By David Scott
Boston Sports Media Watch

The latest numbers from the ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulations) are borderline, “shockingly dismal.”

For Shots, the most-telling and most-disturbing number (but hardly the only of that variety) was this, from the Herald’s own story on the declines: “Sunday (Herald) circulation dropped by more than 12 percent, to 115,214 copies, the ABC figures show.”

Whoa! Knowing what we know about ABC numbers (they’re usually fair, but inflated), it’s quite plausible that less that 100,000 people read the Sunday Herald’s print edition. A few more quarterly decreases and the thing will qualify as a “robust newsletter” instead of a “struggling daily.”

There’s no way it’s good business sense to keep publishing that Sunday edition. If advertisers had any sense at all, they would pull ALL weekend ads from the Yellow Boxers and force the Herald beancounters to focus on selling a M-F, commuter rag that screams and demeans like the rising New York Post.

Would it be radical? You bet. Would some scoff? Don’t they always. Would some laugh while scoffing? No harder or more frequently than they are at the thought of how much staff and effort is being wasted on Saturdays and Sundays at Wingo Way.

Would it be worth the try? We repeat: It’s likely that less than 100,000 people are reading the Sunday edition – do you understand how much paper is being wasted on that day alone? The home page of this here underground website gets that many page views in a week (two, tops) – and this web site knows a whole lot more about its readers than any newspaper can ever claim to. You want to accurately target sports-passionate, loyal men between the ages of 21 and 50? This site (and many others, of course) would deliver those folks in spades and at a cost completely reasonable compared with what is being wasted on Herald, Globe or other old media placements.

USA Today has proven many things during its radical transformation of newspapers in the New Media Age – but the easiest and most overlooked lesson is its print schedule: Monday through Friday. Five days a week.

• Boston Magazine’s John Gonzalez continues delving into the seedy side of Boston journalism with his current BoMag piece on Ron Borges of the Boston Globe.

It was just recently that Boston’s Gonzo journalist took on the Herald’s Track Gals for BoMag.

But in Borges, Gonzalez found a willing – albeit supposedly reluctant – subject, who contributes such gems as: “It’s not personal. I don’t know Belichick well enough for it to be personal. . . [Tony] Dungy has never been on the front page of a tabloid newspaper for something other than football. That’s why I’d take him over Belichick.”

(So, you’re saying you don’t know him, Ron, but you can judge him from a tabloid headline?)

Also, Borges defended his prior comparison of Belichick to Emperor Hirohito, by telling Gonzalez: “At least I didn’t call him Hitler. . .I think I have a sense of humor that’s not for everybody. . .”

(Well said, Ron. No one ever gets your Hitler jokes. It’s a damn shame.)

By and lagre Gonzalez’s take on Borges is incomplete on many levels. He ignores the entire Brad Blank friendship, which has always been a favorite rallying point for the anti-Borges contingent, and something that might have led Gonzo to some intriguing places.

Further, there is virtually no glimpse into the Borges upbringing – which might have helped explain why he likes being the bully. I still don’t know where Borges grew up, went to school or what his family is made up of. There’s a mention of a “personal reason” for not going to the Broncos game earlier this year, but that’s as deep as we get with Borges the Person. Oh, and it seems he has a daughter. I’m not even sure we got Borges’s age from the highly-touted Boston Magazine writer (and NECN guest of Jim Braude this week).

Beyond that, Gonzalez has way too much Globe voice in the piece. (Really? His own editor thinks he’s NFL savvy? How very revealing. Spare us, please.)

And the lone Herald voice Gonzalez goes after is 890 AM’s Mike Felger, who Gonzalez fails to mention has Borges as a regular guest on his fledgling radio show. Felger describes Borges as knowledgable and fell well short of doing what the cross-town football columnist should have done: buried Borges as a brutish boor. Instead, Felger (and, in turn, Gonzalez) pumped up Borges’ profile a bit and made him a more appealing guest.

Gonzalez also swung and missed when running down the employers of Borges, failing to note that regional cable outlet CN8, over the past eight weeks, enlisted Borges as one of its anchor Boston guests for a re-vamped “Out of Bounds.” Or maybe that was the “Radio Free Taiwan” that Gonzalez joked about. Either way, it does further illustrate that Borges has parlayed his circus act into TV money, something Gonzalez mostly overlooks. And he never gets into the fact that the unpolished stone that is Borges is just as un-polished, at times, on TV – never a good thing. Those points would only have painted the enigma of Ron in borader strokes. We’re guessing Gonzo spends more time on the politicos than the jockos, so it’s partially understandable.

