of the Cape Cod Times has an update today.

And check this out: Less than a week ago, the Globe's Sean Murphy wrote an intriguing profile of an obscure Boston political figure named William McDermott, whose dealings with the tribe, and with Marshall, have been so extensive that Murphy called him "a founding father of the modern Mashpee Wampanoag tribe." One of McDermott's "old friends," as it turns out, is Daniel Pokaski, chairman of the Boston Licensing Board, now at the center of the Wilkerson scandal.

Let's not forget, too, that the FBI is still investigating Marshall.

It is time to find out what was discussed in Wilkerson's office that day.

Worst ad of the campaign

So it looks like the award for the most negative ad of the entire campaign will go to — Elizabeth Dole? Sadly, yes. Dole, fighting for her political life in North Carolina, has falsely accused her Democratic opponent, Kay Hagan, of being an atheist.

Good jobs at good wages

Sometimes what's legal is at least as disgusting than what's illegal. Toward the end of Donovan Slack's story in today's Boston Globe on the Boston Licensing Board, which is at the center of the Dianne Wilkerson saga, we learn:

• That the board members receive $85,000 for working part-time, their only requirement being to show up for public hearings three mornings a week.
• That the chairman, who's paid $100,000, "sets his own hours."
• That they were making $60,000 before Gov. Deval Patrick signed a pay raise into law last year.

Sickening.

Obama's Kenyan-Boston connection

The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald are scrambling to catch up with a story that Barack Obama's Kenyan aunt Zeituni Onyango may be living in Boston. Who broke it? The Times of London, believe it or not.

I'm already hearing that the local media fell down on the job by not having this story first. No doubt Globe editor Marty Baron and Herald editor Kevin Convey are wishing they'd found it. But this strikes me as the ultimate example of Donald Rumsfeld's unknown unknowns. You can picture the typical news meeting:

Editor: Marie, you check in with the cops. There were three similar robberies last night in three different parts of the city.

Marie: OK.

Editor: Ed, see if City Hall has acted on our FOIA request yet for those payroll records.

Ed: Sure.

Editor: And all of you — if Obama's got any Kenyan relatives living in Boston, make sure we have that first.

All: Right! Let's go!

Obviously the Times was acting on a tip. The connection may be British rather than American. I'm eager to find out how the Times got this story, but I'm virtually certain it wasn't because local journalists were asleep at the switch.

Covering up for both candidates

Why would the Los Angeles Times accept a videotape of Barack Obama praising Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi under the condition that the paper not actually show it to anyone? Are the editors in the business of reporting news, or do they like collecting stuff for their own personal amusement?

And why would the Times then turn around and report on John McCain's criticisms without noting that McCain helped funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to Khalidi?

I understand that everyone at the LA Times is spending most of their waking hours faxing out their résumés, but this is ridiculous. I guess this is the new definition of even-handed journalism: covering up for both candidates.

The other shoe

Dianne Wilkerson follow-ups in the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald today focus on the possibility that more public officials will be sucked into the mess created by her alleged bribe-taking and spectacular arrest. Given the number of officials with whom Wilkerson interacted, there's no doubt the feds are going to be talking with many, many people.

In the Herald, Laurel Sweet and Hillary Chabot are pretty explicit about the possibility that investigators will try to flip Wilkerson. In the Globe, Matt Viser reports on the blizzard of subpoenas demanding records from officials such as Boston Mayor Tom Menino, Boston City Council president Maureen Feeney, City Councilor Chuck Turner, Massachusetts Senate president Therese Murray and state Sen. Michael Morrissey, D-Quincy, among others.

"This is by no means a suggestion that anyone else is involved in shaking down cash or paying it," writes the Outraged Liberal. "It is a simple statement that some other big names ... could very well get dragged into what is likely an ongoing Wilkerson investigation."

Wilkerson's accusation that the timing of her arrest was politically motivated is interesting because (a) it probably was, but (b) what was U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan supposed to do? If he had sat on this until after the election, and Wilkerson had won re-election against Democratic primary winner Sonia Chang-Diaz, that would have been politically motivated, too — and the public would be justifiably outraged if all this had come out once Wilkerson had been safely returned to the Senate.

More interesting still is what effect the Wilkerson affair will have on Question 1, the ballot measure that would repeal the state's income tax. Wilkerson alone probably wouldn't make a difference — as the Globe's Scot Lehigh observes, Wilkerson was a train wreck years ago, and it's sickening that it took so long to clear her off the tracks.

But if any of her high-profile friends emerges as a player rather than a victim, that would be a mighty powerful argument for Question 1. Never mind that we're the ones who would suffer from catastrophic cuts in education, police, public works and on and on. This isn't about logic — it's about anger.

Photo of Wilkerson at the 2008 Boston Gay Pride Parade (cc) by Paul Keleher and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Another easy payday for Howie Carr

At the Boston Globe, columnist Yvonne Abraham writes of the Dianne Wilkerson affair: "It would be funny if it wasn't so sad." No. Ten years ago it was sad. Now it's just funny.

And at the Boston Herald, columnist Howie Carr has been caught stuffing his underwear with Pat Purcell's cash. If he put more than 10 minutes into typing about Wilkerson, I'd be shocked.

In search of the fat lady

In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that liberals would be nuts if they start banking on an Obama victory. There are just too many things that could go wrong: Republican-led voter suppression, the Bradley effect and the possibility that the McCain campaign's fear-and-smear efforts will finally catch fire.

Christian Science Monitor goes Web-mostly

The only reason to publish an old-fashioned print newspaper in 2008 is because print advertising is more lucrative than Web advertising. Flip through the print edition of the Christian Science Monitor and you will see virtually no advertising. Therefore, the paper's announcement today that it will switch to a mostly Web model next April makes eminent good sense.

The Monitor's daily print edition is already little more than rumor. Where would you get one, other than stopping by a Christian Science Reading Room? Yet the Monitor's Web site is popular enough to attract about 1.5 million visitors a month. (For purposes of comparison, Boston.com, the Globe's Web site, attracts nearly 4.5 million visitors a month.)

The Monitor's announcement makes it clear that the paper, founded by Mary Baker Eddy nearly 100 years ago, is in pretty tough financial shape — as is every newspaper operation. What the Monitor has that commercial papers lack is nonprofit ownership that can look at the long term — and pay a subsidy, as new-media consultant Ken Doctor notes, thus providing a vital bridge to the day that online revenues will start to cover the cost of news-gathering.

Those who insist on the printed word will be able to buy a weekly edition, which will allow the Monitor to engage in reverse-publishing — that is, in republishing content that appears online first. That's what they're doing in Madison, Wis., where the Capital Times earlier this week dropped its daily print edition and replaced it with two free tabloids filled with material from its Web site.

What's happening at the Monitor had been long anticipated. If handled properly, it could be a positive development — and another big step in the paper's (and the industry's) evolution toward a model of putting the Web first.

