Tag: WBUR

Twitter gathering at WBUR

A handful of folks who follow WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) on Twitter gathered at the station this morning for a tour and conversation about the station’s new-media initiatives. That’s “Morning Edition” anchor Bob Oakes behind the glass. (God help me, the event was dubbed a “Tweet-up.”)

For a Flickr slideshow of the event, click on the photo. More pictures may pop up later in WBUR’s Listener Photo Project. And Gene Koo of the Berkman Center, who shot video with a Flip camera, might upload something to his blog when he gets a chance.

Looks like some of Koo’s video is already available at the ConverStation, a WBUR new-media blog maintained by Ken George.

Radio’s challenge to print

You may have heard that two Boston Herald sportswriters, Rob Bradford and Michael Felger, are leaving the paper to join WEEI.com as full-time sports bloggers. The move hasn’t gotten much attention, but I think it may prove to be pretty significant in terms of how the media continue to change.

The buzzword for what this is about is “disaggregation.” What it means is that the one-stop package that is the daily newspaper — hard news and automobile ads, obituaries and sports, political analysis and comics — is coming apart, with niche media better able to give people what they’re looking for.

You can already see this with television sports journalism. The sports segments on TV newscasts have been shortened because the true fans are watching ESPN. Now it’s coming down to the local level, with WEEI (AM 850), a phenomenally successful all-sports radio station, taking the first step toward competing with the sports pages of the Herald and the Boston Globe.

This is going to be a challenge for Bradford and Felger in that there is virtually no adult supervision at WEEI. They’re going to have to provide their own journalistic standards, and no doubt there will be occasions when they’ll have to stand up to management and say “no.” In a larger sense, though, I’m fascinated at the notion that a radio station is going to try to fill at least part of the role traditionally held by newspapers.

In that respect, the WEEI move is more significant than Sacha Pfeiffer‘s decision to switch from the Globe to WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) earlier this year. Pfeiffer’s new job, after all, is to be a radio reporter, not a print reporter who writes for the station’s Web site. It has more to do with a first-rate reporter moving to a medium whose non-profit business model, built on a foundation of listener contributions and corporate underwriting, is more solid than the newspaper industry’s.

Yet here, too, there are developments that bear watching. Every day I receive an e-mail from WBUR with the latest world, national and local news, complete with photos, AP wire copy and sound clips. It is a reasonably comprehensive wrap-up of the day’s news, even if it’s not quite as detailed as what I find in the Globe.

Currently the Globe offers a six- or seven-minute podcast that is little more than a teaser for what’s in the paper. But if WBUR is going to publish what is, in effect, an online newspaper, why shouldn’t the Globe compete with a half-hour podcast consisting of a reasonably complete news report, with paid advertising?

If digital convergence gives radio stations the power to become newspapers, then newspapers ought to consider what it would take to become radio stations. In the current environment, no one can afford not to experiment.

More: Dave Scott has some thoughts on what Felger’s move means for the local ESPN Radio outlet at AM 890, where Felger had hosted a show, as well as further background on the Bradford-Herald situation.

Barnicle may be WBUR-bound

The Phoenix’s Adam Reilly has some rather startling news. Apparently Paul La Camera, general manager of WBUR Radio (90.9 FM), is thinking of bringing in former Globe and occasional Herald columnist Mike Barnicle to do commentary.

La Camera has done a great job of bringing stability to ‘BUR and of adding some local focus to a station that has long been admired for its national reach. But he’s just wrong when he tells Reilly that Barnicle was done in by “wild accusations.” Barnicle left the Globe in 1998 after he was caught plagiarizing and making stuff up, but those were only the latest in a quarter-century of similar, very credible complaints.

La Camera and Barnicle have a history: Barnicle is a contributor to “Chronicle,” a magazine show on WCVB-TV (Channel 5), the station La Camera used to run. It was La Camera who decided to keep Barnicle on “Chronicle” after his meltdown at the Globe, a decision that played to mixed reviews internally.

Barnicle already does commentary for WTKK Radio (96.9 FM) and MSNBC. His grumpy-old-man shtick does nothing for me, but if he’s good for ratings, then fine. But ‘BUR and the National Public Radio system are news organizations that take credibility and ethics very seriously. It will be fascinating to see how this plays out.

Media Nation on the air

I’ll be a guest on “Radio Boston,” on WBUR (90.9 FM), this Friday at 1 p.m. to talk about the future of the newspaper business. The program will be repeated on Saturday at 1 p.m., and will be available online as well.

Also this Friday, I’ll be on “Greater Boston with Emily Rooney” (WGBH-TV, Channel 2), at 7 p.m. for our weekly “Beat the Press” media roundup.

Frank talk about Larry Craig

I’ve been casting about for a point of entry into the Larry Craig controversy. Today, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank gave me one. In an interview with Robin Young on WBUR’s “Here and Now” — most of which was about the mortgage crisis — Frank explained (fast-forward to 14:25) why he didn’t think Craig should resign:

Well, I condemn his hypocrisy, and I think the hypocrisy is a valid reason for people not to vote for him. I think that when you set yourself up to make rules for people and then don’t follow them yourself, you’re committing a very grave error, and that’s a reason not to vote for you. But when you’ve been elected, it seems to me you serve out the term unless you have been shown to be misusing your office.

Look, we have a senator from Louisiana, Senator [David] Vitter, who has acknowledged that he was patronizing this prostitution ring. People haven’t asked for him to resign. Now, I don’t think people should be soliciting sex in public bathrooms, and I certainly don’t think people should be hypocrites. But we’re not talking now about somebody who shot someone, or bodily injured someone, and the fact is that comparable infractions among heterosexuals haven’t led to demands to resign.

Frank went on to observe that Craig is up for re-election next year, and that he assumed Craig would either not run or would be defeated in a Republican primary.

A lot of good sense there. Not that it matters — it looks like Craig will be gone by the end of the day.

Live and local

Adam Reilly reports on Paul La Camera’s ongoing campaign to transform WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) into more of a local news force.

One of the initiatives Reilly mentions — a newsmagazine show to be called “Radio Boston,” hosted by former WCVB-TV (Channel 5) reporter David Boeri — won’t debut for another couple of months, but it already has an online presence. It’s supposed to be a “weekly show about the life of the city, its suburbs, and its people.” Well, that does cover just about everything.

The old argument against doing a show like “Radio Boston” was that there’s no such thing as appointment listening on the radio — if the program were scheduled for, say, Saturdays at 3 p.m., and you’re never in your car at that hour, then you’d never hear it. Far better to do local coverage in chunks and drop it into “Morning Edition.”

Now, though, WBUR can easily offer “Radio Boston” as a podcast so that you can listen to it whenever you like. Which I’m looking forward to doing.

By the way, I looked at La Camera’s efforts to take WBUR in a more local direction last year in CommonWealth Magazine.