BANNED IN BOSTON? Here's an interesting story. Reporters at the Boston Herald are protesting the hiring of Virginia Buckingham, a former director of the Massachusetts Port Authority, as an editorial page writer at the paper.

Several Herald staffers contacted yesterday did not want to speak publicly. But they indicated there is widespread concern about Buckingham's hiring. The biggest questions, they say, are whether readers will constantly be scrutinizing editorials for ulterior motives and whether, as an ex-GOP operative, she can sit in on editorial board meetings with Democratic pols and policy makers and be perceived as a journalist rather than as an antagonist.

Here's a link to the actual letter the reporters sent to the editorial page editor. I especially loved this bit: "She is familiar to most as a GOP political operative, with all the baggage that entails." It really makes you wonder if these reporters think "Democratic political operatives" in similar positions carry no such baggage.

But a journalism professor asks, "What's the big deal?"

But why should this matter to the reporters? Their concern is to maintain the wall between news pages and editorial pages; ensure that readers are aware of the difference; and fight to prevent the editorial-page views from slopping into their own copy and their editors' news choices. ... By protesting the choice of an edit writer, Herald reporters are suggesting to the public that what is printed there does in fact tarnish the news coverage. They are admitting a link that they should be rejecting and denying.

I'm with the prof on this one. (All links via Romenesko.)