Dianne Wilkerson, then and now

Some years back, the Boston Herald's Joe Sciacca and I were standing on the arena floor at the Democratic State Convention, which was to be held the next day. It was a Friday night, a little after 9 p.m. I think it was in 1994*, and I can't remember whether it was in Lowell, Worcester or Springfield.

As we were talking, state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, D-Roxbury, sauntered by. Sciacca and I looked at each other. At the time, Wilkerson was under partial home detention for not paying her taxes or some damn thing, and — if I'm recalling the details correctly — she had a 9 p.m. curfew.

Sciacca went tearing off to the press area. As it turned out, there was no news — he found out that Wilkerson's punishment had just come to an end, and so there was no curfew for her to violate.

No more than a funny little anecdote on a day when Wilkerson's political career has come to a final, sickening end.

Her arrest comes during a week when the Phoenix's David Bernstein is reporting still more wrongdoing on her part. And at Universal Hub, Adam Gaffin explains how Wilkerson unwittingly drew the Boston City Council and Boston Globe columnist Adrian Walker into her orbit.

Wilkerson's once-bright promise flamed out many years ago. It's amazing she lasted as long as she did.

*Update: After reading the Wednesday coverage, I now think it was 1998.

The next president's first priorities

Click here for higher-quality version

Thought you might get a kick out of a news video I put together as a demonstration for my Reinventing the News class at Northeastern. Not gripping journalism, but evidence that modern media tools make it possible even for an old guy like me to make credible-looking video.

The breakthrough here is that I figured out how to add B-roll with iMovie 7 (also known as iMovie '08 under Apple's bizarre naming conventions). I used stills for the B-roll in this example, but the principle would be the same if I had used video instead.

How to play the skinhead story

In a news environment dominated by television and the Internet, I suppose it doesn't make a whole lot of difference whether any given newspaper plays up or plays down the alleged skinhead plot to murder black schoolchildren and assassinate Barack Obama.

Will playing it on the front page trigger a copycat response? Can burying it inside somehow be justified as more responsible? Regardless, I suspect the impact is quite a bit less than seeing it on TV.

Still, it's interesting to look at the different ways that newspapers are playing it today. I'll start with Boston: the Globe runs a small tease on the front, below the fold; the Herald gives over two-thirds of page one to a headline that reads "NUTZIES TARGET OBAMA."

The contrast is even greater in New York. There's not even a mention of the story anywhere on the front of the Times; the story itself is relegated to page A14. The tabloid New York Post, by contrast, leads with a giant "WHACK JOB," driving home the point with this: "Loony skinheads in Obama murder plot." The entire front consists of a photo of suspect Daniel Cowart posing with a gun that looks like it could launch a nuclear missile.

New York's slightly more restrained tabloid, the Daily News, makes no mention of the plot on its front page, going with the death of Jennifer Hudson's nephew and the state's $12 billion budget deficit.

In Washington, the alleged plot gets the silent treatment on the front pages of both the Post and the Times. Ditto in Obama's hometown, Chicago, which also happens to be where Hudson lives, and whose tragedy occupies the front pages of the Tribune and the Sun-Times.

The story gets a tease on the front of USA Today and the Wall Street Journal, which makes sense, given how much space those papers set aside for such things; but nothing on page one of the Los Angeles Times or the San Francisco Chronicle.

Based on what we know so far, this story seems more frightening than newsworthy. It plays into the fears we all have about what may happen if Obama is elected president. Thankfully, the skinheads who were arrested yesterday appear to be so inept that they were caught before they could do much more than talk about their sick plans.

As for how the papers should have played it — not to wimp out, but it's hard to disagree with anyone on this. It's what people are talking about, which argues in favor of the way the New York Post and the Boston Herald played it. But it's more pseudo-news than news, which suggests that inside the paper is where it really belongs.

NewsBusters jumps the shark

OK, I suppose there have been many sharks since it jumped its first. Anyway, the watchdog of the vast liberal media conspiracy gums the ankle of — yes — that pro-Obama propaganda sheet the Boston Herald. Adam Reilly explains.

Bring back the League of Women Voters

Cynthia Stead writes in the Cape Cod Times that the League of Women Voters could do — and have done — a better job of running the presidential debates than the media folks who moderated them this year. She's right.

The Republicans' Palin problem

Strip away all the side issues (and there are many, and they are important), and the essence of Sarah Palin is this: She is an extraordinarily gifted political performer. And she knows nothing — zippo — about the national and international issues with which any national political figure needs to be conversant.

Which brings me to the latest on the increasingly public mud-slinging between the Palin and McCain camps, written up in loving detail by the Politico's Ben Smith. Given her freakish and unwarranted self-confidence, it's not surprising that she believes she could talk her way out of the mess she's in if only her handlers would let her. And given her long string of boneheaded (and worse) statements, it's not surprising that the McCainiacs just want her to shut up.

It is nothing short of astounding that Palin's supporters, according to Smith, point to the Katie Couric interview as something that was mishandled by the McCain forces. We all saw Palin babble about how Alaska's proximity to Russia has given her foreign-policy experience — a softball do-over from Couric, given that Palin had had time to think about it after answering Charlie Gibson's identical question the same idiotic way. We all saw that she couldn't even say what she reads, leading to the not-unreasonable conclusion that she doesn't.

If Barack Obama wins on Nov. 4, it's going to be a long winter for the Republican Party. Among the party's many problems is that Palin has signaled she intends to be a player. Given that she has what's left of the Republican base in her thrall, and that she is a huge negative among everyone else, Palin, for Democrats, may be the gift that keeps on giving.

Repackaging the Globe

At a time when the outlook for the newspaper industry is becoming ever grimmer, the Boston Globe today unveils a repackaging of its print edition.

It's not quite a redesign — the fonts and the basic layout remain the same. But it's been reorganized "to help you better navigate the news," editor Marty Baron writes. (No link; Baron's "To our readers" note does not seem to be online.)

We'll see about that.

My overall impression is that Baron and company have made a virtue out of necessity. That is, the print edition is shrinking, which gives the Globe an opportunity to reconfigure its sections in a way that's not unlike what its bigger cousin, the New York Times, did some years ago.

In an interview with WBUR Radio's Deb Becker, Baron says the paper will shed 24 pages a week, though he adds that the news hole will shrink by considerably less than that.

The biggest, splashiest change is the expansion of Sidekick into a daily tabloid called "g," which gathers together all of the paper's arts and entertainment coverage. I'll let others judge the execution, but overall I think it's a good idea, and you've got to love color comics. Given that the paper recently got rid of the weekly television supplement that had appeared in the Sunday Globe, it's nice to see them in "g," and in color, too. But the listings are for evenings-only. Of course, that's why God made Yahoo.

Columnist Alex Beam is showcased at the back of "g," magazine-style, opposite a photo feature called "Parting Shot," which appears not to be in the Web edition.

