• Together in Song Finale. Lynn Page, producer, Keith Clark, production manager. (Special Event Coverage)
• Dan Kane and Friends Present The Magic of Christmas. Dennis Croteau, set designer, Keith Clark, lighting and set consultant. (Graphic Arts Set Design)

"As the bus monitor, your main objective is to make sure that stuff like this doesn't happen on the bus," Waterman said. "I'm wondering why you didn't say something to them and you weren't more aggressive in your action as the bus monitor."

"That's a good question," Klein said. "It's the first time they had ever done anything like that. Before they had acted up and I made them go sit in the front of the bus. Why I didn't do anything that time I really can't tell you, except that I kept thinking 'School's over and then I won't have to worry about this any more.'"

Klein added that she hadn't seen the children bully anyone else — just her.

She concluded, "It was a bunch that sit together and you know how kids get sometimes."

In fairness to Klein, many of those same questions should also be directed at the school district where she is (or was) employed. That's what Meaghan McDermott did in this article for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, one of the few reports I could find that went beyond the face value of the story.

 
Greater Boston has partnered with the Boston Globe to bring you a weekly feature called "From the Archives." Each Wednesday on Greater Boston, we will show one to two photos from the newspaper's archives. This weekly feature offers a glimpse into Boston's past.
 
This week, we look at … a terrifying murder spree.

On June 28, 1978, five bodies were found in the blood-splattered basement of the Blackfriars Pub on Summer Street in Boston. The gangland-style killing would be known as the "Blackfriars Massacre." The Suffolk County District Attorney said he “had never witnessed a more shocking crime.” Among the dead were club manager John (Jack) Kelly, a former radio and investigative television reporter who was known to associate with members of organized crime. Also killed were Charles Magarian, Peter Meroth, Freddie Delavega and Vincent Solmonte, the club’s owner. The victims were found shot in the head with either a .12 gauge shotgun, or a .25 caliber automatic or both — it was believed that there were two shooters. In 1979, Robert J. Italiano and William N. Ierardi were acquitted of the murder. They were the only suspects tried for this unsolved crime.

BOSTON — When it comes to journalists getting involved in politics most news organizations err on the side of caution, telling staff to keep their sympathies quiet. But when reporter Gail Huff asked permission to star in a pair of new ads for her husband, U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, Washington’s WJLA-TV said … go right ahead.

Huff may be a bit biased when it comes to Brown — she is his wife, after all. In several new campaign ads the longtime television reporter praises Brown as a model husband and fantastic father, saying in one, "If the kids had a problem they didn’t call me — they called Dad."

Huff’s praise could help Brown fend off Democrat Elizabeth Warren. But whether Huff should be a campaign surrogate at all is debatable. During Brown’s last campaign, Huff was at Boston’s WCVB. She didn’t campaign for her husband or even appear with him until election night.

After that race, she said, "What was hard was not to be able to be out there in public support — to say that this is my husband, I love him, I support him."

Now she’s making her support very public. And her current employer doesn’t mind. A spokeswoman for WJLA told Beat the Press, “We discussed it with Gail and we decided it was okay — she’s not a political reporter.”

But sometimes Huff’s general-assignment work does touch on political topics, such as the Occupy movement. In an April 5 story on police attempts to move protesters out of a park, she said, "All you have to do is look at the ground to see the problem. … We still have many tents here. They’ll have to go."

For the record, that’s the same Occupy movement that’s been praised by Warren and panned by Brown — proof Huff may need to do more to keep politics and her career separate. 

BOSTON — Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown is stepping up personal attacks on his Democratic opponent. After leaving the issue mostly to surrogates, he appeared on national television twice the week of June 11 questioning Elizabeth Warren's claims of Native American ancestry.

On Fox & Friends on June 14, Brown said Warren has a credibility problem.

"When you’re running for elective office, especially high elective office, you have to pass a test. And the test is about truthfulness and credibility and honesty. And quite frankly she failed that test as evidenced by her claiming to be Native American and her checking the box and making misrepresentations to not only Harvard but Penn,” he said.

He said the same thing on CBS Network News on June 11.

