The Empty Suit & The Empty Chair

Massachusetts Representative Ed Markey, the emptiest suit on Capitol Hill, has finally met his match in an empty chair he’s using to represent his U.S. Senate opponent, Gabriel Gomez.

From Shira Schoenberg’s report in the Springfield Republican:

12662086-mmmainDemocrat Ed Markey hammers rival Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez on refusal to sign People’s Pledge

BOSTON – Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Edward Markey on Monday hammered Republican Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez for refusing to sign the “People’s Pledge,” a pledge effectively barring outside groups from advertising in the election.

“Gabriel Gomez is saying he will not accept the People’s Pledge, that he is going to welcome vast amounts of undisclosed, unlimited money into this campaign,” Markey said at a press conference at the Omni Parker House Hotel. “I think that the people of Massachusetts deserve better. I think they have a right to know who in fact is contributing, who is paying for these ads that are going to come into our state. Is it the (National Rifle Association)? Is it the coal industry? Is it the oil industry?”

“I am committed to signing this pledge if he is willing to sign this pledge,” Markey said, sitting next to an empty chair.

The People’s Pledge, of course, has now become just an elaborate money-laundering scheme, as the hardworking staff has previously detailed.

Regardless, NECN’s redoubtable Alison King has the video here.

Let the wild Kabuki rumpus begin!

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Herald: No College Credit For UMass/Dartmouth

From our Two Different Worlds desk

Another 7-10 split in the local dailies today, this time over the relationship between UMass/Dartmouth and suspected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Start with Rachelle Cohen’s op-ed in the Boston Herald:

Azamat Tazhayakov, Dias Kadyrbayev, Dzhokhar TsarnaevUMass flunking Marathon test

Secrecy on detained students 
is suspect

UMass/Dartmouth officials continue to stonewall on the issue of releasing information on the records of four students now in custody in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing.

The taxpayers, whose hard-earned dollars keep the place in business, should be outraged.

“We are prohibited from releasing such records by [the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act],” insisted school spokesman John Hoey. “Our interpretation of the law indicates that that information is confidential.”

Note that little “our interpretation” caveat.

Not buying it, eh, Shelly? . . .

Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.

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Globe Still Has Memorial Ad-vantage Over Herald (‘Buck’ Bay Association Edition)

The post-Boston Marathon bombings ads continue to gravitate toward our stately local broadsheet.

For starters, the Boston Sunday Globe featured this half-page ad:

Picture 1

Topping that was this full-page ad in the same edition . . .

Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.

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Two Funerals And Awaiting

Today’s local dailies have – wait for it – very different takes on the disposition of suspected Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body.

Start – where else? – with the Boston Herald’s front page:

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Inside you get a twofer: this Peter Gelzinis column and, more notably, this news report . . .

Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.

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ESPN:The Magazine Now Sports Sponsored Content

The brand journalnaut continues to accelerate with this latest innovation by ESPN: The Magazine (via Adweek).

extESPN: The Magazine Puts a Print Spin on Sponsored Content

Sidebars to feature advertiser’s logo

Branded content has gotten plenty of attention as it’s taken off online where the division between editorial and advertising real estate can be fuzzier (see: Forbes,The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, Gawker), but publishers have shied away from using similar strategies in print. Now, ESPN: The Magazine is taking a page from electronic media by letting an advertiser incorporate its logo into editorial content.

Starting with the magazine’s 15th anniversary issue this week, ESPN will run an editorial sidebar bearing the words “Cold Hard Facts presented by Coors Light” at the top. The ESPN edit team will have full control over the sidebars; MillerCoors won’t have final approval or get to preview the content ahead of time, according to editor in chief Chad Millman. 

Right. Raise your hand if you think ESPN will ever again have a bad word to say about Coors, Miller, or Chad Millman.

Us neither.

Originally posted at Sneak Adtack.

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Editorial Smackdown: Herald Blowtorches Globe

Have some asbestos gloves handy if you’re reading the Boston Herald today. Here’s the lede of the lead editorial:

The whole narrative confirms that while the radical motivations of the Tsarnaev brothers — and perhaps, it remains to be seen, some of their training — came from international jihadist movements, the bombing was also the product of family dysfunction, youthful nihilism, and a pattern of low-level crimes escalating into a very major one.” —Boston Globe editorial May 3.

Dear Officer Krupke — of “West Side Story” fame — please call your office. Clearly these boys just have a social disease, so take ’em to a social worker.

It takes a lot for our competitors on Morrissey Boulevard to really get under our skin, but this one just sent us over the edge . . .

Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.

 

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NY Broadsheets See Different Art Auction Action

From our Compare and Contrast in Clear Idiomatic English desk

There’s a shipload of historic fine art up for auction in the Big Town right now, and it’s characterized very differently in the local broadsheets.

