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Defunct Boston newspaper figures out how to publish news from the future
By adamg on Thu, 12/16/2021 - 4:17pm
When Gannett shut the Allston/Brighton/West Roxbury/Roslindale Transcript Tab in print a couple weeks back, it said readers could keep getting their news online.
Boy, howdy, they weren't kidding: The site is now providing news that hasn't even happened yet, and won't for another 33 years:
The top story on the Transcript Tab Web site is from July 3, 2054 and chronicles the shutdown of the Centre Street fire station in West Roxbury. No doubt thanks to scientific advances over the next three decades, Tom Menino has been resurrected and is once again mayor, while Ed Kelly has resumed his job as head of the local firefighters union.
That the story sounds remarkably like a story from 2009, when Menino and the union were at the peak of their eternal feud, is only proof that history runs (or will run) in cycles.
H/t DMK.
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Comments
Waste of a dollar
Worst newspaper ever becomes the worst digital news site ever. They offered a 6 month subscription for $1, and with foolish optimism I took them up on it. This is an embarrassment for the already bad name of Gatehouse/Gannett.
Question...
Did this station closure actually happen as described, back in 2009? Are they just rehashing an old story with a future date?
Or is the entire story made of whole cloth?
Perhaps one of those stories that gets written as a contingency, just in case it proves necessary, but then never gets run because the triggering event doesn't happen?
I can't vouch for the specific article, but ...
If you do a Google search on 2009 brownout menino kelly, you will find plenty of articles about the basic issue, so I'm going to guess they are doing something in their content-management system and somehow the date got adjusted.
Wayne Braverman
The article was written by Wayne Braverman, who was editor of the West Roxbury/Roslindale Transcript until late 2009, so that lines up with the actual date for the story.
I hope this doesn't somehow qualify the Transcript Tab as a "local news source" deserving of government subsidies if Congress does come through with tax breaks for subscribers or some other way of supporting real local reporting.
Ooh, they "fixed" it
The article now has a 2014 dateline, which is in the past, but which is still wrong (starting with the fact that Tom Menino was no longer mayor).
On the other hand
If the dateline is before Halloween, at least Menino was still alive.
Thank God for the Bulletin.