It was a month ago today that a prankster contacted Boston Herald columnist Ron Borges, claiming to be the agent for Tom Brady with a big scoop: Brady was planning to hold out of offseason work for a new contract.
Borges ran with the story, attributing it to unnamed “sources” (plural), and the Boston Herald splashed it across their front page. The next day the prankster revealed himself and the paper released a statement retracting the column and announcing that Borges had been “suspended pending further review.”
A month later, Borges has yet to write for the paper since. So what happened to that “further review”? Has his suspension turned into a termination, or will he be back at the Herald? PFT put that question to Herald sports editor Sean Leahy, who answered, “There’s no update beyond what the company said last month.”
The Herald still lists Borges as one of its two sports columnists, even though he hasn’t written for the paper for a month and even though they’re not saying whether he will return to the paper. On social media, Borges is acting as if he still works for the paper: This morning he tweeted at a Herald colleague who’s leaving for the Boston Globe with the message, “Our loss is most certainly the Globe‘s gain.” Yesterday Borges tweeted that he’s “waiting to see what the new owners of the Herald do with those 25% layoffs.” The Herald was recently sold to a company that plans to lay off a quarter of the employees.
Borges remains on the Pro Football Hall of Fame selection committee, and he says on social media that he’s writing a book and producing a documentary. During his former job at the Boston Globe, Borges was suspended for plagiarism, and no one who has followed his career can be surprised that he got suspended again at the Herald. And yet his career continues to move along, despite the kinds of journalistic lapses that sometimes end careers.
