The piece was a nightmare of disorganization. Globe reporter David Abel penned an article in today's Globe Magazine about the cop who hit a baby stroller in a JP intersection, a story that Bostonist broke in August. Abel's piece is sort of about blogs, er, "increasingly popular echo chambers [that] have provided a means for those long walled off from one another in siloed lives to search for answers," and it's sort of about the incident itself—he can't quite make up his mind. (Quickly: the cop got a slap on the wrist; the child seems to be doing okay; the internet rumor mongers made life in JP unlivable for the mom, who has since moved to Newton and is looking to buy in the suburbs.) The online version of the piece, which cites Bostonist as well as the "more widely read" Universal Hub and the JP Moms mailing list, doesn't contain a single hyperlink. The house style at Boston.com reportedly doesn't allow them, but, as one Bostonist noted, "this is one of those cases in which it's crazy not to link, or at least to give a full domain name. If they denounced a book I suspect they'd at least give the barest of bibliographic citations (author, publisher, year)."

Filed in News and tagged boston globe, echo chambers, news feedback loops, recursion, universal hub

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