BREAKING NEWS! MATT ASHARE IS OUT AT BOSTON PHOENIX

The news is still coming in, but longtime music editor for the Boston Phoenix has resigned as of yesterday, Media Farm's been told. Among other candidates to replace him, Michael Brodeur, the Dig's previous longtime music editor and short-lived editor thereafter, is said to be at the top of the heap. While it is being spun as a resignation, insiders say that he was asked to leave amidst increasingly painful music coverage and a loath for all things "hip." Lance Gould, editor of the Boston Phoenix, was seen packing his desk for him, although he is allowing the aging scenester to apparently continue writing in between his moderate doses of Geritol. Ashare has been with the Phoenix since before the Civil War ... we'll keep you posted if we find out more.

BREAKING BROOKLINE AVE. NEWS! - SVP Andy Kingston Out at the Phoenix

By Media Farm on Thu, Jan 3, 2008 1:49 pm

Another one bites the dust! Andy Kingston, Senior Vice President and long time Mindich-guru at the Phoenix Media Group announced his departure in a letter to the staff yesterday. In what can only be seen as yet another cost cutting shake-up at 126 Brookline Ave., Mr. Kingston bids fare-well to the never-rising burning bird. See letter below (and take note, if you're hiring, Andy's looking!):

From: "Kingston, Andy"

Date: January 2, 2008 6:42:02 PM EST

Subject: Some news to share

Dear friends,

I want to share the news with you that after 20 years with the Phoenix Media Communications Group (including 3 years here prior to working for FOX TV and CBS Radio) I have decided to pursue the next stage of my career. It has certainly been an enjoyable experience playing an integral role in the growth and evolution of the PMCG over the years; I will always love this company AND all of the great people working here. However, the 20 year mark forced me to be a bit introspective and realize that I was at a crossroads in my life which called for a change. I spoke to Brad (President of the PMCG) many weeks ago so we could create a timeline that worked for both of us. We announced my decision to our staff prior to the Christmas break. I’ll be staying on as SVP through the middle of January and then will take on an external transition role for a couple more months while I search for my next career step (and perhaps catch a couple of powder days on the slopes!).

While I plan to do a thorough exploration, I expect to end up in the marketing, advertising or media worlds. If you come across any opportunities that you think might be a good fit, please feel free to give me a shout.

Certainly one of the best parts of my Phoenix Media Group experience has been getting to know people like you. Hopefully, we’ll get the chance to continue working together in some capacity in the future. I wish you a very healthy and successful year in 2008!

All my best,

Andy Kingston

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Andy Kingston, Senior Vice President

Phoenix Media/Communications Group

126 Brookline Avenue, Boston, MA 02215

Phoenix Newspaper Group, WFNX Radio Network, Stuff At Night, PMCG Online, Phoenix Publications

b: (617) 859-3201

f: (617) 536-1313

akingston@phx.com

McPhee out at Herald

By Media Farm on Wed, Dec 5, 2007 12:42 pm

The Herald buried the story in its blog section late yesterday afternoon after the rumor was confirmed by Bomag's Joe Keohane. The write-up was accompanied by a particularly unflattering mug which ran alongside the announcement that she'll be leaving the paper to host her own radio show on WTKK.

The press release has McPhee giving a rundown of the show as, "A three-hour nighttime radio show will give me a chance to banter with true New Englanders about a workaday woman’s point of view on politics, police, patronage and all the things that makes this area the most colorful in the country."

Could someone please let Media Farm know what a "workaday woman's point of view" looks like?

And is it only "true New Englanders" who will be able to tolerate her voice which has been described a "voice for print"?

Gov helps own cause

By Media Farm on Fri, Sep 28, 2007 1:50 pm

We know the reaction to Deval Patrick's casino plan has been anything but warm, but really, this may be taking things a bit far.

Check the byline, and then cue the netroots howling about the independent press's disconcertingly cozy relationship with government.

For shame, Herald!

Morning Headlines!

By Media Farm on Wed, Sep 26, 2007 10:13 am

Media Farm's Morning Headlines: Take us for a ride anytime you want. Baby.

