http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Fri, 23 Mar 2007 10:14:05 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/03/23/101405.php Harry ForbesThe Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (known as the McCain-Feingold law) was designed to regulate the financing of political campaigns, especially presidential campaigns. Conservatives have viewed the law as an affront to the free speech provision of the 1st Amendment as it prohibits broadcast advertising by many incorporated entities when such ads refer to a candidate for federal election within 60 days of a that election. Apparently we foolish voters are too easily persuaded by sophisticated corporate or union advertising, so in order to assure a “fair” election such groups need to be silenced for a few weeks beforehand.The law has failed spectacularly, of course. The 2004 election was dominated on both sides by “527” organizations whose advertising was exempted by the legislation. George Soros and other wealthy individuals on the political left each invested tens of millions in MoveOn.org and other 527s, while conservatives also invested in their own 527 groups such as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The net effect of McCain-Feingold has been only to make the legal practices for campaign financing and advertising more arcane, more difficult to follow, and more difficult to enforce.One of the fundamental arrogances of McCain-Feingold is that it presumes that the creation and distribution of video political advertising requires large resources, and thus is restricted to large corporate entities and lobbying organizations. The framers of this bill assumed that by regulating the behavior of these organizations, they could control the distribution and public consumption of video political advertising. They also assumed that this advertising was a substantially different form of political speech than the kind you and I might have over coffee on a Saturday morning. In 2007, just 5 years after the bill became law, both these assumptions have become laughable. This month the 2 most talked-about political ads were both created by anonymous individuals and uploaded to YouTube. They will be seen millions of times in their first month online. These are attack ads (one an attack on Senator Hillary Clinton, the other a retaliation against Senator Barack Obama). Both are mash-ups of Apple’s famous 1984 Super Bowl commercial. These ads would be now illegal to broadcast on television near an election, but they’ll undoubtedly be seen and talked about ad nauseum by TV’s many nodding heads.As for video being a separate form of political speech, that assumption held true only when video meant the broadcast television market, with its multi-million dollar cost of entry and 7-figure legal expenses for FCC licensing. In the era of YouTube and other video sharing web sites, anyone with a camcorder and a computer (and talent, of course) can produce an ad that could be seen by millions. To obtain that reach the ad needs the approval not of the bureaucrats at the Federal Election Commission, but of the viral market of YouTube reviewers.How ironic that McCain-Feingold has been thwarted by its original exemptions (demanded by powerful organizations who didn’t want their own political speech restricted) and by improved technology, but not by our democratically elected officials or our courts.Both our representatives and our courts would keep this monstrous blot on the first amendment in force if they could. Where, when this law was passed, were the advocates of free speech and the libertarians? The law was co-sponsored in the Senate by a Republican Senator from Arizona (Barry Goldwater must have turned over in his grave). The Congress passed the law in 2002, when the House was controlled by Republicans, and it was signed into law by a Republican president whose credentials as a conservative seem limited to his social views. The Supreme Court, perhaps in a nostalgic tribute to Dred Scott, voted 5-4 to find the law constitutional on its first legal challenge. But the rise of YouTube has shown clearly that video political advertising, like blogging, is fundamentally a form of individual speech, and no Federal Election Commission or court is likely to step in during the height of election season and demand that home-made videos be taken down from YouTube. Despite the best efforts of our increasingly insular elected officials in Washington, the communications of individual citizens today enjoy unprecedented access to wide distribution.Our Congressmen, Senators, and presidential candidates may chafe at the prospect, but despite their best efforts to silence “irresponsible” critics, their constituents are still able to criticize them freely in writing or on video, even within 60 days of an election.(UPDATE: One creator has now been identified as Philip de Vellis, an ad-firm worker. See this.) Politics61427@blogcritics.org Fri, 23 Mar 2007 10:14:05 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/01/11/030358.php Harry ForbesStartled media observers believe that a sudden and intense religious revival may be sweeping through the Boston Globe newsroom. Evidence shows a complete turn-about in The Globe’s reporting of meetings between clergymen and high state officials. In a startling reversal, the Boston Globe yesterday published an account (ominously entitled "Answered Prayer") of a church meeting between the Massachusetts governor-elect and a large number of Christian activists and clergymen, some of whom even reportedly oppose same-sex marriage. Yet in a major departure from their past reporting on the religious inclinations of Massachusetts governors, the Globe’s account is as full of praise as the choir loft. The Globe article also whitewashed over a lack of diversity among those at the meeting. Without skepticism or any note of an impending threat to separation of church and state, Globe reporter Michael Paulsen detailed events that in the recent past would have provoked the Globe newsroom to cynicism