Results tagged “herald”

-- The parole bid of James Riva, the so-called "Vampire Killer," may not have had a lot of gas, but it did give the Herald the chance to run the banner headline "FANGS FOR NOTHIN'." [Herald]

When Bostonist read last week that Boston Celtics co-owner Stephen Pagliuca and Boston business guy Jack Connors were leading a group to purchase the Boston Globe and involve a "nonprofit foundation" to run the paper, we asked the following question: "So, the Globe gets sold and still doesn't make money?" In the Herald today, Mike Barnicle Jayson Blair Howie Carr began his column with the following statement: "Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought The Boston Globe already was a nonprofit newspaper."

So, hundreds of Pike employees and retirees get free Fast Lane transponders. Bostonist wants one. State cops rightly get most of the "nonrevenue transponders," as they are called. According to the Herald, 849 of 1,300 Pike salary-takers also get the coveted freebies. Not a typo. Aside from being an extravagant perk, as taxes surge and the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority is eliminated, could excessive transponder use cause tollbooth backups?

Congressmen John Tierney and Barney Frank like to travel and love that we pay for it.[Boston Herald]

--The 89-yar old woman who hit a 4-year old and killed her in Stoughton on Saturday charged with motor vehicle homicide and had her license revoked by the Registry. [Globe]

--"Clark Rockefeller" was sentenced to 4-5 years in prison just two hours after his conviction on kidnapping and assault charges. Judge Frank Gaziano's sentence matched what prosecutors recommended. [Globe]

• Governor Deval Patrick has called out MBTA "driver" Aiden Quinn and says he should talk to investigators about last week's crash he allegedly caused. [Boston Herald]

Much as we mock the Globe, it has always seemed to sometimes aim a little higher than its tabloid counterpart. So it was interesting to see the Globe at #5 on a list of the top ten newspapers most likely to fold or go online-only (also at Time). Number 1 on the list, the Philadelphia Daily News, is already nothin' but an edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer and #2, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, has filed for bankruptcy. Time notes that the Globe suffers from being part of the troubled New York Times' New England Media Group, dead weight the NYT might have to shed to survive (UHub commenters point out a Boston Business Journal article that pegs the Globe as worth about $192.8 million, down from $1.1 billion when the NYT purchased it in 1993). So what does this bode for Boston? Will the Metro (also partly owned by NYT and subject to its woes) and Herald be our only daily print options? Will Boston.com save the day? Is it all up to citizen journalists?

Joan Venocchi's column appears on the Opinion/Editorial page in today's Globe. Why does it read, in parts, like a favorable book review for the book that Governor Deval Patrick hasn't even written yet? Deval Patrick comes across as a hero facing a horde of villains, most of them Republican.

Today the Herald wrote about Taser use in Massachusetts, citing some scary statistics. According to the Herald, taser use in Massachusetts quadrupled from 2006 to 2007, when the weapons were used 200 times. Amnesty International reports that 320 people have died after being hit with Tasers since 2001, and also says the weapons are now being used to "get compliance" rather than avoid lethal force. Our Ist friends have covered traumatic Taser incidents in the past: Gothamist reported on a man who fell to his death after being Tasered (as well as the subsequent suicide of the cop who ordered the Taser use), LAist addressed the Tasering of a UCLA student who committed the vile crime of being in a library, Seattlest caught a cop accidentally using his gun instead of his Taser, and Chicaogist shared the CPD's use of force model after a man died following a Tasering. We hope the use of Tasers in Massachusetts and elsewhere can be reevaluated based on these disturbing findings, and that Taser training will be improved.

While some Bostonians dismiss the Herald as a tabloid rag, we read the paper everyday. There's often more energy and swagger on the cover of the Herald than in whole sections of the Globe.

It's unfortunate that yesterday's Herald gave huge play to a superficial analysis of Detroit's casinos and their similarity to Governor Deval Patrick's gambling vision. Bostonist was tough on the piece, which made up for its lack of evidence with a few anecdotes and general confusion.

There's nothing like a loud, baseless Herald story to get the morning started right. Today's tabloid trumps Heath Ledger's death with, "BUSTED! Deval Casino Plan's Just Like Michigan's... And They Lost $10M Last year." This Bostonist happens to be wearing a Detroit Tigers cap and sweatshirt as we type this, but we don't need Michigander bias to be dismayed by the lack of evidence in their piece.