Dear WGBH: This. Totally. Blows.

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

At 12:15 Monday morning, as is our wont, the hardworking staff repaired to the Global Worldwide Headquarters to do a little ruminating and construing, as is also our wont.

And, as usual, we flipped on the radio to 89.7 FM, expecting for all the world to hear Jazz with Bob Parlocha, the way we have for, lo, these umpteen years.

But no!

Instead we were met by some guy prattling on about flat-screen TVs and the Wright Bros. and Samuel Pierpont Langley in a monologue that sounded suspiciously like a Ted Talk.

So we hied ourselves to the WGBH website, which seemed to indicate that Eric Jackson should be on.

But he wasn’t.

This is decidedly not a good sign. But it is a fiendishly clever way to make the hardworking staff listen to 89.7’s kissin’ cousin, 99.5 FM Classical New England.

It’s all very calming and very upsetting at the same time.

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Boston Globe Slowbituaries ( Stephen Bankuti Edition)

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

Hard on the heels of our last installment of this regular feature, the Sunday Boston Globe featured this obit:

Stephen Bankuti, 78; Sudbury soccer coach fought in Hungarian resistance

As a boy in Hungary, Stephen Bankuti defused land mines in farm fields near his home during World War II, and he left school to support his family when the Soviet Army sent his father to a prison camp in Siberia for two years.

In 1956, at age 23, he was part of the short-lived Hungarian resistance movement that rose up during the Soviet occupation . . .

Mr. Bankuti, a coach who was instrumental in bringing girls’ soccer to Sudbury, and who for years operated Steve’s Auto Body, a repair and towing business in town, died of Parkinson’s disease and leukemia May 19 in his home in Marlborough, where he had lived since the mid-1990s. He was 78.

May 19th? As in, seven weeks ago?

Don’t get us wrong: The hardworking staff isn’t being critical about this. We’re just curious about this.

Which is why we’re definitely calling the Globe obit editor later today.

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More Loving Memories Of Joseph Anthony Welteroth, U.S. Navy

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

Turns out the sons (Joseph, Michael, Gregory and Jacob) of World War II Pacific theater seaman/poet Joseph Anthony Welteroth didn’t just run six-figures’ worth of full-page ads in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, as the hardworking staff previously reported.

They also ran full-page ads in the Miami Herald and Dallas News.

The ad – just to refresh, er, memories:

 That’s moving on any number of levels.

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Drew Pinsky Did Stealth Doctoring For Glaxo

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

This past week the U.S. Justice Department reached a “$3 billion criminal and civil settlement with Glaxo over illegal drug marketing and other matters,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

‘Dr. Drew’ Was Paid by Glaxo

Radio Host Extolled Virtues of Antidepressant After Attending Events for Firm

In June 1999, popular radio personality Dr. Drew Pinsky used the airwaves to extol the virtues of GlaxoSmithKline PLC’s antidepressant Wellbutrin, telling listeners he prescribes it and other medications to depressed patients because it “may enhance or at least not suppress sexual arousal” as much as other antidepressants do.

But one thing listeners didn’t know was that, two months before the program aired, Dr. Pinsky—who gained fame as “Dr. Drew” during years co-hosting a popular radio sex-advice show “Loveline”—received the second of two payments from Glaxo totaling $275,000 for “services for Wellbutrin.”

While “it is illegal for pharmaceutical companies to promote drugs for uses not approved by the FDA, a practice known as ‘off-label’ marketing,” it’s not illegal for doctors to do it of their own accord. In his defense, Pinsky told CBS News:

“In the late 90s I was hired to participate in a 2-year initiative discussing intimacy and depression which was funded by an educational grant by Glaxo Wellcome . . . Services for the non-branded campaign included town hall meetings, writings and multimedia activities in conjunction with the patient advocacy group the National Depresive and Manic Depressive Association (NDMDA). My comments were consistent with my clinical experience.”

That’s your textbook non-denial denial. Pinsky may have missed his true calling. Time to change his name to Spin Dr. Drew?

Originally posted at the in restauro (but getting there) Sneak ADtack!

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Boston Globe Slowbituaries (Ed Corsetti Edition)

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

From Saturday’s Boston Globe:

Ed Corsetti, 87; reporter cut teeth covering Brink’s robbery in Boston

Ed Corsetti was relatively unseasoned when he was assigned to cover what would become one of the biggest stories of his newspaper career: the 1950 robbery in the North End of the Brink’s company.

“I was this cub reporter,” he said in an interview recorded by Belmont High School students last year. “I mean, I was about as low as you could get. I can say that the Brink’s robbery gave me a boost, to my career, because I learned an awful lot.”

During decades of working for the Hearst-owned newspapers that became today’s Boston Herald, Mr. Corsetti was known as “the inspector.” Colleagues said he had numerous connections, never gave up a source, and always managed to get the story.

“He was the king of news,” said Stanley Forman, who worked with Mr. Corsetti at the Boston Herald American for many years. “He just knew everybody.”

Mr. Corsetti, 87, who left the newspaper business after the Hearst Corp. sold the paper in 1982 and finished his working days as a tax examiner for the IRS, died of emphysema May 28 in his Medford home.

May 28th? Six weeks ago? What took the Globe so long?

The hardwondering staff has raised this issue before regarding the Globe’s slowbituary of Herald editor Joe Sciacca’s father, Joseph A. Sciacca Sr.

But it’s not just Heraldites who are subject to these delays. The hardworking staff had another, non-Herald example but – full disclosure – we lost it.

Regardless, we’ll be calling the Globe obit desk on Monday.