or multi-part special reports. But today these behaviors are reported by the newsroom as a blessing. Examples:They sang. They prayed. They danced at their seats, and they shouted to heaven… "We are here to celebrate the election of one of our own," [said] Bishop Gilbert Thompson… the ministers gathered around the governor-elect, and, eyes closed and heads bowed, placed their hands on his shoulders, a symbolic laying on of hands with which the clergy called on God to bless and strengthen him... "Divine providence has brought you to this point and to this time." [said one Baptist pastor] The Globe also reports that Governor elect replied in kind:Patrick explained his faith in explicitly religious language… "I'm going to make mistakes, because even after all the nice things said, I'm still a broken and frail human being," he said. "There is only one perfect example, and that's the one in whose sanctuary we stand right now." Some media observers, taken aback by the Globe’s stunning change of tone, suspected that prayer meetings may have become the new strategy sessions on Morrissey Boulevard. “There’s just no other explanation”, said one who spoke anonymously, “these are objective professional journalists, who suddenly sound like the Amen Corner.”So sudden was the change in tone, observers noted that it was only last October that the Globe reported with alarm when the Massachusetts Governor met with a number of his co-religionists and they organized to support his political career. Also last October the Globe featured a four-part series reporting (again with alarm) on a rise of faith-based organizations within the nation’s foreign aid apparatus. Yet concerns of clerical influence had disappeared from yesterday’s Globe report, which even carried a large color picture of the Massachusetts chief executive in prayer while the Christian clergymen performed a ritual of “laying on of hands”.Only time will tell if the Globe’s abrupt conversion will hold, but already Bible salesmen and Christian media consulltants were seen outside the Globe offices, hoping to reap incremental reward from the Globe’s new-found respect for gubernatorial piety. Politics58062@blogcritics.org Thu, 11 Jan 2007 03:03:58 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/01/02/144155.php Harry ForbesOn the last possible day, the Boston Globe editorializes on decisions that the legislature will face this afternoon concerning the definition of marriage amendment. The editorial is muddled by half-truths and irrelevancies.It starts out well enough by advocating plainly against the amendment.We urge legislators to reject the amendment and the costly, divisive circus of a campaign that would doubtless follow its appearance on the 2008 ballot. Ah! Those “costly and divisive” campaigns are a nuisance, aren’t they? Democracy is such an untidy process!Then the editorial gets far worse:There has been much gnashing of teeth over whether the voters will be heard if the Legislature declines to vote on the amendment today. Sorry, no. I must call “bullshit”. The issue of a vote is not about “whether the voters will be heard”. The issue of a vote concerns whether the lawmaking process specified in the constitution of the Commonwealth – our highest law – will be followed or not, as the Supreme Judicial Court ruled last week.By now, legislators have debated the question in multiple constitutional conventions in 2004, 2005, and 2006. It is hard to say that the matter has not been aired. It has been aired indeed, but the only actual vote on the central question was taken by the 7 members of the Supreme Judicial Court. Is it just possible that the desperate avoidance of democratic and due processes of law is what has causes so “much gnashing of teeth”?Last September, legislators took a final vote on a more lenient amendment -- which denied marriage but explicitly established civil unions as an alternative -- and defeated it, 157 to 39. That cleared the way for today's harsher version of the ban, which needs only 25 percent of the convention to advance. Again quite irrelevant. That was a procedural vote on a proposed change to the amendment and it did not fulfill the constitutional obligation. The low support for this more permissive proposal resulted from its widespread rejection by members with many different viewpoints. The Globe editorial is being disingenuous to suggest that such a vote (and the paltry 20% support it received) is all the support amendment has. If that was the case, the gay marriage militants would not be fighting tooth and nail against a vote.The voters also have been heard at the polls in two separate statewide elections, where not one of the proponents of gay marriage was defeated and their margin in the Legislature increased. Governor-elect Deval Patrick was the only major-party candidate to steadfastly support gay marriage in the November election, and he won in a landslide. These points are relevant for members in deciding how they will vote, but it is sophomoric horse manure to say that this means the “voters have been heard”. They will be heard when they receive the vote the SJC says they are entitled to under the constitution by which they are petitioning.The SJC asserted clearly last week that the constitution directs the Legislature to vote on the substance of the amendment. But the court was also correct in saying it cannot force an independent branch to act. The only remedy for those who believe legislators are frustrating the constitution by refusing to vote, the court noted, is at the ballot box. Just so. Most legislators would take their chances with the voters in their own districts. The central question the legislators face is whether to “frustrate” the Constitution. Note the Orwellian contortion of language here. “Frustrating” the Constitution means to disobey a week-old SJC ruling which clearly stated that the Constitution requires a vote on the measure today. If the legislature had decided to “frustrate” the Goodridge decision through such behavior, the Globe would choose more accurate