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Ever wanted to host a local affairs show?
By adamg on Thu, 05/29/2014 - 10:14am
WGBH announced today that Emily Rooney will be stepping down in January as host of Greater Boston (she'll be staying on as host of "Beat the Press" and as a special correspondent).
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Comments
Why don't you step up Adam?
Why don't you step up Adam? After your cameo last night Rooney must have realized out of her league she was.
Adam on Greater Boston
Thanks for the link, I could
Thanks for the link, I could watch videos like this one all day long. And great job Adam, you contributed some outstanding discussion points.
That's great!
Adam did a fine job of putting the world class chimera in a box and summed up the sad shabbiness visited on prior generations of earnest people who came here, wrested some kind of credential and skill base from one of these hack pits and gamely tried to become part of this thing... this Boston.
And their thanks is to get exiled by economic cleansing imposed by greed, venality and process dithering from a confluence of scheming swine in the public and private sectors, epic hogs at gargantuan troughs.
The description of the outward anabasis is almost the opposite of white flight days long past.
To figure out where the fleeting gossamer wisp of affordability is next likely to light, one needs to look at inner layer bedroom suburbs now going to seed, look where the poor people live.
The movement along the Neponset Valley seems to be toward Norwood and Walpole where rents are lower. Stoughton and Attleboro are options. Framingham beckons.
Lynn is still almost menacing. Lawrence is holding its own.
The two main affordability pumps seem to be Quincy and Somerville. Both seem to see that this is where their tax base growth is going to come from. They are acting like the small furry nimble things that make off with the waddling oaf's lunch.
By the time Boston and Cambridge really move on this affordability thing, everyone will have moved to Quincy and Somerville.
We can block other UHub-ers, right?
.
I bet you write great
"Game of Thrones" fan fiction.
I don't even know what it is.
My best feeble guess would be another feudal nostalgia shtick to feed cubicle drone heroics fantasies and lord knows they need em.
I have about as much feudal nostalgia as Sam Clemons and I got tired of fiction a few decades back.
Now if you'll excuse me, a 5:30 bus beckons and bobolinks are jumping in the Appleton meadows, a thing to see if ever there was.
http://youtu.be/8TXIrXiyW6o
You lost all credibility when
You lost all credibility when you described Lawrence as "holding its own."
Don't worry,
..it's just a reading comprehension problem, you'll be fine.
Thanks!
Thanks Chris & Adam!
RIP Maya Angelou
RIP Maya Angelou
And in those days, nickels
And in those days, nickels had pictures of
bumblebees on them. "Give me five bees for a quarter" you'd say!
Got a link to a picture?
Not sure I ever saw any nickels like that. ;-}
Sure
I'm sure Somerville and Quincy have an infinite supply of affordable houses - the laws of supply and demand are clearly just a scam thought up by the man, amiright?
As for previous generations, my impression is that there are plenty of happy Irish and Italian Americans who sold their South/Dot/North End property to others and moved out to the 'burbs. My neighbors, should they ever sell their house, will realize about $400k in gains since they bought their place in the 80s - should they have to sell at a discount?
The dump
...my great grandmother bought in the early 30s in Reading for a few grand is now worth an easy 500k.
It is called asset inflation and I don't imagine anyone is going to confiscate the capital gains from the 80s any more then they do from the 30s.
But it's all a useless conflation and deflection and speaks volumes to the shabby state of reading comprehension.
The only real point of my last wind blast was Somerville and Quincy are trying to build affordable inventory. They are willing to ease up on process a bit to make it happen.
Boston and Cambridge are naval gazing and looking for the big score.
The funniest part I noticed in the video clip was someone talking about 50.. yes 50 affordable units in some glitz pit high rise... whoa!!! That is Potemkin affordability.
And a bonus pointer was thrown in about how a search for affordable housing starts by figuring out where the working poor and former half hosed middle class try and live.. Weymouth... Whitman... etc.
The working poor are surprisingly skilled at figuring out where to live on the cheap. They probably don't have neighborhood status hangups, n shit.
I wonder who's taking over?
I wonder who's taking over? Jared Bowen's arts segments are great, but I don't know how that would translate to politics. Same issue in reverse for Adam Reilly. Margery Egan's good on Beat the Press, great as a guest, and I like her with Jim Braude on the radio, but she's been horrible when she's guest hosted. The other guy they've had fill in recently has also been horrible (sorry, can't remember his name. I try to black out his existence). Maybe Callie Crossley? She's great on Beat the Press, and her radio show's good too.
Callie Crossley could
Callie Crossley could probably hold her own. I wonder if a retired news personality from one of the big affiliates in town might be an interesting choice. Someone along the lines of a Kim Carrigan (sp), Liz Brunner, or even Lisa Hughes if she wanted to leave the daily commercial TV grind. I'm admittedly at a loss right now to think of a potential local male suitor who has the unique skill set to host that program. It's not just a matter of having good reporting chops, but you also need to at least project a sense of credibility when dealing with some of the more lifestyle/art elements of that program. I think the four ladies above would have those skills.
No Callie is a bad fit. She
No Callie is a bad fit. She can't handle any stories, let alone make any comments, which don't have a racial component to them and already is one of the hosts of Basic Black on Fridays.
She can't handle any stories,
Callie does plenty of stories on plenty of subject, and does them just fine.
