The Boston Globe

On Monday, the Times Company closed its wholesale distributor, which would mean a job loss of some 550 people, and today the Boston Globe reports that the Times Company is closing one of the Globe's printing plants. "The Boston Globe said yesterday that the newspaper plans to shutter its Billerica printing plant by 2010, affecting as many as 200 employees who work at the site. The paper plans to keep its main printing plant in Dorchester."

As tough as it is for reporters, what about the distributors? That's 750 people fired in five days.

Move over T: Style!

Despite gloomy buyout news from the Boston Globe in recent weeks, there's still enough staffers left to launch a new monthly magazine supplement: Fashion Boston.  read more »

Today's release after the jump.

The Los Angeles Times has lost New York-based reporter Ellen Barry to The New York Times.

Ms. Barry responded to a phone call this morning with an email. "It's true, I am moving to the NYT after the first of the year, to work for Metro," she wrote. "I'm not going to comment beyond that, but thanks for asking."

Ms. Barry was a 2002 Pulitzer feature-writing finalist and ASNE award winner while at the Boston Globe, for a series on the relocation to America of East African young people. She was again a Pulitzer finalist in 2004, this time in the beat reporting category, for that paper for her stories on neglected patients in the Massachusetts mental health system. Formerly, she worked for the Boston Phoenix and the Moscow Times. She first joined The Los Angeles Times in January, 2004, as Atlanta bureau chief.

Today, The Observer reported that Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. has responded to the Oct. 19 letter sent to him on behalf of the Boston Newspaper Guild. Senator Ted Kennedy, and over two dozen political and labor leaders, signed the union letter that criticized the New York Times Company's management of the Boston Globe.

After the jump is the entire Sulzberger response, and a reply by Daniel Totten, president of the Boston Newspaper Guild.  read more »

-Michael Calderone

When Danny was a kid, he and his cousin Howie—an awkward, overweight, nerdy sort of boy who didn  read more »

When Danny was a kid, he and his cousin Howie—an awkward, overweight, nerdy sort of boy who di  read more »

Long before the release of An Inconvenient Truth, the new film about climate change starring Al Gore  read more »

The Boston Globe put the Brandeis censorship on its front page today (and did a better job than I did of writing it up!).

Published three weeks ago in London, the Walt-Mearsheimer paper on the power of the Israel lobby is the biggest controversy today in the world of ideas. It has been criticized by left wing Jews, and both the Boston Globe and Washington Post have, in covering the matter, given a platform to those attacking the paper's authors personally. Oddly, the paper has gotten an open reception in Israel. Lately, http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/03/opinion/edlevy.php

Which raises the embarrassing journalistic question: How long can the New York Times (which is itself critiqued in the paper) continue to ignore this issue?

Bill Weld may not have made much of an impression on Al D’Amato --"he had not even met Mr. Weld until recently," the ex-Senator told the Times -- but the Weld campaign emailed over a pretty convincing set of clips that detail at least two meetings, despite D’Amato’s denials. Weld apparently recalls three more, including the one he described yesterday.

Boston Globe, 1/25/96: "Sen. Alfonse D’Amato of New York introduced Weld..."

Boston Herald, 6/18/96: "Gov. William F. Weld, who has offered to be a "character witness" for first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, last night wined and dined the GOP’s Whitewater attack dog at a $ 1,000-a-head fund-raiser..."

(The canine in question being D’Amato.)

Weld’s spokeswoman, Andrea Tantaros, said the candidate recalls two other meetings, also in 1996.

They were together at a Suffolk County rally for Dole, she says, and at that year’s GOP convention, "They both walked into a room together where Dole was and a bunch of other people and someone said, ’Wow, look at this odd couple.’"

One of Bill Weld's donors is an indicted Massachussets pol, Tom Finneran, the Boston Globe reports. And Uptown Assemblyman Adriano Espaillat shares a byline in Baltimore with blogger/activist David Sirota, calling for states to force employers to offer health insurance.  read more »

Spring isn't here, but the Presidential campaign is, as charges and countercharges envelope the men  read more »

Late last year, a little-known Democratic Presidential candidate confided deep misgivings about his  read more »

Demonology , by Rick Moody.  read more »

WELLFLEET, Mass.-According to informed sources, i.e., the guy who sells clams down the road, this to  read more »