To me, the most significant aspect of "g" is what the Globe might do: give it away at a few choice locations around the city, thus potentially attracting new readers and advertisers. I have zero insight into whether any consideration is being given to that. But the current thinking in the newspaper business is that it's better to have a variety of different publications and Web sites, each aimed at a different audience, than to take the old one-size-fits-all approach.

As for the rest of the paper, a few quick hits:

• The national and world news briefs have been dumped from pages A2 and A3, replaced with short stories that are collectively called the "Daily Briefing." What's unclear is whether we are supposed to regard these stories as the most important national and world news (other than what makes it onto the front), or if the meatier stories farther inside the "A" section are actually more important.

• For the first time in years, the Metro section is being called — well, the Metro section, as the City & Region moniker has been banished. The columnists have new headshots. A story on an offensive remark that comedian Denis Leary made about autism is accompanied by a note explaining that it grew out of a reader's tip, a wrinkle that I don't think I've seen before.

• The rest of Metro looks no different, but Business has been moved into the section — seemingly without the loss of any column-inches, which is what really matters. Given the primacy of economic news, this is perhaps not the best timing. Personally, though, I'd rather have fewer sections, as long as it doesn't mean fewer pages.

• Sports is unchanged. Supposedly there will be more color.

Overall, I like it. So let me quote an opposing view sent in by a devoted Media Nation reader and newspaper junkie who takes a different view:

G for grim. Befits an institution whose debt is now selling at junk level. My God, look where they've relegated poor Alex Beam to. I don't see how they do those arts profiles any more. They've basically taken Calendar, which used to be a weekly arts supplement, made it daily and eliminated all other coverage.

What's this about junk-level debt? Oh, yes. Yesterday Henry Blodget wrote an extremely downbeat assessment of the Globe's corporate parent, the New York Times Co., saying that it "is approaching the point where it will have to manage its business primarily to conserve cash and avoid defaulting on its debt. This situation will only get worse as advertising revenue continues to fall, and it will be very serious by early next year." The Herald picks up on that today.

The Times Co.'s ownership of the Globe is news on another front, too, as state Rep. Dan Bosley, D-North Adams, a stalwart in the battle to keep casino gambling out of Massachusetts, rips the Globe's negative coverage of House Speaker Sal DiMasi, well-known for his own opposition to casinos.

Jeremy Jacobs pulls together the details at PolitickerMA.com, reporting that Bosley, in a comment on the Outraged Liberal's blog, links the Globe's harsh coverage of DiMasi to the Times Co.'s lust for advertising revenue from gambling casinos.

For the record, I don't accept the view that the Globe's news coverage of DiMasi is being shaped by the Times Co.'s business imperatives. Clearly, though, Bosley doesn't agree.

A big to-do over Reese Who?

Memo to Boston Herald editor Kevin Convey: When leading with a celebrity-arrest story, make sure the arrestee is an actual celebrity. It's always tough to go with one of these stories when you have to give over a good part of it to explaining who Reese Hopkins is. I mean, was.

At least us old-timers have heard of Bob Gamere, the former television sportscaster who's been arrested on child-pornography charges (Herald coverage here; Globe coverage here).

A friend of Media Nation asks if it really makes sense to lock up Gamere. Since Gamere is innocent unless found guilty, let me change the question: Does it make sense to lock up a 69-year-old man if he's been distribuing child pornography via e-mail? Of course, I'm talking about a theoretical 69-year-old man, strictly in a hypothetical sense.

Answer: Hell, yes. This is not mere possession, which probably shouldn't be punishable by prison. Anyone who would do what our hypothetical 69-year-old man has been charged with doing is a danger to society.

OK. Off to look at the redesigned Boston Globe. More in a bit.

How McCain is blowing it

If Barack Obama wins the presidential election, he'll be able to thank John McCain for embracing the Republican right just as it was losing its strangehold on American politics. Or so I say in the Guardian.

Steve Garfield visits Northeastern

Steve Garfield, video blogger extraordinaire, visited my Reinventing the News class yesterday and did a demonstration on one-person citizen journalism. I tried shooting a video, but naturally Steve came up with something much better.

He shot this with his Nokia N95 and streamed it live to his page on Qik. Please have a look.

GateHouse story in new CommonWealth

If you live in a suburb or exurb of Boston, or on Cape Cod, there's a pretty good chance that you read a community newspaper published by GateHouse Media New England — maybe even two.

GateHouse, a national chain based in suburban Rochester, N.Y., owns more than 100 newspapers in Eastern Massachusetts, including such well-known dailies as the Patriot Ledger of Quincy, the Enterprise of Brockton and the MetroWest Daily News of Framingham.

I've got a story on GateHouse in the new edition of CommonWealth Magazine in which I find that though the financial condition of the company is dire, its top executives make a decent case that they've got the time and the resources to grow their way out of the current mess. And its online initiatives are interesting and worth keeping an eye on.

The question: Can the company's chief executive in New England, Kirk Davis, eventually begin rebuilding his staff after two decades' worth of cuts under three and in some cases four different owners, including Fidelity and Boston Herald publisher Pat Purcell? Or is GateHouse, and the rest of the newspaper industry, doomed to keep shrinking?

One problem is that the economic outlook is considerably worse than it was in early September, when I was wrapping up my reporting and writing the story. Last Friday, the Boston Herald ran a report that seven editorial employees had lost their jobs at MetroWest and the Milford Daily News. Well-informed buzz within the company suggests that's just the tip of the iceberg.

In addition, the New York Stock Exchange this week, in a long-anticipated step, announced that it will delist GateHouse's stock, which is essentially worthless. And a major investor is getting out.

Still, the principal on GateHouse's enormous debt is not due until 2014, and its cash flow has been decent. Whether that will continue as we move into what may be a deep recession remains to be seen.

Double digits

Everyone being polled could be lying. John McCain could pull Osama bin Laden's head out of a bag and hold it up before the TV cameras the weekend before the election. Sarah Palin could be replaced on the Republican ticket by Warren Buffet, who — along with Colin Powell — will renounce his previous endorsement of Barack Obama. So no predictions from me.

But good Lord. John Zogby, whose methodology may understate support for Barack Obama, now has him leading McCain by 10 points, 52 percent to 42 percent. And Pew has Obama up by 14 points among both registered voters (52 percent to 38 percent) and likely voters (53 percent to 39 percent).

Posts on polls are kind of useless, and I apologize. But the campaign has taken over most of my brain cells. I thought it was interesting that what seemed like a slight shift toward McCain a few days ago appears to have been stopped and is now being reversed.

I still think it's going to be close.

Dial "Z" for poll numbers

I'm allergic to math, but even I can understand why Barack Obama's eight-point lead in the Zogby tracking poll is bigger than it looks.

Zogby has consistently had John McCain doing better than in many other polls. As Nate Silver explains, it's because Zogby weights party affiliation based on exit polls from the previous election.