Warren defended herself on MSNBC, asserting that she does have Native American heritage but she never used it to get a job or a raise.

“This is how I grew up, this is my family. I’m not backing off from my family. It became clear I didn’t get anything for law school applications or from college or for any of the jobs that I was hired for," she said.

Warren has gone through a slow wringer over whether she inappropriately identified herself as Native American in order to advance her academic career. And while a Suffolk University poll in May showed a majority of voters don't care about her heritage, some party leaders have expressed concern that Warren's handling of the situation shows the dangers of putting such an inexperienced campaigner in a high-profile race. 

For months, Brown's campaign staff has been calling reporters and bombarding them with press releases pushing the Native American story line. But the week of June 11 marks the first time he took the attacks national in network television interviews. 
 
So far, Brown hasn't run any attack ads about Warren's heritage. And an agreement he signed with Warren back earlier this year bans third-party PACs from doing the dirty work for him.?. But as the campaign gets more competitive in the following months, Brown might have to go even more on the offensive.
 

BOSTON — The Massachusetts Senate race is becoming an all-out war over which candidate is out of touch.
 
When Republican Sen. Scott Brown mentions his likely Democrat opponent Elizabeth Warren, he refers to her as “professor” — a reminder that she teaches at Harvard and lives in Cambridge. It’s just one more example of Brown’s push to cast himself as an affable Everyman next to Warren’s out-of-touch elitist.
 
But unlike Martha Coakley, who lost to Brown in 2010, Warren seems unwilling to let Brown claim that mantle all for himself.
 
Brown recently panned Warren’s supporters as “Washington insiders, celebrities, elites, occupiers and leftists.” That charge made Warren bristle. "You know, I think Scott Brown should stop the name-calling," she said. "I’m very proud of everyone who’s become part of this campaign. There are people all across this commonwealth."
 
However, Warren also recognizes that Brown’s rhetoric is potent — and that she needs to fight back. Last week she made sure to hit Fenway’s 100^th anniversary season home opener with her husband Bruce Mann — and to document their outing on Facebook.
 
Brown has played the Fenway card too, lauding the park in a recent radio ad: "Remember what Fenway looked like the first time you walked into the ballpark? There was that emerald-green grass, the white chalk lines perfectly laid out, and that giant green wall out in left field…."

The Massachusetts Democratic Party pounced on that radio ad, noting that Brown once urged the Sox to move to Foxborough.
 
If state Dems have Warren’s back, the Boston Herald has Brown’s. Recently the paper gave Brown’s visit to a local brewery an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
 
"This is him, I think, trying to show that he’s a regular guy, that voters in Massachusetts can approach him, that he’s a guy you want to get to know," reporter Hilary Chabot said in a Herald video.

Now the Brown campaign has offered voters a chance to win a very blue-collar day with the candidate: lunch at Kelly’s Roast Beef, bowling and a beer.

For her part, Warren is insisting that voters want more than cultural populism. "I think people will be affected by reality. Families are struggling. There are people across this Commonwealth who are working hard just to keep it together," she said.
 
Still, when Warren gets demonstrably down to earth — whether it’s visiting Fenway or making her own stop at Kelly’s — she’ll make sure to let us know. 

BOSTON — For most of us, "60 Minutes" was appointment television in a time before 700 channels, Tivo and endless reruns. When news reached me of Mike Wallace's death, it took me back to the days when you actually had to get up to change the channel. It also took me back to the night I appeared in a "60 Minutes" story, ever so briefly.
 
Wallace was a merciless interviewer. On Sundays we'd see him confront a newsmaker. On Mondays, we'd all talk about it. But for all the ambushes, the pointed follow-up questions and the celebrity interviews, Wallace was a big believer and a strong advocate for making you, the news consumer, more responsible.
 
His death led us into the WGBH Vault, a climate-controlled room where thousands of archives are carefully stored. It is here where our team found a 1970 seminar at MIT in Cambridge. The topic centered on television news, which was still in its infancy. So the audience was suspect and ready to take on Wallace as if he were the spokesman for the entire industry.

