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Boston Herald going for broke
For much of the 20th century The Boston Herald was the leading newspaper in Boston. A broadsheet rather than a tabloid (as at present), it was the generally Republcian voice of the Brahmin aristocracy....
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Regionalism: Behold and Beware.
A frustration in covering Massachusetts politics is seeing the staying power of bad ideas. Perhaps the worst idea with the most staying power is the notion that local self-government as we know it is...
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Farewell to The Providence Journal
With land grants encouraging their expansion, and with the laissez-faire capitalism of the post-Civil War era, railroads were vast sources of wealth—enriching, among others, Vanderbilts, Harrimans and...
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Something Old, Something New In 2008
Be as it may a sign of obsolescence, I spend the first wakening hour of nearly every day reading books. Since no editor or schoolmarm intrudes I go at my own pace, but do read challenging books along...
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The Moral Equivalent Of War?
On April 20, 1945, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morganthau, Jr. met with Harry Truman on the eighth full day of Truman’s presidency to inform him of the financial condition of the government. In...
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Tilting At Carbon
Civics came easily enough but I needed two tries to get through high school chemistry. Today, I refrain from ranking scientific theories but do know the signs when, to paraphrase the Cadet Prayer at...
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Money Now — Reform Never!
Franklin Delano Roosevelt turned 127 on January 30 but is on people’s tongues. President Obama cites his leadership during the Depression as a model for himself; critics say many of the New Deal’s...
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The First American? No, Not Quite
When it came time for my Fifth Grade class to sing, the teacher (of every subject) would blow into a two-inch-in-diameter pitch pipe to key the class to the first note of the selected song. Then, in...
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At Two Cents On The Dollar
It will go down as a great journalistic and capitalistic miscalculation: In 1993, The New York times paid $1.1 billion to buy The Boston Globe from from the descendants of Charles H. Taylor. On April...
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