So if the electorate is more Democratic today than it was in 2004 — and it is, by quite a bit — then Obama's lead is actually understated by Zogby. That is, if the tracking poll is accurate in the first place, which is always a question worth asking.

Outraged Liberal reveals identity

If you're of a certain age and have a secret decoder ring, it's all here.

Slime in historical context

Josh Marshall writes: "I don't think there's any question that McCain's is the dirtiest and most dishonest campaign, certainly in the last 35 years and possibly going much further back into the early 20th century."

By invoking the 35-year rule, Marshall is leaving open the possibility that Richard Nixon's re-election effort in 1972 was worse. I'd agree with that. Worse than anything since? Yes, I think so. The worst I can remember George W. Bush doing against Al Gore was taking credit for a children's health measure in Texas that had passed over his veto. George H.W. Bush ran some notably dirty campaigns in 1988 and '92, but I think McCain has set a new standard.

Last night Mrs. Media Nation and Media Nation Jr. came back from a trip to the in-laws and reported that several members of the family had asserted that Barack Obama is "a terrorist." Not even that he "pals around with terrorists."

You can argue all day that neither John McCain nor Sarah Palin has said anything quite that breathtakingly brash. But they set it in motion, and let pre-existings fears about a black man with a Muslim-sounding name do the rest.

An improbably good post-season

Congratulations to the Red Sox, whose incredible comeback in Game 5 capped an improbable post-season. Somehow they glided into the playoffs without ever really getting hot. Then they knocked off the Angels, and nearly knocked off the Rays, despite injuries and glaring weaknesses.

Not that the Rays haven't had injuries. But they are a young and resilient bunch, aren't they?

The Sox have a lot of holes right now — holes that weren't at all apparent when the season began. Of course, the biggest hole is the loss of Manny Ramírez's bat. Jason Bay was a great pickup given the impossible situation Ramírez put the Sox in. But he's no Manny.

Will Lowell ever be the same player? No. Ortiz? He'll be better than he was this year, but he's not going to hit 50 homers again. Probably not 40, either. Will Drew ever play a full season? No. How'd you like to play with a herniated disc? Is Youkilis now the third baseman? I hope not. He plays with such maniacal intensity that I'd rather seem him stay at first, where he's less likely to burn himself out. Will Lowrie and Ellsbury hit consistently enough to stay in the line-up? Who knows?

Two things I'd like to see next year: (1) Beckett's showing up in shape. This year he hurt his back, and then it was one thing after another for the rest of the season. (2) Schilling's rejoining the team after the All-Star break. He might just be better than he was in late 2007. And he was pretty good then.

Go Rays!

Photo of Fenway Park copyright © 2008 by Michaela Stanelun. All rights reserved.

Remembering David Nyhan

My brief mention of the late Boston Globe columnist David Nyhan prompts this wonderful reminiscence by Elliot Luber, who writes to Media Nation about watching Nyhan in action while he was a Northeastern co-op student.

The occasion was the 1978 night that Ed King stunned the political world by defeating incumbent Michael Dukakis in the Democratic primary for governor.

Meeting Nyhan was probably the highlight of my co-op experience — not that I didn't learn more from Paul Hirschorn, John Burke and Andy Gully (back at the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune), but Nyhan was the ultimate role model.

He was the tall young handsome journalist married to a model, and he called things as he saw them with not the slightest fear of how it might wrinkle [Globe editor Tom] Winship. I remember the night of Ed King's victory over Dukakis — how it caught them so far by surpirse that they couldn't make heads or tails of the numbers.

Winship had all the top editors huddled around an Atex where they were trying to figure out their lead story, and no one could, so Winship called for Nyhan to "get over here." Nyhan, of course, was already out the door on the top floor of the parking lot, where they had quarantined the alcohol until after deadline.

He came sauntering across the city room with the loud false floor above the Atex wiring booming, then sat down in front of the terminal, and put his beer down beside it. I remember telling Bart Ziegler: "He's so damned cool! Here it is, the shit's hitting the fan, and he's so calm about it that he's drinking in front of Winship."

When I read in his obituary that he had won the Harvard-Yale game for Harvard by recovering a fumble in the end zone I was amused, but not surprised. I'd seen him do that for Winship.

Luber now lives in New York, where he works for IBM.

Powell endorses Obama

Anticipated for weeks, if not months, former secretary of state Colin Powell has finally endorsed Barack Obama. Is this as big as everyone thinks it is? My suspicion is that it will prove to be the single most important endorsement of the campaign, yet still fall short of being a transcendent moment.

Powell is a flawed figure tied to the past, and there are those who will discount this on the grounds that both Powell and Obama are African-American. On the other hand, Powell crystallizes principled conservative discomfort with the McCain-Palin ticket.

But it's certainly bigger than any newspaper endorsement.

Man bites dog

The Phoenix's David Bernstein salutes Mike Barnicle for writing a tough Huffington Post piece on John McCain, whom he had praised fulsomely for many years.

I'll go halfway there. Barnicle is mighty critical of McCain, and it's wondrous to see. But he can't quite seem to get it through his head that it was McCain himself who hired the advisers "who took his honor and reputation and tossed it out like so many discarded items for a yard sale." As I said the other day, there is no such thing as candidates who are better than their campaigns.

Here's what I'd really like to know. What would David Nyhan think? I can't recall a liberal pundit more enamored of McCain than Nyhan was. Unfortunately, he's not here to tell us.

My "favorite" new blog

The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. You'll "howl." (Hat tip to "Matt" Collette.)

The pride of Pennsylvania

"Let me just say categorically I'm proud of the people that come to our rallies."

— John McCain, Oct. 15, 2008

Beating the press (II)

A reporter says he was assaulted by "a large, bearded man in full McCain-Palin campaign regalia" at a McCain rally in North Carolina. The reporter's offense: Interviewing some Obama supporters who had infiltrated the event. (Via Jay Rosen's Twitter feed.)

Beating the press

I'll be on "Beat the Press" (WGBH-TV, Channel 2) today at 7 p.m. Among other things, we'll be talking about Christopher Buckley's departure from his father's magazine, National Review, following his endorsement of Barack Obama.

Listening in on two war stories

I want to call your attention to two astonishingly good stories I heard on WBUR (90.9 FM) this morning.

The first, from NPR, is about a former marine who married a young Iraqi woman and brought her back home to the Ozarks. It's a love story, but damned complicated, and no one's living happily ever after. Listen to it or read it — and click on the photo (or here) for an audio slideshow. The reporter is Ivan Watson and photographer is Paxton Winters.

The second, a local story, is tangentially related — a piece by Monica Brady-Meyerov on Stephen Fortunato, a young Beverly man who was killed in Afghanistan on Monday while
serving in the Army. The audio's not online yet, but you'll find it here later today.

