Published in the April 5, 2018 edition.
By MARK SARDELLA
Being a panelist on two local candidates’ debates last week got me thinking about the role that local media plays in town.
Televised debates for political office in Wakefield go back to the days before WCAT, to what I call the Dark Ages of public access TV. That was my first brush with local media — hanging around the Wakefield cable TV studio when it was at 37 Water St.
It was in the pre-internet days, when local newspapers thought that local cable posed a major threat. Cable TV was brand new, and cable companies were promising the world in order to land lucrative franchise monopolies in each city and town. Their proposals typically hinted in vague language about offering a nightly local news broadcast. Of course, once they landed the 15-year contract, those promises were quickly forgotten.
Wakefield did briefly have a weekly local TV newscast in the early days of cable, produced, not by the cable company, but by local volunteers. You’ll never guess where the local news anchors got most of their stories. That’s right, they ripped them out of the Wakefield Daily Item. They just turned a few words around and shamelessly read them on the air.
But even doing a local newscast only once a week and stealing all your stories from the local paper was a tremendous amount of work, and the program didn’t last.
But the other thing that began during that time was televising local political debates. Back then, Wakefield had an active League of Women Voters which, in the pre-cable days, would put on candidates’ forums that drew hundreds of people.
Someone in the League got the idea of putting these forums on cable and since I was the only local resident with TV skills who was foolish enough to do it, I was recruited. For years, I worked closely with the League producing these televised debates. At first, I would film them on location with a single video camera. Later, I’d direct multi-camera productions with a whole crew of volunteers.
The Item staff was usually represented on the LWV debate panels, asking questions of the candidates. Eventually, the Item got involved with putting on its own televised candidates’ forums. So, the partnership of the Item and local cable TV goes back a long way. My own role has switched from the control room to the press panel.
After a few years, people came to expect these televised candidate debates, so in one form or another, they have continued to this day.
Another thing that began back then and continues to this day is Town Election night coverage on local cable. It was started by a guy named Rich DiPirro who took me under his directorial wing. About a year later, he left Wakefield for a job in Winchester. So, when it came to the election night show, I was the heir apparent (again, no one else wanted it).
People used to call the Item office on Town Election night or hang out at Town Hall to get the early results. For the last several decades, they mostly just turn on their TVs.
Cable didn’t kill newspapers, but then the internet came along. Now, that is supposedly the thing that will spell the end of both newspapers and cable.
Newspapers especially are dismissed as irrelevant dinosaurs – until we write something that rubs someone the wrong way. Then, all of a sudden, we are “the face of the town” with a duty to “be worthy of our vital role in the community.”
And local newspapers do still play an important role. No one else is going to do what we do. Facebook? Please. And the Boston Globe is too busy keeping track of how many genders there are to cover our local candidates’ debates or write about our local school budget.
But, of course, when the issue was gender neutralizing the Wakefield Board of Selectmen, the Globe was all over it. How ironic is it that in a year when women could have made history by winning a majority on the Board of Selectmen, we will be doing away with the Board of Selectmen.
Sorry, ladies – a female majority Town Council just doesn’t have the same cachet as a women majority Board of Selectmen.
Oh well. History is overrated anyway.