words.The Globe is also silent on its own past editorial inconsistency. When the legislature delayed their vote, the Globe staunchly editorialized that a vote was due (see their earlier editorial ‘Delayed, Not Denied”). Now that the day is arrived, it seems their position has changed to “Delayed and Denied”. The Globe cannot bring itself to advocate that legislators defy the court, but neither can it ask them to obey the court. Like our craven representatives, they are desperate for a way out on this issue – a way to get out of the law’s requirements while still maintaining the appearance of abiding by the law. Today is one day when such appearances will not suffice. Politics57690@blogcritics.org Tue, 2 Jan 2007 14:41:55 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/01/01/121322.php Harry ForbesToday on New Years Day the Boston Globe editorializes against an autocratic and undemocratic government that cares little for the rule of law. Yet the Globe editorial concerns the destruction of democracy and law halfway across the world in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, not one on Boston’s Beacon Hill, just 3 miles north of the Globe’s offices.Tomorrow the Massachusetts legislature will consider in joint session citizen petitions to amend the state constitution. The petition process is part of the constitution itself. The petitioners have fulfilled all the constitutional requirements to bring their proposed amendment to a vote in the legislature. In July the Globe editorialized that:…the tension that now exists will not be relieved if opponents of gay marriage, who chafe at the narrow SJC ruling, are denied a legitimate vote in the Legislature because of political trickery. And later in July when the legislature had postponed its vote until after the November election:…delay is far better than killing the proposal by refusing to take it up, or by other legislative trickery.But 2 days after the November general election when the day actually came for the Legislature to vote, the Globe editorialists smudged their former explicit endorsement of a vote in words as carefully chosen as any of Bill Clinton:Legislators need not fear the wrath of their constituents if they move against advancing the gay marriage ban to the ballot. On that day the legislature indeed “moved against advancing” the ban by adjourning their session rather than taking a vote on the initiative. The Globe editors said in response...absolutely nothing.On December 27 the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court clarified the requirements of the Massachusetts constitution in a ruling by writing:The members of the joint session have a constitutional duty to vote, by the yeas and nays, on the merits of all pending initiative amendments before recessing on January 2, 2007. Again the Globe editorial page remained completely silent.Tomorrow the legislative session will convene for its final day. They will then have to decide once and for all whether to bring the citizen petition to a vote or adjourn finally without voting. Adjourning without a vote would be done in explicit defiance of the SJC and the constitution. Yet the likely outcome is that they will again adjourn without voting. Then the Globe editors will probably emerge from their distraction by the Putin regime and express some form of sanctimonious regret about “the way this matter was handled” and opine that it is time for the Commonwealth to “move on past this divisive issue”.Time to “move on”. Wouldn’t Putin say just that to Russian citizens and foreign investors who dared to protest the loss of their right to due process of law?The Globe editorial board’s inexcusable silence on this question shows that they will discard their commitment to the rule of law when it makes them uncomfortable. The people who have the courage to speak out against Putin’s rule often end up dead. The Globe’s editors risk only losing the approval of their unprincipled Beacon Hill friends.If the Globe editors wanted to take a serious stand in support democracy and the rule of law this week, they could have looked closer to home. Politics57671@blogcritics.org Mon, 1 Jan 2007 12:13:22 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/12/07/035813.php Harry ForbesSquaring the Boston Globe has learned that Massachusetts Governor-elect Deval Patrick has taken delivery of his morning newspaper from suspected illegal immigrants. Patrick, an early riser and Boston Globe subscriber, has possibly also waved and said “Gracias” to his Boston Globe carrier when picking up his paper at 5:30 AM in the driveway of his Milton home. Patrick may also have tipped his carrier directly with cash or through a tipping program for newspaper carriers administered by the Boston Globe. Deval Patrick’s Boston Globe newspaper is delivered to his million dollar home by Publishers Circulation Fulfillment (PCF). PCF has provided distribution services for the Boston Globe since 2001, and provides similar services for the New York Times. Hundreds of Boston area immigrant laborers work with PCF. They obtain batches of Boston Globe newspapers at several distribution centers every day around 3:30AM and deliver them via prescribed routes to Boston Globe subscribers in the greater Boston area, including Deval Patrick. The vast majority of PCF's Boston Globe carriers are immigrants. Their legal status is unknown.Deval Patrick emerged here to pick up his Boston Globe newspaper, delivered to his door by a firm that uses suspected illegal immigrants.PCF officially maintains that these carriers are not actually employees, but instead serve as independent contractors. If so, PCF would not be required by law to verify legal immigration status of the Boston Globe carriers. A recent want ad published by PCF seeking such “independent contractors” does not state any requirement for immigration status. According to a phone message at PCF offices (1-800-537-5354) all that is required is that contractors “must be at least 18 years of age with a valid drivers license and a dependable