Fortunato's death is receiving respectful and comprehensive coverage elsewhere. Paul Leighton has an outstanding story in the Salem News. In the Boston Globe, John Ellement does a nice job and includes a video. The Boston Herald has fine coverage from Laurel Sweet and Mark Garfinkel. I could go on.

But Brady-Meyerov paints a sound portrait of Fortunato's family that is worth hearing as a model for radio journalism.

Not dead yet

I hang my head in shame today, as I confess that I went to bed shortly after 10 last night, with the score 5-0.

I do have an excuse — I was at my desk at 6:30 a.m. yesterday so I could start working on this. I was pretty fried. Still, I missed the greatest comeback since 1929.

And yes, I would start Beckett tomorrow, as long as he says he's healthy.

Update: I just joined the Facebook group Fair Weather Red Sox Fans. Which I'm really not. I swear.

Reese Hopkins is gone

Yeah, I know. Reese who? Financially troubled WRKO (AM 680) has decided to replace him with syndicated talker Laura Ingraham, who was dumped recently by WTKK (96.9 FM) to make way for — and no, you really can't make this stuff up — Curtis Sliwa, of 1980s Guardian Angels fame.

So what about those death threats?

What is really going on at McCain-Palin rallies? The Times Leader of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., reports that the Secret Service can find no evidence that anyone shouted "Kill him!" in reference to Barack Obama at a recent Palin event (via Little Green Footballs).

The story was originally reported by a competitor, the Scranton Times-Tribune, which is standing by its reporter, David Singleton:

Mr. Singleton said the remark came from his right, amid booing that followed Mr. Hackett's mention of Mr. Obama.

"[I] very distinctly heard, 'Kill him!' Male voice," he said. "It was definitely back in the back."

Mr. Singleton said other people were in the bleachers he was behind and in similar orange bleachers to the right.

He moved toward the area where he thought the remark came from to see if the person who said it would repeat it. That didn't happen, and he was unable to identify the speaker, he said.

"I didn't hear anything else at that point," he said.

Singleton, by the way, is described by his employer as a wire-service and newspaper reporter with some 30 years of experience. In other words, he doesn't sound like someone out to make a name for himself. As his editor put it, "He heard what he heard."

Conservatives bloggers today are excited over the possibility that Singleton got it wrong, pointing to it as evidence that McCain's and Palin's crowds would never, ever yell out death threats, and that Obama and his supporters are wrong to level that accusation.

"It's as if they're just making stuff up to make McCain and Palin look bad," says the InstaPundit, Glenn Reynolds, referring to the media.

But not only is the jury out on the Times-Tribune story; there are other facts to sift through as well.

The first report that Palin's crowds were getting out of control appeared in the Washington Post in early October, when Dana Milbank covered a Florida event at which "Kill him!" was clearly heard. According to Milbank, though, those words were apparently aimed at former Weather Underground radical William Ayers, not Obama. Which I guess makes it OK.

But wait. On Oct. 8, MSNBC reported that someone shouted "Off with his head!" at a Pennsylvania event when McCain mentioned Obama's tax plan. That sounds like a death threat aimed at Obama, does it not? I don't think Ayers has a tax plan.

Finally, the aforementioned Milbank says the Secret Service is now stopping reporters from interviewing people at McCain-Palin rallies — a censorious action that is most definitely not part of the agency's mission statement, and that makes you wonder about the veracity of its claims about Singleton's reporting. Milbank puts it this way:

So they prevent reporters from getting near the people doing the shouting, then claim it's unfounded because the reporters can't get close enough to identify the person.

I can understand why the Secret Service would do that. More media coverage means more reports of death threats; more death threats mean more nuts reach for their guns. But I also don't doubt that the agency would rather keep Obama safe than be completely forthcoming with the truth.

Here's the scorecard, as best as I can tell:

• "Kill him!" at Florida rally. True, though probably aimed at Ayers rather than Obama. Still, a death threat is a death threat.
  
• "Off with his head!" True, and almost certainly aimed at Obama.
• "Kill him!" at Pennsylvania rally. Probably true, despite the Secret Service's inability to find the criminal. Definitely aimed at Obama.

Is this how McCain's defenders really want to spend their time?

All the rage

In my latest for the Guardian, I find that the pundits, regardless of how they think John McCain did on substance in his third and final debate with Barack Obama, hurt himself big-time with his petulant, angry performance.

Time to reboot

I'm looking at the Washington Post's Political Browser, its shiny new compilation of what is supposed to be the best political news on the Web. And here is the first thing I see:

12:30 p.m. ET: The debate is now only hours away, which means our televisions and Internet caches are full of suggestions for "What McCain/Obama Needs to Do Tonight..."

Well, The Rundown would like to hear what YOU think they "need to do," so deposit your suggestions in the comments section below.

Wonder if I could take the credit if I wrote in, "I think McCain should bring up Joe the Plumber."

Liveblogging the final debate

McCain had two pretty good debates. Obama had three. I don't think Obama made any mistakes that can be used against him tonight, though it's too soon to say. He was fluent and fluid, if not particularly inspiring.

McCain, meanwhile, was just awful — rambling, incoherent at times, ineffective in his attacks, petulant and occasionally angry. This isn't going to move the polls — certainly not in McCain's direction.

Best performance of the night: Bob Schieffer. Folksy and charming, and he got out of the way.

11:14 p.m. Wow. CBS News' insta-poll of uncommitted voters shows Obama winning the debate by a margin of 53 percent to 22 percent. To the extent that you can trust such things, that's huge. CNN's insta-poll has similar margins, though it's slightly skewed toward Democratic voters. And that's it for tonight. I'll be rounding up media commentary for the Guardian bright and early.

10:39 p.m. Pundits tying themselves in knots to say nice things about McCain. John King: McCain's best debate! No way. As CNN went to the break, I could hear Bill Bennett in the background, pimping the lie about Obama and infanticide.

10:28 p.m. Seth gives it to Obama, big-time.

10:27 p.m. Whoa! McCain ends on a sarcastic, snappish note. "Got it — heh, heh."

10:25 p.m. Why does Sarah Palin know about autism "better than most"? That's the second time McCain has said that. Is he confusing autism with Down's?

10:19 p.m. Joe the Plumber hits Twitterspace.

10:16 p.m. Judges and abortion — not a ratings hit. But I wonder how it will play that McCain can barely manage coherently to lodge his accusations, and Obama easily swats them away. McCain's response: Don't trust Obama's "eloquence." What, he's supposed to sound tongue-tied?

10:03 p.m. Let the fall health-plan reruns begin. McCain: He'll fine small businesses! Obama: He'll tax your insurance! And all of it aimed at Joe the Plumber. What about me?

9:59 p.m. Joe the Plumber! Time for a drink.

9:56 p.m. McCain is singing an ode to President Uribe of Colombia, an ally with a dubious record on human rights.

