By William Tauro 

The Times has brought its approach to media reporting in Somerville to another all time low with their crazy antics and phony character-plants that are trolling Facebook. All this while being egged-on by the Mayor and his administration as a distraction, fueled by more political games. It’s a sad day when the Mayor, facing a Primary (and if he’s lucky a General) election, has to turn to phony characters on Facebook to divert breaking news about his administration’s downfalls.

The Times even mentioned it in their own paper – boasting about it and asking people to follow it. It’s nice to see them stick their foot in their mouth again, as usual, but as we said before, we just can’t be bothered. Their reward for being a shill for the Mayor? The City’s legal ads – all because they don’t ridicule the Mayor or mention any of the problems in his administration in their paper. At the end of the day, it’s a sweetheart deal – at the taxpayer’s expense! We here at the Somerville News Weekly can’t be bothered with this drama, nor will we waste our breath on, or be distracted by, these childish antics. Games like this mean absolutely nothing to us, much like the people behind them – behind the local “fake news.”

The Times should concentrate more on their own 24 page black & white paper with little to no content and dwindling advertisers. We, on the other hand, are grateful to our readership and their loyalty both online and in print. We also want to take this opportunity to thank the Mayor, as well as The Times – because of their drama, our readership and our ratings have skyrocketed! Every time we push the button 16+ thousand people read our paper online and/or in print, then it gets shared multiple times after that – you gotta love it! We here at the Somerville News Weekly must be doing something right and we know that those impostors over at the Times are doing something terribly wrong.

We welcome competition because it’s great for business, the local economy and our readership – but for the Times to stoop as low as they (always) do, well, that’s very unprofessional and childish with a heavy splash of creepiness/sadness! Hopefully someday they will come to their senses and just move on, expand their publication, gain some readership and join the real world. Despite our earnest well-wishes, we are also quite certain that the Times will come out with a retaliation piece on this – and might even create another fictional character on Facebook, because that’s who they are. Bla, bla, bla! They mean nothing to us, they’re irrelevant. 

As far as the Mayor and his administration, they are feeling the heat with opponents in this coming election cycle and pressure out there from people who are truly disgusted with the state of the City. We can only hope that if they are planning on sticking around, they should consider growing up, doing what’s right for all the residents of the City, and start listening to people who want the best for Somerville. If he/they can’t, we said it before and, we’ll say it again: “Let’s Drain the Swamp!”