The story most likely went south when Borges finally agreed to sit down with Gonzalez and played the Gonzo slick-sheet scribe the way Belichick played with Brad Childress on Monday night. Borges sipped a smoothie, shpieled his “shtick” and boasted about being an a-hole, giving Gonzalez’s piece exactly what it didn’t need: Borges’ high opinion of himself augmented by the high opinion his co-workers, co-hosts and co-conspirators have for him.

Uh, so, yeah. Go ahead and read the Borges piece in this month’s Boston Magazine. It does give you the opportunity to “hear” Bob Ryan use a four-letter.

. . . Background on Gonzalez from when he was hired at Boston Magazine in April of 2005:

“John Gonzalez, an award-winning feature writer for the Dallas Observer, has been hired as a staff writer. Gonzalez has been a finalist for the Livingston Award, the premier award for journalists under the age of 35. A Philadelphia native, he worked for the Philadelphia Inquirer and later for the alternative newspaper the Dallas Observer.

Among many other subjects, Gonzalez covered the swift-boat controversy that dogged John Kerry, and ran for Congress himself in his Texas district to write a story about it—and got 6,000 votes, more than all but two third-party candidates in the state.”

• The thought of ESPN’s first-ever Ombudsman, George Solomon struck thrice this week:

1. In the “Legend of Red” broadcast from FSNNE – Solomon was prominently seated next to Red at the China Doll when the FSNNE crew tagged along for its taping. The sight of Solomon at Red’s right spurred Shots to email the OmbudsmanESPN and ask for some Red thoughts. Solomon’s subdued but polite response was this: “Red was a true living legend, whose legacy was as a great basketball coach, executive, scout, personnel manager and trend-setter. I don’t know of anyone, anywhere who hired so many people of character, ability and determination and turned them into a team in the true sense of the word. He was a friend – and the privilege was mine.”

2. Also, Solomon’s time is almost up and this week’s submission for November could be the penultimate of Solomon’s 18-month appointment. However, Solomon reiterated to Shots that he would be willing to extend his contract on a month-to-month basis when his tenure expires on Dec. 31 – if the ESPN people so desire. Last month, in a discussion at a Boston University/Frank Shorr class, Solomon similarly indicated he felt so strongly about the network’s need for an Ombudsman, that he would continue on until they find a replacement.

We’d like to reiterate the Shots Belief that ESPN needs to bring on a full-time Ombudsman and they should do it by January 1 so there can be a neat and tidy passing of the baton from Solomon to Whomever is Next.

3. Lastly, and Solomon should do an immediate follow-up on this, ESPN’s SportsCenter has run, on more than one occasion (since last Friday), a supposed “news piece” done by Solomon favorite, Jeremy Schaap, revolving around the the latest installment of “Four LeBron James” campaign which Nike has been rolling out alongside the NBA’s opening week. Schaap did “interviews” with Wise, Business, Kid and Real Lebron and even used “old footage” of Wise from his “playing days.”

The segment was treated like it was real news and actual reporting with one of the network’s premiere and most-respected reporters. It could be the single worst depiction of corporate crossover onto the news side of ESPN in the network’s history. And considering this is the same place that brought us the Budwesier Hot Seat, the Coors Light Six pack of questions and network anchors who shill any number of products, that is saying something quite big indeed.

• Probably my first and last link to a myspace page, but for Jon Lester, it seems quite worthwhile.

• FSNNE programmed with a heavy heart all week long and gave everyone ample opportunity to catch its Red remembrances.

Continuing the roll for the Celtics’ broadcast partner is the pre-empted debut of “Tommy, Forever Green,” now scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 7.

Shots got a preview reel and the 30 minute special is well worth the take, despite breaking the golden rule of documentary-style film-making: It uses the narrator (Danny Ainge) as a talking head about the subject (Tommy). That’s a big no-no in our book. Some of the Tommy close-ups and quickcuts at the beginning can be a bit disturbing, but overall, the package works nicely.