vehicle.” Squaring the Boston Globe called the PCF job line only to hear a recording ask:If your prefer English press 1.If you prefer Spanish, press 2.If you prefer Portuguese press 3.Neither PCF nor the Boston Globe could be reached for comment, but in Friday’s Boston Globe another supplier of illegal immigrant labor is quoted as saying that a customer “doesn't have to ask” whether his contractors are legal immigrants because “I'm a company”. Jerry Giordana, the president of PCF has assured the Boston Globe that “It’s your paper. Your subscribers. And our promise to deliver.” The story of Deval Patrick’s possible encounter with illegal immigrants is part of a recent newspaper reporting trend. The issue of illegal immigrant laborers has been tricky and sometimes damaging to political figures. Last Friday, the Boston Globe disclosed that a firm named Community Lawn Service with a Heart had used at least four illegal immigrants to provide groundskeeping services at the Belmont home of outgoing Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Sadly, today nobody knows the legal status of the hundreds of immigrants who deliver the Boston Globe. However Squaring the Boston Globe is certain that the dedicated professionals in the Boston Globe newsroom, who are now alerted to this situation, will investigate the legal status of these newspaper carriers with the same zeal and determination that they showed in the case of Romney’s “contracted” illegal immigrants. When they have completed their usual thorough job of investigative journalism, the public will know for certain whether Deval Patrick has taken his copy of the Boston Globe from the hand of an illegal immigrant.Full disclosure: PCF has also delivered newspapers to Squaring the Boston Globe. All the Globe carriers who have served Squaring the Boston Globe have been immigrants. Squaring the Boston Globe does not know the legal status of the Globe carriers who have served us. Our carrier left recently to return to his home in Latin America. Unlike the Boston Globe, Squaring the Boston Globe does not have the lavish resources to fly ourselves to Latin America for a single interview to determine if our Globe carrier was in this country legally or not. Politics56629@blogcritics.org Thu, 7 Dec 2006 03:58:13 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/11/11/042550.php Harry ForbesThe Democratic-dominated Massachusetts legislature today abdicated its constitutional duty to vote on an initiative brought before them by a fully constitutional process of law. They did so because they would prefer to defile the Constitution of the Commonwealth rather than perform a constitutional process whose potential outcome they find distasteful. Thus they willingly trample on the Commonwealth's highest law to get after the intolerant Devils within it who (in today's case) have petitioned to restrict legal marriage in the Commonwealth to opposite sex couples. No doubt Boston Globe editorials Friday and to follow will sanctimoniously opine that this willful disregard for law represents a higher wisdom by the Legislature, and is saving us all from a far greater evil. Such transparent self-justification reminds me of this short passage from the play "A Man for All Seasons", where Thomas More's family urges him to arrest Richard Rich, a plainly evil man whose perjury will eventually send More to his execution. Out of respect for the rule of law, More refuses. ALICE: (Exasperated, pointing after Sir Richard RICH) While you talk, he's gone!MORE: And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law!ROPER: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!MORE: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?ROPER: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!MORE (Roused and excited): Oh? (Advances on ROPER) And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you-where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? (He leaves him) This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast-man's laws, not God's-and if you cut them down-and you're just the man to do it-d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? (Quietly) Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake. Our Democratic legislators have today ignored the law and instead hoisted the voters of the Commonwealth onto the wobbly mainmast of their own principles. Their insouciance toward the rule of law will bring us far worse results than could the progress of any single constitutional amendment. Politics55611@blogcritics.org Sat, 11 Nov 2006 04:25:50 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/10/25/210817.php Harry ForbesThe barbarians are at the gate and the Boston Globe may soon be on the block. Today’s front page reports: Two of Boston's best-known businessmen -- retired General Electric Co. chief executive Jack Welch and adman Jack Connors -- are quietly exploring the possibility of making an offer to buy The Boston Globe from The New York Times Co… the executives are working with the investment bank JPMorgan Chase & Co. to analyze a potential deal. They say JPMorgan has valued the Globe at $550 million to $600 million, well below the $1.1 billion the Times Co. paid in 1993. The story contains several howlers, as is often the case when the Globe reports on itself. First this one: It is unclear whether the Boston group is willing to sign a formal pledge not to interfere in the editorial process, as the new buyers in Philadelphia did. The pledge was an attempt to preserve the traditional boundaries meant to prevent business considerations from influencing news coverage. Sure. It makes perfect sense for those businessmen-investors to pay $500 million for a company while at the same time they pledge not to alter its product or business processes, thus subsidizing the continuance of Globe’s arrogant corporate culture. If they were that foolish, they would never have become wealthy. If these insufferably arrogant newspaper people want to live in an ivory tower that never changes, they should simply join some bureau of the