Half full [Globe]

Half empty [Herald]

Yeah, but was it a mustache ride? [Herald]

Pervpervpervpervperv [Herald]

Leave the light on for us [Globe]

Mass CoMA [Globe]

Trolleys are racist [Herald]

Look who's soft on crime [Herald]

It's hard out there for a hedge fund manager [Globe]

Law and Order episode, 25 years later [Globe]

Fast times [NYT]

Goats and rockets [NYT]

Blast the vote [NYT]

Former Dig writer reeks of opulence

By Media Farm on Tue, Sep 25, 2007 5:14 pm

Attention, insufferably rich pricks of the world: Jason Feifer is now one of you. He finally has a really nice car.

Or, he had one. He seems to have enjoyed it, from the looks of things. The write-up can be found here.

Frankly, we feel a bit inadequate. Now that Feifer's at BoMag, he gets swag like $340,000 cars to tool around in. We've done some research, and concluded that the swankiest thing he ever got from us was a free ticket to Kerry Healey's post-election-night-demolition party.

As you can see, the Healey party had a fruit tray, which we're sure Jason enjoyed. But, you know, it's no $340,000 car. How can we ever hope to hold on to writers this way?

Isn't there anyone out there who's content being bought off with deli platters and kind-of access to the state's most semi-powerful politicians???

Read it again, Globe

By Media Farm on Tue, Sep 25, 2007 4:10 pm

On Sunday, the Boston Globe published the fruits of a week spent considering the governor's announcement that he wants to bring three resort casinos to Massachusetts by 2012. Since this is the biggest policy decision of the year, we were expecting the full enterprise reporting treatment -- a compendium of the sources Patrick used, an analysis of the data he relied upon, and maybe a PowerPoint slide or two.

Instead, the Globe produced a single article that announced that Suffolk Downs has plans to erect a "temporary casino" next summer.

Nobody had to dig much to find that story -- Suffolk Downs outlined its plan in report it gave to the Patrick administration in July. The Globe got a hold of it last week, when the packet of the governor's casino materials, which included the report, was released to the press. Somehow, the Globe seized onto this small piece of the 500-page document as its juiciest bit of gotcha news.

"If they are able to secure a casino license, the operators of Suffolk Downs want to build a temporary casino as soon as July, an aggressive timeline that could possibly introduce slot machines and gaming tables - and their economic benefits and social impacts - much earlier than Governor Deval Patrick's proposal," ran Matt Viser's lede. He went on to quote Suffolk Downs explaining their plan and Patrick administration officials distancing themselves from it.

Today, the paper revisited the story by reporting that Patrick and Mayor Menino "oppose any move by the owners of Suffolk Downs to speed up the timeline on casino gambling." Menino calls himself "blindsided" by the plan.

Despite the Globe's intimations to the contrary, Suffolk Downs' desire to build a temporary casino in 2008 is not the big story here. A look at Patrick's casino sources not only shows that his staff should have been aware of the "temporary casino" plan for months, but that the governor relied partially on Suffolk Downs' research to make his case for casinos in Massachusetts. (An internal memo from his staff quotes from the Suffolk Downs report extensively while summarizing potential casino revenues.) That's the story here: that Patrick's gambling proposal, as we'll point out in our feature tomorrow, is a desperate money grab based on questionable data provided by biased sources.

The Globe’s State House bureau has fallen down hard on this story. Its muzzled reporters seem only to be capable of basic stenography when it comes to evaluating Patrick's decision. There's not even a pretense of evaluating his financials or reviewing his numbers, even though the Globe likely has the resources to do so. Even the coverage of the Patrick's critics is sloppy: consistently, the Globe has positioned all-around right-wing-nutcase Kris Mineau as one of the casino plan's biggest detractors, while letting far more authoritative -- and rational -- opponents, like Representative Dan Bosley and Senator Susan Tucker, hide below the fold.

Luckily, the Globe's columnists get to do their own reporting. That's probably why a healthy faction of them are calling bullshit.

Last week, business columnist Steve Bailey pointing out that if any other industry had to build in 2.5% of its revenue to offset the human casualties it caused, we'd kick it to the curb.

Over the weekend, Joan Vennochi fleshed out the history behind Patrick's casino run, explaining that it's all about the taxes, stupid.

Yesterday, Kevin Cullen took a swipe at state treasurer Tim Cahill by calling him the "biggest bookie in the state" and badgering him with questions about whether drug and prostitution legalization are next. (Cahill said he wasn't for either.)

Even Adrian Walker, who's not known for his jaundiced reporting (tow trucks oppress the poor, savages are victims, etc), knows that something's not right here. "I was never persuaded by the idea that [Patrick] was spending August in the Berkshires deeply pondering where to come down on this," he wrote last Friday. "The seeds of this notion go back to the campaign trail, where he agreed to support nearly every constituency's pet idea. That costs a lot, as his opponents pointed out. The bill is quickly coming due."

