Tough Day for the Globe

And we’re not just talking about the broadsheet’s plan to close its press in Billerica.

The Miami Herald reports today that the Globe’s Tania deLuzuriaga may have had a relationship with a Miami-Dade public school official while she was covering the district for the Miami Herald. Steamy.

Alberto Carvalho, who is currently the district’s associate superintendent for intergovernmental affairs, was offered the job of superintendent earlier this week. But he’s under fire after emails surfaced that reportedly show Carvalho and then-Herald reporter deLuzuriaga were planning a trip to Boston and Portugal, and were discussing “relationship angst.”

Carvalho insists he’s been set up, and wants the district to make all of his emails public.

”Some of the contents of the e-mails suggest to me that somebody has manipulated them,” Carvalho said after meeting with students at Miami Jackson High. “What they are attempting is damaging and hurtful and untruthful. They are using them to damage my character.”

If Carvalho and deLuzuriaga—who declined comment to the Miami Herald and has also left calls and emails from Boston Daily unreturned—really were planning vacations together, it would be a huge conflict of interest for the reporter, and the Globe would have some tough decisions ahead of them.

It is of course too early to convict deLuzuriaga, though (that whole innocent until guilty thing), so for the mean time, here’s what we really want to know: why doesn’t this kind of thing happen more often? In this era of faux-Dan Grabauskas Facebook pages, why isn’t everyone setting up email addresses and creating fictional trysts between notable people? It would be a new kind of fan fic.

In fact, we think we may do it as a way to blackmail our way to promotion later today. If you don’t hear from us this afternoon, it’s because we’re the new editor of Boston magazine.