Federal government! Here is another paragraph that leaves much unsaid: Welch and Connors first discussed the possibility of buying the Globe at a lunch about six weeks ago at Boston's Four Seasons Hotel. Also at the lunch was former Boston Globe and Boston Herald columnist Mike Barnicle, who was forced out of the Globe in 1998 over charges, which he denied, that he had fabricated a column. Barnicle, friends with both men, now does a radio talk show on WTKK-FM, and worked as a consultant last year with a group that sought unsuccessfully to buy the Boston Herald. It it delicious to imagine the distress that Barnicle’s presence at such an early discussion might cause among the self-righteous folks on Morrissey Boulevard. Here is a paragraph that indicates newsroom bootlicking of the potential new owners (already!): Welch and Connors are no strangers to the media business. GE, which Welch ran for two decades, owns NBC-TV. Welch's wife, Suzy Wetlaufer, is a former editor of the Harvard Business Review and was a reporter for the Associated Press. Connors has been one of the top forces in Boston advertising for decades, and Hill Holliday currently handles the Globe advertising account. This is true, but one could also say that the current Mrs Welch (the third), though no stranger to the media business, is a reporter who became most intimately familiar with one of her subjects, even though it probably caused her to lose her journalistic dispassion. Some puns about “penetrating journalism” would be most appropriate here, but why get the new boss’s wife furious before they even take over? So much for the “the traditional boundaries meant to prevent business considerations from influencing news coverage”, invoked just a few paragraphs above! It appears that the potential new owners are being treated with kid gloves already. Now for the piece de resistance! Mrs Welch III is not the first journalist to go down for a source. Globe reporters have experience in this area, too. A related story buried on page C3 carries the headline that the "Times Co. defends moves at the Globe to state politicians." The Times’ defense is in response to a letter to NY Times Chairman Pinch Sulzberger signed by 20 Massachusetts politicians in support of the reporters' union at the Boston Globe. The letter urged Pinchie-poo to stop the cost-cutting layoffs at the Globe. Of course this story is public only because it was published by the Boston Herald (see here and Howie Carr here). An earlier Globe story (which reported on the Herald story) said: The question of whether a newsroom union can seek the help of politicians without compromising members' independence was raised on a popular media web site by Mitchell Zuckoff, a Boston University journalism professor and former Globe reporter. In a posting on Romenesko , a blog hosted by the Poynter Institute, a non profit journalism education organization, Zuckoff wrote that unions soliciting help from politicians "was a textbook case of seeking favors from sources and subjects." Indeed. The union seeking favors from politicians, by the way, includes all the Globe staff reporters and columnists. Of the 20 politicians signing the letter, only Ted Kennedy has been identified. I wonder how many of the other 19 signers are Republicans? Politics54890@blogcritics.org Wed, 25 Oct 2006 21:08:17 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/07/13/055932.php Harry ForbesOn my way to a Boston trade show last April, I stopped for a visit at the Morrissey Boulevard complex of the Boston Globe. My visit was hosted by Richard Chacón, who was then the Globe Ombudsman. Richard toured me around the huge Globe complex and gave me some insight into how the newspaper comes together each day. For 2 years I have authored the blog 'Squaring the Boston Globe' which is usually quite critical of the paper. Did Richard expect that, like Jonah in the belly of the whale, I would repent my past criticism after spending a just few hours at the Globe? Hardly. He did believe, though, that having some insight into the Globe’s workings would make any criticism more informed. I hope he was right. So here is a first impression -- the points that stick in my mind after seeing the Globe in operation for the first time. The Globe building has a typically grandiose 1960s corporate lobby full of granite, marble, and other signs of organizational pride. There is a huge stone map of New England on the rear wall and another wall has a huge fabric tapestry containing an image of the front page of the Globe from April 4, 1872. This may be the first paper since the continuous production of the Globe or have some other historic significance, I’m not sure. I spent some time reading the 1872 paper, and much of the front page is devoted to covering the content of the Sunday sermons that were delivered in various Boston churches the day before. How times do change.A Chance MeetingWhile I was waiting in the lobby to meet Richard, I introduced myself to one Globe reporter who was there for a minute. When he found out I was a blogger, he asked me if my blog was one of the “media bias blogs.” I told him it was, and he said that in his opinion “a lot of what may appear as media bias is really a result of laziness, incompetence, or organizational stupidity.” He related an example of one story that had been growing in importance for about a week. It was not covered by the Globe for several days because the key reporter on that beat was off on vacation and so the Globe’s antenna was impaired.This is an interesting observation. Everybody who has worked in an organization, large or small, knows that work processes and practices are never all they should beand that these issues always interfere with the organizational mission to some degree. Why should the Globe be any different? It cannot be. Of course we all know of organizations where the burden of organizational dysfunction eventually outweighs the ability to provide value (FEMA comes to mind as an example). The relevant question is how often and how badly such dysfunction