I heard him the other morning on my way to work and was stunned to hear he was joining WEEI...really surprised me that they would make the move, especially given the overall quality of people they have there right now.
The interesting thing was that one of the reasons why Tomase claimed he went to WEEI was to "get off the sinking ship" that is the newspaper business, which I thought was interesting because on the same day I saw Jeff Howe tweeting to people to "buy a paper"because "he had 4000 words in it":
https://twitter.com/jeffphowe/status/549959751254425601
Could have been nothing, but I'm having a tough time believing Tomase wouldn't say that on the radio without some legitimate reason behind it given the seriousness of the comment. Makes me wonder if there's some instability at the Herald right now and Tomase jumped to WEEI for that reason. The frustrating part for that newspaper is they took a massive PR hit over that debacle (which I hated every minute of and it still irks me to even think about it), leaving them having to essentially rebuild that beat. I'd have to go back and dig to find exactly who all the writers were back then, but I remember it changed radically after that.
Ian Rapoport did a solid job while he was there and obviously moved on, but I have to say, Jeff Howe is a great guy and has been a tremendous addition and truthfully he worked his a** off at NESN to get there. I couldn't help but notice that he was pumping out 2-3 quality entries a day during the dead of the offseason and they were always great stuff, so I was really psyched to learn he got that gig.
Since he's been at the Herald he's also been a guy who has broken a lot of stories and has been terrific in terms of getting injury information. He's also hilarious on Twitter and puts a lot of that personality into his writing. I've also always been a big fan of Karen Guregian, who in my opinion is top notch in terms of her analysis and doesn't get enough credit for what she does. I also do enjoy reading Steve Buckley's stuff, although he doesn't write much in terms of the Patriots and Callahan's writing is better than his on-air personality. I do read Borges because his brutal honesty has its moments of being interesting, and I've always been a fan of his writing style and the structure and technical aspects of the way he writes - albeit I read him more when he was with the Globe. I was also a big fan of Mark Daniels, and he's made the Providence Journal relevant again because they had absolutely no one getting it done reporting-wise following Shalise Manza Young's departure to the Globe. I enjoy his stuff, it's top-notch.
But yeah...needless to say I was surprised to see it happen. I've spoken to many different media people from all different outlets over the years and heard their thoughts and most seemed to side with the belief that the percentage of blame was higher on the people above him than on Tomase himself.
However, one individual I have a lot of respect for - and I won't mention his name but you'll probably figure it out based on what I'm about to say - is notorious for not posting a breaking news story until he's absolutely sure of its accuracy and strongly believes it's more important to be correct than to be first. Sometimes he won't even post anything, even if everyone runs with it. That speaks volumes about today's media, who overall is more focused on getting a story out there than they are making sure it's correct.
That didn't happen in the case of that story, and it was an incredibly damaging mistake that I do believe adversely affected that day and ruined what had been an absolutely amazing and historic year. No apology they could ever publish could undo what the original story did, and unfortunately regardless of where the fault truly lies, his name will forever be attached to it.