 
"Catering" to short-term sensation      

"Do you really think that in fact the profit motive of exactly appealing to your audience isn't accelerating, isn't teaching people to have a shorter time span, and to want more sensational things?" one attendee said. "Aren't you really reversing all the things that people learn from kindergarten to 12th grade about how to really appreciate complex issues by your catering to the sensational short-term, let's-do-this-and-move-on-to-another-thing type news broadcast?"
 
Wallace said television news was "getting better" but admitted, "We err sometimes, still."
 
At the time, the country was in the middle of the Vietnam War and college campuses were the focal point of anti-war rallies against President Richard Nixon and Vice President Agnew. Television news was getting battered from both sides, as Wallace noted, referencing a disparaging comment recently made by the vice president.
 
"I could hardly believe I would have to come to Cambridge to find so many allies of Spiro Agnew," Wallace retorted. "In three separate seminars today, it's become painfully obvious to me that the MIT community looks askance at television news just about as much as Agnew does, although for different reasons."
 
Wallace responds to the critique
 
Long before personal computers, cellphones and "apps," Wallace knew the audience's attention span was pivotal.
 
"If we in broadcasting fail at the mass communication of complicated issues, and I think we should plead guilty, we fail because first of all, the attention span of our viewers is probably minute," Wallace said. "If we delve too deeply, or linger too long on something difficult, we lose our audience — the ratings prove it. Second …  there is almost no chance to savor and test an idea before another proposition has replaced it on the tube. And finally the average viewer or listener finds so many issues so overwhelmingly complicated to begin with that he despairs of understanding them anyway and says to hell with it and settles for a movie or a paperback whodunit or an episode of 'Mission Impossible.'"
 
But the audience isn't off the hook
 
In the WGBH Archives, I'm struck by the give-and-take, Wallace's comments and audience laughter, and think of a simpler time in journalism. But whether it was 1970 or throughout his career, Wallace always believed that you, the audience, held a powerful responsibility.
 
"We can sketch the outlines of the story. We can convey its feel. We can get the citizen involved, whet his interest, make him want to know more," he said. But for the complications and intricacies, the viewer would have to go deeper, "to the newspapers and journals, to the magazines and books, to public conversations and to private thinking — and in the final analysis, of course, that’s where he must go: to himself."
 
Wallace added, "It's hard work to learn about complicated issues. It is easier to pin the tail on the mass media for failing to keep us informed than to suggest that we ourselves lack the discipline to inform ourselves." 
 
Which gets me back to my flash frame on a "60 Minutes" broadcast — when Wallace became interested in a situation that followed when my television station delved into complicated issues on the air.
 
Judging journalism
 
In 1996, after a year's worth of work by top-notch, respected journalists, my station aired an investigative series on Northwest Airlines detailing safety issues, sizable fines and a culture that prevented employees from coming forward. We also had whistleblowers (something that, coincidentally, Wallace would come to know in his controversial story on big tobacco).
 
To this day, I believe Northwest knew the story would hold up in court. So instead of staging a legal battle, the airline filed a grievance with a public watchdog group called the Minnesota News Council. Its criticism of our investigation was lengthy; our defense was equally thorough. The result was a very public airing of journalism standards, tactics and techniques in newsgathering. We didn't stand a chance.
 
Over the years, I had testified before the council and defended news stories. But this case was different. Wallace was advocating for a national news council, where aggrieved subjects could take their case before a similar group. So when Northwest filed a complaint, Wallace came to town and "60 Minutes" covered it. Sunday night. Appointment TV.
 
A Wallace effect?
 
There was plenty of intrigue before and after the council ruled against the story. Did the glare of "60 Minutes" impact the council's decision? Was my station being held to a higher standard? How would Wallace's own, famously aggressive newsgathering tactics hold up in front of an ad hoc panel of former newspaper people and community members? Not well, I bet. 
 
When the council ruled, there was celebration at the airline and a chilling effect in our newsroom. We realized that a news story could win in the courtroom but lose in the court of public opinion. The next night, my station won an Emmy for the Northwest investigation.
 
In subsequent years, instead of ignoring News Council complaints as my competitors did, I returned to the lion's den to defend more stories — none of which, I believe, we won. But it was important to face this "jury" even if its decisions seemed off the mark. The News Council disbanded in 2011 after 41 years.
 
