An even gutsier idea is Recovery Road, a Sunday-afternoon (4–5 pm) show that rolled out last weekend and deals with the tricky issue of substance abuse, featuring recovering alcoholic Peter Simon (brother of Carly) and counselor Woody Giessman, former Del Fuegos drummer. Whittemore says the idea for the show was Simon’s and “it’s been a while in development. We’ve really worked our asses off ... He wants two hours. I want to hear what the show sounds like.” An advice show on substance abuse sounds fraught with peril, which is exactly why WRKO should be commended for taking the risk.
Meanwhile, the just-released fall 2005 Arbitron ratings herald good tidings for the station, which posted an overall 4.5 share compared with a 3.9 for the same period in 2004. Meanwhile talk rival W TK K-FM, suffering from the absence of Jay Severin on the afternoon drive, slumped from a 4.1 to a 2.7. (Severin, now a syndicated talker, has returned to WTKK’s air at 7 pm).
From general assignment to Inspector General
When Raphael Lewis, a 36-year-old rising-star Boston Globe State House reporter recently departed Morrissey Boulevard to work for Massachusetts Inspector General Gregory Sullivan, he turned what might have once been a funny coincidence into a bona fide trend.
Yes, there are now three former high-profile Boston daily reporters working at the semi-obscure watchdog agency whose mandate is to prevent and detect waste, fraud, and abuse in state government. And though their presence certainly has something to do with Sullivan’s shop, it is also a reflection of the shaky newspaper industry.
The first to arrive, in April 2004, was Ellen Silberman, a six-year Boston Herald veteran who had been the paper’s City Hall bureau chief. “I had a great run at the Herald,” she says. “I did all the fun things you could possibly do if you were interested in politics.” She left, she says, when “the Herald was getting a lot less fun.”
Almost a year later, in March 2005, she was joined by Jack Meyers, a 17-year Herald veteran who had worked for several years on the paper’s investigative unit, but had been reassigned. “I was basically being a GA [general assignment] reporter at the Herald,” he says, “which wasn’t very satisfying to me.”
In an interview several weeks ago before he left the Globe, Lewis, maybe half-jokingly, said his job change gives him the opportunity to have “subpoena power with the agencies I’ve been fighting with for years.” Lewis couldn’t be reached for comment this week.
Actually, both Silberman and Meyers say they employ a number of their newspaper skills at the IG’s office — but with one luxury that a daily deadline often precludes.
“It really suits me because we have a fair amount of time to really investigate things and understand them before we write them,” says Meyers. Echoes Silberman: “It’s like being a reporter with the time to do your job.”
