BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
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Thursday, November 13, 2003
A legend at 34. One fact
really caught my eye in this morning's Boston Herald coverage
of former Herald reporter Paul Corsetti, who died yesterday:
he was 54, and he left the business 20 years ago.
Corsetti was a minor newspaper
legend, going to jail rather than giving up a source and carrying a
gun after he was threatened by James "Whitey" Bulger. I'd forgotten
the details, and was fascinated to be reminded of them this morning.
But to think that he did all of this by the time he was 34.
Amazing.
The obit doesn't seem to be online,
and columnist Peter Gelzinis's tribute
is for subscribers only. Gelzinis, in particular, is in fine form,
observing that Corsetti was a hardbitten throwback to the days when
reporters reported and handed their notes off to "rewrite men," the
guys -- and they were pretty much all guys -- who stayed in the
newsroom and did the actual writing.
Gelzinis quotes Corsetti: "What I
do is get the story and hand it to you ... writers. Otherwise,
what the hell would you do all day?" (BTW, the italics are accurate,
but didn't make the transition to the Herald's
website.)
Here's an
earlier Gelzinis column on
Corsetti that you don't have to pay for. Shhh! Don't tell anyone
where you found it!
Post-post-modern Dowd.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd today
quotes Newsweek quoting the New Yorker. Who does she
think she is? A media critic? A blogger?
No marriage, no protection: no
justice. Media Log confesses to not having followed the Rosie
O'Donnell case in microscopic detail, so maybe I should have known
this already.
But I hadn't realized that Gruner
& Jahr had been able to introduce into evidence e-mails exchanged
between O'Donnell and her partner, Kelli O'Donnell, because -- as the
Times' David Carr puts
it today -- "she was not
entitled to the same protection as a spouse."
Just another small
outrage.
Book report. If you'd like
to hear me talking about my book, Little
People, click
here
and scroll down a bit. You'll be able to listen to the interview
Here & Now's Robin Young did with me yesterday on WBUR
Radio (90.9 FM).
This morning at 11:15 a.m. I'll be
flogging Little People on the PowerNomics Radio Network with
host Tom Pope (click here
to listen); and this evening, sometime between 7:30 and 8 p.m., I'll
be on Nitebeat
with Barry Nolan, on the Comcast Network (CN8).
New in this week's
Phoenix. The real stakes over the Republicans'
phony
outcry re the leaked
Democratic memo from the Senate Intelligence Committee.
posted at 9:18 AM |
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link
MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
