Year: 2009

For Severin, no news is good news

Jay Severin began his first WTKK Radio (96.9 FM) show in a month by reading an apology, the text of which is on the station’s Web site. Then he switched over to distorting Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s record on racial preference. (Here are the facts.)

Pre-suspension, it’s pretty much a slam-dunk that he’d have snickered about her weight. And it’s unlikely that he would have lauded her “compelling life story,” as he did today. So that’s progress. I guess.

Can I change the station now? Thank you.

More: Not sure how long Severin’s apology will remain on WTKK.com, so here is a more permanent home.

GateHouse’s crushing debt

Old friend Steve Syre analyzes GateHouse Media in today’s Boston Globe and comes to a conclusion that’s sadly familiar when looking at newspaper companies these days: its papers, though not in great shape, would be doing fine if it weren’t for the corporate debt under which they’re staggering.

Not to keep linking to a story I wrote on GateHouse for CommonWealth Magazine last fall, but it’s relevant.

Department of redundancy department

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert pokes fun at Newt Gingrich this morning for calling Judge Sonya Sotomayor a “Latina woman racist,” writing that Gingrich is “apparently unaware of his incoherence in the ‘Latina-woman’ redundancy in this defamatory characterization.”

Herbert is technically correct. But as we all know, Sotomayor’s most controversial public pronouncement came during a 2001 speech in which she said:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

Watch Herbert tie himself into knots as he attempts to allude to that statement without quoting it directly.

For the record, I don’t think Sotomayor is incoherent, redundant or a racist.

Two days, two acts of terrorism

The suspect in the shooting of two soldiers in Little Rock, Ark., one fatally, has been identified. And as with the murder of Dr. George Tiller, the slaying of Pvt. William Long appears to be an act of domestic terrorism. From the New York Times:

The gunman, identified by the police as Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad of Little Rock, fled the scene and was arrested minutes later a short distance from the recruiting station, in a bustling suburban shopping center….

In a lengthy interview with the police, Mr. Muhammad said he was angry about the killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, Chief [Stuart] Thomas [of the Little Rock Police Department] said. Previously known as Carlos Bledsoe, Mr. Muhammad told investigators that he had converted to Islam as a teenager, Chief Thomas said.

The injured soldier, Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, is said to be in stable condition.

It is absolutely horrifying that two people have died at the hands of gunmen who have been charged with taking their political beliefs to a deadly extreme.

The cultural divide that won’t go away

The assassination of Dr. George Tiller, I write in the Guardian, shows once again that abortion is the cultural divide that won’t go away. Which is why Bill O’Reilly’s taunting name-calling — “Tiller the baby killer” — and his comparisons of Tiller to Nazis and Al Qaeda terrorists was so mind-blowingly irresponsible.

Globe expands Your Town

The Boston Globe has rolled out six more Your Town hyperlocal sites, the subject of so much angst (and a lawsuit) last winter. Unlike the original iteration, the sites now feature mostly Globe content, with a few links to community sites. Your Town is now in 10 communities.

My quick perusal reveals no links to GateHouse’s Wicked Local sites, even though the out-of-court settlement between GateHouse and the New York Times Co. allows linking as long as the Globe doesn’t resume its practice of running an automated feed of GateHouse content on Your Town.

Interesting that the Globe continues its local push even as the Times Co. threatens to close the paper.

The new sites are on the South Shore (Hingham, Norwell and Scituate) and in the urban communities of Medford, Malden and Melrose. Here’s an e-mail that went out to the staff on Friday from David Dahl, the Globe’s regional editor:

All,

This week we launched six more Your Town sites, bringing to 10 the number of our hyperlocal sites. The new communities are Hingham, Scituate, Norwell, Medford, Malden and Melrose. You can find the sites at boston.com/hingham, boston.com/scituate, etc.

As many of you know, in addition to posts from Globe correspondents and staffers, the sites offer a collection of links to other blogs and websites, interactive opportunities for readers to post events and to report potholes and other problems, and, coming soon, improved blogging tools to allow readers to more easily post words and photos on our sites.

The sites enable us to reach deeper — and on a daily basis — into the communities that we’ve covered for years in our zoned sections. And the effort represents another collaborative effort between the Globe and our colleagues at boston.com to boost our local online effort.

Thursday’s Globe North offers a good example of our early successes. Steve Rosenberg wrote a story about municipal salaries for the city of Medford, the latest in a series of muni salary stories to come out of the zones this year. Eric Bauer created a searchable database of the top 100 salaries. We published the story and database at boston.com/medford and in Globe North.

The response: several thousand page views, and 50 reader comments. “Great expose of public information. Plenty more out there. Next story: follow around a few of these administrators to see what they do all day and then figure out to whom they are related,” wrote one reader. (It wasn’t me, I swear…).

There are many people who worked to assemble these new sites, among them: Teresa Hanafin, Angela Nelson, Glenn Yoder, Marcia Dick, Dean Inouye, the zones copy desk and the staff on Bob Kempf’s product team. In addition to staffers whose work will appear on the sites, we are using free lance “Town Correspondents” to post blog items and conduct outreach in the communities. They are Kathryn Eident, Ben Terris, Lisa Crowley and Travis Andersen.

Several of you have asked about page views and about advertising support. We’re closing in on a half million page views this month from the Your Town sites. Ad sales are going reasonably well at this early date, and I’m assured that our sales people are looking for more.

David Dahl
Boston Globe Regional Editor
Boston.com/yourtown

Another public pension outrage (III)

Salem News reporter Chris Cassidy is back with another sordid tale about the Essex Regional Retirement Board. This time, the board is looking to lower the retirement age for public-works employees from 65 to 55. You can’t make this stuff up.

Unlike the board’s recent move to lower the age for 911 dispatchers from 65 to 60, this time it apparently cannot act on its own. Rather, it has asked state Sen. Thomas McGee, D-Lynn, to file legislation on its behalf. Board chairman Timothy Bassett, a notorious double-dipper, is said to be buddies with McGee, son of a legendary former House speaker who was ousted by reformers a generation ago.

Fortunately, Cassidy writes that the bill, which has been filed in previous sessions, is unlikely to go anywhere.

Did Severin take a pay cut?

From Jessica Heslam’s interview with Jay Severin in the Boston Herald:

Severin referred questions about the conditions of his return — including whether he took a pay cut — to his agent and attorney, George Tobia. Tobia declined to comment on the conditions, saying simply, “Jay is very excited to be back in the fold on his station. He loves working there and he’s excited about doing a great show for WTKK.”

If the answer was “no,” wouldn’t Severin and Tobia just say “no”?

From Eric Moskowitz’s story in the Boston Globe:

As have others who have followed the issue from both sides, [El Planeta managing editor Marcela] García speculated that the suspension had as much to do with Severin’s reported $1 million annual salary and his recent drop to 14th in the ratings as with his particular remarks. A spokeswoman for Greater Media Inc., has confirmed that WTKK’s parent company and Severin are in negotiations.

Negotiating over what?

Keep your eye on the big picture. From the beginning, this has sounded more than anything like the story of a troubled media company — and keep in mind that all media companies are troubled — trying to get out of a contract it agreed to in the midst of an entirely different economic climate.

I don’t think we’re going to see any $1 million-a-year local radio hosts anymore. It must be particularly galling for Greater Media to have to pay Severin that much to come in last in his two-person race with WRKO’s Howie Carr.

No doubt Severin’s ratings on Tuesday will be spectacular. We’ll see if he can sustain it.