Beleaguered Boston Herald sports reporter John Tomase’s coverage of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s press conference on what former New England Patriots employee Matt Walsh had to say about the team’s videotaping habits includes the following passage:

[A]fter the press conference, NFL counsel Gregg Levy explained that Walsh had passed on observations from the walkthrough to former Patriots assistant Brian Daboll, who’s now with the Jets.

“Walsh was asked during the interview today whether after the walkthrough, anyone asked him about what he had seen,” Levy said. “He said ‘yes’. He saw Brian Daboll . . . and Daboll asked him what he saw. Walsh said two things — one, he had seen Marshall Faulk in a formation to receive a kickoff or a punt, and he had been asked about offensive formations, particularly about the use of the tight end. My understanding is that is not consistent with what we had learned prior to the interview, during the course of the investigation. At this point, it’s uncorroborated, but it’s something the league is going to look into.”

I wonder who Tomase’s infamous anonymous source is? It stands to reason to assume that it would be someone who Tomase would have found credible, someone who could have been in touch with both Walsh and the Patriots coaching staff in 2001. Who framed John Tomase? And why would that person have held such animus towards the Patriots?

Will the Herald move Tomase, or will the newspaper stand its ground and perhaps even out the source? For a variety of reasons, I think the newspaper will give Tomase a new assignment, even as it stands behind him. Way behind him , as the old joke goes.

A paid daily circulation of 388,000. A free daily circulation of 335,000. More than 3 million monthly web site visitors. 17 visitor reference, lifestyle and economic development publications. 181 penny saver editions. 97% of all this can be yours for $630 million.

Actually, it can’t anymore, because Cablevision has already bought Newsday in a $650 million zero-equity deal financed by Bank of America (money down is so last millennium). The seller, Tribune Company, will retain 3% stake of the newspaper valued at $20 million.

Cablevision is a so-called triple-play service provider that offers subscribers bundled cable television, telephone service, and Internet access. It has three million subscribers, mostly in the New York area. The company has a particularly strong position on its native Long Island. Cablevision also owns Madison Square Garden, the New York Rangers, and the New York Knickerbockers, along with various media properties like IFC and AMC.

Cablevisions’s main owners - the Dolans - recently abandoned a stalled effort to take the company private. The company has a long history of rather pricey acquisitions. In 1988 it shelled out $550 million to purchase Viacom Inc.’s cable systems on Long Island and suburban Cleveland. One of Cablevision’s main competitors at that time was Times Mirror, which then owned Newsday (tribune acquired the newspaper as part of a merger in 2000). Earlier this month Cablevision agreed to acquire Sundance Channel for $496 million, almost one hundred million dollars more than the channel’s owners reportedly had expected to pull in.

According to a 10-K filing 78% of Tribune Co.’s publishing revenue came from advertising and 14% from subscriptions and sales. Those numbers are for all of the the company’s newspapers, not Newsday specifically (some of Tribune’s other newspapers are Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and Hartford Courant).

According to the Wall Street Journal, one media analysts estimates that Cablevision could increase Newsday’s circulation by 100,000. That would mean some $25-30 million in subscription and sales revenue, plus a multiple in extra advertising revenue. So maybe $100-$120 million in extra revenue? Newsday’s revenue fell 13%, to $498 million, from 2005 to 2007, while circulation dropped by 10%. Cablevision needs to boost circulation by 44,000 just to bring it back to 2005 levels.

Here’s an odd reaction to Cablevision’s purchase of Newsday:

“Being owned by an Internet service provider company opens up a range of options for a newspaper to generate revenue from people accessing the Internet,” said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a think tank in Washington. “Revenue from the Internet service can go to underwrite the content.”

So, in Mr. Rosenstiel opinion, Cablesvision’s owner borrowed $650 million to provide Newsday’s news room with a revenue stream from cable subscribers. OK.

Finally, here’s a prescient quote from tribune’s 10-K mentioned previously in this post:

[C]ompetition for certain types of acquisitions is significant, particularly in the Interactive space. Even if successfully negotiated, closed and integrated, certain acquisitions or investments may prove not to advance our business strategy and may fall short of expected return on investment targets.

