Sue O’Connell and Jeff Coakley yesterday acquired the largest gay-and-lesbian newspaper in New England and a Boston neighborhood paper, according to Dan Kennedy. Coakley was the Phoenix’s director of classified advertising in the mid ’90s; O'Connell served two tours of duty as the paper's entertainment sales manager before leaving in 1998 to become associate publisher of Bay Windows, a 22,000- circulation publication targeting the region's GLBT community.
David Bernstein and Adam Reilly have both been hired to replace Seth Gitell, who left in May to become Mayor Tom Menino's press secretary, reports Boston Magazine's James Burnett. The double-hire also helps to address a vacancy created when Dorie Clark left the paper to serve as a spokesperson on Howard Dean's campaign. The Phoenix has been "a longtime incubator for well-known national political scribes," says Burnett, who lists Joe Klein, Sid Blumenthal, Michael Crowley and Ted Widmer among the paper's distinguished alumnus.
Dan Kennedy, the Boston Phoenix's media critic, originally opposed publication of the video and photo of Daniel Pearl's grisly slaughter. Now that his paper has carried through with its vow to publish the images, Kennedy has changed his mind. "It's important to see the Daniel Pearl video because it's important to look into the face of the pure evil we're up against," Kennedy writes. "It's important to see it because merely reading a description of it cannot do justice to its full horror."
Knapp was hired as a lifestyle writer for the Boston Phoenix in 1988, and invented an alter ego, Alice K., who attracted a cult following in Boston. "As a writer Caroline had a signature style," the Phoenix writes in an article for Wednesday's paper. "Her grace sometimes masked the broad stretch of her range. As a reporter, she was dogged and inventive." Knapp was the author of two New York Times best-selling memoirs: "Drinking: A Love Story" and ''Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs.'' She died Monday of lung cancer. (Photo by Mark Morelli)
The paper is already drawing heat for its Web site link to videos of reporter Daniel Pearl's gruesome murder in Pakistan. Now Publisher Stephen Mindich has told reporters he intends to publish photos of the slaying this week, if the grainy photos will reproduce, the Hartford Courant reports. "It has to be seen," Mindich told the Courant. "This is not a movie. It's not Hollywood. This is a human being [that] went through this thing. While I understand the pain felt by the Pearl family, the pain is as great for all of us in a different way. I think this brings the pain to everybody."
"This is the the single most gruesome, horrible, despicable, and horrifying thing I've ever seen,'' Boston Phoenix Publisher Stephen Mindich says in an editorial accompanying his paper's link to the unedited video showing Pearl's decapitation. In an interview with the Boston Globe, Mindich decried the fact that the tape had not been more widely viewed and discussed.
Kristen Lombardi of the Boston Phoenix is singled out by CJR for her coverage of the story of pedophile priests being shielded by the Catholic hierarchy. "Her prodigiously reported pieces documented the sorry history of Geoghan's career, as well as the still sorrier protection of that career, and too many others like it, by the church and by Cardinal Law," CJR writes.
Another front has opened in the Boston news box war. Still embroiled in a lawsuit over whether free-circulation newspaper boxes can be banned in Boston's Back Bay, plaintiffs say the city took their boxes away from sites near Red Sox stadium on opening day, while the paid daily boxes weren't touched, Seth Gitell of the Boston Phoenix reports.
A ruling on whether Boston can ban news-boxes in the Back Bay may be handed down as early as Monday, the Boston Phoenix, a plaintiff in the case, reports. "As far as the Back Bay is concerned, aesthetics are far more important than the exchange of ideas," Seth Gitell writes in the Phoenix.
