Globe Bureau Chief in Washington Must Think We’re Here to Torment Him

          The Globe’s bureau chief in Washington, Peter Canellos, must think we were sent to earth to torment him.

            We were thumbing through our first print edition from June 1999 recently and saw that the City Editor of the Globe had written a private memo to his boss back in 1999 that his staff “lacked talent” and most of their lead stories couldn’t even be edited.

            His private memo got leaked somehow and even posted on a bulletin board in the newsroom of the Globe. Surprisingly, the Herald printed only a small story as did the Washington Post. But it remained pretty much a secret until we mailed 1/4 million copies of our new newspaper around the state. That got the story a lot of attention and everyone was soon chuckling at the Globe.

            When we read that, we started wondering. What happened to Mr. Canellos?

            It didn’t take long to discover that he is now the bureau chief for the Globe in Washington. We’ve been writing many articles about them recently and we know we are shaking them up although we cannot divulge our sources.

            Whether the rumors about Andy Card resigning are accurate is unimportant. He may resign to run against Ted Kennedy or not. But the Globe should have known that the rumors are out there and reported that they are there.

            There are many other stories we have written, such as their intentional false reporting about the wife of Justice Alito, the machinations of Nina Easton and much more. It’s not an exaggeration to say that that bureau is in chaos and morale must be near the bottom.

            Worse, we notice that today’s story about Congress raising the borrowing limit was written not by the Globe’s bureau but by the staff at the Washington Post. What message does that send about the Globe staff?