There’s even a wonderful, brief cameo by the lovely daughter of Shots fave, Bill Raftery – Kelli – and some good insight from the likes of Joe Fitzgerald, Bob Ryan, Dave Cowens, John Havlicek and Mike Gorman who make the show thoroughly watchable. It even offered us a new appreciation of Tommy – probably some residual emotional affect from Red’s passing, but appreciateion nonetheless.

We especially liked the Mendy Rudolph, Miller Lite clip and the ensuing locker room celebration where Rudolph interviews Heinsohn for CBS.

. . . Dealer Danny does a tremendous job on the voice-over, by the way, reminding us of his fine work as a broadcaster – it was a nice pick by executive producer, Stevan Reagan and producer, Paul Lucey.

. . . Take some time to read or add comments at The Red guest book and here as well which we sadly discovered because of this press release

Here was one from a familiar name in French Lick, IN.

. . . And this was Frank Deford’s SI piece, which included the Defordian: “None of his minions had known him when he had the auburn hair that inspired his nickname. That cognomen was bestowed on him when he was growing up in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, where he was born on Sept. 20, 1917.”

. . . Glenn Ordway was the wrong, wrongh, wrong person for the halftime tribute and the boos from the crowd confirmed that. Mike Gorman doesn’t get booed. Danny himself wouldn’t have gotten booed (maybe). No one should have had the opportunity to boo on that night and although Ordway has history with Red, his polarizing personality was a miscalculation on an otherwise well-calculated evening.

Still, you have to imagine what Dr. Chuck and his Fenway Folks would have done in terms of a tribute – the Celtics attempt fell just short. Doc Chuck would have had the entire place in tears and he wouldn’t have left it to Paul Pierce to get it that way.

• Student journalism we can get on borad with from Mike Janela at The D.O..

• Nice timing for the release of Charlie Pierce’s Tom Brady book. Here’s where you can catch Charlie on tour. We might hold out for a Marquette date and roadtrip out to catch Pierce in his element.

The book, by the way, is scheduled to be excerpted in this Sunday’s Globe magazine and there is also be an Al Skinner interview worth your attention. But you didn’t hear it here. . .

• For all the moaning about Bill Belichick’s curt manner on Wednesday, it was odd that very few of the local media could put two and two together publicly and point out that Coach Bill was fuming over the Track Gals’ rip-job from Wednesday. Thankfully, Mark Farinella hit it on the head with this Thursday piece. It was no small part of the story and Farinella’s box mates should have mean more in tune with the “outside” things affecting BB’s demeanor.

• Don’t tell MLB.com’s Ian Browne that it’s the off-season. Browne’s been doing some yeoman’s work from Tokyo, including details on much-talked-about-savior-to-be-for-someone, Daisuke Matsuzaka.

• Maybe Mbook sales didn’t go all that well for Seth Mnookin. On Tuesday he included this line in a collection of questions for Deadspin’s guest editor-for-the-day:

“Are Brooklyn Dodgers fan or Boston Red Sox fans more annoying?”

We’re going to go ahead and answer that question from Mnookin with another question:

“Is it more annoying when a non-sports guy tries to write a definitive tome on a team who has given him the keys to its offices OR when said author slams and insults the very fans he panders and sells books to on his Summer, now Fall, book tour?”

We had remained on the Mnookin fence right until that one-liner. Now we are fully in the “phony-book-seller-looking-for-his-next-book-deal” court. We want our money back from ‘Monster’!

• ESPN announced its various line-ups for college basketball coverage and the best news from the voluminous release is that Stacey Dales will be in-studio as an analyst for Big Monday. We’re quite possibly the biggest Dales fan in all of America and college basketball’s start makes us happy for many reasons: chiefly the Stacey Factor.

• It appears ESPN Radio Boston is starting to blog about the Felger show. (Click on the show’s title on the left.) It’s sloppy and un-credited as of now, but it is an intriguing idea. Let’s keep an eye on that.

• Good Luck, Adam Reilly. We’ll be watching closely, because we kind of coveted that spot. Always will.

David Scott writes from a seaside shanty on the shores of Hull, Mass. And can be reached at shotsATbostonsportsmedDOTcom

Shots welcomes recorded messages – up to two minutes – by clicking below. Go ahead – you know you want to try it!