By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
How thin is the NBC News bench? The Los Angeles Times reports that the top three contenders for Tim Russert’s “Meet the Press” perch are David Gregory, Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough. Good grief. I’m adding “Face the Nation” to my podcast subscriptions right now. (Via Romenesko.)
Media Nation’s top two (and extremely unlikely) contenders: Gwen Ifill and Aaron Brown.
Picking up on Gladys Kravitz’s post on the top 10 reasons that a casino will never be built in Middleborough:
The wife of Shawn Hendricks, president of the Masphee Wampanoag tribal council, has taken a restraining order out against him, according to Stephanie Vosk and George Brennan of the Cape Cod Times. The Hendrickses are in the midst of a messy divorce that includes accusations of violence and steroid use.
Last year Hendricks took over the tribal presidency from Glenn Marshall after it was revealed that Marshall had lied about his military service and had a record as a convicted rapist. It was Marshall who led the tribe’s efforts to build the world’s largest casino in Middleborough. Hendricks has vowed to continue with that effort.
Tim Russert’s death does not bode well for the future of television news. Though he was sometimes criticized for being too much of an insider, and for being tougher on liberals than on conservatives, Russert was smart and serious. He had a rare talent for communicating his love and knowledge of politics. And he was, by all accounts, a thoroughly decent human being.
Will NBC executives take advantage of this tragedy to go younger, glitzier and cheaper? That is not the legacy Russert would want or deserves.
Bill Shields of WBZ-TV (Channel 4) interviews several of us from “Beat the Press” here. The actual “Beat the Press” discussion should go up here sometime over the weekend. I’ve also written a column on Russert for the Guardian, which should be available here in a little bit.
Saturday morning update: My Guardian piece is now online.
Photo (cc) by Joseph Hallett and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
The great Gladys Kravitz offers her top 10 reasons why a casino will never be built in Middleborough.
Jeff at CelticsBlog writes:
As soon as the final buzzer sounded, I knew I would remember this game for the rest of my life. When my children are playing sports and get down about playing poorly, I’ll tell them stories about this game. When I’m feeling overwhelmed and overworked, I’ll think about this game. When a friend is feeling low and comes to me for some words of encouragement, I’ll draw inspiration from this game.
OK, I wouldn’t go that far. It’s not like it was a baseball game. But that was amazing, astounding, inspirational — oh, I’ll stop stringing clichés together now.
When it looked impossible, I was clicking back and forth between the game and Olbermann. But that 20-point margin started shrinking, and all of a sudden it was a game.
It’s too easy to say that the Lakers are choking. Look at all the youth-league, high-school and college games even the lowliest NBA player has had to dominate in order to get where he is today. Is winning a high-school championship really any less stressful for a 16- or 17-year-old than winning an NBA title is for a 25-year-old? I don’t think so. But at least from where I’m sitting (that would be in our living room), it appears that the Celtics have more character and team cohesiveness than the Lakers.
One other thing. I suppose you can’t tell much about a person by watching him being interviewed on TV. But Doc Rivers, like Terry Francona, comes across as just a good, decent human being. Stuff like this tends to confirm that.
In Boston — and around much of the hoop world — this game will be known as the greatest comeback in NBA Finals history. In LA, well, there will be references to tight neckties.
And in fairness and as a reality check, I will remind all of us (Yankees fans don’t need it) that it is physically possible to come back from 3-0, let alone 3-1.
Universal Hub rounds up more Celtics commentary here.
Josh Marshall passes along a Daily Kos item criticizing the National Press Club for providing a platform to an Obama critic from the lunatic fringe. The Kos piece — by Markos himself — urges readers to sign a petition asking the press club to disinvite the wingnut in question, someone named Larry Sinclair.
In fact, the National Press Club is merely renting space to a group called Veritas Federal Media, which is sponsoring the news conference. Click here and scroll down to June 18. You’ll see this: “This event is not affiliated with the National Press Club or the Eric Friedheim Library.” (The library is part of the press club.)
That said, the press club could certainly do a better job on its home page, where you’ll find a plug that looks very much like an official notice saying: “Larry reveals the truth about Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama.”
I’m on “Beat the Press” this week. Among other things, we’ll be talking about the Mayhill Fowler story. The show will be broadcast tomorrow at 7 p.m. on WGBH-TV (Channel 2).
Jon Keller’s blog finally unveils a working RSS feed and permalinks. Which means I can link to his post on Katherine Patrick.
Bay Windows breaks some pretty big news today: Gov. Deval Patrick’s 18-year-old daughter, Katherine Patrick, has come out as a lesbian, right before this weekend’s Boston Pride parade. Katherine tells editor-in-chief Laura Kiritsy:
As private of an issue as it is, we’ve sort of had to come to terms with the fact that we are a public family and there you give a part of yourself away. And we also … wanted people to know that it’s not only something that we accept, but it’s something that we’re very proud of. It’s a great aspect of our lives and there’s nothing about it that is shameful or that we would want to hide.
Two interesting side notes: the governor did not know about his daughter’s sexual orientation until after last year’s battle over marriage equality; and he makes the common-sense point that he was uncomfortable about talking with Bay Windows because he wouldn’t do an interview to announce that his daughter was straight.
Following up a few recent Media Nation posts:
Hyperlocal is about conversation, not traditional news. Writing for the Online Journalism Review, Tom Grubisich takes a deeper look at the Washington Post’s LoudounExtra.com site, recently pronounced a failure by the Wall Street Journal. Grubisich’s verdict is that the site falls short in large measure because it doesn’t provide much in the way of interactivity and social networking.
Parsing the financials at GateHouse Media. The financial blog 247WallSt.com last week claimed that GateHouse Media — a national chain that owns some 100 community newspapers in Eastern Massachusetts — could go broke later this year because of its plummeting stock price and $1.2 billion debt. But, in fact, there is some positive news to report as well.
According to GateHouse, in the first quarter of 2008 revenues were $168.9 million, an increase of 78.4 percent over the previous year. And its EBIDTA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) was $30.1 million, up 93.9 percent over the previous year.
A not-so-mysterious increase in listeners. The Boston Globe today profiles “TOUCH 106.1 FM,” a pirate radio station serving the black community that’s been threatened by the FCC. Globe reporter Brian Ballou does a thorough job, but I had to chuckle at his writing that the station’s Internet listenership has recently jumped from 2,000 to 5,000 without offering any possible explanation.
Here is the explanation.