All the Stupid Articles...

What's with the flurry of dumb, non-substantive articles about the Governor's race recently?

There's this article about lawyers' donations.

There's this article about the Gov candidates living in luxury.

There's this article about the money being paid to consultants.

There's this article about Reilly's tax returns.

There's this article about Patrick's "bogus" blog vids.

OK, maybe these aren't stupid, but they feel so unoriginal. Especially that lawyer money article - why did Frank Phillips and his intern spend so much time and effort researchng that? Is it relevant? Probably. But is it news (i.e. is it new, original, etc...?) abosolutely not. We all know that while Tom Reilly is not a "good politician", he's also not someone who can easily be bought, so this kind of journalism is a waste of time. The fact is that downtown Boston has tons of lawyers, and tons of lawyers also work in other professions. So it's no surprise that people with a JD gave $$ to candidates.

Bottom line: if Frank and his intern spent as much time reviewing job creation or environmental proposals and wrote nearly a whole page about that, we as a populus would be much better off. And don't give me the "we'll cover substance as the election approaches" argument. That's crap. We need to know this stuff now and we're big enough and smart enough to be able to take it all in - contrary to the patronizing view you may have. These articles are why people get pissed off at politicians and talk about it at the water cooler or on the bus. This is why when I'm in a cab and the driver as jay Severin or Howie Carr on and the cabbie starts railing to me about how awful our politicians are, I get mad. It seems to me that a pretty simple shift in approach by these newspapers would have the potential to lead to people saying "Reilly's new ______ idea sounds interesting" or "Gabrieli's record on after-school programs is interesting." It wouldn't take much, folks...