The Wall Street Journal, not surprisingly, takes a financialist view of the big sell-off.

$1 Billion in Art Heading to Auction

Collectors from Paul Allen to Madonna aim to sell paintings in New York sales next week

It’s a seller’s market. Next Tuesday when New York’s chief auction houses kick off two weeks of major art sales, collectors will see price tags for paintings that put other luxury goods to shame. Four canvases alone are estimated to sell for at least $30 million apiece—a trophy price rarely demanded during the recession or even before.

That’s because bigwig sellers who know how to gauge the art market’s cycle noticed a reassuring uptick in American bidding during a similar round of New York auctions last fall, a confidence that was matched by exuberant global bidding at London sales earlier this spring. Now, sellers are dusting off their masterpieces and trying to ride the wave.

Among the featured artworks in the Journal piece are André Derain’s “Madame Matisse in a Kimono” (estimate $15 million) . . .

Read the rest at Its Good to Live in a Four-Daily Town.

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Our ‘Beat The Press Party’ Bakeoff (Joe Battlefield Edition)

It was clear from the start that the Great Boston MediaWatch Dogfight between the underdog Boston Herald Press Party webcast and the big dog WGBH Beat the Press broadcast would eventually turn into a slapfight providing countless hours of entertainment for the local citizenry.

And yesterday, exactly that came to pass.

Press Party host and Herald columnist Joe Battenfeld began the wild rumpus with his Friday piece:

BI1E5802.JPGHey Emily Rooney, always check your facts

I had finished up hosting the Herald’s new weekly Web show, “Press Party,” last week when I heard our competitors over at WGBH’s taxpayer-funded Taj Mahal had bashed a column I wrote following the killing and capture of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers.

The column chided liberal media and others for mocking or lecturing those who broke into spontaneous cheering and “USA” chants to celebrate the remarkable bravery of our law enforcement for taking these dangerous terror suspects off the streets.

Emily Rooney, the host of “Beat the Press” on GBH, called my column “nonsense” and demanded I “name one, just one” journalist who was critical of the flag waving.

So Battenfeld did.

OK. Here is one, and as it happens, he works for Emily Rooney and publicly funded WGBH.

Here are some of GBH reporter Adam Reilly’s Twitter posts the night of those celebrations.

“Treating a massive anti-terrorist manhunt like a big game kind of diminishes the ol’ Boston luster, right?” Reilly tweeted.

“Relief is normal and I’m delighted they caught the —- But this isn’t a game — and not only Americans were hurt,” Reilly tweeted again.

Two things:

1) The “Taj Mahal” reference is especially funny coming from the host of a show with Wayne’s World production values.

2) Full disclosure: The hardworking staff takes some unfriendly fire at the end of Batterfeld’s column.

Last point: Battenfeld explained the week-long time lag between Rooney’s challenge and his response this way.

I had ignored Emily’s rant until now because I didn’t want to single out a fellow journalist.

But I feel like I can’t let such a direct challenge go unanswered any longer.

Yeah, especially since it was time to promote the newest episode of Press Party.

P.S. In the end, the hardwatching staff failed to watch either show because, well, this is enough fun for one post.

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Local Dailies Taking Care Of (One Another’s) Business

In a variation on the old Does Macy’s Tell Gimbel’s? question, the Globe is telling on the Herald – and vice versa.

From Wednesday’s Boston Globe:

Globe circulation continues climb

Paid digital subscriptions rise nearly 50%

Paid circulation at The Boston Globe continues to climb on the strength of digital subscriptions, which shot up by almost 50 percent in six months, according to figures released Tuesday by the Alliance for Audited Media.

The Globe’s weekday circulation, which includes print readership and digital subscriptions, was 245,572 during the six-month period ended in March — the highest since 2009 and 8.9 percent higher than figures for the same period a year earlier. Sunday circulation rose 4.6 percent to 382,452.

But amid the good news, the bad:

The Boston Herald, which charges for an electronic replica of its print edition but offers free access to its website, reported 9,810 weekday digital subscriptions and total circulation of 95,929, an overall decline of 11.6 percent.

The Herald’s Sunday circulation fell 10.8 percent to 73,043.

The Herald did not respond to a request for comment.

Not only that, the Herald did not report its precipitous circulation decline . . .

Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.

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NYT Celebrates Itself And Sings Itself

From our Walt Whitman desk

The New York Times is engaged in a Tongue War with the Wall Street Journal nowadays, and Wednesday’s edition featured the latest volley in the form of this full-page ad:

 

Picture 1

 

Don’t take all those numbers at face value, though. See here for further details.

Hey, Wall Street Journal: You gonna just sit there?

 

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