We who are about to die salute you
May 5, 2025: It was nice of Marty to get the old crew together, just for old times' sake. There's Dan. He used to cover the Red Sox. I'll go say hello. And Mark -- he used to ghostwrite my column when I developed ''bluefish poisoning." Maybe no one needs to know that. What happens on Morrissey Boulevard stays on Morrissey Boulevard.
It all happened so fast. One day we were printing half a million copies, delivering them all over New England. Then -- poof! -- it was like everyone heard the ''new media" dog whistle and stopped reading. The kids were getting their news from the ''Politics" forum on craigslist. (Sample posting: ''Hypocracy is not our style.") Once the senior citizens figured out the comic strips and the crosswords were free on the Web, they didn't need us anymore.
I guess we had only ourselves to blame. We were so hung up on that old news paradigm. It's hard to imagine that we used to send reporters to places like China and Russia, or even Somerville, to report on social and political trends. It all seems so 20th century.
Ever since Mr. Murdoch's nice wife, Wendy Deng, was crowned minister of Pan-Asian information at the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China has thrown itself open to new broadcasting and information. I think the average citizen can see ''Baywatch" and ''American Idol" in 17 different dialects! It's a whole new world. If anyone needs to know about politics or world events, they can go right to www.partyline.com.cn.
That's been such a successful franchise for the Murdochs: www.partyline.com.ru in Russia, www.partyline.com.us right here in the United States. Now governments can make sure that people get accurate information, not filtered through some notebook-toting scribbler or Teleprompter-peeping ponce. And Murdoch was smart to aggregate all the African news into one site: www.party'sover.zzzz. No one wants to read about all those gnarly coups and epidemics anyway.
It's true, we dug our own grave. Can you imagine, we were still writing about boring stuff like Social Security right up until just a couple of years ago, when President Bush eliminated the program? Just because she went to the University of Texas doesn't mean she didn't inherit Dad's political savvy. Jenna dynamited all those bleeding-heart Democratic entitlements -- welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, you name 'em. ''Want a handout? Go to Sweden!" I have to admit, that was a pretty clever campaign slogan. Karl Rove would have been proud.
We at the Globe were lucky, in retrospect, to have been part of The
I asked Denton if I could join the Paris bureau, maybe cover her if she ever came to New England. He let me down gently, said he really needed younger legs covering Ms. Hilton. Of course, with a 50-person operation, there was bound to be turnover. He said he would keep me in mind.
I did manage to land a Fleshspotting gig with Fleshbot, trolling the Internet for gamey material. After a while, my eyes gave out, and I asked Denton Omniversal if my health plan covered eye care. ''What health plan?" the ''benefits concierge-bot" replied to my electronic query. I'm OK, though, because my son has family medical through Defamer-Beijing. He smuggled his cellphone into a party and photographed Ziyi Zhang's guest bathroom. (You remember her: ''House of Flying Daggers," ''Memoirs of a Geisha," ''Spider-Man 3-15.") Defamer got 114 million hits worldwide. My son got a huge raise.
I remember when we used to photograph judges sneaking out of their courtrooms to play golf, or the speaker of the House partying with lobbyists on a beach in Puerto Rico, and print those pictures on Page One. It all seems so long ago.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.
