I ran a small handful of keyword searches that are near and dear to me in Microsoft’s new search engine Bing today and found that the gossip section in the Boston Herald, the Inside Track Gals, used one of my pictures on May 11 to illustrate some item related to the the Boston Celtics Dancers.

Google’s image search is pretty good at suppressing image swipers but the current incarnation of Bing seems to put a premium on recentness (Yahoo!’s image search is a butt load of Flickr images). Because of that, I imagine, the Herald’s sticky fingers bubbled to the top row on the Bing image search results.

The Inside Track used a re-sized version of the second photo of my suite of pictures of the Boston Celtics Dancers that I took during a game against the Atlanta Hawks almost two years ago. The caption has it that it is a “file” photo. I rather doubt that such a low-res image would end up in a photo catalog so I assume that “file” means “pilfered from some site on the Internet”. Here’s a re-sized and cropped screenshot of the Inside Track’s completely unauthorized usage of the photo:

Here’s the original photo:

A couple of months ago I quoted a local politician in Sweden recounting how government revenue projections are repeatedly revised downwards because of the terrible toll the recession in the United States is taking on the global economy’s export-driven participants. The local newspaper in my native city reports this weekend on another town that’s facing rapidly growing budget deficits because of collapsing revenue:

In the beginning of the year politicians in Gnesta [the G is not silent] thought it would suffice with a couple of million [SEK] in spending reductions. But the deficit has deepened along with the recession.

- In April we said four million and one can save that by asking all the departments to keep their belts tight. But then came another cold-shower [projecting even lower revenue] and now we have be specific and tell each department how much they need to cut back, says town alderman Henric Soderlund.

And he fears it will get even worse.

- New projections will be announced at the end of June and they aren’t likely to be any more fun, he says.

The department that gets hit the hardest in Gnesta is Human Services according to the newspaper article, which is fairly normal since that’s one of the real big-ticket items in municipalities in Sweden.

(My translation and editing)

A picture of a Target Assets Protections tricycle personnel carrier at the Target store in Watertown. I don’t know whether it’s a souped up pimped Segway or some kind of electric vehicle. I have to say it’s more stylish than the plain vanilla segways that mall cops ride. Target wins - again.

some nitwit who copied passages because the idea of writing was more appealing than the writing itself.

Udolpho.com on Ben Domenech, 3/26/2006

New York Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd (461) has gotten herself into a pinch by lifting a paragraph written by blogger Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo fame and using it in one of her columns without attribution. That’s plagiarism (4,990).

In the dark world of Search Engine Optimization and affiliate marketing (the two of which I shall refer to collectively as online marketing) we don’t worry about plagiarism as much as so-called duplicate content. In our world we answer to a power much higher than editors, we answer to Google, and Google does not take kindly to duplicate content. Consequently, when I manage or supervise writers - or content writers as we are prone to call them in online marketing - I implore them to check phrases and sentences they write to make sure they aren’t identical or closely similar to existing copy on the web, especially when it comes to sentences that contain the keywords we try to push.

(Even on this monumentally unprofessional blog I put the vast majority of quoted text in blockquote tags and the remainder in quotes to inform both readers and search engine bots that the enclosed text is in fact a quote and could very well be found elsewhere, especially on pages I link to from that web page. Occasionally I also wrap the attribution in a cite tag to really drive home where I’m getting the material from, whether the the source is online or not.)

In other words, Dowd not only failed to live up to the standards I expect of part-time minimum wage writers, she merrily violated those standards by knowingly, willfully lifting copy.

But Dowd is far from a part-time minimum wage writer (0) looking to build her portfolio. She is a big deal, at the top of the journalistic totem pole, a brand name more than a writer. What she writes about and how she writes is a good deal more important than what she actually writes. If you are a fan and frequent reader of Dowd and the mind-candy she regularly outputs in her column do you really care if she occasionally adds some candy that isn’t strictly speaking hers? As a fan of Dowd (0), how harshly do you want her to be punished for bringing you witticisms even wittier than what she can produce? If you, like me, aren’t a fan of hers and never read her stuff and pretty much don’t even give her existence much thought unless she happens to augment some content of hers with a few lines written by a better and harder-working writer, well, how much does it really bother you that she isn’t as good as perhaps some would want to have you believe?

We are, after all, talking about one insipid paragraph in a long stream insipid name-brand content that’s been output by Dowd over the course of many years. I compare Dowd’s error to the kind of transgressions radio talk show hosts occasionally commit. Radio yakkers typically yak for several hours each day and it doesn’t strike me as particularly outrageous, or even noteworthy, that they cross the line from time to time. I suggested yesterday that journalists who plagiarize should have to send half their paycheck to the writer they victimize. The kind of plagiarists I had in mind for the half-a-pay-check punishment are columnists.

My lax standards for op-ed columnists don’t extend to reporters. If, say, Boston Globe’s reporter Maria Cramer stole a paragraph or two from a blogger to spice up an article she would seriously undermine the credibility of her work. Likewise, if you write novels, essays or science papers of one kind or another you pretty much burn yourself when you plagiarize.

Perhaps I have a misplaced lack of respect and appreciation for the Dowds of the world.

(Number of exact matches on Google for the preceding phrase)

Peacuddy’s Cafe & Bakery in Melrose - a rather pleasant town north of Boston - is a terrific little place to have a cup of coffee and something to eat (Peacuddy’s serves Rao’s so you know the coffee is good). They have great cookies, too.