Mike Wallace's passing could be the end of a conversation about journalism standards and the public's role. Or it could be a fresh start.
 
I'd like to know what you think. Tell me in the comments or email your thoughts to ted_canova@wgbh.org.
 

Ted Canova is the executive editor for news at WGBH Radio.

BOSTON — Over the decades, the venerable vinyl LP has been threatened by cassette and eight-track tapes. It was nearly killed off when compact discs crowded the music stores, and the mighty mp3 was supposed to deliver the definitive, digital blow. But nothing has been able to stop this whirling wonder. Record sales have been going up — last year they were up by 36 percent. Now it looks like the LP is here to stay. In this digital age, who can can resist the tactile pleasure of placing the needle on that first track? And the snap, crackle and pop that comes with spinning a well-worn, deeply loved disc? 

John Damroth of Planet Records in Cambridge and WGBH's own Mike Wilkins joined Callie Crossley to play some favorite tunes and try to explain the appeal of vinyl today.  

From the afternoon's set list. (Mike Wilkins/WGBH)

LISTEN: SONGS PLAYED DURING THE SHOW
 
Charles Mingus / Solo Dancer
Willie Colón & Ruben Blades / Tiburon
WAR / Cisco Kid
Major Lance / The Monkey Time
Rip Chords / She Thinks I Still Care
-----
Aretha Franklin / Rock Steady
Pavement / Stereo
Tommy Flanagan / Overseas
Arthur Prysock / This Is My Beloved
The Fresh & Onlys / Summer of Love
-----
Earth, Wind & Fire / Got to Get You into My Life
Cream / White Room
Isaac Hayes / Theme from "Shaft"  

Wilkins credited "the ability to include the visual arts along with the audio arts." When he asks his friends what attracts them to records, "One of the big things that everybody says, first thing was the cover art — it was just giant-sized, beautiful," he said.

Closeup of the turntable. (Abbie Ruzicka/WGBH)

Damroth agreed. "Records mean more than just music: It's the cover, it's the experience of holding it and turning it over and reading it and putting it on the player, listening to it, in your comfortable chair," he said. "It is a very different experience."

Ali Nikseresht on Facebook noted the creative possibilities inherent in the format: "I miss the two distinct music arcs you get on old vinyl. A good band could often end side 1 as if it was the end of the album and understood how to use that palate cleanse to its full potential when starting side 2."

And the love's not limited to the baby boom generation. Robert Hertig, a senior at Northeastern, won the university's Prototype Grant in March to create a high-quality but low-cost turntable. "A lot of people my age have their own little record collections," he said. His own is heavy on LCD Soundsystem, Pavement, the Fresh & Onlys and other bands that are releasing vinyl records now.

Long may they play.

 
BOSTON — The Boston Herald has had its share of struggles over the years. The paper almost shut down in 1984; more recently, it's had to lay off dozens of editorial people and all the delivery drivers. But publisher Pat Purcell is optimistic about the future now that the paper has moved out of its old headquarters and revamped its news-gathering model.

Out with the old ...
 
He won't miss the mice or the mold, but Purcell was a little nostalgic about what the old building at One Herald Square meant to him.
 
"It was really, really something for me to, as a guy coming up on the business side, to have Ted Kennedy, Joan Kennedy, governors, other senators, presidential candidates come through the building. It was really amazing," he said.
 
After 53 years Purcell and his team have packed all those memories away, moving to new digs on the waterfront across from the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. As Purcell took me into a humming newsroom, he gestured to all the open space: "We looked at a lot of spaces where there were these partitions and, you know, if it’s 6 feet or 8 feet it doesn’t matter — it’s a wall, it’s a barrier. I wanted to eliminate all the barriers to communication."
 
... In with the news

The wide-open space is now home to the Herald's print, web and video reporters and editors, who now sit side-by-side at long open desks. Gone are the barriers between departments.
 
There are still sections in the paper, "but the idea that we could lead the paper with an entertainment story or a sports story is a new approach and one that I think is innovative and points us in the right direction," Purcell said.
 
