A funny thing happened on the way to the back pages

Loosely Speaking by Nancy Gaines

In a move attracting no fanfare and little attention, the Boston Globe's multiple Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Paul Szep ended his 30-year stint on the editorial pages this week, moving to the comics. "It was no secret that this hasn't been my best time on the editorial pages. We're in a period of political correctness here that doesn't lend itself to what I do," says Szep, who didn't get along with editorial-page editor Dave Greenway; on the comics page, he's under the authority of editor Matt Storin. Over the years, Szep thrust the Globe into the national limelight with his take-no-prisoners, liberal-leaning cartoons; last year he got into hot water with Irish Catholics over one that denigrated Irish blowhards. Szep's new six-times-per-week panel, Top Secrets, will be "totally apolitical."

At first ego: Dueling cameos What with his Boston Properties real-estate empire, plus U.S. News & World Report, New York's Daily News, the Atlantic Monthly, and Fast Company, you'd think Mort Zuckerman would have enough to do. Apparently not. He had time to make a cameo appearance in the film At First Sight. Perhaps he had to keep up with developer Dick Friedman, who appeared in Newton resident David Mamet's The Spanish Prisoner. At least Friedman had the smarts to stay in character, playing, albeit woodenly, a rich investor. Zuckerman had the bad taste to play a homeless man.

"When you're in the business of offending people," he says, sounding weary, "people you don't even know hate you. I've been blackballed from some golf clubs, I've had death threats, I've had people vandalize my home. It's interesting, 'cause I hang around with [Today co-host] Matt Lauer, and people love him. And people hate me. I think I need a break.

"And however innocuous these things I'm doing now are, there's a creative process involved. I'd rather do this than be frustrated trying to do the other thing the way I wanted."

Speaking of frustrated, wonder how Metro columnist Eileen McNamara felt last week when, on the same day she lamented the scant attention being paid to the murder trial of horrifically battered six-year-old Eric Dawood, the Metro section relegated a story on the subject to the pages following the sports section, below New England News Briefs. McNamara wouldn't comment, but a week later, on the same page as another McNamara column, the Globe saw fit to tease an inside story on the verdict.

Word is also around of more changes soon to take place at the Globe (not necessarily related to discontent), including Living pages editor Nick King's possible move to the Sunday magazine. Rumor has him replaced by Food and At Home editor Fiona Luis, who is married to Globe political editor Doug Bailey. And Metro editor Teresa Hanafin, the story goes, will shift to a computer-related post, making room for her deputy, Peter Canellos, to take over Metro.

Former wives' second lives

When the aforementioned Mort Zuckerman (or at least his übereditor Harry Evans) hired former Boston TV reporter Sharon King to pen a new page-two feature for the Daily News on things to do, her debut raised eyebrows in the newsroom. It wasn't merely that some staffers objected to the shrinking of the news hole, but that her previous incarnation there was as wife of former publisher Jim Hoge and a glamour girl among the New York social/media set. Divorced several years ago from Hoge, King, who in the 1970s was a star TV consumer reporter, has kept her hand in journalism, writing for magazines including Forbes, Mirabella, and GQ. She's also kept close ties to the Hub, editing Delta Airlines' Shuttle Sheet.

Lazy to go-go

Superstar caterer Susan Callender is soon to bring her talents to the over-the-counter market with a gourmet takeout shop on Peterborough Street, in the Fenway. The Lazy Susan Boulangerie, scheduled to debut in March, will offer the prepared foods her Boston Unique Events has popularized over the past 11 years, and will have a small seating area.

The Bostonization of New York?

The New York Times found it necessary to point out recently that a new restaurant in Manhattan called Figs has no tie to the Todd and Olivia English operations of the same name. The owner just likes figs.

Native intelligence

We were happy to see that former Baywatch babe Traci Bingham, born and raised in Cambridge, is, literally and figuratively, growing up. Three years ago, when Bingham burst onto the national scene, the attendant publicity said she was 25. Or 23, depending on which press release you read. But a check of her birth certificate showed otherwise. Last week, the PR mill noted that Bingham had a birthday: her 31st. . . . Folks in the advertising business are buzzing about a big new account Arnold Communications (of Volkswagen fame) may land. Speculation centers on a media or show-biz account, in line with Arnold's recent takeover of two California agencies. The spotlight is on the Loews theater chain, which, by coincidence, was founded in Boston and has been talking about opening a fancy-schmantzy new cinema in Boston this year, in an undisclosed location.