The Boston Globe is now a week into its epic delivery mess. You could blame digital disruption, but you’d be wrong. The Globe’s management did this to itself. First, let me single out the Globe’s journalists for praise. In the wee hours Sunday morning, reporters volunteered to help deliver papers. (I love Hiawatha Bray‘s caption for this photo…
The Boston Globe has managed to survive the inescapable digital transformation of the world, only to destroy itself in spectacularly shortsighted analog fashion. Like all media, the Globe faces digital disruption. But from the innovative launch of Boston.com in 1995 to the responsive-design works-on-all-devices site of today, its digital steps have been clever and effective. The paper’s…
Christopher L. Gasper is a Boston Globe sportswriter. His metaphors startle the reader, jarring you from the trance of reading and making you say “wha?” Learn from his excesses. I’ve recommended that you avoid cliches in your writing. Don’t say “dumb as a post” if you can say “dopey as Sarah Palin.” But there’s a limit. When…
In a front-page article, the Boston Globe sneers at Donald Trump for speaking at a fourth-grade level. They imply that simplicity is equivalent to stupidity. In fact, a bias toward complexity — the same bias inherent in this article — is what has given us a world pervaded by bullshit. The Globe ran the candidates’ speeches…
Here’s what I expect from a major newspaper: news. That is, reporting on things that are new. When it comes to sensational headlines about HubSpot, the Globe appears to have forgotten about the “new” part. Like many of you, I’ve been following the titillating saga of the executives that left HubSpot because, allegedly, they used…
Last month a cyclist died in an accident on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston. Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby thinks the solution is to get bikes off the road, but his editorial, “Urban Roads Aren’t Meant for Bicycles” is just a pile of non sequiturs and whining. Because logic and recommendations are missing from his piece, I’ll have to…
I’m here to help you in this troubled time for the market. I will provide you with an accurate description of why the market is down, one that differs from everything you have read in the media. Not only that, I’ll make a bold prediction about where markets are going next. And I’ll tell you how to interpret every article…
“Something must be done.” It’s the passive-voice cry of the handwringing editorial or the concerned memo. And it’s vacuous and worthless, since it doesn’t say who must do what. I’ll illustrate with Christopher L. Gasper’s article in today’s Boston Globe: “It’s time for the Red Sox to call for a changeup.” The story so far: despite a high payroll, the Boston…
Harry Truman supposedly longed for a one-handed economist. As he pointed out, “All my economists say, ‘on the one hand . . . on the other . . .’ ” When the title of an article is a rhetorical question, I long for a one-handed reporter. I know there’s a real issue here. When a reporter…