Granted, he acknowledged, "the advertising model is lagging" for online properties. But all media outlets face the same problem — and, Purcell said, his audience is larger than ever. Despite drastic declines in print circulation, the Herald gets about 4 million readers a month, most of those online.

No more dead trees?
 
In fact, Purcell can even imagine a day with no newsprint at all.
 
"Back in, I think it was 1988, 1989, I was at News Corp. and we were contemplating what newspapers or what the newspaper industry was going to be like with computerization," he said. "One of the guys who was a big, big proponent of online and computerization said we have to stop chopping down trees and smearing ink on them."
 
The Herald has already shed its 50-year-old printing presses. Purcell admitted it was hard asking his rival The Boston Globe to print his paper — an arrangement that began in January — but said that in the end, it was just a business deal..
 
"I came to the realization that we are in the information business a long time ago," he said. "I didn’t need to be in the production business, I didn’t need to be in the distribution business."
 
As for those persistent rumors that the Herald is on its last legs, Purcell just laughed at them.
 
"People at the Globe tell me they used to predict the budget for our demise almost every year," he said. "It's pretty gratifying that we’re still here …we’ll keep pushing the envelope and hopefully good things will happen."
 
Here’s to a two-newspaper town. 

 
It’s perilous when products gain national exposure because of news stories. Think of Kool-Aid, the powdered drink mix forever linked with cult leader Jim Jones, even though Jones didn't use Kool-Aid in the cyanide brew that killed more than 900 of his followers. (He used a competing product, Flavor Aid.) Twinkies are forever linked to San Francisco politician Harvey Milk’s murder. The killer claimed that eating the cream-filled cakes made him do it — thereby creating the Twinkie Defense.

By example, then, it’s the handling of the Skittles brand in the next few days that may determine whether it remains just a popular candy or a treat with a sour aftertaste.
 
Marketing consultant Joan Schneider praised Skittles' handling of the situation: "Perhaps they should give a donation to an anti-violence group or something like that but then people might criticize them for trying to capitalize and get good press."
 
And Skittles, at least, doesn't have to shine up a tarnished image, unlike Twinkies and Kool-Aid. "When I heard for the irst time he had Skittles and iced tea I thought [it was] emblematic of how innocent he was," Schneider said. "I think that's why it's become such a big thing. It's a symbol for what's not right."
 

 
BOSTON — Advocates and postal workers rallied Wednesday at the Massachusetts State House, warning of service delays and job losses due to planned post office and mail processing center closures in the state.
 
More than 40 post office locations in Massachusetts are slated to close this summer, including branches in Boston, Dorchester, Newton, Fall River, Medford, Springfield and Worcester.
 
But the bigger impact could come from plans to close five mail sorting centers in the state, in Brockton, Waltham, Cape Cod, Shrewsbury and Springfield. See the list of facility closures.
 
A significant portion of incoming and outgoing mail currently processed in state would be rerouted through Connecticut and Rhode Island, slowing delivery times.
 
Ramona Daniel, president of the Massachusetts Rural Letter Carriers Association on Cape Cod, said the closures would double and triple the amount of time it would take to deliver a package or letter:
 
“The post office would like to drop our delivery standards to two to three days instead of one day," she said. "That will impact every customer and that will impact all of my carriers because we will be the one customers will be yelling at because their mail isn’t on time or their card is late.” 
 
Thousands of jobs could be at stake. And not just any jobs, said Dennis Avery, who works at the Waltham plant slated to close.
 
“The postal service has already provided me with a decent wage, a livable wage, good benefits … something that supports me and my family," he said. "I was able to get married, buy a house, have kids, support them. And I mean, that’s being taken away.” 
 
The postal service has said the closures are on hold until May 15 to allow federal lawmakers time to come up with an alternative plan. The service has lost business in the email age. It lost $8 billion last year, and its debt is skyrocketing. The mail center consolidations and closures are part of a plan to save $20 billion by 2015.

LAWRENCE, Mass. — About 300 people gathered at Pembroke Park on the Merrimack River on Tuesday, chanting "Law-rence! Law-rence!" to protest what they considered a lack of respect from the local media.
 
