Published October 14, 2010

The Huffington Post made hay of NPR's directive.

The Huffington Post got a hold of an internal NPR memo (which we received at WBUR) forbidding employees from attending the upcoming Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert “Rally To Restore Sanity” and “March To Keep Fear Alive” events on Capitol Hill. And they ran with it — big.

In her memorandum, NPR’s Ellen Weiss, the senior vice president for news, excerpted NPR’s publicly available ethics code — with a personal annotation in italics:

NPR journalists may not participate in marches and rallies involving causes or issues that NPR covers, nor should they sign petitions or otherwise lend their name to such causes, or contribute money to them. This restriction applies to the upcoming John Stewart and Stephen Colbert rallies.

That last part is what got people so riled up. Of the nearly 8,000 comments on the Huffington Post story, commenter Todd Downing asked: “It’s unclear… did NPR also issue these types of warnings before the Beck rally?”

NPR’s Dana Rehm, the senior vice president for communications, responded in a blog post on NPR.org:

We didn’t get questions from staff about [Glenn Beck’s] Restoring Honor and One Nation rallies, because it was obvious to everyone that these were overtly political events. It’s different with the Colbert and Stewart rallies; they are ambiguous. But their rallies will be perceived as political by many, whatever we think. As such, they are off limits except for those covering the events.

So, are WBUR employees subject to this directive? Sam Fleming, our managing director for news and programming, says it’s a gray area. As an NPR member station, we take guidance from — but are not bound by — NPR’s ethics code.

I asked outright: Could a WBUR employee attend a Jon Stewart rally on personal time? Yes, he said — just as a WBUR employee could attend a Glenn Beck rally. Anyone can attend a rally out of curiosity, not necessarily allegiance to a person or cause.

Where WBUR draws the line is at involvement with political campaigns — either real or symbolic. That means no political bumper stickers, no lawn signs — and the rule applies to all WBUR employees, not just journalists.

If the most trusted name in fake news leads a march on Washington, is it comedy? Or is it politics? NPR says it’s not clear — so journalists may not attend as private citizens. WBUR, on the other hand, makes no such restriction.

• NPR’s code of ethics
• NPR’s official response

Thanks to Adam Schweigert for the screen grab.

Published October 13, 2010

Hot-air balloons in Hudson (Tyler Trahan/Flickr)

Photographer Tyler Trahan visited a hot-air balloon festival in Hudson (just inside 495) and captured something you don’t often see in pictures — balloons at night. He describes the technical details:

0.8 second exposure at ISO 100, f/10. That seemed to be the best balance between good DOF and having the balloons move visibly in the exposure.

Nice work! I am featuring user photos from the WBUR Flickr group every day on Hubbub.

Published October 13, 2010

Clap Elementary in Dorchester might be closed.

Carol Johnson, Boston’s superintendent of schools, is proposing to close six “underperforming” schools in the city. One of them, Roger Clap Elementary in Dorchester, is tiny — 166 students across seven grades.

Smaller is not always better, Johnson recently told Radio Boston:

Small class size can be important. But if you have small class size or small schools — and you don’t focus on the teaching and learning that’s going on in them and thinking about individual students and how you’re going to respond to their needs — it won’t be enough.

Johnson wants to close the six schools based, in large part, on MCAS data that show consistently poor student performance. (Mayor Tom Menino supports the plan, even though it would mean the closure of three schools in his neighborhood of Hyde Park.)

But Kenny Jervis, whose 7-year-old, Sophia, and 4-year-old, Nigel, attend Clap Elementary, says MCAS can’t capture the kind of education happening at Clap.

Jervis created a Facebook group dedicated to keeping the school open, and he shared with me an open letter signed by Clap parents, excerpted here:

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Published October 13, 2010

Almost two weeks after police arrested Kimani Washington in New Hampshire for weapons violations, prosecutors say one of the guns he carried was used in the murders that took four lives in Mattapan on Sept. 28.

