Harvard prof: Boston.com dis driven by cash-making clicks

The Harvard professor at the center of a $4 Chinese food bill dispute reported in a series of stories posted by the Boston Globe's 
Boston.com said yesterday he believes the extensive coverage was driven by a desire for cash-producing clicks, not balance.

"I recognize that the news business is tough. 
Boston.com's approach to the story gave them a much bigger story, more page views, more ad revenue. I want to see journalists and journalism thrive. But at what cost?" Ben Edelman, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, told the Herald in an email.

Edelman faced a torrent of stinging criticism on the Internet and social media after Boston.com revealed his emails demanding a refund from Sichuan Garden in Brookline over a $4 difference between his food bill and the restaurant's prices as advertised online.

During the reporting, Boston.com staffers noted on Twitter that they had ordered takeout from the restaurant and deputy editor Hilary Sargent, who wrote the stories, designed a T-shirt mocking Edelman and put it up for sale online.

A story by Sargent alleging the professor had sent a racist email to the owner of the restaurant was pulled shortly after it was posted and replaced by an editor's note saying that 
Boston.com could not verify Edelman had sent it. The professor denies writing or sending the email containing a racial slur, which was sent through an online form on the restaurant's website.

Sargent was suspended for five days as a result of the T-shirt incident and the website BostInno reported that she has been demoted from deputy editor to senior writer. Neither she nor Boston.com would comment yesterday.

But Edelman said, "Boston.com wanted to paint me as a bad guy, and in general it's their right to tell the story as they see fit. But my emails, right there for all to see, specifically indicated that I wanted the restaurant to refund all customers who had been overcharged. Somehow that key fact ended up totally missing from almost all the media coverage."

The professor said Boston.com was out to push an " 'Edelman is a jerk' narrative," that ignored previous efforts he had made in the areas of consumer protection and privacy. He added: "From my perspective, the most distressing aspect of the media coverage was how little attention the articles paid to my true motivations."

His track record of advocating for consumer causes, he said, shows he is "a reasonably nice guy, trying to make the world a better place in my own small way."

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Herald lights cigar over Page One pick

The Herald's Page One coverage of President Obama's easing of relations with Cuba was recognized as a Top 10 front page among hundreds reviewed by the Newseum yesterday.

The page, designed by Page One Editor Paul Keaney, featured a photo of buildings in Cuba's capital city under the headline, "Welcome to Havana."

Coverage inside included Republican outrage over the move, a look at travel to the island nation, and how the new policy will affect cigar aficionados.

Other newspapers in the Top 10 list included the Miami Herald, the Virginian-Pilot and the New York Daily News.

The Newseum is a Washington, D.C.-based journalism museum and think tank.

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Weak coffee sales hurt Dunkin’ Donuts earnings

Dunkin' Brands announced weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter sales and lowered its 2015 outlook yesterday, blaming declining sales of Dunkin' Donuts' packaged coffee and continued pressure on consumers.

Shares fell as much as 9.45 percent yesterday to $41.85 — the most since Dunkin' Brands' 2011 initial public offering — before closing at $43.05, down 6.86 percent.

"This has been a challenging year for our businesses," CEO Nigel Travis said in a statement. "While our earnings growth expectations for 2015 are below our longer-term targets, we are committed to returning to double-digit growth in the subsequent years."

Struggling joint-venture Dunkin' restaurants in Korea and Baskin-Robbins in Japan also remain under pressure and are forecast to negatively impact 2015 results, according to Travis.

"We are disappointed by the ongoing softness in Dunkin' U.S. (comparable-store sales), which was attributed to a tough environment — presumably being caused by heightened competition — and decelerating sales of packaged coffee — probably weakness in K-cups," Baird Equity Research analyst David Tarantino said in a research note yesterday.

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The Ticker

Dow soars 421 points

The Dow Jones industrial average had its biggest surge in three years yesterday, soaring 421 points in its second straight triple-digit gain after the Federal Reserve's reassurance that it was in no hurry to raise interest rates.

Bullish earnings from technology giant Oracle also drove the rally.

Fed chair Janet Yellen said Wednesday that she foresaw no rate hike in the first quarter of 2015.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 421.28 points, or 2.4 percent, to 17,778.15. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 48.34 points, or 2.4 percent, to 2,061.23. The Nasdaq Composite gained 104.08 points, or 2.2 percent, to 4,748.40.

