Irish eyes are averting their eyes

By Media Farm

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Congrats to the Herald on their stunning Hey everybody—here's some terrifying news! mashup from Sunday. Tomato salmonella? Sucks. Gas prices? Suck. But the two brought together as one for the purposes of chumming for angst while presenting little new news? That's Pulitzer bait right there. Keep on keepin' on, fellas. Or not.

Because, speaking of You Bet We're Alive Today, the paper also proved last week that their cross-town competitor doesn't have the market cornered on crappy trend journalism. Not even close. Did you know that Red Auerbach used to smoke cigars? And even though he's dead, Bostonians are still smoking cigars? They're "back in vogue," you see. All thanks to the C's. Hooray!

[Cigar Masters] makes no excuses for catering to the wealthy. Most of the patrons have money or know how to dress the part ... But the cigar-soaked air was shared Friday by some holdouts from the Celtics celebration, college kids who flopped on the couches as though ready for a Grand Theft Auto marathon. They puffed away, dressed head to toe in cheap Red Sox and Celtics garb ...

And, if you were curious, yes, Howie Carr just did label Celtics fans as methadone addicts who work at McDonald's.

BOSTON MAGAZINE scribe John Gonzalez is blowing town momentarily to write about sports for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Not a moment too soon, either. It seems that, in the weeks since Gonzalez lambasted the Globe's metro columnists as soft and unimaginative, Kevin Cullen—the Irish guy in this current columny rotation, and the man who publicly refuted Gonzalez's attack on his work by arguing that Boston Magazine sucks—has, it appears, been steadily losing his mind. Or at least his ability to see a single thought through a 600-word column. If Gonzalez didn't blow town soon, we'd worry that, by next month, there'd be little more than a stream of drool running down the left side of City & Region Mondays and Thursdays.

After publicly undressing Gonzalez's employers, Cullen tackled Scott McClellan and the Celtics getting less white. This past week, his brain seemed to break a little more, as he closed out a Father's Day column about pickup ballgames and Yaz bread by wishing that Leon Powe would dunk over Kobe. Uh, yeah. Then, the next time out, he wandered around Ireland, asking anyone who'd listen who won the Celtics game. Apparently, there are no USA Todays or International Herald Tribunes in Ireland these days. Or, for that matter, internet access. The Irish, we learn, have been much too busy watching European soccer tournaments and voting. The latter development leads Cullen to compare Irish voters sinking the Lisbon Treaty to the Green hoisting their 17th banner. Don't scratch your head like that—it'll only make it worse:

There's something very refreshing about a small island in the Atlantic being able to stop a runaway train by using something as simple and beautiful as a vote. It's called democracy, and it works. A weird coalition of left-wingers and anti-abortion activists were able to beat a better-funded, government-backed campaign. It was as fun to watch as KG, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen hoisting the trophy.

SAVIOR OF ALL MEDIA Arianna Huffington announced last week that she's expanding beyond politics and into local news with the creation of a hyperlocal site dedicated to Chicago. She's seeking capital to fund the expansion, which, she told the Guardian's Future of Journalism conference, will eventually cover "dozens of US cities." She added, "We are aspiring to be a newspaper in that we want to [be] covering all news, not just the political blogging the way we began."

It's an interesting gambit. On one hand, local news is universally acknowledged as the media's only remaining growth sector. That may be by default, since it's unlikely, in the long term, that few organs not named the Times and the Washington Post will be able to maintain aggressive, robust newsrooms dedicated to covering Washington, international and national news. Instead, the theory goes, papers should get out of the big boys' way, and focus on local news, crime, arts and politics—the same subjects Huffington now wants to cover.

The problem is, the Wall Street Journal recently dubbed the Post's foray into hyperlocal journalism, LoudonExtra, an unmitigated "flop." GateHouse Media, the would-be local news empire, is struggling under a billion-dollar-plus debt load and a plummeting stock price. And remember BostonNOW? Yeah. So, uh, good luck, Arianna. You probably won't need it, though. Right?