Selling in the dead-tree market space is a much better business proposition. Well done, Tribune, and good luck, Cablevision.

Three topics to ponder: CHB, John Tomase, and whether Pat Purcell should waste money on beefing up the Boston Herald’s sport section.

Mark In The Car is on the phone. What’s up, Mark?

Yo, Matt, listen, dude. All these people who rag on Shank are retards, figuratively speaking. Take this guy Boston Blood Sox who wrote a post on how stupid and irrelevant CHB is – and then he emailed the douchebag to let him know how irrelevant he is. And then he posted the douchemeister’s six word answer, which wasn’t “your post is the greatest ever,” just to underscore how irrelevant he is. Let me tell you, Matt, when it comes to covering Boston sports, you’re irrelevant, I’m irrelevant, but Shank is like the bleeping Pope. Everybody listens to him, if only to rip him. A Pope in a world of Ian Paisleys.

But I know you don’t care for Shank The Pope of Douche, either, Mark In The Car.

No, I stopped reading him years ago. The guy can’t write one sentence without alluding to the Red Sox. I’m a bleeping Patriots fan. I don’t to need to hear that Ellis Hobbs failing to cover a wide receiver is like Billy Buckner failing to pick up a ball in the World Series in 1986, or whatever. I’m not a homoSoxual. It’s not my bag, baby.

Well put, Mark In The Car.

You know how a platoon of sports writers has left the Globe recently?

Yes?

But no football writers.

Right.

You know why?

Tell me, Mark In The Car.

Because The Globe DOESN’T HAVE ANY FOOTBALL WRITERS. They’re all a bunch of seamheads who despise football.

Come on, they have Mark Reiss…

…who’s basically a blogger with a paycheck. Here’s the prototypical Mike Reiss question at a Bill Belichick press conference: Your team has an offense, can you talk about the qualities of it and what it brings to the team?

Mark In The Car, listen to me. He could ask Belichick anything and the answer would be the same. In the best interest of the team. It is what it is. We can all play better, coach better, prepare better. Blah, blah, blah.

He could bring something. Something off the wall. Like the guy who asked Bill about what his mom thinks about the way he dresses during games. The setup for that question was outstanding.

I know, I know, Mark In The Car. That was classic.

But it would never have happened had it not been for the Boston Herald. And now fans want to run poor John Tomase out of town for quoting an unnamed source.

Tomase. Speaking of bloggers with a paycheck…

Yeah, so the guy can’t tell football from soccer or soccer from synchronized swimming but at least he’s is trying to play journalist. You know, occasionally asking uncomfortable questions, writing articles that aren’t suck-up jobs to the team owners. Hey, if Belichick hadn’t misinterpreted the rrrrrules there would never have been an unnamed source. But fans are acting as if Tomase tripped Hobbs in the Super Bowl.

Yeah, it’s kind of sad. But it was a tough, tough loss for Patriots fans and they want to vent.

Yeah, if only the players had cared half as much as us fans…

They cared enough, they just didn’t believe they could possibly lose. They were almost right. Any one of four or five plays on the last Giants drive alone would have won the game for us. But it is what it is. We’re moving on. Kansas City. Hey, Mark In The Car, what do you think of Adam Riley’s idea that the Herald should go mano-a-mano against the Globe in sports coverage?

I saw that. Listen, man, the guy’s an idiot. What would the Herald get out of doing that, besides maybe winning a prize for best sports coverage in East Central New England? There’s no way a newspaper can recoup that kind of investment these days. Hiring seven people, how much is that? North of half a rock, I guarantee you that. How are they going to get that money back?

Not going to happen. I agree, it’s a hare-brained idea. But the guy’s a bust, anyway, so who cares?

He’s the Andy Katzenmoyer of media critics.

How very CHB of you, MITC.

I read the blogs. I’m jiggy with the haters. Rut ro. w00t, w00t. Air quotes.

Anything else, Mark In The Car?

Yeah, did you know that the median age of Massachusetts residents increased from 36.5 in 2000 to 38.5 in 2007, according to population estimates by the United Sta…

Bye, Mark, see you next Tuesday.

