Globe stays in-house for new metro columnists

Globe Editor Martin Baron has just told his staff that Globe staffers Kevin Cullen and Yvonne Abraham will be replacing Brian McGrory and Eileen McNamara on the left side of the metro section. Cullen could be a wicked cool columnist - he did a great job as police-beat reporter for the Herald and then the Globe (Abraham could be good, too, I'm just not as familiar with her work).

Baron's memo follows:

The Globe lost the strong voices of two superb columnists in recent months as Brian McGrory assumed leadership of the local news staff and Eileen McNamara left us to become a journalism professor at Brandeis University. I'm delighted to report that we'll be replacing both of them, and that Yvonne Abraham and Kevin Cullen will bring their fresh, eloquent voices as columnists to our metro front.

Both have intimate knowledge and deep affection for this city and the region. Both are known for distinguished and distinctive reporting on a wide range of stories. And both have the insatiable curiosity, writing chops, and energy that are the essential ingredients of a standout columnist. Both have strong opinions, too. With this appointment, they can finally let loose.

Still, as you know, their backgrounds are very different.

Yvonne, 40, was born in Sydney, Australia to Lebanese immigrants. She worked "every crappy job you can imagine," she says, but found her way to graduating from the University of Sydney with a double major in history and English literature. She got a couple of years into a PhD but abandoned that idea "when I realized I preferred shorter lead times." After working as a debt collector for a fancy department store "cajoling payments out of the formerly well-heeled," she came to Boston on a Rotary Foundation fellowship in 1993 to get a master's degree in journalism at Boston University. She worked a year as a staff writer at Boston magazine, followed by two years covering city hall, education, public housing and other topics at the Boston Phoenix, and then finally arrived at the Globe in January, 1999. Yvonne has gone on to do general assignment, cover presidential campaigns in 2000 and 2004, work the State House for four years, take on an assignment in Pakistan after 9/11, and, most recently, cover immigration.

Kevin, 48, is Boston to the core. Born here and raised in Malden, Kevin says he was an "All-Star altar boy" in his first eight years at Catholic school who still "fought constantly with the nuns over what I would call intellectual freedom." He then went to Malden High and on to UMass Amherst, before withdrawing and enrolling at Trinity College in Dublin - "fulfilling a fascination with my roots that the sociologists call ‘third generation return.' " He returned to UMass for his degree as a double major in journalism and political science. Before his first newspaper interview, Kevin says, "I stayed up all night, reading the New York Times, trying to memorize the name of Thailand's foreign minister, as if that would be what the managing editor of the Transcript-Telegram of Holyoke would ask me in my interview." Instead, the managing editor asked him, "What's the least amount of money you would work for?" Apparently, Kevin answered correctly. After two years there, he joined the Boston Herald to cover cops. Since he was hired by the Globe in 1985, he has been police reporter, all-around street reporter, European correspondent (covering Ireland and the war in Kosovo), member of the Spotlight team that exposed the FBI's corrupt relationship with Whitey Bulger, and a member of the Pulitzer-winning investigative team that cracked the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. He was a Nieman fellow in 2003 and, most recently, a projects reporter. "From the time I began working as a street reporter," Kevin says, "my dream job was to be a metro columnist for the newspaper I grew up reading."

We haven't yet determined when Kevin and Yvonne will start. Meantime, please join me in congratulating both of them on their exciting, but challenging, new assignment.

Marty