RIGHT THE FIRST TIME: but would it have killed them to call?

Last August, I took the Boston Herald to task for failing to contact American Repertory Theatre artistic director Robert Brustein before reporting that this would be his final season (see " This Just In, " News and Features, August 25, 2000).

As it turned out, Herald theater critic Terry Byrne's unnamed sources were right on the money, despite Brustein's vociferous next-day denial to the Boston Globe. Last week, Harvard University and the ART announced that Brustein will be leaving, to be replaced by award-winning director Robert Woodruff - identified by Byrne last August as the leading candidate.

Byrne and her editors - managing editor for features Kevin Convey and arts editor Greg Reibman, both of whom are now with the Herald's corporate sibling, Community Newspaper Company - are entitled to crow. I still wonder, though, about their original decision not to obtain a comment from Brustein or any other ART official - driven, they told me, by fears that the Globe would be tipped off and the Herald would lose its exclusive. As I wrote at the time, the Herald allowed itself to look wrong on an important front-page story.

Now we know that they were right all along. But the original story would have been more solid if they had worried less about the Globe and showed more concern for their readers.

Issue Date: May 31 - June 7, 2001