impairs the Globe. Besides the inevitable issues mentioned by the reporter, there are also certainly dangers from group-think, ideological bias, and (of course) external competition. It is the external competition, I believe, that by far receives the most attention from Globe people today.US newspapers are struggling. Circulation and ad revenues are declining. The creation of powerful, free Internet-based news sources and advertising/trading platforms (such as eBay) have changed the business more than any other form of competition since broadcasting. Major newspapers have responded by focusing more on local and specialized content, and by providing their own Internet content. The business models for the newspaper business remain “in flux,” as consultants politely say. My post-visit impression is that this external challenge causes far more anxiety within the ranks of Globe people, compared to accusations of liberal bias. The Liturgy of the HoursThe most persistent impression to a new visitor is of the cavernous newsroom, which is on the 2nd floor and runs at least half the length of the building. When you see pictures of the room, it looks light and airy, but my recollection is of a very well-worn interior environment. The wear comes from almost continuous occupation. Each day a newspaper goes through a complete cycle as the product is produced. My visit was at the very beginning of the Globe’s daily cycle, starting at around 10 AM. The content creation process continues for each day’s Globe until the ‘first edition’ of the day’s paper is released to the building’s press plant at about 10PM. The paper goes through three more editions each day. The 2nd edition has updates of financial information and minor changes. The 3rd edition has late sports stories and other content changes, especially updates to page 1 for late news. The 3rd edition is what most subscribers living near Boston’s Route 128 beltway receive. Finally the 4th edition is usually not a big change over the 3rd, but it is released later and is targeted for distribution by newsstands within the city of Boston. How do you tell which edition you are reading? The 1st edition gets 4 tiny stars in the margin at the upper left of page 1. For each succeeding edition, one star is removed. For you algorithmic types, that means the edition you are reading is expressed as 5 – S, where ‘S” is the number of stars you see in the margin.Newspaper stories have variable gestation periods, depending upon their subject. The stories are assigned to reporters by “assigning editors.” Globe reporters are assigned to ‘beats.’ This might be City Hall, Universities, the police department, or a suburban region. Senior editors at the Globe are responsible for prioritizing the stories within their own beat.The reporter writing the story and this editor are the primary people responsible for the story’s content and accuracy. They collaborate to write the story and take primary responsibility for its accuracy. This may seem to be a fragile system, and it is. It relies on the good faith efforts of people to produce a quality product. Would extra check help to eliminate bias? I doubt it. Additional approvals would not have much value given the very tight schedule that constrains production. Besides, having fewer approvals concentrates responsibility (and accountability) for a story’s accuracy.When a story is passed by an assigning editor, it goes to a 2nd editor who focuses more on how well the story meets the paper’s style guidelines. The style guidelines provide a uniform guide for editing all the paper’s content. They would make interesting reading. I think responsible newspapers would do well today to publish their style guides so that critical readers can evaluate them. The Morning MeetingThe highlight of my visit was to attend a daily morning meeting in the Globe newsroom. There are two such meetings each day. The meeting is brief, lasting only 20-25 minutes. It is a meeting of Globe Senior editors, those who are responsible for various sections or departments (National, Local, Business, Health/Science, Sports, graphics, photo, etc.). The Globe’s Washington editor attends via conference call. The Globe’s Managing Editor simply calls on each editor by name and they report the top two or three stories they plan to run, give a thumbnail sketch of each story, and maybe mention where their people are now deployed. Each editor talks for only 1-2 minutes. Then the next editor is called on by name and does the same. When all the editors have had their say, the meeting ends. Not very exciting, but it is communicative. In 20 minutes one gets a good summary description of the content of tomorrow’s Boston Globe. On the day I visited, about 80% of the stories appeared in the next day’s paper. Many of those that did not appear the next day appeared a day or two later. Seeing the stories in the paper the next day recalled the meeting and made me appreciate its significance. It is a meeting about tomorrow’s paper. There is another such meeting in the afternoon that I understand includes some discussion of which stories should appear on page 1. But that’s it for formal meetings. The overwhelming majority of the real work is done outside of meetings (isn’t that always the way!). LayoutI didn’t see the layout process since it happens during the late hours of the day. What I did notice about the process is that the advertisers get first pick. In other words, the areas of each page in the day’s edition of the Globe that are committed to advertisers are marked off first and the layout editors fit the news stories into the remaining space within each section. I don’t know why this surprised me. I already knew that magazines operated this way, but had just never thought about it in the context of newspapers. The customer comes first, and the Globe is an intermediary with two groups of customers -- subscribers and advertisers. You would expect the group that provides the most revenue would get higher priority service, and that is what happens. No big deal. Do