9:47 p.m. Schieffer's doing pretty well, I think. Brokaw was sour and obsessed with the clock. Schieffer is not only letting them mix it up, but he seems engaged in a positive way.

9:46 p.m. Now drinking Harvest Moon. This debate isn't worth anything better.

9:45 p.m. McCain just lied about Biden wanting to divide Iraq into "three countries."

9:41 p.m. Schieffer throws Obama a high knuckleball that doesn't break: Why is Biden better than Palin? Obama's now trotting around second base.

9:40 p.m. Here we go on William Ayers and ACORN. Good grief. McCain can barely make a coherent statement tonight. Obama's response is devastating in a suitably low-key way.

9:34 p.m. You could look it up: I've scored the first two debates as a tie. McCain's coming off as a doddering old coot tonight.

9:32 p.m. Good for Obama. He's not only not repudiating John Lewis, he's giving him some cover.

9:31 p.m. Joe the Plumber! Where is he? If he's in the audience, bring him up.

9:28 p.m. McCain: "You didn't tell the American people the truth because you didn't." Nyah, nyah.

9:25 p.m. Schieffer: You've both been naughty. The dread specter of equivalence rears its head.

9:24 p.m. McCain is coming off as rambling and unfocused. Obama's not at his sharpest, but he's better than McCain so far. McCain: Name me one thing on which you've opposed your party. Obama: Bing, bing, bing.

9:20 p.m. McCain is peppering Obama with scattershot charges. Should Obama respond to each one, or take a broader approach? He seems to be opting for the broader approach.

9:12 p.m. Plumbers make more money than lefthanded relief specialists. I mean, they deserve it, but I'm not surprised Joe makes more than $250,000 a year.

9:07 p.m. It all comes down to Joe the Plumber.

9:01 p.m. Trader Joe's microwave popcorn actually tastes like corn.

8:59 p.m. I always get a kick out of seeing the moderator alone on the stage with the crowd dead silent. Thank you, C-SPAN.

This should be interesting. It hasn't started, and I'm already nodding off on the couch.

Lesson not learned

Seth Gitell explains one of the fundamental mistakes of the McCain campaign:

I know from my own reporting that McCain campaign operatives examined the Deval Patrick-Kerry Healey race in 2006. They saw how Healey's tough law and order ads not only failed but also sent the campaign into a downward spiral. Those mean-spirited [ads] alienated independent swing voters and had no resonance in what was then very much a "change" election. Yet despite that knowledge they made the same mistake.

Gitell's right, and there's a larger theme, too. For 10 years, McCain has been campaigning on the idea that he can offer a higher level of leadership and independence. But when it finally came time to deliver, he turned over the single most important political task he's ever undertaken to "operatives."

Everyone's got operatives. In most successful campaigns, though, the operatives work for the candidate. Conversely, in many losing efforts, the candidate ends up doing whatever the operatives tell him or her. That was certainly the case with the hapless Healey, who, in a matter of two weeks, morphed from respected if little-known moderate to right-wing nut.

There is no such thing as candidates who are better than their campaigns.

Balz puts his thumb on the scale

With three weeks to go, Washington Post political reporter Dan Balz has proposed a truly dangerous idea: subjecting Barack Obama to a tougher level of scrutiny than John McCain on the grounds that Obama is virtually the president-elect.

"McCain is the focus because what was thought to be a close race doesn't look like one at this moment," says Balz. "Which is all the more reason that the real focus now ought to be on Barack Obama."

Guess what? If Obama wins the election, then he'll be the president-elect. Not until then. Tough questions for both candidates ought to be the goal. Balz's plea amounts to asking the media to put their thumbs on the scale in order to even things up.

"I've heard reporters admit that coverage can be biased for one reason or another — ideology, desire for a close race, personal afinity [sic] for one of the candidates — but I've never before seen one openly propose a double standard," writes Jonathan Chait of The New Republic.

Obama supporters ought to be wary going into tonight's debate, which will kick off the final leg of this endless campaign. The McCain-Palin operation has fallen apart during the past few weeks, leaving Obama with what appears to be a big lead in the polls. But members of the media don't like telling the same story day after day, week after week. And some influential players — Balz has already signaled that he's one of them — are going to try to change the story.

Eric Alterman reminds us that Howard Fineman of Newsweek and MSNBC has openly admitted that the media turned on Al Gore in 2000 at least in part because they didn't want to cover his "triumphant march to the presidency."

The danger tonight is that any minor slip-up by Obama will be magnified — and any mistake by McCain will be ignored.

The Sox are playing? Uh, not really.

How did I not know the Red Sox were playing tonight? I thought it was tomorrow. Anyway, I haven't watched one moment of this game, and it's just as well, seeing they're down 11-1 after six.

I will not count these guys out until they lose four games. But the fact is that this is the thinnest team the Sox have field in quite some time, mainly because of injuries. If you've only got three guys hitting, Beckett isn't Beckett and Lester isn't Lester, well, the results aren't going to be good.

Besides, the Rays are a better team than the Sox, or better, at least, than the Sox without Mike Lowell, a healthy David Ortiz, a healthy J.D. Drew ... you get the picture. And unlike the Angels, the Rays are tough as nails.

The president and the Boss

A radio station needn't obtain advance permission before playing a particular song by a particular musician. Same with a nightclub. Under copyright law, you're free to play copyrighted music as long as you pay a fee.

That goes for politicians, too. In today's Washington Post, Christopher Sprigman and Siva Vaidhyanathan explain why musicians such as Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart, the Foo Fighters and others have no legal basis in objecting to the McCain campaign's use of their songs. The campaign, they note, has paid its licensing fees, and that should be the end of it. (Via Altercation.)

It's a free-speech issue, and, as such, we should be just as vigilant against Jackson Browne's attempt to censor the Republicans as we are about, say, Sarah Palin's redefinition of freedom of the press as a "privilege."

The man who wrote the book on how to respond to an unwanted political embrace was Bruce Springsteen. In 1984, Ronald Reagan, running for re-election, gave a shoutout to Springsteen, whose "Born in the U.S.A." had set off a boomlet of patriotic fervor. Though in actuality it was a bitter antiwar anthem, the upbeat music had confused more than a few conservatives into thinking Bruce had cast his lot with the "Morning in America" crowd.

Shortly thereafter, Springsteen, at a concert in Pittsburgh, introduced his song "Johnny 99" — about an unemployed auto worker-turned-murderer — with this:

The president was mentioning my name the other day, and I kinda got to wondering what his favorite album musta been. I don't think it was the 'Nebraska' album. I don't think he's been listening to this one.

And that was the end of that. (Wikipedia reference verified by my steel-trap memory.)

Update: Looks like some news organizations are pushing an overly restrictive interpretation of copyright law, too — even going so far as to demand that YouTube delete some McCain ads that use news clips.

Photo (cc) by Music Master and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved. And in case you were wondering, yes, that's a wax figure, not the real Bruce.