Woman sues over elevator fall at Fenway

A 22-year-old woman who fell two stories down an elevator shaft at Fenway Park and was seriously injured is suing the owner of the Boston Red Sox and an elevator company.

Elisabeth Scotland of Brigantine, N.J., sued Wednesday in Suffolk Superior Court against Fenway Sports Group and Otis Elevator Co. of Farmington, Conn. The suit seeks an unspecified amount in damages.

The suit says Scotland fell when a closed elevator door opened when she brushed up against it, and she suffered a traumatic brain injury, spinal injuries, facial fractures and dental damage.

A Red Sox spokesman declined to comment on the accident, but said all Fenway Park elevators are safe and the team wishes Scotland well.

Whidden Hospital workers ratify pact

Union health care workers at Whidden Memorial Hospital in Everett announced yesterday they ratified a new contract agreement with Cambridge Health Alliance that grants them raises and a minimum start rate of $15 an hour, effective July 1, according to 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East.

The agreement covers more than 230 caregivers at the hospital, the union said.

Emerson announces dorm starts

Emerson College has announced plans to begin construction of two student housing projects that will increase its Boston undergraduate housing capacity by more than 33 percent.

In April, Emerson College will begin construction at 1–3 Boylston Place on an 18-story, 380-bed student housing project. The college also plans to renovate its largest student residence hall, known as the Little Building, located at 80 Boylston St., adding 290 new student beds to the 750 beds currently in the building.

• Newburyport's Muzzy Lane Software, a developer of game-based educational software, announced that Conall Ryan, left, has joined the company as president and chief executive officer. Ryan previously served as executive vice president of Houghton Mifflin Co., where he guided the development of the first Curious George digital titles.

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Hot Property: Think inside the Box in Chelsea’s Flats at 22

The Flats at 22 in Chelsea's new Box District neighborhood is now leasing — and providing some relief from Boston's high apartment prices.

This is developer Mitchell Properties and builder Traggorth Cos.' third apartment project in the area of former box and bedding factories that has been reborn into a neighborhood of market-rate and affordable apartments and condos as well as a new park along Gerrish Avenue. The Box District won the 2014 Urban Land Institute's Jack Kemp affordable and workforce housing award.

The Flats at 22, with 50-units of mixed-income new construction apartments, is renting market-rate units for as little as $1,425 for studios, which includes a garage parking space and building amenities such as a rooftop fitness center, roof deck lounge, a community room with a full kitchen and projection TV, and an outdoor patio with barbecue grills.

One-bedrooms in the pet-friendly complex start at $1,625 per month and two-bedrooms at $1,900.

The Flats at 22 has 29 market-rate units, of which 20 percent have been leased ahead of a Jan. 15 opening. It's offering one month free rent for 12-to-18-month leases.

"We are renting to a lot of young professionals who have looked for apartments in Boston and balked at the prices," said Tanya Hahnel, Traggorth's project manager for Flats at 22. "You get much more for your money over here along with the amenities and free garage parking."

For example, model Unit 111, a 659-square-foot one- bedroom, has hardwood floors throughout and a recessed-lit kitchen with 18 tall cabinets, bi-level gray granite counters with a breakfast bar, stainless-steel Whirlpool appliances and an open living/dining area with floor-to-ceiling windows and a private back entrance. There are stylish barnboard-style doors, a walk-in closet in the bedroom and a large tiled bathroom. The rent is $1,695 a month, which also includes an in-unit washer and dryer, a tankless water heater and USB outlets for phone charging.

Model Unit 115, with similar finishes and two carpeted bedrooms, two full bathrooms and a private rear entrance, is going for $2,100 a month.

The 46 units at the adjacent The Flats at 44 opened in March, and the 41 market-rate units leased quickly.

"People looking for afford­ability and nice, modern apartments have been finding us," said Margaret Farrell, regional manager of HallKeen Management, which manages the 150 ­total units in Mitchell's three buildings, including the brick-and-beam Atlas Lofts, carved out of a former bedding factory in 2010.

The rehabbed Box District is only a block from City Hall just north of Bellingham Square. A new Silver Line Box District stop connecting to South Station is under construction behind the Flats at 22 and will open in 2016.