Dan Kennedy has a write-up on Adam Gaffin and his site Universal Hub in the latest issue of MassINC’s magazine Commonwealth. Universal Hub is a bit of a big deal for many of us bloggers in Boston and people who cover or influence the city for profit should probably follow it on a regular basis. As Kennedy mentions in his article, Gaffin is a pretty old-school journalist who won’t serve you any silly bloggers-shall-rule-the-Earth rhetoric.

Kennedy and Gaffin were both members of a panel at a MassINC sponsored event last year that discussed young adults and their news consumption.

Tom Casale claimed on PFW In Progress today that Comcast in New England used a generic show description in its program guide for the episode of South Park last week that called New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick a cheater. According to Casale, an unnamed source at Comcast believed an episode-specific description wasn’t “appropriate for this area.” (You can listen to the show here (South Park is discussed in the last five minutes or so)).

The episode, “Eek,a Penis,” was, in my opinion, hit-and-miss, as is often the case with South Park. What probably annoyed me the most was that Eric Cartman (posing as Cartmenez, a Chicano-nationalist teacher) said the Patriots violated league rules by videotaping opposing defenses. In reality, they violated the rules by video taping opposing teams’ coaches on the sideline. However, the line How do I reach these kiiids? is a definite keeper.

Boston’s second free daily newspaper, BostonNow (or perhaps it is, or was, Boston Now) has folded. It launched last year, backed by an Icelandic company, with the nominally rather ambitious goal of marrying and blending web and printed content in one extensible orgasm of professional and amateur journalism. In reality it became an almost indescribably awful rag. The professional journalism in the newspaper was abysmal and the thoroughly mediocre excerpts from various local blogs embarrassing. BostonNow occasionally carried full-page four-color ads from H&M featuring hot babes, which prompted the obvious joke: I read if for the H&M ads!

Reactions to the newspaper’s demise:

Local freelance writer says see ya!

Dan Kennedy - incredibly - says Mission: Accomplished. OK, he actually says a bit more than that.

Will Iceland now return to pre-industrial poverty?

Boston Magazine does the cha-cha on Now’s grave.

Final words: It’s now been proven beyond a doubt that Mainland Scandinavians (Swedes and Norwegians, specifically) rule New Media. Eat cod, ye volcano islanders!

On Tuesday night I went to a seminar where a bunch of seamheads lamented the rise of professional football. No, seriously, I went to a panel discussion organized by MassINC that tackled the issue of young adults and their seeming aversion to news in general and traditional news media in particular and what news organizations can do to connect with young adults.

The panelists were Assistant Professor Dan Kennedy (Northeastern University), Deputy Editor on Boston Globe’s editorial board Dante Ramos, WBUR reporter Bianca Vasquez-Toness, and Universal Hub’s Adam Gaffin. Adam Reilly, writer and media critic at The Boston Phoenix, did a solid job as moderator.

Kennedy mentioned a stunning anecdote in his opening remarks when he noted that many of the students in his class - which he said is the first class in journalism for NU students who major in that discipline - haven’t read newspapers on daily basis before taking his class. I’d say it’s pretty bad if not even aspiring journalists can be bothered to read newspapers.

Later in the evening Kennedy noted that the thinking about the future of news media has progressed from visions of “The Daily Me” (news personalized to suit me and possibly only me) to what Reilly suggested might be called “The Daily Us,” news that fit a specific social network, the members of which can amuse themselves by collectively laugh at or agree with the news they get.

There was in general quite a bit of talk surrounding how to distribute news via social media. A woman in the audience argued that teenagers get most of their news from friends via email, Instant Messaging, text messaging and what not. In Web 1.0 jargon one could perhaps say that news are viral but not sticky for teenagers and - presumably - young adults (here defined as people aged 18-30). Not being the most charitable person in the world I can’t help but wonder what passes for news for those kids? I’m guessing the latest employment situation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t clog too many Trilian windows.