Media Nation on Dark Party Review

Dark Party Review has an interview with yours truly about media coverage of the presidential campaign.

Michael Graham responds

If you can call this a response. I think he's invoking the "any idiot would know it's a fake" defense, which I anticipated in my item yesterday. But it's kind of hard to tell.

Why Ayers instead of Wright?

Tucker Carlson asks something I've been wondering myself: Why did the McCain campaign choose to go after Barack Obama's tenuous ties to the former radical William Ayers instead of revisiting Obama's long association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright?

Sarah Palin's accusation that Obama has been "palling around with terrorists" is false on at least two levels: her use of the plural, and her insinuation that Obama had anything more than a passing acquaintance with Ayers.

Yet Obama has clearly been disingenuous about his long, close relationship with Wright, whose "God damn America!" exhortation was one of the recurring hits of the primary campaign. You don't title your campaign book after one of Wright's sermons and sit in his church for 20-something years without knowing what the man is about.

Given the McCain campaign's lie-and-deny tactics, it doesn't seem likely that it was too worried about the Palin family's own association with the radical Alaskan Independence Party, whose founder's motto — "I've got no use for America or her damned institutions" — exceeds Wright in its anti-American vitriol.

So why Ayers and not Wright? It is a mystery. If you're going to go negative, at least do it competently.

Michael Graham's anti-Obama fakery

I suppose this is like pointing out that the sun rises in the east. But WTKK Radio (96.9 FM) talk-show host Michael Graham is running a fake photo on his blog showing Barack Obama speaking in front of a poster of the Latin American terrorist/'60s icon Che Guevara.

The photo of Obama was taken during his 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. It's been superimposed on a background of Guevara. You may recall that there was a brief controversy some months ago when an Obama volunteer put up a Che poster at the campaign's Houston headquarters. The campaign, not surprisingly, responded by denouncing Che.

Graham's deceptive hackery isn't even original — it was posted here back in February. No doubt Graham will tell us that anyone would know the Obama-Che photo is a fake. But if you listen to his callers, I'm sure you'll agree that's a stretch.

The second-best part is that Graham calls his blog "The Natural Truth." The best part is that Graham is on a crusade to convince people that McCain-Palin supporters aren't really hate-mongering against Obama. I guess he'll have to exclude himself.

Two weekends in the Pemi

On Columbus Day weekend in 1998 my friend Brad Johnson and I headed out on what would prove to be one of the more miserable — and productive — backpacking trips of our lives. For three days we hiked in a light but steady rain through the Pemigewasset Wilderness. The temperature hung in the mid-50s throughout the weekend.

On day one, we took the Zealand Trail to the Ethan Pond Trail, followed by a stream crossing so difficult we had to take off our packs and throw them to the other side before we could start hiking along the Thoreau Falls Trail.

For a Flickr slideshow, click here or on photo

We camped near the junction of the Wilderness and Bondcliff trails, telling ourselves that at least our day in the rain had consisted of level hiking. Surely the rain would stop before we started climbing the Bonds the next day.

No such luck. We reached the summits of Bondcliff, Mount Bond and West Bond in clouds and rain, slipping and sliding the whole way. We considered staying at the Guyot Campsite, but, as I recall, it was already full, and we were afraid that if we stopped there we'd have to do more hiking than we should the next day.

So we trudged on, hitting Zealand Mountain and heading for Zealand Falls Hut. We had planned to tent out near the hut. But at that point we were so wet and miserable that I declared my intention to keep right on going to the car if we couldn't stay at the hut.

Following a steep descent, we arrived at the hut just as darkness was falling, only to be told by one member of the crew — or "croo" — that there were no openings. Another member, though, said that half the people with reservations hadn't showed up, and let us in. Within moments, we'd changed into semi-dry clothing and were having supper put in front of us. Neither Brad nor I had stayed in an Appalachian Mountain Club hut before, and it was just what we needed following two days in the rain.

The next morning, I wrote an entry in the hut journal, which I actually found and took a photo of this past weekend (above). After breakfast, Brad and I headed out in the rain once again, taking the Lend-a-Hand Trail to the summit of Mount Hale before heading back to our car and home. We'd climbed five of New Hampshire's 4,000-foot mountains that weekend, putting both of us well on the way to completing all 48.

Media Nation Jr. and I set out this past Friday on a considerably less ambitious hike. Tim is a strong hiker — stronger than I am at this point — but we had both been sick all week.

On Friday we took the very easy hike to the hut along Zealand Trail. We stayed at the hut with the intention of taking a longer hike on Saturday, camping out and returning on Sunday. But we were both still woozy and decided against it. So on Saturday morning we headed to the summit of Mount Hale (photo at left).

While we were loitering at the top, a group of five students from Tufts University arrived. We learned that the Tufts Mountain Club had sent students to hike to the top of all 48 4,000-footers during the weekend. The five students we met had chosen one of the easier mountains, though one with a not-particularly-interesting view.

From there Tim and I descended along the Hale Brook Trail, stopping at the Miss Wakefield Diner on our way home.

Catching up with the tubes

New York Times reporter Brian Stelter today offers a smart take on the increasing willingness of commercial news outlets to link to outside content — except that there's not a single outside link in his piece. (Not his fault, I'm sure.) What few links you'll find direct you to past Times coverage.

As a public service, Media Nation offers the following outside links mentioned in Stetler's article:

• Publish2. Online software, which, though still not quite ready for public use, lets you add a widget to your site consisting of pages to which you've linked. I've tested it, and it's pretty cool. Stetler, by the way, credits Publish2 CEO Scott Karp with coining the phrase "link journalism."
  
• Political Browser. The Washington Post's page of links to political stories from around the mediasphere.
• WMAQ-TV. The Chicago NBC affiliate's Web site is being transformed into a city guide with lots of outside links.
• "The ethic of the link layer on news." Jeff Jarvis' post on link journalism, published on his blog, Buzz Machine, in June.
• Breaking on the Web. ProPublica's guide to online investigative journalism.
  

Still unanswered: Who at the Times thought it was a good idea to publish a story on link journalism without actually doing any.

Don't read this on a full stomach

The best (that is, the most nausea-inducing) part of this New York Times report on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's plan to intervene directly in the banking system comes near the end:

Industry executives quickly told Mr. Paulson that they liked the idea, though they warned that the Treasury should not try to squeeze out existing shareholders. They also begged Mr. Paulson not to impose tough restrictions on executive pay and golden-parachute deals for executives who are fired.

Mr. Paulson heeded those pleas.

I know I should end here with some sort of zinger. But words fail me.

Gone hiking

Media Nation Jr. and I are backpacking to Zealand Falls Hut later today. Both of us have been sick, so we may take it easy tomorrow — although if we feel up to it we'll camp out at Guyot on Saturday night. In any case, I won't be blogging or reading e-mail until we get back.

