Credit: Michael Dwyer/AP Photo
BUDDING ROCKER SELLS NEWSPAPER
The Boston Business Journal among others reported last week that principal Red Sox owner John Henry is indeed selling the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, which he acquired along with the Boston Globe in October. According to the New England’s premier outlet for news about Henry and his holdings:
Henry announced his plans to employees in Worcester on Tuesday afternoon, saying he hoped to find a local buyer for the T&G and its website, but that no deal was imminent.
“I think it’s important for the Telegram & Gazette to be under local ownership,” Henry said at a gathering in the T&G newsroom Tuesday, the company reported on its website.
Henry, the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox, bought the Globe, the Worcester paper, and both companies’ websites in October for $70 million. He published a letter in the Globe on Oct. 27 titled “Why I Bought the Globe,’’ in which he did not mention the T&G, fueling questions in Worcester about that newspaper’s future ownership.
We’re a bit disappointed, as the kind of local ownership that Henry offers is precisely what the Worcester paper needs. In case Central Mass readers don’t know what they’re missing, here’s a tickler from the intro of the slobbering jaw job the Globe spit out last August:
John W. Henry was a college dropout playing guitar in a rock band when his life took a sudden turn in the 1970s. The death of his father gave him control of the family’s soybean farm in Arkansas, a business that didn’t seem to suit him any better than being a rock ’n’ roller.
So he did something different. With a natural affinity for numbers, Henry used his growing knowledge of the soybean business to trade commodities, making a fortune that allowed him in time to become the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox.
Worcester’s loss.
TIME OF OUR LIVES
On a quick note, we were ogling TIME’s Top 10 Photos of 2013. Sincere congratulations to local honoree and Globe photographer John Tlumacki, whose April 15 pic of the Boston Marathon finish line just moments after the bombing remains etched into so many of our consciousnesses. Moving on, though, we just couldn’t help but think about how suitably voyeuristic this annual exercise is considering that your stereotypical TIME reader–those who are still living, at least–hardly strives to interpret issues beyond superficial facades. They’ll sympathetically eye-fuck the pudding out of pictures of Egyptian security forces attacking civilians and of persecuted protesters in Istanbul, but then think it’s in poor taste when activists in their own country crash their Black Friday binges to demand a fair wage. Just the way we saw it. More proof, perhaps, that photos really are the closest thing we have to true objective journalism.
FUCK MIT
Major Media Farm props to Kevin Poulsen, his colleagues at Wired, and anybody else keeping the Aaron Swartz flame burning. For those who have forgotten, Swartz was the MIT grad and activist programming wiz who was caught liberating millions of academic studies from the online service JSTOR using MIT infrastructure. With MIT holding their hands, federal prosecutors kicked Swartz through a legal gauntlet until he committed suicide in January. Poulsen recently secured more related info from The Man through a formal inquiry, including a video of Swartz breaking into the wire closet where he did the deed. We especially applaud the way Poulsen wraps up his report:
Looking at the video, it’s easy to see what MIT and the Secret Service presumably saw–a furtive hacker going someplace he shouldn’t go, doing something he shouldn’t do.
But photos from the putative crime scene, also released by the Secret Service, add context missing from the video: a concrete support in the network closet is crammed with a jumble of Sharpie graffiti dating back to the early 1980s–earlier generations of hackers at the institution that invented hacking, going places they shouldn’t go, doing things they shouldn’t do, leaving their mark at the very spot where, on January 4, 2011, MIT lost its tolerance for such behavior.
SON OF A MITT
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to grow up in America’s premier plutocratic Mormon family–the lack of paternal attention, wondering if daddy loves you, that sort of thing–don’t wait another second before checking out reports about Mitt Romney’s son Josh allegedly saving four people on his way home from Thanksgiving dinner, or something like that. We especially dug the Gawker rendition, “Mitt Romney’s Son Wants Everyone to Know He’s a Hero.”
Cory Booker must have been unavailable.
Josh Romney, son of former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, said in a tweet on Friday that he saved four people after a car accident and included a photo of himself standing next to what appeared to be an overturned vehicle inside a house.