Kimani Washington, left, stands with his lawyer John Salsberg, in Dorchester District Court on Wednesday. (Pool photo by Mark Garfinkel)

Washington, 35, did not speak at his arraignment Wednesday. Washington’s lawyer entered a “not guilty” plea on his behalf.

Washington was charged with weapons violations, drug trafficking, receiving a stolen car and being a career criminal. The judge ordered him held on $500,000 $1 million bail.

His lawyer, John Salsberg, has said Washington “unequivocally denies” hurting anyone. “Mr. Washington’s family and friends remain very supportive of him,” the AP quotes the attorney as saying outside the court.

Simba Martin, 21; his girlfriend, Eyanna Flonory, 21, and her two-year-old son, Amani Smith; and Lavaughn Washum-Garrison, 22, were killed. A fifth shooting victim, Marcus Hurd, 32, is clinging to life at a Boston hospital.

If you missed it this morning, WBUR’s Bianca Vazquez Toness reported on the frustration in Mattapan about press coverage of the killings. It’s a conversation I started here last week.

Update, 5:45: A judge raised Washington’s bail to $1 million cash after prosecutors produced a taped confession from Washington admitting he possessed “one of the murder weapons, the surviving victim’s motor vehicle, and a large quantity of crack cocaine.”

Published October 12, 2010

The Friendship on Salem Harbor (Jeff Weeks/Flickr)

Photographer Jeff Weeks shot this pretty picture of the Friendship yesterday in Salem:

I walk by here a couple of times a day on my daily dog walks, and thought the sky and lighting were especially nice this evening. Plus it reminds me of the scene in Pirates of the Caribbean III where they have to flip the Black Pearl upside down at sunset to escape Davey Jones’ locker.

Great reflections, great color!

Jeff submitted his shot to the WBUR Flickr group. Join in and I might feature yours.

Published October 12, 2010

A Washington-bound Acela Express train in Jamaica Plain (Night Owl City/Flickr)

Even though you can get to New York on a $15 bus ticket, more and more people are opting to take the train.

More than 10 million people rode the Washington-New York-Boston rails in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, a 4.3 percent increase over the year before, according to new data from the company. That amounts to almost $900 million in ticket revenue.

“People are now starting to get back to traveling again after the heart of the recession hit about a year ago,” said Cliff Cole, an Amtrak spokesman. (Last year, ridership dropped for the first time since 2006.)

The company says the growth in the Northeast Corridor drove a nationwide ridership record. “It’s one of our biggest moneymakers,” Cole told me.

Why are more people taking the train when the bus is cheap? Gas prices are still high. Road congestion is still exhausting. Air travel is still unpleasant.

Amtrak tickets from Boston to New York run $50 to $200, depending on time of day and amenities. The fast, business-oriented Acela Express — which saw 7 percent growth last fiscal year — offers free Wi-Fi. (So do some bus services, such as the Greyhound-operated BoltBus, but the connections are spotty in my experience.)

Since fiscal year 2000, Northeast ridership is up 37 percent. Now we have to wait about 30 years for super-high-speed trains that can do Boston-New York in 84 minutes. That would beat the pants off a bus ride, which can take five hours on a Friday night.

Published October 12, 2010

After this weekend’s mixed performance in Prague, WBUR Bruinblogger Ric Duarte looks ahead to the 2011 season. Last week, Ric explained the most significant changes to this year’s lineup. –AP

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Boston's Tyler Seguin, right, shoots to score past Ilya Bryzgalov of the Phoenix Coyotes during a game in Prague on Sunday. Boston won 3-0. (Petr David Josek/AP)

The Bruins finished their European vacation looking like the team from last year, with no cohesion and a real knack for making the average goaltender, Ilya Bryzgalov in this case, look like the second coming of Georges Vezina.

In the season opener Saturday in Prague, the Bruins gave up three clean breakaways, one of which the Phoenix Coyotes scored on. They had no fight for the puck. They let Phoenix pretty much have their way. Stop me if you’ve heard this before.

On Sunday, from the opening faceoff, you had to ask, Who are these guys? They fore-checked, they back-checked, they took care of the puck in their own end and created quality scoring chances that were non-existent in the game on Saturday.

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