Danny Schechter, the “News Dissector” whose progressive approach to the news was such a key part of WBCN’s early years, has weighed in on CBS’s decision to pull the plug. He writes:
The station’s legacy and importance — the reason it built a national reputation and worldwide respect — was deliberately buried in the need to meet quarterly revenue projections and serve its corporate masters. Their goal was to compete with commercial drek by becoming commercial drek. And they did.
And where did it take them? To the radio graveyard. Shame.
Interestingly enough, Schechter says he had recently been approached about doing commentaries for WBCN’s Web site — something that may yet come to pass, given that CBS is reportedly thinking about keeping the station semi-alive online.
Learning that WBCN Radio (104.1 FM) is leaving the airwaves leaves me feeling a bit wistful, but not much more. There was a time when I would have been outraged. But ‘BCN had become so irrelevant to my life that I had not listened to it in years.
It looks like I wasn’t alone, as the Phoenix’s Adam Reilly reports that CBS is doing a station switch, the main result of which will be a new sports-talk station, WBZ-FM, at 98.5 FM. Anything that makes the boyos at WEEI (AM 850) break into a sweat is all right by me.
Charles Laquidara greets the news of WBCN’s demise with an obscure one-liner, while Danny “The News Dissector” Schechter hasn’t mentioned it yet.
WBCN, an independently owned “underground” station that launched in 1968, was an ear-opener for an exurban adolescent growing up in the early 1970s. I listened to Laquidara and Schechter and Old Saxophone Joe and Maxanne Sartori and all the rest of that great crew.
Along with alternative papers like the Phoenix, Boston After Dark and the Real Paper, WBCN was my main source of information on leftist politics and the counterculture.
But the station had long since disappeared into the cog of corporate radio. It’s not that it won’t be missed. It’s that the time to miss it expired about 20 years ago.
Welcome, Danny Schechter readers, who may be looking for my blog item on an important Internet freedom-of-speech issue that we were confronted with during our time in Kazakhstan at the Eurasian Media Forum. The News Dissector, ever more diligent than I am, has already weighed in. I expect to have something up tomorrow morning.
Friend of Media Nation Danny Schechter will be speaking and screening a new film next Monday, March 23, at 7 p.m. in Brookline. His appearance will benefit Brookline Access Television. Here’s Danny’s announcement:
I may no longer live in Boston, but Boston lives in me.
Danny Schechter, your News Dissector here, inviting you to an event I am being saluted at on Monday evening, March 23, at 7 p.m. at the Coolidge Corner Theatre on Harvard Street in Brookline.
It is a benefit for Brookline Access Television, a vital community TV station.
I will be screening a “self-dissection,” a film called “WORK IN PROGRESS: Putting the ME Back In MEDia,” a hour retrospective on my work including my years at WBCN, WGBH, WCVB, the Harvard Nieman Journalism Fellowship, etc.
Produced by Marie Sullivan, it is a fast-paced romp through my media career from the ’60s to 60 and beyond, with many fun moments and serious ideas. I did it because media folks rarely scrutinize their own work or try to draw lessons for younger people enchanted with the media world. Folks who have seen it say they were surprised that it is not self-promotional. (Well, maybe just a little!)
In my career I have told many stories — including my most recent, still-unreleased film on the Barack Obama campaign — so why not tell my own?
I would be pleased if you can come, support a good cause — people’s TV — and see what I have been up to in the years before and after I lived in Boston. (Incidentally, Ijust learned that the year after I left, Obama moved into an apartment around the corner from our house in Somerville. Smile.) Another connection of interest — this event takes place at the very cool Coolidge Corner, a great theater that my brother Bill, who lives nearby, helped save year back. I am proud that he did that.
Disclosure: They are looking for a $10 donation. Thanks to BATV for the invite and for organizing it. For more information: Peter Zawadzki, who can be reached at peter {at} batv {dot} org.
Until then,
Danny Schechter
For more on what our company, Globalvision, is up to these days, go to globalvision.org.
Photo of Schechter with another Boston media legend, Sarah Ann Shaw, is (cc) 2006 by the Boston chapter of the Action Coalition for Media Education and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
Media Nation’s best wishes go out to Danny Schechter and his family. Danny’s father, Jerry, died on Tuesday at the age of 90. Danny writes:
He had achieved all that he wanted when confronted with the reality of a terminal illness. He decided to prolong his life as long as he could and enjoy it as much as he could. He did. He wanted to die at home. He did. He wanted to be surrounded in his last hours by his family. He was. He wanted to avoid becoming dependent. He never complained, and faced his fate calmly. He was philosophical and practical about it. He left us in dignity and without pain. He was gutsy throughout. He had even instructed us to have the body removed immediately so no children in the neighborhood had to be scared by the sight of a dead person. All of the nurses, doctors and health workers who helped him became his friend and he ended up helping many of them. He was like that.
Three years ago I met Jerry Schechter, who lived in Brookline, when Danny was up from New York to speak at Northeastern. Despite his advanced age, he was sharp and energetic. I know Danny had been dealing with his father’s illness for a long time. But that doesn’t make it any easier to lose a parent.
Veteran progressive journalist Danny Schechter will be speaking in Boston at the Ford Hall Forum next Thursday, April 17. I’ve got a preview in the new Boston Phoenix, where you can also find a video clip of Schechter challenging a CNBC reporter at a protest outside Bear Stearns. You can check out Schechter’s voluminous blog here.
The MediaChannel, a nonprofit watchdog organization founded seven years ago, is in danger of going under by the end of June.
The organization was begun in 2000 by two former Boston journalists, Danny Schechter and Rory O’Connor. Schechter recently released a new documentary, “In Debt We Trust.” O’Connor is a founder of NewsTrust, a social network that rates news stories and organizations.
Here’s an excerpt from MediaChannel’s fundraising appeal:
“It is sad to have to shut down an important service in the public interest because our not-for-profit site can’t attract sufficient resources to support a very small staff or to pay necessary bills including rent, server fees and utilities,” said Danny Schechter, co-founder of the international web platform that launched February 1, 2000. “The ultimate irony is that MediaChannel has never been better — its traffic is up and its impact strong, as is the quality of its timely and diverse offerings, which include original reports, blogs, videos, features and media news from across the world.”
MediaChannel may not get as much attention as Media Matters for America, which also analyzes the media from a left-of-center point of view, but with a more partisan political edge. But it does good work, and it would be a shame if it disappeared.
Also banging the tin cup: Christopher Lydon’s excellent public radio program, “Open Source,” which lost its funding from UMass Lowell last year. Clea Simon has the update in Wednesday’s Globe.
Uncategorized | Dan Kennedy | 
July 15, 2009 9:51 am | 
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