I admire Callie and think she
I admire Callie and think she's a great contributor to the show. Having said that, she does see race more than others on the panel and at times I can see them feeling uncomfortable. I certainly understand why, but I myself squirm when I see the other panelist squirm and for that reason I don't think she'd be a good host on Beat the Press. She also does a fine job on Basic Black.
White people squirming when a
White people squirming when a black person brings up what are legitimate and problematic racial issues is a sign those issues need to be brought up more, not less.
Amen!
Too true.
Exactly!
If it makes you uncomfortable and you can't get past it, perhaps you need to do more listening and less thinking about yourself. Just listen and let people experience what they experience, let them share their experiences as they are and not as you translate them. You don't have to find commonality...just start by listening and leave it at that.
In that respect...
Christopher Lydon would certainly fit the bill. I know he has a show on WBUR right now, so he would probably have to ditch that, but it's only once a week whereas this would be 4 nights a week ("Beat the Press" taking up the Friday spot) and with many more options & resources at his disposal.
I like your idea
Christopher Lydon or Callie Crossley get my votes. Both ask interesting questions. Neither is sycophantic, yet also avoid seeming arrogant. Or, as Rooney sometimes did, almost visibly eyerolling at her guests.
Replace Emily Rooney with an outsider
On a local level, Ramos could be describing Emily Rooney's Greater Boston. Good riddance! Over the years, her interviews with Tom Menino were borderline unbearable with the laughter, guffaws and backslapping, including the latest interview last week. No serious or critical questioning whatsoever. Same for interviews with Ed Davis, Deval Patrick, et al. It's understandable that she'd toss softballs when she regularly appears on the "celebrity" pages of Boston Magazine and the Improper Bostonian socializing with the beautiful people. Her constant fretting over the impromptu Marathon Memorial being tacky and being allowed to remain too long said it all. If WGBH was serious, they'd bring back Christoper Lydon or perhaps an outsider with no allegiances. The same for Beat (the non-liberal) Press.
I nominate Swirls !
I nominate Swirls !
Why thank you, Kvn
The main problem is that I somehow have a voice like Patty and Selma in the Simpsons, even though I never smoked.
That would be the least of
That would be the least of problems.
I second the nomination.
I second the nomination.
GBH right at the end of the Paul Dudley White bike path.
GBH, institutionally very bike firendly.
Bouvier voice = Auto-tune.
Who cares what you sound like
Who cares what you sound like? Anyone would be an improvement over Teh Roon!
You mean , never inhaled?
You mean , never inhaled? At Itchycoo Park?
Not tobacco
Nope. :-)
My favorite Rooney moment
For a while, she was playing kissy-face weekly with the execrable Jay Severin back in the day on WTKK. They were discussing the fatal restaurant fire in West Roxbury that killed two fire fighters, and they were both riffing on what a "gritty, urban neighborhood" it was located in.
Hello.... HELLO!
Bring back Chris Lydon. At least he had a grasp on the city that extended past the seven-figure, brownstone neighborhoods.
yeah
that Locust Valley Lockjaw was an affectation. Emily got her job after being News Director at WCVB. I know the concept of experience and achievement is foreign to some of the ideologues on this board but they needed her more than she needed them. She will be missed, even though she wasn't down with Occupy Boston.
I love Emily Rooney and the
I love Emily Rooney and the best thing about her is that eye roll. Her job on the show is NOT to be the objective journalist. I hope Jarred Bowen doesn't take over though I expect he will. It has felt as though she were grooming him for it for years. I find him too obsequious with everyone. Callie Crossley says irrelevant things too often for her to be a successful host. I don't think she has much to contribute and would be a disastrous host.
Um... but...
Greater Boston is advertised as unbiased by the WGBH.
For those of tender years.
For those of tender years. WCVB in it's early decades was a pioneering station in the public affairs and news programming that it did. It's hard to imagine in thee days of pulling stories off of You Tube, but there was a time where there were real reporters and anchors who actually knew more than your average 12 year old.
Emily will be missed.
The words
"gritty" and "hardscrabble" should be banned from news stories.
Going completely outside the box
Robin Abrahams, the former Miss Conduct for the Globe, would be an excellent choice. Knows the city well.
That would certainly
That would certainly guarantee that the Ig Nobel Awards would get more coverage than ever before!
Local TV personalities? I
Local TV personalities? I hear Bob Gamere is free.
Dana Hersey still alive?
Dana Hersey still alive?
Ask the Manager
Wasn't that the show co-hosted by Dana and the station manager. It was great.
Yes, it was!
And invariably every week someone would ask if they were getting rid of the Three Stooges.
Here is Dana's demo tape
BTW I think he does. Radio show in the South Shore area
last I heard
he was raising horses in Topsfield, so he has a tough commute.Met him once, great guy. His voice is about a foot taller than he is.
There Can Be Only One
Let's get real. There's only one great talking head in Boston TV — Chris Lovett. The others have ego trips while he relentlessly, daily brings out the key issues and abstracts with guest after guest. I've been on his show and watched it many times. He's the only one capable of doing what Emily has never been capable of pulling off. He's the best.
Noooo ...
Emily Rooney is awesome. I will REALLY miss her. She has done a phenomenal job with that show. I tape it every night. Damn.
I like Callie a lot and would be happy with this choice but I want to also throw in a vote for Kara Miller - I think she'd do a fine job, too.
Emily Rooney
Kim Carrigan gets my vote. She's smart, knowledgeable, classy, and at ease when filling in for Emily Rooney. While the other guest hosts are good, Kim is a cut above the rest!