The value of a two-newspaper city:
One of the great losses of the decline of newspapers is the end of many of the "two-newspaper cities," when there are rival papers that catch each others' mistakes. Competition breeds excellence, and any newspaper that lacks that is incredibly susceptible to laziness.
Luckily, Boston is still a two-newspaper town. The Boston Globe (owned by the New York Times) has its own take on the news, but fortunately for Bostonians the Boston Herald (a scrappy tabloid) delights in one-upping the Boring Broadsheet.
And it's when both papers cover the same story that the differences stand out in stark contrast.
Take, for example, the coverage of a shooting in Boston recently. Jason Collins, 30, is a wheelchair-bound Boston man who was recently shot by gang members. The Boston Globe's story is filled with the tragedy of the tale...
And it's a 3 hanky story, indeed.
And then you pick up the Boston Herald. From the very first sentence, you learn far more about the story than you did from the entire article in the Globe.
Sorry, no spoilers, but you can put away the hankies.
