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Oopsies: Globe acknowledges the T is not tearing down a brand-new bridge
By adamg on Tue, 06/10/2008 - 9:36am
Remember the other day when the Globe reported on what seemed to be Yet Another Only at the MBTA Moment, i.e., that the T would have to tear down a brand-new bridge on the brand-new Greenbush line?
Today, the Globe ran the following:
Because of a reporting error, an article in Friday’s City & Region section about a bridge that needed to be replaced as part of the Greenbush commuter rail line project incorrectly reported the bridge's age. The bridge being rebuilt in Scituate is more than 100 years old and is downstream from a three-year-old rail-crossing bridge.
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Comments
A Bridge Too Far
Wow--that's a pretty egregious "reporting error".
Maybe they should stick to front page life-style reporting,
where they can make things up with a lot less likelihood
of getting bagged.
So, what does this bridge have to do with the Greenbush line?
if it isn't even on the line?
But it is part of the line
From the Globe's correction, it seems to be that this bridge is part of the Greenbush line, but the bridge the Globe thought it had been was over the railroad line. Or something like that.
This is from the MBTA's Project Description (emphasis mine):
So we are left with two choices
this reporter Noah Bierman:
a) is very stupid
b) chose to ignore the facts, and write a story that would impress his editors and attract attention
Or c)
He made a mistake.
Granted, a rather large, embarrassing mistake, but it happens. One data point isn't really enough to conclude he's an idiot or Jayson Blair Jr.
Hard to believe
that any intelligent, objective, and professional journalist
could confuse a brand new bridge with an old bridge over 100 years old.
isn't this the same reporter who wrote a whole story based on one woman's complaint (ONE WOMAN) that her ass was slipping on the seats in the new Blue Line trains?
Junior Reporters
Junior reporters don't get to pick their assignments. They get sent out with or without a photographer to find people who have sliding arse problems on the blue line, or write a quick story about a bridge. Deadline, yesterday.
He's not a junior reporter, though
He's
Fred GarvinTransportation Reporter Noah Bierman.I'll go with "a"
I understand that these junior reporters are under deadline pressure, but to get the main point of the story completely wrong is pretty damning.
To me, the story should be about the fact that the T is forced to spend $5M to alleviate one inch of flooding during a "big storm" (I assume 100-year storm). Doesn't seem like a good use of the T's limited capital improvements budget. (This assumes that the Globe got these facts correct)
More than you probably want to know about bridges in Scituate
Boston Daily pulls up the aerial images to explain Globe sloppiness.
new bridge
The connection is that the Country Way bridge is slightly downstream from the railroad bridge, and since the MBTA had to build a new rail bridge upstream, the Army Corps then required the MBTA to improve the bridge downstream.