From the Boston Sunday Globe:
Correction: Because of a reporting error, the ideal position of ceiling fan blades was described incorrectly in last Sunday’s Globe Magazine. In the summer, the fan should push air down, and in the winter, it should draw air up.
Glad we got that sorted, yeah?
Well the Great Boston MediaWatch Dogfight continued apace last Friday, and the most interesting contrast between the two local media hall monitors was their coverage of the Boston Globe sale to Red Sox owner John Henry.
Start, as usual, with the Underdog: the Wayne’s World webcast that is the Boston Herald’s Press Party (still not posted on YouTube – what are you, morons, Heraldniks?).
The Press Partyliners promised to tell us “why other [Globe] bidders are crying foul, and why critics are calling it the ultimate conflict of interest.”
Representative sample:
If the Boston Globe said [to Henry] you know, we need you to do this that and the other thing, would you mind taking care of that – I think John Henry would do that. The other bidders, not so much.
Whatever that means. And then there’s this:
I think it makes a feel-good story. I felt like the New York Times here was looking for a little bit of spin here – instead of the story being focused on how much more they’ve actually lost out of this deal. Instead the story is – whoa, Red Sox owner, right? That’s actually the more catchy headline than ‘Big Loser to Other Nondescript Media Conglomerate Who Has Purchased This.’
Okay then.
Crosstown at Big Dog WGBH, Beat the Press featured a – wait for it – very different discussion:
Representative sample:
I think the big thing here is what great news this is for the newspaper business – absolutely tremendous . . . in a week we’ve gone from continued pessimism about the news business to guarded optimism about where this might be going.
Yes, well those are parallel universes, yeah?
Meanwhile . . .
Fun fact to know and tell: The hardworking staff got a shoutout from Herself during BTP’s Rants ‘n’ Raves segment. You can see it here at around 4:56 but, really, why would anyone bother? (Tip o’ the pixel to Laurence Glavin.)
See you next Dogfight.
First there was this full-page New York Times ad from Time Warner Cable whacking CBS for the retransmission fees it’s demanding from the cable giant.
Clever, eh? And catch this in the body copy:
CBS wants Time Warner Cable to pay 600% more to get WCBS-TV than we pay in other places for the same CBS programming.
That’s 600% more than we pay for CBS in other cities from coast to coast.
Yes, well, maybe that’s because New York is 600% better than other cities from coast to coast. Besides, why should the Big Town be penalized because other places don’t know from haggling? (Find more of Time Warner Cable’s whining here.
As the hardworking staff previously noted, CBS has responded with its own full-page New York Times ad.
Now comes a new player in the retrans soap opera: the American Television Alliance, an industry coalition of which Time Warner Cable is a partner.
Here’s their NYT ad:
That’s a nice little misdirection play, eh: “The American people give the broadcasters our airwaves for free, and they respond by blacking us out? We’re not that dumb.”
But apparently they think we are, because the truth is all those stations are still available over the air. It’s on cable they’re blacked out, and that takes a cooperative effort.
Uh, make that uncooperative effort.
The Rogers Cup semifinal in Montreal last night between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic was yet another standout battle between the two premier players on the men’s tennis circuit.
And this time Nadal prevailed.
Despite blowing the second set.
The third set, however, was a whole nother thing.
Nadal went up 6-0 in the tiebreak, only to have Djokovic win the next two points.
And those old doubts started to creep in.
Until this:
Yes!
As the hardtracking has previously noted, web publishers are increasingly employing journalists to create ads in sheep’s clothing, also known as native advertising.
Now add Wired Magazine to the ranks of rank sell-outs.
From Adweek (tip o’ the pixel to Taylor Wray) . . .
Read the rest at Sneak Adtack.
Among its many and varied talents, the Boston Herald has an uncanny ability to find the cloud inside the silver lining. Especially when it comes to crosstown rival Boston Globe.
To wit, today:
It’s wait, see for Globe’s unions
Union bigs at The Boston Globe said they’ll keep an open mind about new owner John Henry even as they face the unpleasant task of immediate negotiations over new contracts.
“I think guarded optimism is the right term,” said Martin Callaghan, the president of the Boston Newspaper Printing Pressmen’s Union. “John Henry seems to be saying the right things, but ultimately it comes down to who he surrounds himself with. We don’t necessarily view him as a newspaper guy, so it’ll be interesting to see if he keeps the current management and who he brings in for day-to-day operations.”
Union contracts at the Globe expired seven months ago . . .
Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.
From our Worst Nightmare desk
The hardworking staff just received this email from The New Republic:
That’s some pairing, yeah?
You’ve got Sorkin, whose The Newsroom is the show about journalism that journalists love to hate, teamed up with Wieseltier, whose TNR columns top the Pomposity Index on a biweekly basis.
Yikes!
Campaign Outsider Official Prediction: These two will bury the needle on the Smug-o-Meter in the first fifteen minutes of the discussion.
Thank God we won’t be there.
From our Walt Whitman desk
The Boston Herald’s incessant Garage Broadband Radiostream gets front-page treatment for the umpteenth time in a row today.
And what is this “National Honor”?
36th place in a list published by a radio industry website whose traffic numbers are too low to be tracked (see here).
Regardless, here’s the story . . .
Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.
This is Day Four of the Sale-itary Confinement of letters to editor about John Henry’s purchase of the Boston Globe. As the hardreading staff noted earlier, there wasn’t a single letter in the Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday editions of the stately local broadsheet that addressed what certainly can be viewed as a controversial and significant development for Globe readers.
Now comes today’s edition. Top half of Letters column:
Bottom half . . .
Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.
Red Sox owner John Henry’s bargain-basement purchase of the Boston Globe has generated plenty of news coverage this week.
But, oddly, no Letters to the Editor in the stately local broadsheet.
Monday’s letters:
Tuesday’s letters . . .
Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.
Click to subscribe to RSS
Campaign Outsider 