In other words, Patrick's casino proposal looks like hastily-designed policy based on desperation. Why the Globe hasn't dispatched a team of reporters to make sure is a mystery.

UPDATE: Didn’t see this until now, but Jon Keller has an excellent conversation with Globe State House bureau chief Frank Phillips from a couple days ago here and here. Phillips is remarkably candid about the motivations behind and prospects for Patrick’s casino plan. Any particular reason we can’t talk like this on newsprint?

Revere, Bitch!!!

By Media Farm on Tue, Sep 25, 2007 3:18 pm

Speaking of epic correspondence… This just came in yesterday. You’d never guess, looking at the nice little lighthouse stamp on the envelope, what kind of bile lay within.

Clearly, this poor girl needs a turnaround in the roommate-luck department. This isn’t usually our job, but as a public service, if you’ve got a spare room and need a little more Revere in your life, drop us a line – letters@weeklydig.com. We’ll be happy to forward on your contact info to the author, providing you promise not to go through all her personal belongings or lay in bed all day and talk about her and other people.

Oh, Cruel Transportation System!

By Media Farm on Tue, Sep 25, 2007 2:40 pm

Wow. In going through Oh, Cruel World! submissions for next week’s issue, we came across this. There’s not really any way to get it into the paper, but it raises some very important issues about the state of the Commonwealth’s governmental apparatus, and therefore should be enjoyed in its entirety. Enjoy…

Fuck you four times, Massachusetts Highway Division.

Let me explain. I have Thursday night trivia in Worcester with my friends, and I live in Watertown, so I drive home along the Mass Pike. Pretty ordinary, right? This last Thursday, I had just made it past the toll at Route 95 when I saw a sign advising me that my exit was closed.

Before I get batshit angry, let me take a short aside. I’m glad that the highway division is taking the time to assess the state of our bridges and tunnels, however belatedly. I’m glad that they chose to do it late on a weeknight when the traffic was minimal. I’m glad to have an infrastructure I can drive around on, since our public transportation system sucks big saggy donkey balls.

Here’s what pisses me off insanely: The next exit is in Cambridge. It’s a toll exit for the princle sum of a buck. I could honestly give a flying fuck about a dollar, but having gone past the 95 tolls, I was trapped unless I made a dangerous and illegal U-turn. And it’s not like they warned me before I hit the 95 tolls, or forgave the Cambridge tolls because I was just some poor schmuck trying to get the hell home to Watertown and already four miles out of my way. So fuck you #1, Massachusetts Highway Division, for your pissant, roach-motel extortion.

The Cambridge tolls were furthermore being operated by a single individual. I understand that many of the people he had had to deal with were frustrated and angry, and in general I like my toll collectors, but this guy was truly a piece of shit. Admittedly, there is some pleasure in knowing that he will likely die from metastatic lung cancer, but throughout my ride home, I found myself desperately hoping that it will be the momentary exposure to the exhaust from my Honda Accord and not his three-pack-a-day habit that does him in. So fuck you #2, Massachusetts Highway Division, for the some of the dumpster-scrapings that work for you.

Once off the Pike and into the proposed detour, there was a traffic jam, to put it mildly. How it was possible to snarl a mile of cars into a completely immobile mess at 11:30 PM on a weeknight is a mystery to me, but our boys in yellow (with an assist from the boys in blue) managed to accomplish it. So fuck you #3, Massachusetts Highway Division, for what can really only be called a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

One of the things that my Dad taught me is that payback is a bitch. And he also taught me about a frequent flyer program he adapted from Abbie Hoffman. Those automatic ticket-spitting machines? It turns out that if you just sit there, they keep giving you tickets. If you go through a toll and there isn’t much traffic around, collect a bunch of them. Stash them in your glove compartment. Then, the next time you're on the Pike, compare the toll you’re supposed to pay to the tolls from your stash. If something in your stash is cheaper, use that ticket instead, and save yourself fifty cents or a buck. Not only are you that much closer to the back-alley handjob you always wanted, but you can take pride in knowing you’ve just stuck it to the man.

So fuck you #4, Massachusetts Highway Division. From me to you.

Morning Headlines!

By Media Farm on Tue, Sep 25, 2007 10:31 am