Their immediate grievance was an article published in the new Boston Magazine titled “City of the Damned.” The piece details Lawrence’s various problems — violent crime, a high dropout rate, the controversial tenure of mayor William Lantigua — and dubs the city “the most godforsaken place in Massachusetts.”
 
For youth organizer Christopher Benitez, who emceed the rally, that religious language struck a nerve. "Because I’m a man of faith, being told that our city is 'godforsaken' was painful to hear. But at the end of the day we all face prosecution or persecution, and that’s just what it is," he said.
 
> >  READ: A Lawrence city councilor responds to the magazine story
 
Benitez said he’s tired of seeing Lawrence painted as a place where only bad things happen. He claims there are plenty of good stories to tell — but that the media ignores them.
 
For instance, he said, "The community has decided to come together and renovate a lot of these old mills to build affordable housing and create beautification and at the same time preserve its history. I think that’s been a beautiful initiative and it’s a beautiful story."
 
Boston Magazine editor John Wolfson said the article wasn’t intended as a commentary on the residents of Lawrence. Instead, he said, it was about what he called a “corrupt political system” that has repeatedly stifled efforts to make the city better.

In November 2011, WGBH News looked at some of the changes brewing in Lawrence as part of our "Where We Live" series. Read the story.

Dee-lish. (Clay Johnson)

EXTRA: We don't always consume the most whole-grain information. What's your biggest guilty-pleasure media "junk food"? Tell us in the comments, on Facebook or on Twitter.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — We take in a lot of information these days ... from the radio, television and every size screen imaginable.

Just look at the media diet of one patron at Out of Town News in Harvard Square: "I usually read the newspaper — a little old-fashioned — then I check my iPhone to see the breadth of news that’s out there, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and the London Times. I listen to the news on radio, but also Bloomberg Radio."

The media, like the food we consume, provides different tastes for different moods. But would you consider your media diet a balanced one? Are you getting the recommended daily dose of media nutrients? According to a 2009 study from the University of California San Diego, Americans consume an average of 12 hours of media a day.

But just as we're tempted to skip that apple and snarf some chips, with media, "The problem is that there is a difference between what people want and what they need," said theorist Clay Johnson.

The surprising similarities of consumption

Johnson is the author of "The Information Diet." He said Americans are not just getting heavy around the waist, we’re growing obese … information obese.

"We have industrialized agriculture, and that’s made companies have a fiduciary responsibility to create a cheap and popular food, and we’ve also industrialized media and that’s made it so that companies have to produce cheap and popular information," he said. "So we have to take personal responsibility and understand that this is not a media reform problem, this is not a political problem. This is a public health problem."

No one disputes how bad junk food is for us. Johnson has taken it one step further: junk information makes us stupid — and we need to use our time better.

Among Johnson's tactics: scheduling.

"Actually make an appointment for Facebook. Say OK, well, I’m going to spend 15 minutes on Facebook on Fridays from 5:00 p.m. to 5:15 p.m. And do the same thing with email and do the same thing with Netflix. Just because you can watch all 160 episodes of 'How I Met Your Mother' doesn’t mean you should," he said.

Getting guidance to make healthy choices

But what about measuring the good media calories and the bad ones. Is there a way to create some sort of nutrition label to make it easy on us?

"These days we obviously have way more information than we can ever read, and now the problem is finding the quality information in this world of complete entertainment, misinformation and good information all mixed together," said Matt Stempeck, a research assistant at the Center for Civic Media at the MIT Media Lab. "I like designing tools that help people find that needle in the haystack in a convenient way."

Stempeck and his team at the Media Lab are building the Media Meter, which is, he said, "an open platform to help people track and then visualize what their media diets look like."

The idea is that the Media Meter will show you what you’re getting in your daily media consumption and also what you’re missing in your media diet. Kind of like … a nutrition label.

Maybe we shouldn't consume everything we want. (aaronolaf/Flickr)

> > Read: Stempeck: What if we had a nutrition label for the news?

To Stempeck, it just makes sense. "We've got nutritional labels for food. And when we choose to use them, we know what we’re putting into our body. But today, even though we consume more information than ever before, we have very little meta information with what we are putting into our brain."

