Media Nation

Media Nation reader M.G. sends along word that the Boston.com entertainment message board is promoting a “Blow Job Workshop for Women in Oct.” I hightailed over to see for myself, and was pleasantly surprised to see that it hadn’t been taken down yet. Click here and scroll down (it’s under “New Message Boards”), although it will probably be gone by the time you get there. At least at this moment, as the screen capture shows, it’s also getting prominent billing on the main Arts & Entertainment page.

This is neither the result of a massive brain cramp nor a prank. Drill down and you’ll see a detailed description of a “Fellatio Workshop,” along with this helpful syllabus: “This is NOT simply a ‘blow job’ workshop. Anyone can learn tips and skills to use when performing oral sex. What makes you GREAT at it is having the desire and the confidence to do it.” You can also sign up for a striptease class, or for “Sexology 101: Ladies, Get More Pleasure in Bed.”

Now, I have no problem with such content, and except for the “Blow Job” come-on, it’s not actually on Boston.com. As far as I can tell, these are legitimate offerings, and how else are people supposed to find out about them? Somehow, though, I don’t think the folks at Boston.com would agree.

Update: It’s 2:52 p.m., and the notice is still up on both pages. So I guess a new era has dawned at Boston.com.

Update II: It’s 10:01 p.m. now, and it’s gone.

One of the exhilarating — and intimidating — things about teaching a course on Web journalism is that my students invariably know things that I don’t. There’s no way to keep up with everything. I’ve got an RSS aggregator, NewsFire, that dings every time one of them has posted something new. These days, it’s dinging a lot.

I’ve just spent the last half-hour reading updates, and though there were a lot of terrific posts, I was particularly taken by this, from Rajashree Joshi, on a new feature being offered by the Washington Times: Click on a story, and a female-voiced robot (or maybe it’s a robotic-sounding female) will read it to you.

I find audio innovations to be inherently interesting because it’s the ultimate medium for multitasking. You can’t read or watch video while you’re driving, raking leaves or doing the laundry, but you can certainly listen. That’s why, amid all of the technological advances of recent years, the greatest news success story is public radio. It’s not that it’s so wonderful (although it often is); it’s because it reaches people where they are: stuck in traffic, on their way to or from work.

But radio news stories — even serious radio news stories, such as NPR’s offerings — are a lot shorter than text-based news. The two media are not alike, and one doesn’t translate well to the other. Consider this story in today’s Washington Times on the House ethics committee’s investigation into who knew what about former congressman Mark Foley, the Capitol Hill king of instant messaging. It’s only 1,060 words long — about average for an important news story.

Click on it, though, and you’ll find that it takes seven minutes and 14 seconds to hear the whole thing. Assuming you could port this over to your iPod and play it over your car stereo (it looks doable but not easy), that would take up a significant portion of your commute.

By contrast, a similar story on NPR’s “Morning Edition” today checks in at just 3:51.

The Washington Times deserves credit for experimenting with different ways of delivering its content. But as media analyst Barry Parr is quoted as saying in the Times’ own article introducing the feature, “I don’t understand what they are trying to do here.”

Seth Gitell blogs on food. And let me tell you, Seth knows his food. We’ve had some memorable eating experiences on the political trail over the years. Perhaps the most memorable: stopping at R.B. and Big Daddy’s Rib Shack in Waterbury, Conn., on the way home from the Republican National Convention in Philadephia in 2000.

The Boston Globe’s pro-Deval Patrick editorial page and moderately liberal Globe columnist Scot Lehigh both put their finger on the real problems raised by the way Patrick has handled his past support for convicted rapist Benjamin LaGuer.

From the editorial:

His failure to disclose at an earlier point his contribution to the DNA test might have been just a memory glitch. In that case, his error was in not doing a more thorough review before describing his involvement with LaGuer. Or, more seriously, he might have not mentioned the contribution initially because he wanted to hide this deeper connection to LaGuer.

The editorialist, not being a mind-reader, refrained from saying the obvious: It seems pretty unlikely that Patrick’s memory is as bad as he claims.

From Lehigh’s column:

Further, Patrick’s own account of the role he played leaves one wondering about his judgment. In a Wednesday interview, Patrick said that he didn’t know LaGuer, adding that “I can’t say I studied the record with care.”

“The issue that came to my attention at the time was the fairness of his trial and particularly the fairness of the jury deliberations,” he told me.

