Published July 14, 2010

When it comes to online comments, WBUR was late to the game. We didn’t allow them on wbur.org until April 2009 — and by then many news organizations had rethought comments altogether. A few news sites and numerous blogs have relaunched without any comments.

The Sun Chronicle, a newspaper in Attleboro, is trying something novel: Would-be commenters must pay a one-time fee of 99 cents to verify their identity.

Should this guy be allowed to comment? (Scott Beale/Flickr)

“This is not about the revenue,” said publisher Oreste D’Arconte. As Curt Nickisch reported, D’Arconte said it’s about reducing the workload for his editors, who spent hours policing comment threads.

Only a small handful of people have signed up at this point, and the complaints are already rolling in — including on our own website. “Perhaps we should further reduce the burden on the newspaper’s editors by no longer reading their paper,” writes “J,” who I suspect would not want his identity revealed at thesunchronicle.com.

It’s a dilemma for news organizations. We all want to be more accessible and interactive. And comments are a no-brainer. But we don’t want to create barriers to interaction.

I talked about this on Radio Boston last month  with Boston Globe writer Neil Swidey, who interviewed some of the most prolific commenters in the polluted backchannels of Boston.com. In that conversation I talked about some ways news organizations can immediately improve the quality of comments:

• Get the journalists involved in the discussion
• Moderate, moderate, moderate — nasty comments set the tone like a snowball rolling downhill
• Require an account, or at least a real e-mail address

At wbur.org, we do the first two. For whatever reason — our online audience is smarter, our traffic lighter? — I can count on two hands the number of times we had to get involved in a thread. (It did get ugly yesterday on David Boeri’s piping plover story.)

We have received a lot of meaningful — anonymous — comments on news stories that we might not have gotten otherwise. Then again, we don’t publish stories without bylines. What do you think? Would you pay a small fee to get access to comments?

Published July 14, 2010

Three sharks have been spotted off the coast of Massachusetts in the past month. The most recent sighting was just offshore, off of Chatham. Great whites are not foreign to these waters, but it never stops being scary.

I’ve created a Google map to locate this season’s shark sightings or captures. Please help improve the map by reporting new sightings or correcting the coordinates.

The experts warn: Don’t swim around seals. Sharks like to eat seals.

Ever encountered a shark? Share your story in the comments.

[googlemap title=”Summer 2010 Shark Sightings In Mass. (Updated 8/23/2010)” url=”http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hq=&hl=en&msa=0&msid=118366230091007475545.00048b4ee655a232006cf&ll=42.022773,-70.073547&spn=1.036509,2.39502&z=9″ width=”630″ height=”400″]

Published July 13, 2010

Try sharing the sand with these guys. (AP)

You might think the tiny piping plovers of Plymouth are a big controversy. But you’ve never met the seals of my hometown San Diego.

They may look cute, but it was a hostile takeover. In the 1990s, scores of harbor seals staged an occupation of the “Children’s Pool” in La Jolla Cove. The historic stretch of beach was once a place for schoolchildren on field trips to play with starfish. After the seals took over, kids weren’t allowed in. No humans were.

The ensuing legal saga has lasted almost two decades. Activists have sued to open up the beach for recreation, and friends of the seals have fought to protect their adopted home. Judges have ruled, overruled and ruled again. It’s political suicide to take a stand on the seals. In the meantime, the spot has become a tourist Mecca.

So it’s hard for me, a San Diegan who covered the seal saga, to take Plymouth’s controversy too seriously. After all, in San Diego it’s seals vs. children, two of nature’s cutest things. Here in Massachusetts, it’s plover versus Hummer.

Beachgoers can’t drive SUVs across certain stretches of sand for a few months a year, to protect the defenseless one-ounce birds from being crushed.

It's Hummer vs. Plover in Plymouth. (Photos by TravOC and auburnxc/Flickr

“The birdies and their nests have taken over the beach,” said Karen Fantasia, of Plymouth.

Um… These birdies — brown-and-white cotton balls with orange toothpick legs, as David Boeri calls them — are hardly taking over. Try sharing the beach with a belching 200-pound sea mammal.

