Bill O’Reilly is out in a major victory for women’s rights and an acknowledgement by Fox News of the clear wrongs he committed over many years while bloviating from moral high ground as the cable giant’s top-rated host. Well, at least the first part is true. O’Reilly was unceremoniously dumped yesterday while vacationing in Italy. […]
Media and Journalism
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Where’s the story on Trump’s taxes?
Certain people over a certain age recall the old Wendy’s slogan that became a pre-internet viral cry for whenever someone offered something without substance. “Where’s the beef?” is a phrase that could easily be applied to the first revelation of President Trump’s tax returns. But the reaction by supporters and the president himself that the “exclusive” […]
Posted inThe Download
How soon is too soon?
Basically, anyone in first grade or older has a pretty firm recollection of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and the four-day hunt for the killer-terrorists that held the Greater Boston region hostage both literally and figuratively. It’s that fresh memory that has many conflicted about whether or not the new movie Patriots Day was made too […]
Posted inUncategorized
Sheehan steps down as CEO of Globe
THE BOSTON GLOBE on Thursday shuffled its top management, bringing newspaper executive and publisher Doug Franklin out of retirement to replace Mike Sheehan as CEO. Franklin, 59, is the former executive vice president and chief financial officer of Cox Enterprises, an Atlanta-based conglomerate with media and automotive operations. Franklin worked there from 2013 to 2015. […]
Posted inOpinion
We’re turning 20
MASSINC, THE PARENT of CommonWealth magazine, turns 20 this year. We’re planning a birthday party on December 1 that we’re calling Serious Fun II and we’re starting to think about what the next 20 years might look like. I invite you to support our work by attending the birthday party and offering your suggestions on […]
Posted inState House News Service, The Download
Making noise — and a splash — on guns
For a newspaper opinion page, it’s the closest thing there is to shouting something from the rooftops. Today’s Boston Globe — both online and in print — leads with a large-type three-word call: “MAKE IT STOP.” The “it” is the carnage of mass shootings in this country, as the paper calls for a national ban […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Opinion, Politics
DA O’Keefe amazed at limited DeLeo leak inquiry
I write in response to the recent article that ran under the headline, “Gants calls off DeLeo leak inquiry.” This article carried the sub-headline, “Law enforcement officials tell SJC they didn’t do it.” Is this what a judicial order from the Supreme Judicial Court is worth? The context here is that House Speaker Robert DeLeo […]
Posted inOpinion, State House News Service, The Download
Gorillas in our midst
Bloom County, the edgy political comic strip that now lives on social media, cut to the heart of the problem over the killing of a gorilla at a Cincinnati zoo to save a child who had fallen in the cage. A living room debate among the Bloom County principals on the “Men’s Squabble Couch” questioned […]
Posted inThe Download
Columnist uses his imagination
In his recent columns, Lowell Sun columnist Peter Lucas seems to be letting his imagination run a little wild. A week ago he posted a column based on a WGBH interview with Senate President Stanley Rosenberg in which Rosenberg talked at length about his “shared leadership” style. In one paragraph of the WGBH story, Rosenberg […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Voters trump media predictions
There’s nothing those in the media like reading and writing more than “we got it wrong” stories, provided they have company. And in the case of Donald Trump, there are plenty of people on the mea culpa highway. Trump has been dallying around the fringes of presidential politics for a few years now, first hobnobbing […]