"Getting the Silver Line will be a huge boost for Chelsea," said HallKeen marketing manager Courtney Mathiowitz. "And this neighborhood is a national model on how to do mixed-income housing in an urban neighborhood."

Hahnel said that the mostly young professionals renting in Mitchell's Box District properties like the fact that it's a diverse neighborhood with lots of children.

"It's not a sterile place," she said. "It's active and full of life."

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Boston’s Revere Hotel gets a new owner

Boston's trendy Revere Hotel has a new owner, a little more than 2 1⁄2 years after it debuted following a $29 million transformation of an undistinguished Radisson Hotel into the luxury boutique property.

Bethesda, Md.-based Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, owner of Boston's W Hotel, has bought the 356-room hotel, a lucrative 826-space attached parking garage and a vacant adjacent Stuart Street property for $260.4 million from New York's Northwood Investors.

The parking garage makes it difficult to decipher the strength of Pebblebrook's purchase on a per-room basis, the typical metric for hotel purchases, according to Matthew Arrant, executive vice president of Pinnacle Advisory Group, a Boston hospitality consulting firm.

"The parking garage is a really big component of the revenue stream," he said. "But (the total purchase price) is a testament to the strength of the Boston market right now and how far the market has come since Northwood bought (the hotel)."

Northwood acquired the hotel for $143.5 million in 2010.

It's a strong time for hotel sellers, with additional value gained because of the strength of the market overall, said Andrea Foster, vice president and New England practice leader of PKF Consulting USA.

"It's also a good time for buyers," she said. "With the future forecast for occupancy and rate projections, there's still upside for buyers in the next couple of years."

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Innovation expansion urged: Four areas envisioned as new Boston ‘districts’

A task force appointed in September by Mayor Martin J. Walsh is eyeing four neighborhoods as potential innovation hubs, Boston's economic development czar said yesterday.

Although its final recommendations are not due until Jan. 30, the four areas most discussed by the Neighborhood Innovation District Committee are East Boston, the Bowdoin-Geneva and Fields Corner sections of Dorchester, and Dudley Square in Roxbury to Uphams Corner in Dorchester, said John Barros, who co-chairs the committee.

"Mayor Walsh sees an opportunity to bring the innovation economy into Boston's neighborhoods," said Melina Schuler, a spokeswoman for the mayor. "The recommendations being made by the Neighborhood Innovation District Committee are first steps in establishing how communities can participate and benefit from this new type of entrepreneurship and job creation."

While government can be the catalyst for that, the private sector "can make it real and sustainable," as has been the case with MassChallenge, said Scott Bailey, senior director of partnerships for the Boston-based startup accelerator and competition.

"The real challenge in any of these neighborhoods is how do you keep them included in what's going on in other places," Bailey said. "It's not about building a cluster and leaving it off on its own."

Charles Teague, CEO of Lose It!, a startup that makes software to help people lose weight, said when his company was looking for a location, it chose Boston's Innovation District because it was more affordable than Cambridge's Kendall Square and had a vibrant community of tech companies working on some of the same problems. He worries that sense of community could be "fragmented" if the city creates other innovation districts.

But Tim Rowe, founder and CEO of the Cambridge Innovation Center, said: "Innovation-driven prosperity can't remain the province of just a few neighborhoods. If Boston wasn't pursuing this, we'd be asking it to."

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Chrysler to recall about 288K Ram pickup trucks

DETROIT — Chrysler is recalling about 288,000 older Ram pickup trucks in North America and elsewhere because the rear axle can seize or the drive shaft can fall off.

The recall covers Ram 1500 pickups from the 2005 model year.

Chrysler says in documents posted Friday by U.S. safety regulators that the rear-axle pinion nut can come loose. That can cause problems that make the trucks spin out of control.

The recall comes after an investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that began in June.

The agency found 15 complaints, including seven drivers who reported that the wheels locked at speeds over 50 miles per hour. Chrysler says there have been three crashes and one injury due to the problem.

The recall includes nearly 257,000 trucks in the U.S., another 22,000 in Canada, 8,800 in Mexico and 400 outside North America.

The affected trucks were made from Jan. 28, 2004 to Aug. 3, 2005, according to the documents.