But some people in Plymouth really see these birds as a threat to their human rights. Rich Whelpley started a Facebook page to “take back the beach.”

“You’ve got to make a decision. We care about the wildlife. We care about the people. Do we care about them equally?” Whelpley said. “Or do we say: People aren’t important, they can do something else, this beach is for the birds?”

No comment, Mr. Whelpley, except that people aren’t endangered.

In San Diego, the humans have a good case. The beach is for the kids. In Plymouth, the beach is for the cars?

The plover protesters need a new angle. A suggestion: Piping plovers are illegal immigrants who have better beach access than the taxpaying residents of Plymouth.

Discuss.

Published July 13, 2010

Oh, mannequin. A woman got busted in the carpool lane for having this guy in the passenger seat:

Police did not identify the mannequin.

Observations:

• My colleague Benjamin Swasey asks: “The newsroom wonders why the driver decided she needed to add a vest to the mannequin. The red shirt wasnt life-like enough?”
• I would like to know what that ball cap is. (Should have put a Sox hat on the old man.)
• Nice touch with the crossed legs.
• I had to do some serious color correction on this photo — and still it looks like a police mug shot, which, I guess, it is.

Here’s the e-mail from the Massachusetts State Police press office:

Good afternoon. You’ve all asked for a photo of the mannequin that we caught a woman driving with yesterday in the HOV lane of the Southeast Expressway. Here he is. The driver was cited for improper use of the HOV lane and fined $35. Please note we are not presently doing any sound on this. I will tell you that we do occasionally see people trying to beat the HOV regulations, and that we routinely run details at the entrance to the lanes for just this reason.

What a dummy.

Update: The mannequin is now on Facebook.

Published July 13, 2010

Blog host Andrew Phelps here. Legendary Yankees owner George Steinbrenner is dead, and Boston owns a piece of that story. Intern and sports writer Jeremy Bernfeld looks back.

George Steinbrenner in March (AP)

Say what you want about George Steinbrenner, but the world was more interesting with him in it.

The flamboyant, outspoken, passionate Yankees owner died on Tuesday after being in poor health for years. He was 80.

It is a struggle to describe Steinbrenner.  He built an empire (evil or not) and succeeded in bringing America’s game to a place no one thought possible: the world. An astute businessman, his Yankees grew to be worth more than a billion dollars under his watch while becoming the first baseball team with a stake in its own cable network, one of the largest revenue streams for today’s teams.

And yet Steinbrenner surely will be remembered for perplexing decisions and unbelievable outbursts.  He feuded with managers and players, enforced rigid and sometimes unpopular policies and created a team that some charge with destroying baseball’s competitive balance.

Above all else, he most certainly won.  Since Steinbrenner bought the Yankees in 1973, New York brought home an incredible seven World Series titles.  While the Yankees ascended and the Sox struggled, the New York-Boston rivalry intensified under Steinbrenner’s watch.  He personified the rich, flashy, immoral winner that Red Sox fans hated and became the object of special (in)affection.

[pullquote]Beneath the venom, on sports talk radio, on the T, in the bahs and in the pahks, there was a jealousy.[/pullquote]

Beneath the venom, on sports talk radio, on the T, in the bahs and in the pahks, there was a jealousy.  “Why can’t we get a free-spending, winning-obsessed guy in charge?” we all asked, breathlessly.

To many Sox fans, Steinbrenner was the devil incarnate, but the devil we would have sold our soul to for just one World Series title. Heck, he could have spared one.

Whatever he was, he was famous–presiding over one of the biggest sports franchises in the world’s biggest market will do that.

From the New York Times obituary:

Steinbrenner was the central figure in a syndicate that bought the Yankees from CBS for $10 million. When he arrived in New York on Jan. 3, 1973, he said he would not “be active in the day-to-day operations of the club at all.” Having made his money as head of the Cleveland-based American Shipbuilding Company, he declared, “I’ll stick to building ships.”

Steinbrenner certainly did not stick to building ships. Famous for rapidly making changes within his organization, he didn’t stick to much.

He was the man most Bostonians loved to hate, and in that way, he’ll forever stick to Boston.

