The gubernatorial debate wars, simmering beneath the surface for a while, break out today in the Herald. The headline refers to the media consortium organizing the debates as (of course!) a “Globe-led group.” Near the bottom of the story, we learn that the consortium also includes “WGBH (Ch. 2), WCVB (Ch. 5), WHDH (Ch. 7), New England Cable News and WBUR (90.9 FM).”
Yet to fire back are Jon Keller of WBZ-TV (Channel 4), who was trying to put together a Nov. 1 debate without the consortium, and, of course, the Globe.
Personally, I’m not a big fan of media organizations’ working together when they ought to be competing, so I say good for Keller. But for the Herald to use this as a pretext for tweaking the Globe is kind of ludicrous.
The Herald also gives big play today to the Boston Newspaper Guild’s decision to take out anti-Globe radio ads. Sound clips included.
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There’s a great article in the current issue of Vanity Fair,which describes the parlous financial state of the NYT, especially the ‘B’ stockholders, aka the Sulzburgers. The article suggests that the first cuts to be made will be human ones – and now, apparently, human ones remote from Manhattan.
Dan, you are correct on the consortium. The candidates should make themselves available to do a number of TV debates and the media outlets shouldn’t be working in collaboration like this. Also, these collectives tend to keep out the “fringe” candidates because wankers at the Globe don’t believe that they are viable even though they make the ballot. To Keller’s credit – and Ellen Rooney of “Greater Boston” too – he did allow Republican Phil Hyde and myself on his Sunday morning TV56 show during the 1998 8th Congressional District when we were blacked out by all the other TV stations and newspapers. We were also allowed on some more open-minded radio stations like WILD and Tai’s show on WRKO.