Now we know what the managing director of the Boston Globe does: She enlists Harvard, MIT, and Massachusetts General Hospital, and together they launch a week-long festival celebrating innovation. Called HUBweek, the festival is slated to kick off October 3 next year.
Linda Pizzuti Henry, the Globe’s managing director and the wife of Globe owner and publisher John Henry, is the driving force behind HUBweek, so it’s no surprise that the newspaper gives the festival a huge push with a front-page story and a lengthy editorial.
The festival sounds intriguing, a sort of Ideas Boston on steroids. It’s an attempt to create Boston’s version of Austin’s South by Southwest and Miami’s Art Basel, to showcase for a broader audience the innovation that is going on in and around Greater Boston every day. As the Globe’s editorial says, “To compete on a global scale, Bostonians need to claim their place in the global conversation.”
The four sponsors clearly have the chops to pull something like this off, and hats off to Pizzuti Henry for thinking big. One example: holding a “master class” for as many as 37,000 people at Fenway Park, which John Henry also owns.
Turning Fenway into a giant classroom is not without its risks, however. What happens when the “students” start doing the wave, tossing around a beach ball, or singing Sweet Caroline? And what does an October innovation festival mean for the Red Sox? The Sox play in Cleveland October 3, but then it’s time for the playoffs. Is Boston big enough for two fall classics?
—BRUCE MOHL
BEACON HILL
MassDevelopment, suddenly flush with cash, is able to fund a new program targeting Gateway Cities whose funding was cut by the governor, CommonWealth reports.
The Eagle-Tribune analyzes salaries on Beacon Hill and confirms the governor is low paid compared to many of his state colleagues, particularly the coaches of the UMass football and basketball teams.
Members of the state Health Connector board show some love for MIT economist — and fellow board member — Jonathan Gruber, who has been finding anything but that most everywhere he turns these days.
Not one, but two, Globe columnists take some whacks at Bill Weld’s newest incarnation as a State House lobbyist. Scot Lehigh ponders the grimy quality to having a former governor of the Commonwealth enter one of the political world’s oldest professions, while Adrian Walker calls the development both “amusing and jarring.” Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Republican State Committee officially took Weld to task for his endorsement of several Democratic legislative candidates in November’s election.
Renee Loth hopes Charlie Baker stays on board with a homelessness prevention program Deval Patrick announced this week in what may be one of his last official acts.
Meet Kristen Lepore, soon to be the most powerful numbers-cruncher in the state.
CASINOS
The Sun Chronicle looks at the hunt for the state’s third casino license, including a bid by George Carney to build a gambling facility at the Brockton fairgrounds.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
The total value of Boston real estate has pushed past $100 billion.
The Secretary of State’s office has ordered the Fall River police department to undergo training on the state’s Public Record Law after they wrongly told a reporter a request must be in writing and they overcharged him for copies.
A judge has upheld the decision by the town of Weymouth to terminate a firefighter who was caught smoking in violation of the statewide ban on the use of tobacco by firefighters and police officers.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
The House approves a $1.1 trillion spending bill less than three hours before a midnight deadline.
Former congressman Barney Frank says the decision to place an amendment in the spending bill watering down his legacy financial act could open the door to gutting the entire law through parliamentary process rather than open voting.
The Justice Department says Indian tribes can grow and sell marijuana on their reservations as long as they follow the same rules as states that have legalized the drug, the Associated Press reports.
The Berkshire Eagle raises a glass to Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Bloomberg Politics casts Warren’s recent agitation as a proxy war over the Democratic Party’s future, while the Wall Street Journal sees Warren’s rebellion as cementing her role as the leading figure among liberals nationally.
EDUCATION
Middlesex Community College plans to hire as its new president the vice president for academic affairs at a community college in Arizona, the Lowell Sun reports. Fitchburg State University, meanwhile, hires the dean of the business school at California Polytechnic University.
The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit website focused on education innovation, says technology is making higher education less efficient, not more, as students focus on the tech rather than the substance of the lesson.
Hudson and other communities see benefits from a Reebok-sponsored before school exercise program.
Larry Harmon ponders the long history of anti-Semitism at Wellesley College.
Fitchburg officials push against a proposed charter school.
HEALTH CARE
Pedestrian injuries due to cell phone use are way up, Governing reports.
More and more grandparents in Massachusetts are raising their grandchildren, in part because the parents suffer from opiate addictions, CommonWealth reports.
TRANSPORTATION
The MBTA is going to test the concept of youth passes and college discounts, WBUR reports.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
Conservations on the Cape want to end to coyote and fox hunting.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
The head of the Massachusetts Police Association and a civil rights attorney debate on Greater Boston over whether videotaping police such as through the use of body cams would make a difference.
U.S News & World Report gathers data in a number of criminal justice areas, from simple police encounters to imprisonment, to show that justice in America is not colorblind.
MEDIA
Michel du Cille, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer for the Washington Post, dies on assignment in Liberia.