However, there’s no empirical data out there, like the nutrition facts label, to tell us if what we are reading is in fact news versus opinion. So who makes that distinction?

"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't let you read that."

Said Stempeck, "Basically, we’re going to ask computers to do it for us."

With some human assistance. For instance, if President Barack Obama visited a baseball stadium in Japan, a computer might have trouble figuring out whether that's sports, U.S. or world news.

Using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, Stempeck's team is asking people all over the world to read the opening paragraph of a news story and answer what category that news story falls under.  

With these responses, the Media Meter team will train a machine algorithm to categorize more nuanced stories automatically. And that’s when you and I decide whether we want to upload the Media Meter plug-in on our computers and use it to track our media diet.

When the spirit is willing but the mind is weak

But would any of us set aside the junk food and bother to use the Media Meter or read these so-called nutrition labels? Sean Cash,  associate professor of economics at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, knows about who pays attention to labels and who doesn't.

"The people who are willing to seek out information are often the people who are already most amenable to incorporating new information," he said. "On the food side, we find that it’s the people who are already eating healthier diets, more balanced diets who are most willing to use that information on the labels."

Which may mean people already getting a balanced media diet would be most likely to read media nutrition labels.
 
Content provider, heal thyself

And that leads to the supply side: those who produce your media "meals." Do content providers have a responsibility to pay attention to their own nutrition labels?

Stempeck liked the idea. "If news providers themselves are interested in getting a third-party look at what they’re producing and what they’re not producing, then they could change their behavior," he said. If the media changes its behavior, "All the consumers downstream who don’t particularly care to measure their media diet could still benefit. When a newspaper sees that it hasn’t looked at the continent of Africa in six months, everyone might benefit when that happens in the newsroom."

Which takes this food for thought to a healthier state of mind.

When you're not consuming healthy, whole-grain news like WGBH ... what's your favorite media "junk food"? Tell us in the comments, on Facebook or on Twitter.

REVERE, Mass. —  It sounds like the death of romance in the shape of a candy heart: Whereas Necco hearts were once known for sweet sayings like "Marry Me" and "Be Mine," now you can ask your sweetheart to "Text Me" or "Tweet Me."
 
The hearts debuted in 1902, and "they've always had sayings on them," said Necco projects manager Jennifer Chambers. Choosing those sayings is … a process.
 
First, there are mechanical restrictions. Necco's machines can handle up to 80 sayings, though typically there are only 50. The company usually retires 10-20 sayings per year and adds 10. The phrase length is limited to five letters in the top row and four in the bottom. Longtime employee Jeff Green is experimenting with fonts, "trying to increase the amount of information" that fits — but no change yet.
 
Only now can the company tackle the content of those loaded phrases. For a number of years, the company started with a theme, Chambers saidhe pet theme produced Puppy Love, Purrfect and Love Bird; from the weather theme, we got Heat Wave and Cloud Nine; the food year, Honey Bun and Yum Yum.
 
"We should go to the dark side and say Divorce Me," Green joked.
 
But it's all different now. In 2010, Necco started crowdsourcing phrases online. That's how they got Text Me and Tweet Me. The company's not going back. Chambers said: "Moving forward, we're really seeking [sayings] from the community and the public."
 
To choose its 2013 sayings, Necco solicited ideas from elementary-school students and posted the top seven to Facebook via its partner CVS. The choices include Live N Love, B Tru 2 U and LOML ("love of my life").
 
If that sounds as romantic as mud, you're in luck. In an effort to retain its traditional audience, Necco has divided the heart-shaped brand. The new sayings will appear only in a separate product line, "Sweethearts," which come in "young" flavors such as green apple and blue raspberry.  Boxes marked "Conversation Hearts" have the time-tested sayings and flavors — banana, grape.
 
Traditional romance isn't entirely dead among the texting and tweeting crowd: Some Sweethearts will still say Marry Me. It's the company's most popular heart, Chambers said. 

> > Read about how Necco is trying to attract new customers while keeping the old.
 

Many of you were on Twitter on Tuesday composing candy heart slogans you either want to see or hope you never see. Here are a few of the less risqué ones from the Boston area. And if you're so inclined, you can type them on a virtual heart.