Things Fall Apart

By Media Farm

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Kevin Cullen's Monday column addressed a local woman who loves the Red Sox. Also, there was this:

Three years ago, they sat Theresa Marie down in an office at New England Medical Center and told her she had ovarian cancer. Theresa Marie is mentally retarded but she isn't stupid. "Am I going to die?" she asked ... According to all the medical evidence, Theresa Marie Freitas is dying. But it's baseball season again, and spring is in the air, and just around the corner Dean Martin was singing "That's Amore" from the speakers at Martini's Smoke Shop. Theresa Marie Freitas is alive, just like the Red Sox chances.

In the column's aftermath, the following message traversed the internet, ultimately coming to rest in Media Farm's inbox. "I've never seen a more joylessly mechanical pulling of the heartstrings. And you can quote me as an insider on that," said one Boston media insider.

Related: Can anybody inside the Globe newsroom pinpoint the exact moment when Brian McGrory's succubus dispelled Kevin Cullen's soul and filled the void with his own black, humorless, and astoundingly disinterested columnist-spirit?

IN OTHER NEWS from the Department of Declining Standards, congrats go out to the anonymous local environmental canvasser who managed to get herself quoted in Friday's Globe under the name Diamond McMillion.

As in, "Diamond McMillion hopes the cold doesn't linger. Her job is to get people to sign petitions to fight global warming. Stopping passersby on Coolidge Corner, she said the warmth made her job easier. 'People are much more pleasant,' said McMillion, 22, of South Boston. 'The sun really helps.'"

And a double fist-bump to the editor who not only let that quote slide, but decided to use it as a pull quote. Excellent work all around.

On a totally unrelated note, Media Farm has decided to stop hiding behind this cloak of craven anonymity we've been saddled with for all these years. We'd now like you to know us by the name the Good Lord gave us: Trustfund Goldenpants, IV. This should make the rest of our media brethren much more comfortable about quoting us. Take it away, Editor and Publisher!

US daily newspapers shrank their newsrooms by 2,400 journalists in the past year, a 4.4% workforce decrease that's the biggest year-over-year cut in ranks since the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) began conducting its annual census 30 years ago.

ASNE said 52,600 people work full time in daily newspaper newsrooms—a number that has not been that low since 1984.

"This totally fucking blows," opined the noted Boston media critic Trustfund Goldenpants, IV. "Donkey balls!"

THE PULITZER PRIZES—awards that celebrate the best American newspapers have to offer—are destroying newspapers. So says Gawker Media founder Nick Denton: "But the newspapers' Pulitzer-chasing is most damaging because it distracts newspapers from their real challenge. Rather than impress colleagues with the seriousness of their reporting, US newspapers need to engage a readership that is drifting off to television and the internet. Pulitzer-winning journalism will win Pulitzers; it won't save an industry which is experiencing double-digit annual declines in advertising revenue."

That's some fascinating advice there, Nick. Excellence ruins things. Got it.

We'd argue the point further, but everybody knows that the only way to fix something Nick Denton doesn't like is to make Nick Denton interim editor of the object of his ire. So, please, dude, take your rightful spot atop the masthead of the Washington Post. They're clearly in desperate need of your help right now.

ASTUTE READERS will note that it's been some time since we've checked in on our friends at the Daily Free Press. Last time we did, we found a rewrite of a weeks-old Globe trend story, recast to star a (probable) virgin with patchy facial hair, running around with a broom between his legs and explaining the differences between children's literature and the real world thusly: "When we get angry with each other, we don't duel with wands, we just yell."

Maybe it's a good thing that there aren't any newsroom jobs left for these kids to inherit.

AND, AMAZINGLY, things can and do get worse from there. Witness the awful spectacle of Stuff@night helping local band Baker get wicked famous by teaching them how to dress themselves. There appear to be no restaurants and bars left to ruin, so they've set their sights on local music: "Sure, there are exceptions, but the band that rolls onstage every night in wrinkled T-shirts and mussed hair probably isn't making it big any time soon." Uh, isn't there a ball out there somewhere that needs to be chased into the street?