the Globe layout people know who has bought particular ad space? I believe they do know what firm will be advertising in each area, but they do not know the ad content.Layout is one of the last editorial processes. Most of the layout goes on from about 6-10PM within a large circle of workstations at the south end of the Globe newsroom. Since I was visiting in the morning, this area was completely vacant. I could only see a little of the debris left over from yesterday’s layout.The Ink-stained Wretch as AuthorAnother aspect of the Globe I could see and did not expect was to get some sense of the excitement of their business. We’ve all heard many people in the news business say they love it. We’ve also heard them say (ad nauseum) how very important their business is, and cringed at the implied arrogance. Leaving arrogance aside, it is easy to see a sort of romance in the daily creation of an intellectual product which begins in the intangible and ends up on the doorstep and in the hands of hundred of thousands of people. Frost uses this image to describe the delights of authorship:I told him this is a pleasant lifeTo set your breast to the bark of treesThat all your days are dim beneath,And reaching up with a little knife,To loose the resin and take it downAnd bring it to market when you please.Bloggers especially should be able to appreciate this creative aspect of news-papering. Like any author, a blogger is delighted to find readers. Reporters and editors are writers -- but in a collaborative, structured, and sometimes chaotic process that repeats on a daily or weekly cycle. They do not have a blogger’s freedom to produce 'when they please.' Are they proud to have their work in wide circulation? I am certain of it. Are they entitled to that pride? Most of the time.But back to media arrogance. Is there a further analogy between newspaper reporters and bloggers? Many bloggers have been sickened by the insufferable arrogance of major news media personalities (Dan Rather first comes to mind, but any such list would be long). On the other hand, I can think of other reporters who are personal heroes (Claudia Rosett, William Langewieche, and the late Mike Kelly fit in this category). Are there similar characters within the blogosphere? Certainly. The hero class for me includes Power Line, Andrew Sullivan, and many others. In the wildly over-arrogant class, I would enshrine the Wonkette and her ilk.What contrasts Dan Rather and the Wonkette from the “heroes” is that becoming well known seemed to bring out more of their character weaknesses. The greater the fame, the greater the pathology. Character really does count. Wanting to be well-liked, well known, or well respected is not in itself a bad thing. But vice is only intemperate pursuit of what is in itself good. Hollywood is literally a global machine for identifying people who have developed extreme forms of this pathology. Our culture mistakenly refers to these as celebrities. It should not be surprising that the creep of Hollywood into the news media should result in circuses like today’s broadcast news. The same phenomenon occurs in print, but on a thankfully smaller scale, and even the blogosphere as it matures may see the same pathology in some cases.Lessons LearnedThe biggest change in my own perception of the Globe is a better appreciation for the separation between the news and the Op Ed content. These two operations go on in entirely separate but parallel processes, until they are combined in the day’s paper. The location of the Globe’s Op Ed content is well standardized within each day’s paper, but the degree of separation between the news and Op Ed processes is greater than can be communicated to the reader by just the layout. The reader often simply flips between pages. Perhaps the Globe should use red ink ( pink?) for the Op Ed content. Either of these color choices would be fitting. Seriously, since my visit I have revised upward my expectations for Globe news coverage and reduced my already low expectations for the Op Ed content. Realizing that most of what I find deeply offensive in the Globe originates in the Op Ed process helps me to enjoy the rest of paper more.Finally, I learned some appreciation for the Globe’s esprit and for that of the whole newspaper business – a business that worries deeply about disruptive competition from the Internet in ways that remind me of the automobile business during my youth in Detroit, when today’s automotive climate of heavy government regulation and global competition was just beginning. The newspaper business has real concerns about competitors from the Internet. Yet the Globe and other newspapers have at least two sustainable advantages. First, they deliver their product daily to my doorstep before breakfast in a form that, while venerable, is quite satisfying and will remain so. Second, they can marshal a relatively large group of talented people to create their product. If they do their reporting jobs well, they may even be able to support an insular Op Ed board that seems to believe their target market is the Harvard faculty and others who react with hostility when ideologically challenged. Culture50298@blogcritics.org Thu, 13 Jul 2006 05:59:32 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/06/25/180649.php Harry ForbesRobert Kuttner writes in Saturday's Boston Globe:"The right has managed to savage the institutions that produced increasing opportunity and a broader middle class in the decades after World War II – minimum wages, trade unionism, job-security, decent health and retirement plans, affordable college and housing, Social Security that rose with inflation, and economic regulation to keep Wall Street from grabbing most of the winnings."How can the right (who, in the worldview of the Globe Op Ed writers, through their horrid nasty policies seek only to plunder and pillage the poor and middle classes in society on behalf of the wealthy) keep winning elections? Is it that the many voting folks who aren’t wealthy, yet vote Republican, are so profoundly