Copyright © 1998 by the Boston Phoenix, Inc. All rights reserved.

This Just In: Media

Bitch, bitch, bitch

By Dan Kennedy

The News Mait Writers' Cooperative Web site is loaded with useful tools for journalists: reference sources, professional organizations, online news, search engines, and a moderated discussion group.

But let's get real.

The reason it's become such a guilty little pleasure among journalists is its "Newspaper Intelligence" section, consisting of reams of anonymous comments -- filled with bitterness and loathing -- about newsrooms across the country. "If Deep Throat had been a scribe," News Mait promises, "the information he would have leaked to the press about his boss or place of employment is what you will find on this page."

Greater Boston's journalists can bitch with the best of them, which makes for some mighty entertaining reading. As for the credibility of the complaints, News Mait puts it this way: "The opinions expressed on this page belong solely to the contributors."

The Boston Herald. "Can-do attitude and energy give the bigger Boston Globe a good fight, but morale is beaten down by editors who heap on three stories a day and have little time for enterprise because of chronic understaffing.... Unfortunately, the copy desk is on a permanent vacation, and editors never learned their grammar. Overall, a good place to work, but you don't want to make a career there."

The Quincy Patriot Ledger. "The reporters are (with some exceptions) top-notch, hard-working, and a great group to hang out with.... Half the copy desk is deadweight who take facts and reach new heights of fiction. The other half is great.... This paper is a pale ghost of what it once was; barring widespread changes from top management on down, the situation will only get worse."

The Lowell Sun. "Morale, office politics, and working conditions are all very poor.... Journalists are pressured to use stories as a tool to promote the political allies and ideology (pro-development for city of Lowell) of the management and to do less-than-fair stories on any people or projects that conflict with these interests."

The Middlesex News. "Certainly a good place to start. That's about its only enduring quality. Ninety-nine percent of stories are announcements. And if you have a good story that beats the Boston media out of the sky, forget about getting it printed because newspaper has no cojones. And in the end, that's why its circulation is going down the toilet."

The only disappointment was that no one from the Boston Globe, a notorious hotbed of discontent, has seen fit to weigh in. At least not yet.