“Was first on scene to big accident, see pic of car in the house. I lifted 4 people out to safety. All ok. Thankful.”, the tweet read.
We’re just disappointed this all happened after TIME finalized their list of awesome photos.
MARATHON HUSTLE
Speaking of tragedies. While we’re anticipating the upcoming film American Hustle and how it promises to surpass Argo in its glorifying a disreputable federal agency, at the moment we’re a bit put off by this cheap Associated Press attempt to link the new blockbuster and the bombing of the Boston Marathon. Remove your Boston Strong T-shirt and buckle your bullshit belt:
While shooting in Boston, David O. Russell found his film “American Hustle” caught up in the Boston Marathon bombing.
When the city was essentially shut down for the manhunt for suspect Dzokhar Tsarnaev in April, the production–which had been shooting in the area–had to be stopped for a day. The experience, Russell says, was felt closely by the filmmaking crew and actors.
“It was hanging over us the whole time,” Russell said in a recent interview.
In situations like this, it’s hard to know whether to blame the writer, the editor (if there was one involved), or the interviewee. Nevertheless, while we’re sure some cast members were indeed affected by the tragedy, we still hold that if this was some kind of publicist-assisted angle–which, let’s face it, is hardly beyond the realm of possibility–then we would love to hear from any writers who were pitched the American Hustle bombing story, but had enough self-respect to pass on this kind of narcissistic boilerplate baloney:
“You just end up feeling the emotion and the strength of the community around you,” said the director. “It just makes you more human, really, because you end up having a very human connection with, literally, everyone around you. I mean, everyone, strangers on the street. Everybody was moved and pulled together by that tragedy.”
Russell, a New York native, has become increasingly identified with Massachusetts. A graduate of Amherst College, he memorably shot his Oscar-winning “The Fighter” on location in Lowell.
GOD HATES FAST
In the interest of giving more undeserved attention to a group of hateful imbeciles who win attention by picketing things that also warrant little attention, we totally recommend this Pulitzer Prize shoo-in on the Westboro Baptist Church’s plans for ironic car crash victim and motorhead movie star Paul Walker. Be sure to check the video. It’s disturbing even by Westboro standards. Westboro standards. Now there’s an oxymoron for ya.
DOMOSCOW
If we were already jealous that the fledgling social media music outlet Do617 jumped from a few hundred Twitter followers before Thanksgiving to more than 7,000 at the time of this writing, then imagine how envious we were to discover that the bulk of them were from Russia. DigBoston has been trying to make moves in the Moscow market for years, so we’ll have to keep paying attention as they achieve gains that are truly unprecedented for New England media outlets in Eastern Europe. Hats off to them, or, in the words of Do617 follower Christian Vieira (handle: @KhrisFz), “Naoo Cruze Os Braços Nas Horas Dificeis , Pois O Melhor Homem Do Mundoo Morreu Com Os Braços Abertooos.” Amen!
ANOTHER SNOW JOB
Some say you can’t fight city hall. Others, mostly cowards, criticize whistleblowers for their lack of blind patriotism, or the sense of martyrdom that often comes with headline subterfuge. There’s as much truth as there is utter nonsense in both of those notions, but putting ego and philosophy aside, there’s no denying that former NSA contractor Edward Snowden is surpassing the likes of Daniel Ellsberg and Paul Wellstone in upsetting the government. Most recently, he turned the United Nations into the do-nothing diplomatic equivalent of cheerleaders accusing one another of spreading scabies in the human pyramid. A note from The Guardian on his latest jab:
Edward Snowden revelations prompt UN investigation into surveillance
UN’s senior counter-terrorism official says revelations ‘are at the very apex of public interest concerns’
The UN’s senior counter-terrorism official is to launch an investigation into the surveillance powers of American and British intelligence agencies following Edward Snowden’s revelations that they are using secret programmes to store and analyse billions of emails, phone calls and text messages.
The UN special rapporteur Ben Emmerson QC said his inquiry would also seek to establish whether the British parliament had been misled about the capabilities of Britain’s eavesdropping headquarters, GCHQ, and whether the current system of oversight and scrutiny was strong enough to meet United Nations standards.
The inquiry will make a series of recommendations to the UN general assembly next year.