stupid that they can’t recognize their own interests? Or do they believe that beyond all else it is in their interest to have leaders they actually trust?Is the degree of trust a property that differentiates the two political parties most in the minds of swing voters? I believe it is. Recall how post-election polls reported that even voters who were less confident in Bush felt more certain that they knew where Bush stood – and therefore were more certain of what Bush would actually do in office. It would follow that they weighed Bush’s campaign rhetoric as more genuine and less calculated than Kerry’s.If the Democrats' credibility doesn’t measure up to their opponents, it stems from the fact that they can’t agree to disagree the way the Republicans have done. The Republican coalition consists of a number of ideological strains stretching from Christianist to Libertarian. Not all of us are pleased with Bush. Certainly the fiscal conservatives are not reaping great rewards from their help in electing the current administration. Yet Republicans seem united in the realization that despite flaws, they far prefer Bush to acting as opposition to what they believe would have been a national disaster under Kerry.By contrast, the Democrats are unable even to converge on a single wording of a non-binding Senate resolution on the single issue of the Iraq war. Instead they offered two separate resolutions, and six Democratic Senators voted for neither of these and instead with the Republicans. Furthermore, Senator Clinton even celebrates this disunity (at least in comments for public consumption) as indicating a more open, honest party. After the votes in the Senate this week she said, "Although unity is important it is not the most important value. It is, I think, a tribute to the Democratic Party at this moment in time that we are honestly and openly struggling with a lot of the difficult issues facing our country."That’s an appropriate sentiment for an academic colloquium. However governing is not an academic pursuit, as Hillary well knows. The key success factor in governing is maintaining unity. Openness and honesty are essential, but within the context of a unified party. To succeed as an administration unity at voting time is the critical ingredient. The Democrats have proven repeatedly that they cannot do this as successfully as their opponents.Iraq is only one current issue, albeit by far the largest. Go beyond that to issues like immigration, judicial activism, school choice, gay rights etc. and Democrats are even more all over the map. Republicans are debating and disagreeing on these issues as well, but their ideological distribution is not as wide. There are more areas on which they have common ground (to borrow Jesse Jackson’s mantra).Robert Kuttner believes that a return to the pocketbook issues of the FDR and Truman era is the correct answer. Speaking to journalism students at NYU, (what was probably a more ideologically uniform group than any party caucus) he said:“My view is that if you deliver the goods on pocket-book issues, if you help the 70 to 80 percent of Americans who are economically insecure, they will cut you some slack on the other stuff. If you fight on the other stuff, the Republicans are going to beat you.”That appeal to the old time religion of the Democrats doesn’t cut water any more. As Peggy Noonan wrote earlier this week, “[Democrats] like--they love--the old base: old union guys who drink Schlitz and voted for FDR and JFK. But today those old union guys are mostly dead, dying or Republican.” Just as dead is the economy that supported FDR’s coalition. It’s not Republican perfidy that broke it up, but market forces operating in a more global economy.Robert Kuttner ought to recognize that much, and stop blaming the right for his own party’s problems. Politics49663@blogcritics.org Sun, 25 Jun 2006 18:06:49 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/06/16/122129.php Harry ForbesAmid all the media fanfare during the run-up to the recent special election in California’s 50th congressional district, there is also a marvelous case of mainstream media omission. Here is a snippet from an LA Times story on the election:Some analysts blamed Busby's loss on a gaffe during the campaign's final days, when at a rally she seemed to be encouraging illegal immigrants to vote. Before her comments, GOP officials in Washington were increasingly concerned about the outcome. But after Busby's comments Thursday night, momentum in the race switched.So exactly when did the LA Times first report on this critical gaffe that occurred on June 1? The LA Times first mentioned it in the above story on June 8 – an entire week after it occurred and only after the election. The LA Times broke the news delicately to its readers without repeating the offensive text of the gaffe ("You don't need papers for voting.").Of course if you wanted news of the Busby gaffe before the election, it was available in some places. The San Diego Union Tribune did have a story covering it before the election. Hugh Hewitt had it. Power Line blog had the audio recording, and the story reached the zenith of the blogosphere, Instapundit, on June 4. But the crucial words were deemed unworthy to be printed by newspapers such as the LA Times and the New York Times…until after the election. This media behavior reminds me very much of the 17 days in 2004 when the charges of the Swift Boat veterans were also unmentionable in the MSM, even though in retrospect both presidential campaign managers agreed that these charges represented the most crucial juncture of the campaign.There should be a special term to describe this media behavior. So here is a proposed definition:Swift Boat Hush (n.) - A behavior of the mainstream media during an election campaign characterized by a period of widespread silence concerning a news story that is severely embarrassing to a liberal candidate. The silence ends when it no longer shields the candidate from damage. Politics49326@blogcritics.org Fri, 16 Jun 2006 12:21:29 EDT