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Dead Blogging reThink Ink At The BPL

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

Well the Missus and I trundled down to the Boston Public Library to catch reThink Ink: 25 Years at Mixit Print Studio, and, boy, it was swell.

From the Mixit Print Studio website (the BPL site is inexplicably down):

“By printmaking, we often mean more than an individual artist creating a matrix and generating impressions. We mean the entire cooperative structure that surrounds and fosters the making of prints…in printmaking, where so many fruitful tensions exist, that between the individual and the group is especially important. Artists may require a kind of systole and distole of seclusion and collaboration throughout their lives. Cooperative studios like (Mixit Print Studio) allow us to be enriched by the discoveries of others, and to move forward, taking something of the past and turning it into something new, part of a process central not only to printmaking but to life itself.”

—K.E. Duffin, Variation and Community: the Workshop Portfolios,
Contemporary Impressions, 2000

Having an exhibition in the magnificent architecture of the McKim Mead and White designed Changing Exhibition Space at the Boston Public Library is a challenging and unprecedented opportunity in the history of printmaking in Boston. Rarely do artist printmakers get a chance to ignore shipping regulations and dimensional restrictions to fully exploit the possibilities of printmaking as a contemporary language spanning the full spectrum from hand-held miniatures to fully sculptural, multi-media installations. It is an acknowledgement of the ongoing support given to Boston area printmakers by the BPL, and to the continuing relationship between Mixit Print Studio and the BPL.

The exhibition is mounted in two areas of the library, both of them impressive. Check it out before July 30, when it leaves.

 

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Let The Whatever Billion Dollar Rumpus Begin!

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

From our Housekeeping desk

Saturday’s Boston Globe featured a sharp front-page piece on the presidential campaigns’ stepped-up digital efforts this time around:

Spending on online advertising could exceed $160 million during the 2012 election cycle, up from the $22 million spent four years ago, according to forecasts by Borrell Associates. Most of that — about $100 million — will be spent on presidential campaign, Borrell predicts. The Obama campaign has spent about $24 million on online advertising, according to reports released in June by the Federal Election Commission. But that doesn’t include money for consultants and salaries for digital campaign staffers. The Romney campaign has spent $1.7 million for online ads and $5.6 million for consulting on digital projects.

Of course, that’s lunch money compared to what the overall campaign spending will be, largely devoted to traditional TV spots:

For now, television will continue to play a huge role, with about $6.5 billion expected to be spent on ads for all campaigns. That’s two-thirds of the $9.8 billion in expected political spending, according to Borrell.

Just so you splendid readers understand all our posts headlined “Let The $4 Billion [Original Estimate] . . . Or $6 Billion [Revised To $6.5] . . . Or $9.8 Billion [High Estimate]  Rumpus Begin!”

Not to get technical about it.

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Steve Schwartz Did NOT Miss His Last WGBH Radio Show

Posted on July 7, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

Last Friday the hardworking staff worried that Steve Schwartz might be aced out of his final WGBH Jazz from Studio Four show.

He was not.

And Steve produced a sweet swan song.

Sometime around 10 pm he said something like this:

“I’ll be here after midnight until we’ve played all the music I brought tonight.”

True enough, sometime around 12:45 Steve said something like this:

Thank you for your support and your participation in the Boston jazz community . . . And I always close the show saying: Please go out and hear some live music.

Here’s John Coltrane on saxophone with “Every Time We Say Goodbye.”

(A 1961 version)

Steve Schwartz did go gentle into that good night.

A class act all the way around the course.

P.S. A Friday Letter to the Editor in the Boston Globe announced this:

We understand the challenges facing WGBH and other NPR stations nationwide. We also understand the pain and outrage of Boston’s jazz community because we’re part of that community. Other US cities have faced the same problems, and some of the most enlightened ones have found solutions. We’re optimistic that can happen here.

To begin the process, JazzBoston will bring together members of Greater Boston’s jazz community and friends in the broader arts community in an open meeting at the Boston Public Library on July 31. We expect a large turnout.

See you there.

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Did You Ever Want To Talk To Your 12-Year-Old Self?

Posted on July 7, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

This guy did (via Mediaite):

 

That is one freaky – and fabulous – video.

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Is It The God Particle, Or The Goddamn Particle?

Posted on July 7, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

The media rumpus over the discovery of the elusive Higgs boson subatomic particle has now reached critical mass (yuk yuk), but one question that apparently hasn’t been settled is how it was dubbed “the God particle.”

From yesterday’s Wall Street Journal opinion piece by Michio Kaku:

The press has dubbed the Higgs boson the “God particle,” a nickname that makes many physicists cringe. But there is some logic to it. According to the Bible, God set the universe into motion as he proclaimed “Let there be light!”

But NPR’s All Things Considered told a different story on Wednesday in this exchange between anchor Robert Siegel and Victoria Martin,  a lecturer in physics and astronomy at the University of Edinburgh who studied with Peter Higgs:

SIEGEL: I want to ask you about this particle’s nickname, the “God particle.” What did Higgs, who I’ve read is an atheist, think about the nickname the “God particle”?

MARTIN: I’m sure – I actually haven’t ever asked him this directly, but I’m sure he doesn’t like it. Almost all particle physicists detest that name. It was actually Leon Lederman, who’s a Nobel laureate, that came up with it. But he was trying to call it “that goddamn particle,” and that wasn’t allowed by the publishers so it became the “God particle.”

So the name stuck and I think it’s fine because then people know what we’re talking about. But secretly, all of us hate the name, the “God particle.”

So Kaku’s WSJ piece is half-right.

Close enough for journalism, these days.

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