Massachusetts instituted universal health care in 2006 which has led to longer wait times to see a doctor according to survey that Boston Globe reports on today. The promise of universal health care is that it will reduce cost by expanding preventative care to a larger share of population. Reality is of course different:

“If someone calls with chest pain, their doctor is not going to say, ‘Come back in three weeks.’ That is not going to happen,” he said. “But naturally, the patients who want a routine evaluation are going to go to the bottom of the list.”

Routine evaluation is the basis for preventative care. Oh, well, there’s still diet and exercise. See you at the ER.

New England Patriots tight end David Thomas is preparing for what is likely going to be his last training camp with the team. Hope springs eternal in the off season, as the Boston Globe’s Christopher L. Gasper reminds us:

One advantage for Thomas is that for the first time since his rookie campaign he’s been able to have full-throttle participation in the offseason program because he’s not coming off a major injury.

One disadvantage for Thomas is that he’s just not particularly good at playing football. He’s got the speed and the hands and he can block well enough but for whatever reason he simply can’t put it together on the field come game time.

Going to the ball game
leaving work early
sitting in a back up
stuck on Storrow Drive

Get honked at
Get yelled at
Get cut off
price gouged
Get blocked in
Get ticketed

I tell you, fans, it’s harder than it looks
it’s a long way to Fenway Park when Boston Red Sox are home

Metro USA has been sold by its Swedish owner to a company called Seabay Media, which is headed by Metro’s former CEO, Pelle Tornberg (Törnberg in Swedish) who’s widely regarded as the newspapers founder. Metro’s American newspapers have a week-daily circulation of 590,000 and supposedly snag 1.2 million readers in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston (where the Boston Globe owns 49% of the newspaper in a No-Win No-Lose partnership) who can’t be bothered to bring any reading material of their own to whatever public transportation they use (as much as I don’t particularly care for Metro I have to admit that the defunct Boston Now showed how surprisingly easy it is to make a newspaper that’s much, much worse).

Not much information about the deal is available other than what is in the announcement made by Metro and Seabay so we’ll have to resort to old-school Kremlology. The Seabay contact person listed in the press release has a Swedish cellphone number and works in Investment Management/Restructuring according to a partial LinkedIn profile. Not your typical newspaper PR flak, but more promising for Metro readers and employees than, say, a tax-shelter consultant or a debt collector from a biker gang.

Hardly anything has been reported about this Seabay Media company or how much capital it has at its disposal. Is Tornberg its lone investor, its main investor, or just the front person for a small or large gaggle of money men? I don’t know. Is the company loaded with cash or leveraged with debt? I don’t know. Nor is it known how much Seabay is paying for the Metro’s US operations, if anything at all. It could simply be that it is taking over obligations and liability, thus saving Metro from having to throw good money after bad. It has been rumored that Metro, which lost even more money in the U.S. in 2007 (8.9 million euro) than it did in the dreadful 2008 (5.3 million), has been unwilling to shut down its U.S. operations because of long-term contracts with printers that contain very costly early-exit fees.

(This lack of insider-information about the deal supports my hypothesis that while Americans take enormous pride in out-leaking each other Swedes prefer to stay mum.)

Tornberg did say in an interview on Monday that Seabay Media is not going to launch the Metro USA newspapers on the web as it will be enough work, according to Tornberg, to make and keep the printed papers profitable.

However, there is reason to believe that Tornberg is in it to win it rather than just perform some kind of financial alchemy for quick profit or tax-evasion purposes (perhaps something involving what would amount to a hostile handover of Metro Boston to minority-owner Boston Globe). In an interview last year he claimed to have a “positive” outlook on the future for newspapers, but allowed that the “business model must change” and added that paid-for newspapers “with exclusive content … must make themselves more expensive and live with smaller circulation.” The multiples mentioned in the interview are 3-5 times current subscription prices.

The interviewer concludes by asking “so there is a future for newspapers?” Tornberg’s one-word answer: “Absolutely.”

In another interview, held in Swedish, from late last year Tornberg made the same point about newspapers having to segment free versus paid-for content and charge the small number of readers willing to pay much more than they currently do. Tornberg also points to Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of Wall Street Journal as a sign that newspapers have a viable financial future (News Corp. shareholders are free to disagree). He says that the market’s winners will be companies that have enough money to weather the current rough times.

As an aside, trading higher subscription rates for a smaller circulation has been suggested for the Boston Globe by Boston-based media professor and former journalist Dan Kennedy as one part of a strategy to improve that fortunes of that newspaper.

And now for something completely different. Seabay probably sounds a bit odd to Americans. I’m guessing it’s a literal translation of the Swedish word havsvik, which Americans would know as “sea bay.” The typical Swede probably imagines a sea bay as deeper and more narrow than most Americans would, a tranquil place from where one can behold the majestic beauty of the sea without being exposed to its winds and currents. In other words, a nice place to be for a media company in these - here it comes - stormy times for the newspaper industry. I’ll be here all week!

A photograph of a sign in a Pottery Barn Kids store at Burlington Mall in Burlington, Massachusetts:

Are they sure it’s “”their” space” and not “their “space”?”

…as long as it isn’t a spelling bee

Here’s a sign from a CVS store in Winchester in Massachusetts:

A question mark would have been in order in place of the mysterious ellipsis, but at least whoever created the sign didn’t put a random word in quotes for no particular reason (I imagine “supplies” would have been a strong candidate).