As we’ve said many times before, we love our rabble-rousing tabloid. But sometimes, the Herald’s sense of righteous indignation feels a bit forced. Such as in today’s story about the Massachusetts lottery doling out free concert tickets to high-performing ticket agents despite its sinking revenues.

It looks bad on the face of it, which is how the story wound up on the front page. But once you get into the article, you see that government interests haven’t run completely amok.

Lottery Executive Director Mark Cavanagh said the department gave out 628 tickets because of a prepaid $143,700 contract with concert promotion company Live Nation that ends in December.

“While rewarding outstanding agents with tickets was an effective part of the incentive program, the Lottery has decided to end the practice for both sporting events and concerts,” Cavanagh said in a statement. “The concert ticket program will end when the contract expires at the end of the calendar year.”

If the agency didn’t use the tickets, the headline would have been “TIM CAHILL WASTES COVETED KENNY CHESNEY TICKETS.” And while that’s no travesty in our eyes, certainly someone, somewhere would find that revelation deeply upsetting.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 11:59 am and is filed under Herald, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted by Amy Derjue on 11/10/08 in Herald, Politics