Published July 12, 2010

The Public Garden is a great place. (Michael Durwin/Flickr)

Today the commonwealth releases a list of 1,000 great places — or is it the 1,000 greatest places? (The official Web page shows both. If it’s the latter, I pity the 1,000th greatest place in Massachusetts.)

Gov. Deval Patrick established a commission 19 months ago to round up the Bay State’s great places, and they came up with about 15,000, with help from the public. Someone — probably an editor — told them to get the list down to 1,000. Bob Oakes said it best this morning: “It’s almost as if you can’t throw a stone without hitting something great.”

In seriousness, Massachusetts is filled with great places. “Greatness is all around you,” said my favorite native, Ben Franklin. Boston Harbor, the Public Garden and the Common, the USS Constitution, the Old North Church, the Old South Church, the Granary Burying Ground, the Mt. Auburn Cemetery, the Longfellow Bridge, the Zakim Bridge, Mass MoCA, Walden Pond, Cape Cod, Harvard Square, Davis Square, Sullivan’s food stand, the little park behind my apartment, ooh, the Arnold Arboretum — OK, I see how you could generate a list pretty quickly.

What are you greatest places? Let’s get a list going. Share in the comments.

Update: Here’s the list (Scribd). It’s not weighted.

Published July 9, 2010

Slurp in style (and for free!) this weekend. (Joe Marinaro/Flickr)

It’s a culture fest in the Bean this weekend. Whether you’re letting your inner Francais show through or downing all the Greek food you’ll ever want, the world’s at our feet — let’s just hope it doesn’t sizzle on the pavement.

Continue reading →

Published July 9, 2010

Hubbub host Andrew Phelps here. WBUR’s Sonari Glinton covered Thursday’s fire at Deluca’s Market, one of Boston’s oldest grocery stores. It was a four-alarm fire that took five hours to extinguish. The story led Sonari to a yarn from a colleague who worked at Deluca’s more than 40 years ago. Here’s Sonari.

____

After spending hours watching the market smolder, I couldn’t help but wonder about the thousands of stories inside those walls. I posted a few photos of the fire on Facebook, and then one such story came to me.

I got this intriguing e-mail about Deluca’s from my colleague, Art Silverman:

My second home from 1967-71.  Had all the free roast beef I ever needed. Quit meat after that. When punks beat the crap out of me on Beacon Street, Virgil Aiello came to my rescue. Fond memories

Art Silverman (Sonari Glinton/WBUR)

Art works with me on NPR’s All Things Considered (my real job — I’m only moonlighting here in Boston). Art is sort of ATC’s mad radio scientist/genius. If there is something kooky, interesting, weird or funny on our show, there’s a pretty good chance Art played some role in it. This dude has stories, so I had to call him.

Art was a stock boy at Deluca’s from 1967-1971. It was his first full-time job. Here’s Art’s story as he told it to me, with some editing:

I occasionally made deliveries, which is where you really made the cash. The customers they had were some of the wealthiest people on Beacon Hill and Back Bay.

You got to drive a car, and it was all banged up and they didn’t care if you put new dents in it. It was impossible to drive this van without bumping into something.

I remember delivering, among the customers, Ted Kennedy, Al Capp (the cartoonist of Lil’ Abner fame). I remember delivering to Ursula Andress’ sister.

This was 1967. I was on the way back with my long hair, about 8 in the evening. A car pulled up, and I would count six to eight guys got out of a dark Chrysler and just set upon me. Beating the the pulp out of me with their hands, kicking me in the head. I was bleeding, somewhat unrecognizable. I ran to Deluca’s Market and pounded on the door, and Virgil Aiello, one of the owners — he’s an ex-Marine — he said, “What the hell happened?” I told him. He got a meat clever. He went running after them down Beacon Street.

Virgil patched me up with butcher’s aprons and took me to Mass General. I’m forever in their debt. They were just good people.

I knew I didn’t want to be in retail. In 1970, I stopped eating meat. And I still haven’t, I’ve never gone back.

Art said he’d seen the insides of enough chickens and cows for a lifetime. But he was glad to have worked for Deluca’s, taken in some of that Italian-American culture — danger and all.