Local blog wrap: the good/bad/ugly

Published Nov 08 2006, 06:54 PM by Adam Reilly

First, the Turkey of the Day was unquestionably Hub Politics, which 1. insisted that the race would be relatively close and 2. reacted to Patrick's victory with overheated screeds like this:

While there may not be a Republican in the Corner Office, today was not about electing change. There is no change. Today in Massachusetts, democracy killed democracy. The voters of Massachusetts rejected two-party government; they rejected debate in the arena of ideas; they rejected the positive, and believed the negative.

Um.... Whatever makes you feel better, guys.

And now, the Big Winner Award goes to: Blue Mass. Group, which finishes the '06 election season as the 800-pound-gorilla of web-based political coverage in MA. The live-blogging from Patrick's post-election fete left me a bit cold, but that's less a reflection on the way BMG did it than on the genre itself, which is really, really hard to do well. (Maybe we can put a moratorium on live-blogging in '08? Or at least take it down a notch?) On the other hand, the reports from across MA were fantastic, and testify to just how influential BMG has become. Kudos, guys.

What else.... The Herald's Daily Briefing did a nice job reporting Boston's ballot shortage first, and the Globe did well to get a full-fledged article on the subject up on Political intelligence just a few minutes later. Also, the Herald's Kim Atkins was the first to report that exit polls portended a huge Patrick victory (no surprise there). But my favorite daily-paper-blog material came from the Globe's Matt Viser, who demonstrated a keen eye for idiosyncratic detail at the Healey and Patrick shindigs. (Love the bit about the melons carved into kissing swans at Healey's event, Matt.) Tell you what: let's all do the live-blog thing again in two years, but only if we collectively agree to come up with more gems like that.

Any major omissions? Care to agree/disagree? By all means, do.