Category: Uncategorized

What goes around

Stop what you’re doing right now and read Howie Carr’s Herald column on Don Imus, starring Mike Barnicle (unnamed, but he’s hard to miss), Alan Dershowitz, Riddick Bowe and an unspeakably sick putdown of Carr’s wife that Howie attributes to the I-Man. No direct evidence that Imus ever said it, but Carr claims Imus settled out of court, and I believe him.

Meanwhile, Imus himself was back on the air this morning, doing his “I’m contrite but I’m really a decent person” thing before beginning his two-week suspension on Monday. I caught him with one of his enablers, Paul Begala, who turned in a performance that could only be described as icky.

If Imus’ bosses were really serious about punishing Imus for his “nappy-headed hos” crack, why are they giving him a week to spin this his way before giving him a timeout?

More: Is the Globe’s front-pager on Barack Obama’s restrained reaction to Imus really a story? Squaring the Globe says no.

Not much of a come-uppance

I’ve never thought Imus was a racist. Nor do I think he blurted out “nappy-headed hos” in order to goose his ratings. Nevertheless, he and his crew have repeatedly crossed the line over the years. This isn’t Michael Savage-style hate radio — rather, these are old men playing at being naughty boys. Still, Imus and company’s act is old and offensive, and it’s time to bring it to an end. A two-week suspension? Please.

Carolyn Ryan is N.Y.-bound

Scratch Globe metro editor Carolyn Ryan from the list of possible replacements for columnist Eileen McNamara. The New York Observer reports that she’s accepted a job as deputy metro editor for government and politics at the New York Times.

I’ve known Ryan since the early 1990s, when she was covering Beacon Hill for The Patriot Ledger of Quincy. As a media reporter, I always found her to be accessible and a straight shooter, and I wish her well in New York. (Via Romenesko.)

Toward less anonymity

I don’t want to rehash today’s New York Times article about attempts to encourage civility in blogland through a voluntary code of conduct. Rather, let me briefly consider one aspect of this that I’ve wrestled with from time to time: the matter of anonymous comments.

The code, online here, includes this:

We do not allow anonymous comments.

We require commenters to supply a valid email address before they can post, though we allow commenters to identify themselves with an alias, rather than their real name.

I can almost guarantee that Media Nation will adopt this system later in the spring. I like how I’ve seen this implemented on other blogs. Blogger, unfortunately, does not appear to offer any middle ground between full registration and total anonymity (although some commenters here work around that by including their names or pseudonyms). But change is coming.

Patrick versus Romney

Much comment out there about the Globe’s poll regarding Gov. Deval Patrick’s first 100 days in office, as well as a similar State House News Service poll. The Outraged Liberal: It could be worse. Hub Politics: Actually, it couldn’t be much worse. Blue Mass Group: It’s pretty good! David Bernstein: It’s pretty bad, but don’t write Deval off.

What’s missing from all this is context. How is Patrick doing compared to Mitt Romney at a similar point in his term? Media Nation comes to the rescue. It turns out that the Globe conducted an almost-identical poll in April 2003 (online here; scroll down), around the time Romney had been governor for 100 days. What follows are some numbers from both Globe surveys.

Personal popularity

  • Romney: 55 percent positive; 32 percent negative
  • Patrick: 63 percent positive; 25 percent negative

Job performance

  • Romney: 55 percent positive; 39 percent negative
  • Patrick: 48 percent positive; 33 percent negative

State of the state

  • Romney: 39 percent, right track; 47 percent, wrong track
  • Patrick: 44 percent, right track; 56 percent, wrong track

Budget leadership

  • Romney: 51 percent, approve; 40 percent, disapprove
  • Patrick: 56 pecent, approve; 30 percent, disapprove

Much as I’d like to make more comparisons, the tabular data from 2003 are not online.

So what can we learn from the Romney-Patrick smackdown? At roughly the same point in their governorships, they were in a similar position with respect to public perceptions. Patrick is better liked. Although a higher percentage of respondents approved of Romney’s job performance, a higher percentage disapproved, too. Apparently more people are watching and waiting with Patrick.

Each governor dug himself into something of a hole rather quickly. As we know, Romney never dug himself out — and, after a while, he stopped trying, as he decided to run for president by making fun of Massachusetts rather than govern.

Despite Patrick’s stumbles coming out of the gate (some real, some media hooey), he seems genuinely dedicated to trying to do a good job. The relatively high marks he receives for managing the budget put him in a decent position from which to mount a comeback. And he has a reservoir of goodwill on which to draw.

Who listens to Imus?

A Media Nation reader has challenged me to back up my assertion that no one has complained to WTKK Radio (96.9 FM) about Imus’ racist language because, well, no one listens.

It’s a fair point, though proving it is not as easy as it might seem. But there is certainly some evidence that the I-Man is not as big in Boston as he used to be.

Ideally, I would look at Arbitron’s ratings for weekday mornings among listeners in the key 25- to 54-year-old demographic. Unfortunately, companies pay a lot of money for those ratings, and no one’s going to give them to me.

On the Arbitron Web site, I can get data on overall ratings for Boston radio stations among listeners 12 and older. Since these numbers are not broken down by time slot, they’re not much good. For what it’s worth, though, the station came in ninth last fall, the most recent quarter for which numbers are available. News and/or talk stations that finished ahead of WTKK were WBZ (AM 1030), WRKO (AM 680) and WEEI (AM 850). And you can be sure that public station WBUR (90.9 FM), with a news and talk line-up, finished well ahead of ‘TKK, since its morning drive-time ratings are invariably strong — something not reflected in the Arbitron rankings, which only include commercial stations.

I also searched the archives of the Globe and the Herald for the past two years. Although I could not come up with anything definitive, I did find the following from the Herald’s “Inside Track,” published in September 2005:

Ratings-wise, “Imus in the Morning” isn’t exactly a powerhouse for ‘TKK in that all-important male 25-54 age group.

In the last five ratings books — Spring 2004 to Spring 2005 — the perennially PO’d morning man weighed in after WEEI’s sports yakkers Dennis & Callahan; Howard Stern’s strippers-on-parade on WBCN; and all-news WBZ-AM. Classic rock WZLX even beat him a few books back.

Again, WBUR probably beat Imus, too.

The bottom line is that Imus is no ratings monster in Boston. Stern’s gone, of course, but it seems eminently reasonable to assume that three news and/or talk stations — WBZ, WEEI and WBUR — all do better than “Imus in the Morning.”

If anyone has more definitive numbers than this, please pass them along, and I’ll be glad to post them.

Trying to remember Imus

I’m not surprised that Boston’s WTKK Radio (96.9 FM) says it’s received no complaints about Don Imus’ racist prattle on Wednesday. Who knew he was still on the air?

The Herald’s Jessica Heslam has the details. Imus’ apology has been posted on MSNBC.com. Here’s some background on Imus’ previous racist, misogynistic and homophobic outbursts.

I think it’s time — past time — for Imus to retire to the ranch. And he can take his little pal Bernard McGuirk with him.

Please come to Lowell

The New England News Forum is holding its coming-out party tomorrow at UMass Lowell. I’ll be on a panel from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. on “The Blogger as Journalist: Making New Law and Definitions,” along with Christine Stuart of CTNewsJunkie.com and Robert Cox, founder of the Media Bloggers Association.

It looks like a great program. If you can make it, I hope you’ll look me up.