Legitimate concerns, certainly, but why, then, had he pushed for parole for LaGuer and not a new trial? Because he wasn’t representing LaGuer, and anyway, “you don’t address that to the parole board,” Patrick said. “The only thing you can address to the parole board is his readiness for parole.”

But if he didn’t know LaGuer, it’s difficult to see how he could make a responsible assessment of that readiness.

“I had corresponded with him,” Patrick noted later. “You get an impression of him from that correspondence.”

What can you say, other than, “Oof”?

To repeat, there was nothing wrong with Patrick’s pushing for a DNA test for LaGuer, who was widely believed to be innocent until he flunked said test in 2002. Nor was there anything wrong with Patrick’s legal work on behalf of a cop-killer facing the death penalty. But his correspondence with LaGuer was way too supportive, and the way he’s handling the fallout has been wretched.

And Jon Keller reports that it’s about to get worse.

Patrick is very lucky that Kerry Healey’s only positive themes are that she’s going to do in her next four years what she and Mitt Romney failed to do in the previous four.

There’s a torrent rushing by, and I’ve only got a thimble. But here are a few drops:

Howie Carr yesterday took a call on his WRKO (AM 680) talk show from a woman in Maine who was very, very upset about Deval Patrick’s proposal to allow illegal immigrants who’ve gone to high school in Massachusetts to pay in-state tuition rates at public colleges and universities. (Howie also seems to think there’s a loophole that would allow anyone who manages to swim ashore to be eligible for in-state tuition the next day, but that’s another matter.)

The woman then complained that her daughter has to pay $40,000 a year to attend Northeastern University. Northeastern, of course, is a private school, and there is absolutely nothing that Patrick or any government official could do to lower tuition at NU for illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, nonimmigrants or anyone else.

Carr not only didn’t correct her, but he egged her on, bringing up the $40,000 figure several times before bringing the conversation to a close.

But what does Howie care? He’s already been promoting the false notion that Patrick supports “free” tuition for illegal immigrants. His Sept. 20 Boston Herald column contains just one of several examples I’ve found: “Deval doesn’t just want to give them in-state (i.e., free) tuition, he wants to give them drivers’ licenses, too.”

What’s with the parenthetical “i.e., free”? In fact, the in-state tuition rate is not zero, as any parent of a kid who goes to UMass knows. (Indeed, as Howie himself knows.) For the real figures, read this.

The tanks roll in from Chicago, and Los Angeles Times publisher Jeffrey Johnson is out. Will editor Dean Baquet now be sent to re-education camp?

If Deval Patrick proves incapable of defending himself, he’s got Blue Mass. Group to do it for him. Still, there’s so much rank hypocrisy surrounding the mini-crisis in which he finds himself that I’ve got to point out a few of the seamier examples. First, read the round-up by Boston Globe reporter Andrea Estes. Now consider:

1. Kerry Healey’s new ad. Watch it here. If this isn’t an attempt at “Willie Horton II,” I don’t know what is. Attempting to trash a lawyer for ethically defending a client is just vile. Attempting to trash a lawyer who was merely trying to spare his client the death penalty is beyond vile.

2. The LaGuer connection. Patrick appears to have dissembled on how much help he’d given to convicted rapist Benjamin LaGuer, and now Patrick is paying the price. He should. But it can’t be emphasized enough the extent to which LaGuer’s supposedly wrongful conviction was a cause célèbre in this state until 2002, when DNA tests proved beyond any reasonable doubt that he was, in fact, guilty.

Particularly laughable is a column in the Boston Herald today by Virginia Buckingham, who writes: “When I got a couple of letters from convicted rapist Ben LaGuer at the Herald, I filed them — in the circular file. I’m sure I’m not the only one.” What Buckingham fails to say is that she went to work at the Herald in 2003, a year after LaGuer failed the DNA test.

You’ll have to take my word for it, but I always believed LaGuer was guilty. Still, I knew plenty of smart people who thought otherwise. And, guilty or not, there are questions to this day as to whether he received a fair trial.

Globe columnist Adrian Walker writes, “In 1998, many thoughtful people had serious doubts about LaGuer’s conviction. Some still do. It is ridiculous to equate examining questions in a case with being procriminal. Yet that’s just the leap that’s being made in this campaign.” No kidding.

