September 10, 2007 by Dan.

Based in California, the Quality News Network has affiliate radio stations all across America, including two based in Massachusetts–one in Marlborough and the other in Haverhill. Patrick spoke today with Tony Seton, an award-winning broadcast journalist and host of the program, America Back on Track. The entire show can be heard here. Patrick’s interview begins about halfway through the link.

It’d be great if the press here in our district recognized the creativity, intellect, depth of message, and depth of character that Patrick has shown in his campaign, and that others, such as QNN, NPR, and Mark Shields, have already realized. My fear is that the press here has either

1.) recognized these in the long conversations Patrick has carried with them and decided not to give him ink or validation because of editorial choice, or

2.) worse, that they are unable to distinguish for themselves what a true, viable candidate looks and sounds like.

Emblematic of the press Patrick has received from the local papers, please consider this campaign anecdote. When I first released Patrick’s Shared Sacrifice proposal to the press, I telephoned a reporter at the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune. I explained the nature of the proposal, asked for an email to forward our official literature, and promptly emailed this reporter. Before our conversation had ended, the reporter had promised he would call soon after he had read through our text and promised, too, to interview Patrick regarding the bill. I thanked him. Not more than five minutes later I received a call, and answered thinking it was the reporter. It was not. I heard a different name. But the caller was from the paper, so my next thought was that the interview had been delegated or relegated depending on how you think of these things. But the call was not from a reporter, but from a salesman from the newspaper’s advertising department. Again, I call on you, the reader to make your own judgments here.

Eventually, the Eagle-Tribune did report on the proposal, but it was relegated to the bottom of the pile, butchered in all senses of the proposal (like when the report claimed it taxed the very population it actually exempted), and gave only a small nod to the fact that a sitting congressman decided to sponsor a version of it. The proposal was described so inaccurately that there were corrections for the corrections, and our own words were finally used to describe the bill. And this is just the surface of it. I’ll have to save the rest for a best-selling book. There’s certainly enough material for it.

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September 10, 2007 by Dan.

For those of you expecting Chet Curtis to interview Patrick last Thursday, you may have been heartened by Chet’s ability to appear slimmer and more youthful. It was neither the effects of TV nor of medicine. Nor was it, in fact, Chet. Gone was the oak round table and its familiar host. In one day, the pleasant set that Tsongas and Ogonowski had been afforded was being demolished. They were, as we in the trades say, “demo-ing” the old set as Patrick was responding to questions on the war and health care in the press room next door, amid the milieu of many keypad and mouse clicks.

You may draw your own conclusions from this bit of intimate knowledge. But more importantly, for those of you who missed it, you may find a video clip of Patrick on www.necn.com or may find this video on our multimedia page within the next few days.

Our campaign has been very busy this past week. Patrick is likely to appear on Greater Boston tomorrow night and he has many speaking commitments at local universities and high schools planned. He will participate in all the debates and he will be actively campaigning throughout the district. This is more than a two-person race. We hope to prove that in these coming weeks.

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