David Brooks tries candor

David Brooks presumably has an idea of what his New York Times column should be about. Apparently telling us what he really thinks is not high on his list of priorities.

In the Times, Brooks has expressed — well, reservations about Sarah Palin. At a public event on Monday, he described her as "a fatal cancer to the Republican Party." In the Times, Brooks has been skeptical about Barack Obama. On Monday, he said he's "dazzled."

Well, at least he's straight with us when he's not writing.

Clip and save

I've been shying away from predictions about the outcome of the presidential campaign. But I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that this Politico article will stand out as one of the dumbest pieces of the fall, regardless of whether Obama or McCain wins.

The great pumpkin

Mrs. Media Nation and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Topsfield Fair last night. Both of us were struggling with hacking coughs, but we stayed long enough for our traditional meal served by the Second Congregational Church of Topsfield, and for a look at the art exhibit, the poultry show and, of course, the giant pumpkin.

This year's winner, at 1,464 pounds, was grown by Wes Dwelly, according to the Salem News, which has posted a video that shows the weighing of the gourds. That's not close to the record. But it's big.

Truth in labeling

I hadn't noticed this Washington Post feature before, but I love the name of it: "Both Sides," in which Tucker Carlson and Ana Marie Cox "debate the issues and latest developments."

Why do I love the name? Because Carlson isn't really a conservative. And Cox isn't really a liberal. Both sides of what, exactly?

Let the excuse-making begin

In my latest for the Guardian, I find that conservative pundits aren't even trying to make the case that John McCain won last night's debate with Barack Obama. Instead, they're blaming the economy, the format and even McCain himself.

Open thread for tonight's debate

Let's try something different tonight. I'm not going to live-blog the latest Obama-McCain debate. I've been under the weather the last couple of days, and I just want to watch, more or less uninterrupted.

But feel free to post comments while the debate is taking place. I'll try to check in a few times during the course of the evening.

More good news for casino opponents

The premise of this Kyle Alspach article in the Brockton Enterprise is odd: the economic crisis makes the Middleborough casino proposed by the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe less likely, and the construction of commercial, non-Indian casinos more likely.

Alspach bases his reporting mainly on pro-casino sources — the Rev. Richard McGowan of Boston College and Clyde Barrow of UMass Dartmouth — and that makes this hard to parse as well.

Nevertheless, the story stands as further evidence that a casino will never be built in Middleborough. As if you had any doubts.

First thoughts on the Herald redesign

As you can see from the page image at left, at least one late edition of today's Boston Herald included the Red Sox' heart-thumping win over the Angels. But not the one I bought on the North Shore at 3 p.m.

I'd be perfectly happy if the Herald switched to Web-only distribution. But I can't imagine this is what Pat Purcell had in mind when he outsourced printing to Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal plant in Chicopee.

Herald editor Kevin Convey tells the Phoenix's Adam Reilly there are still some bugs to be worked out:

In the early going, we're being extremely conservative about our press times and deadlines to make sure we get the paper out on the street. As time goes by, I expect that our ability to put complete information in more papers will increase to a considerable degree.

As promised, the paper looks a lot better, even though it has shrunk vertically by quite a bit. Photos, including color, are sharp both inside and out. The stories were already so short that making them a bit shorter still shouldn't make much difference.

In the current confused media environment, it's hard to say with whom the Herald is competing. Mainly, it's competing for people's time. If I had 20 minutes to while away, I'd much rather drop 75 cents on a new, slick-looking Herald than, say, pick up a free Metro Boston, because the Herald's got more and better content. And now it looks better, too.

On that basis, the new Herald is a success.

The rape-kit controversy revisited

Among the many myths that have enveloped the Sarah Palin candidacy is the notion that the rape-kit nastiness of a few weeks ago has somehow been debunked. It hasn't. What we knew then holds up quite well. As I wrote on Sept. 11:

The man Sarah Palin appointed to run the Wasilla police department thinks that forcing rape victims to pay for their own forensic tests is just a swell idea. He said so himself a little more than eight years ago.

Every word of that is true. Moreover, as mayor, Palin fired the previous police chief in order to put this guy, Charlie Fannon, into office. It strains credulity to believe that she didn't bother to read her hometown paper, the Frontiersman, the week that Fannon whined about a new state law ordering that the practice be ended, complaining that it could cost Wasilla taxpayers $5,000 to $14,000 a year.

There is no record — none — showing that Palin ever publicly disagreed with Fannon, reprimanded him or said anything whatsoever about this reprehensible policy. Maybe she was too busy reading the Economist.

Fannon also said this: "In the past we've charged the cost of exams to the victims' insurance company when possible. I just don't want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer."

Now, we've all seen commentary suggesting that because the bills were sent to the insurance company, there was nothing wrong with the practice. But by treating rape as a medical problem rather than a violent crime, Wasilla authorities were sending precisely the wrong message in a state with the nation's highest sexual-assault rate. Charging a victim's insurance company is the same as charging the victim.

Neither the victims of non-sexual assaults nor the families of murder victims are forced to deal with their insurance companies for the cost of police investigations. By singling out rape, Fannon was wallowing in ugly old stereotypes.

We know a little bit more than we did a few weeks ago. We know that Wasilla wasn't the only community engaging in this practice, although there is still testimony that it was among the most egregious offenders. We still don't know for certain whether Palin knew, but I (dislocating my shoulders in order to give myself a pat on the back) have been careful about that from the beginning.

Rachael Larimore of Slate has supposedly debunked this story in two parts (here and here), as has Jim Geraghty of National Review. Go ahead and read them. They haven't. Incredibly, Fannon doesn't even make an appearance in Geraghty's piece. Larimore trots him out briefly, for the sole purpose of invoking the insurance rationale.

The best summation of what we know and what we don't know was reported by CNN on Sept. 22. Read it, watch it. And then try to claim there's nothing to this controversy.

Instant update: Eric Boehlert weighs in on the rape-kit story in quite a bit more detail.

InstaPundit threatens "massive resistance"

InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds yesterday posted favorably on Question One, the Massachusetts ballot measure that would repeal the state income tax. And he does so, in part, with an unsupported smear and a non-existent quote. (Via Hub Blog.)

"Most of the people complaining live, directly or indirectly, off the taxpayers' dime, of course," writes Reynolds, offering not a shred of evidence for that remarkable assertion. Most? Please. Then he adds: "And they're pledging a campaign of 'massive resistance.'"

Well, now. Follow Reynolds' link, and you'll come to a story on the Web site of WCVB-TV (Channel 5) that contains nothing even remotely akin to the phrase "massive resistance." Nor does anyone say the magic words in an accompanying video story by Channel 5's Jorge Quiroga.

For that matter, if you search Google News for the phrase "massive resistance," you will find nothing pertaining to Massachusetts. And if you try Google Blog Search, you will get exactly one hit: Reynolds' post.