Ramos somewhat self-servingly but certainly not without logic suggested that today’s extreme fragmentation of media eventually will be reversed which would once again allow for healthy and stable news operations (I’m paraphrasing and extending his thesis a bit. Ramos obviously did not suggest that the Globe isn’t a healthy news operations but newspapers in particular are indisputably suffering from audience fragmentation and shifting advertising spending patterns). I think he’s right. Economies of scale and division of labor just make a lot of sense and I think that reality eventually will reassert itself. It follows that the aggregation will happen along lines that make economic sense. I have no idea what those lines are but they are out there.

One can’t have a discussion about the future of media without running into the question of whether - or to what extent - amateur journalists (or citizen journalists, as they are perhaps more often called) can replace professional journalists. Gaffin, old newshound that he is, pointed out that citizen journalists can contribute greatly with observational journalism such as reports, photographs or video from accidents or other occurrences while it takes professional journalists to undertake investigative journalism like finding out why an accident, like the one in Danvers last year, took place. Kennedy argued that new media bloggers soon may very well develop and break substantial works of journalism, although it would be bloggers who have created a functional financial foundation.

One should keep in mind that there was a good deal of citizen-journalism excitement in the camcorder community in the wake of the Rodney King tape in the early and mid-1990’s, but I think the reality is that citizen-journalism camcording today is mostly focused on more or less stalking high-profile celebrities, in particular nut jobs like Britney Spears. As YouTube demonstrates, much has been captured by cameras since 1991, but not a whole lot that’s necessarily news in any meaningful way.

It was repeatedly asserted by various audience members that there is a widespread general discontent with newsmedia. I think that’s bunk. I think there’s mostly wide spread disinterest, some of which is conveniently presented as disillusionment. I just don’t believe that many people say to themselves that Washington Post is so crappy these days that they’re just going to watch “Keeping Up With the Kardashian’s’” instead. Could news media do something bout the way they select and package news in order to win back the young masses? Perhaps, but how far can they go in that direction without losing current readers/listeners/viewers?

It could be that what we’re seeing now is the Mittelstand of the newspaper industry that is getting squeezed the hardest - primarily regional daily newspapers - while a small handful of big-shot newspapers as well as a huge number of small local newspaper do OK or even prosper.

[If one were to look at the newspaper industry through the prism of the so-called Four P marketing mix one could say that a lot of consumers enjoy getting the content (Product) through the web (Place) at no cost (Price) - and then carp about the shortcomings of what they derisively call Mainstream Media or corporate media.]

The discussion sort of petered out in an inconclusive way which made perfectly good sense: Both producers and consumers of news will have to find their way as they move forward in a for now expanding and fragmenting and financially changing media market.

Scott Allen Miller is leaving Boston for Albany where he’ll work as morning talk-show host and programming director at WROW. Miller was fired from his talk job at the enigmatic WRKO in Boston in January this year to make way for former Massachusetts speaker of the House Tom Finneran who is himself rumored to be on the way out.

I met Miller last year at a small get-together for right-wingish bloggers in Boston organized by Bruce of No Looking Backwards (the blog formerly knows as mAss Backwards). He struck me as a guy who’d be better suited for a Mountain West market than Boston, but perhaps Albany is a close enough approximation, judging by Miller’s description of it:

…middle class working stiffs, high tech brainiacs, students, immigrants, and scary mountain people.

Yeah, sounds like Colorado to me.

I wish Miller the best of luck.

While Miller is leaving Howie Carr wishes he could. A judge has ruled that Carr must remain with WRKO until 2012 because of some indentured servitude precedent that apparently remains in effect in Massachusetts. The judge has ruled that Entercom has matched a competing offer and therefore renewed the contract between the two parties until 2012. It’s quite insane and I hope to God that the SJC overturns the decision on appeal. If that doesn’t happen, Carr will be forced to remain with a station that is incompetently run and with managers who frankly seem to despise him. Carr has been off-air for weeks during the drawn-out legal battle. It’s quite sad. Yesterday, for example, would have been a great day for Howie Carr, what with Ellen DeGeneres’s bizarre meltdown over a dadgum dog. I can almost hear the Senator Byrd/Ellen DeGeneres mix that Happy would have cooked up for Carr, not to mention Sandy coming to DeGeneres defense. It would have been good.