In one complaint to NHTSA in February 2013, a pickup driver wrote that he was on an interstate highway when the drive shaft disconnected and the truck began to spin.

"It was five seconds of terror that I thought would surely end in disaster," the driver wrote. When the truck stopped it was blocking an entrance ramp, and the driver had to drag it to the shoulder in speeding traffic, the complaint said. Drivers who file complaints are not identified in NHTSA's database.

Dealers will install a fix at no cost to owners. The recall will begin in February. Customers can call Chrysler at (800) 853-1403 with questions.

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Unemployment rates fell in 41 US states last month

WASHINGTON — Unemployment rates fell in 41 U.S. states in November and were unchanged in six more, reflecting healthy job gains across the country.

The Labor Department said Friday that unemployment rates rose in only three states: Connecticut, Louisiana, and Washington state.

Solid economic growth since the spring has encouraged more employers to step up hiring. The U.S. has added nearly 2.7 million jobs this year, the most since 1999. That has lowered unemployment rates in most of the country.

Nationwide, the unemployment rate was 5.8 percent in November, down from 7 percent a year ago. Employers added 321,000 jobs last month, the most in three years.

North Dakota's 2.7 percent unemployment rate was lowest in the nation, while Mississippi's 7.3 percent rate was the highest.

Thirty-seven states reported higher job totals, while 12 lost jobs. Idaho's payrolls were unchanged.

The biggest job gains occurred in California, which added 90,100 jobs in November, followed by Florida, which gained 41,900. Texas added the third-most jobs, with 34,800.

California posted a large increase in a category that includes retail and shipping jobs, likely reflecting some hiring for the holiday shopping season. It also saw big gains in hotels and restaurants and professional and business services, which includes higher-paying jobs such as accountants and architects.

The largest job losses were in West Virginia, which had 5,200 fewer jobs than the previous month. It was followed by Mississippi, which had 4,500 fewer, and Kansas, with 4,100 fewer.

West Virginia lost jobs in construction, professional and business services, and hotels and restaurants.

Overall, unemployment rates are getting closer to healthy levels in most parts of the country. The rate fell below 6 percent in 7 states last month, bringing the total number of states with rates below 6 percent to 29.

Still, much of the decline has occurred because many of the unemployed have stopped looking for work, rather than because they have found jobs. The government doesn't count people as unemployed unless they are actively searching for work.

And there are still 9.1 million Americans officially counted as unemployed, up from 7.6 million before the recession.

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FBI blames North Korea for Sony hack

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday formally accused the North Korean government of being responsible for the devastating hacking attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment, providing the most detailed accounting to date of a hugely expensive break-in that could lead to a U.S. response.

The FBI said in a statement it has enough evidence to conclude that North Korea was behind the punishing breach, which resulted in the disclosure of tens of thousands of leaked emails and other materials.

"North Korea's actions were intended to inflict significant harm on a U.S. business and suppress the right of American citizens to express themselves. Such acts of intimidation fall outside the bounds of acceptable state behavior," the statement said.

The FBI's statement cited, among other factors, technical similarities between the Sony break-in and past "malicious cyber activity" linked directly to North Korea, including a prior cyberattack against South Korean banks and media.

President Barack Obama is expected to face questions about the Sony hack at a year-end news conference with reporters later Friday.

The break-in escalated to terrorist threats against moviegoers that prompted Sony this week to cancel the Christmas release of the movie "The Interview." The film, a comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco, is about a plot to assassinate North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un.

North Korea has denied being responsible but earlier this month referred to the cyberattack as a "righteous deed." A North Korean diplomat to the United Nations, Kim Un Chol, declined to comment Friday about the FBI's accusations.

Obama administration officials had until Friday declined to openly blame North Korea but had said they were weighing various options for a response. The statement Friday did not reveal what options were being considered but did say the government would "impose costs and consequences."

It's not immediately clear what action, if any, the government will take. Bringing the shadowy hackers to justice appears a distant prospect. A U.S. cyberretaliation against North Korea would risk a dangerous escalation. And North Korea is already targeted by a raft of sanctions over its nuclear weapons program.

The FBI did not indicate whether it has identified any individual hackers who might be culpable. In May, the Justice Department indicted five Chinese military officers accused of vast cyberespionage against American corporate interests, but none of those defendants has yet to set foot in an American courtroom.

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