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Move over, Michelle Wu: The Boston Globe has found a new progressive pol to write love letters to, and it’s Attorney General Andrea Campbell
Has the Globe given up on tough political reporting? Or is it simply no longer able to do it?
Check out this puff piece, “Campbell has sued Trump more than 50 times. Democrats say they hear ‘a future governor or senator,” on Attorney General Andrea Campbell and the dozens of lawsuits she has filed against the Trump administration.
Sure, there is the pro-forma quote from her Republican challenger and a line or two that might generously be described as mildly critical.
But the rest of the story reads like an infomercial for Campbell as the Commonwealth’s next governor or U.S. senator.
Were some of the lawsuits necessary, given some of the stunts Trump has pulled? Sure.
But while Campbell was spending millions in taxpayer dollars going after Trump, an easy target in deep blue Massachusetts, she spent months not lifting a finger to help fellow Democrat Diana DiZoglio in her battle to conduct an audit of the Legislature.
That gets just two sentences and a quote from a Democrat activist bemoaning all the “infighting,” a characterization that DiZoglio and others fighting for transparency at the State House and in state government would dispute.
Campbell has said she voted for DiZoglio’s audit when it was on the 2024 state ballot. But actually backing it and taking the Legislature to court would surely anger the House and Senate leaders who help set the annual budget for the AG’s office.
Suing the Trump administration is a day at the beach compared to taking on Ron Mariano and Karen Spilka.
Then there is what our long-time colleague Jay Fitzgerald at HubBlog calls the “curious timing” of the Globe’s puff piece on Campbell.
The piece ran just a few days after Campbell’s brother Alvin “was convicted on 21 counts of rape, sexual assault and other charges,” which, of course, does not get a mention in the Globe’s puff piece.
Here’s Fitzgerald:
“I’m not saying the Globe had to pull a Howie Carr regarding the Alvin-Andrea connection. But couldn’t the Globe at least bury a mention of the trial in today’s piece or perhaps even wait a week or two before running the political-activists-just love-her bonbon?… Gee, it’s almost as if they had the story waiting in the can for just such a moment.”
But maybe the Globe no longer has the capacity to routinely do serious political coverage. The reporter on the piece graduated from college in 2022, and, with just a few years of experience, is a cheap hire.
Stellar Globe reporters, like Frank Phillips, the long-time State House bureau chief, and Andrea Estes, a formidable investigative reporter, have long since left the building.
Maybe the best comment on the Campbell piece can be found in the comments section of the story.
“Someone’s taking out papers to run for governor in 2030,” wrote one Globe reader. “This headline is funnier than an SNL skit.”
Cover-up at the MBTA? A member of Phil Eng’s leadership team has lobbed a harassment allegation against the T boss, leading to protracted, behind-the-scenes talks over a potential settlement
Phillip Eng has lived a charmed life atop that shaky heap of mechanical failure, bizarre bureaucratic dysfunction, and old-time hack politics better known as the MBTA.
But Eng now faces what could be the first serious bout of turbulence in his three-year-plus tenure as general manager of the T, and it is coming not from a derailed train but rather from an allegation made by a top staffer.
