Boston Globe publisher, Chris Mayer, announced today that the Globe was relocating its headquarters to Mars. The announcement came in response to a question by a reporter at the paper’s weekly press conference:

“How come today’s Globe didn’t even mention yesterday’s large demonstration through downtown Boston by the 99% against the 1% of banker billionaires, a demonstration that received an extremely warm response from the people it passed by?”

Mr. Mayer replied that the omission was deliberate. He added that, in order to ensure that Globe reporting would not be at risk of contamination by un-newsworthy events happening on earth, the paper was moving its headquarters to Mars. He also said that Bostonians need not worry, however, because the Globe had installed a direct line of communication from Mars to Wall Street corporate offices and the White House, so earthly events worth reporting would still be reported.

On a related note, the owners of the New York Times, which owns the Boston Globe, also held a press conference. One reporter asked the owner of the NYT, Arthur Sulzberger, why the NYT reported on the Wall Street occupation but its Boston paper did not report on the Boston occupation. Sulzberger replied that the NYT reported on the event for two reasons, saying:

1. “The paper today ran an opinion piece that attempted to persuade the protestors to view their goal as getting a tiny tax on corporate transactions and similar responsible reforms, rather than crazy wild-eyed revolutionary aims." and
   
   
2. "The paper reported on the protestors trying to block traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, forcing the police to arrest 700 of them to protect the public from dangerous anarchists, because the public needs to know about threats to their security and happiness. The paper, however, did not report the scurrilous accounts from large numbers of untrustworthy citizens who claimed that the protestors were guided by the police onto the main road of the bridge and then arrested for going where the police told them to go. Such accounts are not, of course, news that is fit to print.”

Details at 11.

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