Boston's next newspaper war?
What interests me most about this article isn't that Boston.com's street-cleaning alert system isn't working well for Somerville. It's that GateHouse--which publishes the Somerville Journal and the related site Wicked Local Somerville--is gleefully using failure to jab at Boston.com and the Globe.
The context here, obviously, is the recent launch of Boston.com's new Newton site, which is fueled, in large part, by plenty of GateHouse content. (As an aside, unlike my friend Dan Kennedy, I do think the question of how much GateHouse content Boston.com can use in good conscience is central. Aggregation's all well and good, but if the majority of "Your Town Newton" content routinely comes from GateHouse, Boston.com and the Globe will look ridiculous.)
Anyway: like everyone else, I'm accustomed to thinking of newspaper wars as bipolar affairs between discrete publications: the Globe vs. the Herald, the Times vs. the Journal, etc. But the fast-developiong onflict between the Globe/Boston.com and GateHouse's various Massachusetts publications could change that model.