My favorite Globe columnists: One good, one bad

Brian McGrory turns in a tearjerker of a column today, in which he talks to a woman who watched her three brothers brutally murdered in 1997. Go read it - with a box of Kleenex. And then hope McGrory keeps it up.

But now let's turn to the sports pages and Dan Shaughnessy. Oh, Shankie! How many times do we have to tell you? People in the media just have no business complaining about media-generated hype that their organizations helped whip up. You think Matsuzaka's getting too much media attention? Write about something else then. Or as Dan Shaughnessy Watch puts it:

In the spirit of Shank himself, let me begin by stating the obvious. Dan Shaughnessy is a columnist. Columnists, unlike traditional reporters, are given much latitude. They can speculate; they can use humor; they can inject personal opinion. When you read a column, the expectation is that you will be treated to a unique insight or be told a story that you have not heard multiple times elsewhere. Let me end this paragraph by stating the obvious. Dan Shaughnessy fails as a columnist. ...