3. Do as I say (I). Michele McPhee reports in today’s Herald that the Department of Correction, under Romney and Healey, approved a light-duty clean-up assignment for Terrill Walker, convicted in the notorious murder of Boston police officer John Schroeder in 1973. Maybe it was the right thing to do, but what do you suppose Healey would say if Patrick could somehow be linked to such a decision?

4. Do as I say (II). Ditto for Healey’s running mate, Reed Hillman, who once sought a pardon for a man who’d been convicted of drunken driving three times as well as of assault on a police officer. Can you imagine what a big issue this would be if anyone had ever actually heard of Hillman?

Patrick’s got a huge lead, and maybe he’s going to coast into the governor’s office as long as he doesn’t make some monumental blunder. Still, he’s got some vulnerabilities — his election would eliminate any Republican check on the Democratic majority, and he hasn’t exactly been reassuring on whether he’d raise taxes. Healey’s been going at him hard on those issues, and she should.

But the soft-on-crime angle is an insult to the public’s intelligence.

More: Jon Keller has a good post and video commentary on Patrick’s fumbling response to Healey’s attacks.

Still more: Matt Margolis is pretty convincing in arguing that there’s less to the Herald’s Terrill Walker story than meets the eye. I should have read it more carefully.

As I did with the first gubernatorial debate, I listened (transcript here) on my way to work this morning and did not see it. Obviously the visuals are important, but I’ll trade that for being able to do more than one thing at a time. (And thanks to WBUR Radio, 90.9 FM, for providing a nice, clear online feed.)

Besides, it’s not as though the exchanges were all that gripping. Kerry Healey’s performance struck me as improved: She managed to get off a few shots at Deval Patrick, especially on taxes and the potential dangers of one-party government, without getting bogged down by Christy Mihos.

Patrick, once again, was OK — good enough, perhaps, to sit on his commanding lead. But even though he was a little more fiesty in going after Healey, one thing hadn’t changed: He was largely able to float above the fray, letting Mihos pound away at Healey.

Green-Rainbow Party candidate Grace Ross acquitted herself well, but she’s got two problems. Four years ago, Green Party candidate Jill Stein won over a number of progressives who were not exactly enamored of the insider Democratic candidate, Shannon O’Brien. This time, Patrick seems to have nailed down the progressive wing for the Democrats.

The other problem is that voters want to hear candidates tell stories about themselves, to connect with their lives. Yet Ross has kept her status as an out lesbian under wraps in the two debates, even though she was tossed a softball on same-sex marriage last night. “Come on Grace, represent,” writes Laura Kiritsy in Bay Windows. (Thanks to Adam Reilly for the link.) Apparently Ross is more comfortable as an issues wonk.

Finally, a word about last night’s moderator, television newsman James Maddigan. There’s an old saying that no one pays to see the umpire. I know the moderator’s job can be difficult. But his incessant interruptions, cutting people off for going over their time limit even when they were obviously seconds away from wrapping up, were an annoying distraction.

No doubt the rules were set by the campaigns, not by Maddigan. But what would best serve the public is a single moderator whose job is not to enforce time limits, but who uses his or her judgment to go with the flow, to poke and prod when needed, and to make sure everyone gets roughly equal treatment.

Is there any chance of that happening in the remaining debates?

This could be nothing more than the enthusiasm of Deval Patrick’s Net-savvy supporters, but — as of this moment — nearly 59 percent of the more than 4,000 people responding to a Boston.com survey say that Patrick won last night’s debate.

Slightly more than 30 percent awarded it to Kerry Healey, while Christy Mihos and Grace Ross both came in at less than 6 percent.

How foolish is state Sen. Steven Baddour? Baddour is one of four Democratic legislators who’ve demanded that Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, a Republican, stop showing a commercial that makes it look like they’ve endorsed her campaign for governor.

“It’s been twisted to appear as though I am endorsing Kerry Healey, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth,” Baddour was quoted as saying in the Boston Globe yesterday.

Today the Boston Herald’s Kimberly Atkins, citing unnamed sources, reports that Baddour “secretly pledged to help Healey’s GOP campaign for governor after the Democratic primary.” Atkins follows up on her blog:

When I arrived at my office this morning, I had no less than three voicemail massages from people claiming to have heard Sen. Steven Baddour say at various times over the summer and fall that he planned to back Kerry Healey for governor if Deval Patrick won the Democratic primary.

Baddour has guaranteed himself the worst of both worlds: outcast status no matter who wins. Good going, Senator.