It’s really strange how WRKO has “kllapsed” (to quote Carr) over the past couple of years. A few years ago the station had a bench so deep that VB was Carr’s fill-in and also had a late-night show. Now things are so desperately bad that Carr’s fill-in is the worst dadgum talk-show host I have ever heard. So Entercom was unhappy with the station’s market position and wanted to shake things up. Fine. I have no problem with that. It’s not as if WRKO exists for my personal pleasure. But for the love of God, why slowly kill programming while insisting on retaining Carr? There’s got to be a profitable AM format other than the old Contemporary Carr and Assorted Crap.

[Thanks to the clairvoyant powers that apparently run in my family I can tell you how Carr's first show back on WRKO will go down, if Carr is forced to return to the station:

Three o'clock hour: Carr invites Boston University's women's basketball team to talk about their season. He greets his guests on-air with a hearty "Hey, bitches, what's up?" An Entercom spokesman explains the phrase as a non-derogatory reference to BU's team name, the Terriers. Jesse Jackson demands an apology. Entercom sues Jackson.

Four o'clock hour: Listeners call in and read aloud their favorite Bible passages. Near the bottom of the hour a Muslim listener calls in with a passage from the Koran. Carr asks him if he's a member of Al-Qaeda as Happy plays A-hab the A-rab. Entercom counter-sues CAIR six seconds before CAIR sues Entercom. Suits and countersuits are filed at such a ferocious pace that every fax machine in every court house on the Eastern Seaboard melts. Both entities accuse each other of being "litigious and unconstructive." Entercom also sues the Muslim caller's telephone company.

Five o'clock hour: 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature winner pool! Every entry is punctuated by an audio clip where some moron yells äntligen!. Three people call. Entercom sues Svenska Akademien for not ever awarding the Prize to popular authors like John Grisham or Danielle Steele.

Six o'clock hour ("the local hour"): Carr interviews a Niki Tsongas campaign worker who goes on and on about the many exciting things that happen when you hold campaign signs for hours on end at a busy intersection. She's calling on a really bad cellphone connection. Entercom sues Tsongas for not being Hillary Clinton.

Seven o'clock: WRKO unveils its new programming masterstroke: Noam Chomsky playing the kazoo.* Entercom sues Chomsky for not playing enough polkas.

Oh my God that's funny, as Gary on PFW In Progress would let me know.]

Anyway, since WRKO killed the Howie Carr show I have been forced to look elsewhere for my late-afternoon radio entertainment, and I’ve found Mike Felger’s show on ESPN 890 AM to be a pretty good replacement. It has good pacing and Felger has a going-against-the-local-stream shtick that suits his general douchebag-turned-jackass persona. His Friday sparring-sessions with New England Patriots players Mike Vrabel and Matt Light are quite entertaining and sometimes even informative. Obviously, sports talk is unbearable after the football season is over, but, hey, that’s several months away.

*I ripped that joke from someone, I can’t remember who.

How the f can this rambling drivel make the Boston Globe op-ed page (feel free to stop reading at “my own scientific experiment,” it only gets worse from there)?

I read on Old Country newspaper websites that one of Sweden’s privately-owned cable channels has launched a show called Boston Tea Party. I haven’t watched it but from what I understand it has nothing to do with Boston, or tea, but probably quite a bit to do with partying. Maybe “Boston Tea Party” is slang for chlamydia or something. I have no idea.

I say WGBH should strike back with a show called Brasklappen in which doctors and lawyers in Newton brag about banging their Swedish (or was it Swiss?) au pairs. Partial re-enactments included! [Speaking of WGBH, the station has a new president, Jonathan Abbott, starting Wednesday this week. The Boston Globe has a long and insanely boring article on him today.]

In unrelated news, the United States Census Bureau reports that home-owners who took out a Home Equity Loan in 2001 were less likely to spend it on home “additions, improvements, or repairs” than their 1991 counter parts. More surprisingly, they were also less likely to spend it on “education or medical expenses.” Read all about it.

(Let me tell you, getting readers for Census posts is hard and demeaning work)