From The Boston Globe — 9/30/2008
Alan Lupo, chronicler of Boston, dies
He was no stranger to the inner sanctums of City Hall but was more at home with regular folks on Boston’s stoops and sidewalks. He knew people — and people knew him — from the North End to Southie, from Dorchester to Doyle’s pub in Jamaica Plain. And there, immortalized in a barroom mural, he forever soaks up stories amid the sandwiches and the elbow-benders. …Mr. Lupo, one of few columnists whose work appeared in the latter-day troika of Boston newsprint — the Globe, the Herald, and the Phoenix — died yesterday …
The Hub’s Herodotus, Mr. Lupo captured the city’s unfolding histories as they played out in courts, schools, and discreet handshake deals among the powerful. Reaching beyond the confines of newspaper stories, he left the Globe in the early 1970s to serve as an editor and reporter on the WGBH-TV show “The Reporters,” which he helped found. …
To read an Alan Lupo newspaper column was to hear his voice, the Boston accent saturating every syllable.
“Alan stood out in a distinctive generation of reporters, activists, and politicians who will forever be identified with the era of [former editor] Tom Winship at the Globe and [former mayor] Kevin White in City Hall,” said Christopher Lydon, a journalist and radio talk show host. “They, or should I say we, were interested in every inch of city turf, in the scoundrels and the saints, in the ancient history and all the present-day choices before the town. Alan stood for localism at maybe its all-time best.”
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Still connected over the years
From Steve Rabin — 10/18/2008
I am not really a WGBH alum, although I spent many days during four years at the station working as Director of Programming at EEN with a number of the producer/directors on programming for the EEN member stations.
Beyond that, as Media Program Director for NEH from 1974-1982 I was privileged to help provide funding for such WGBH series as The Scarlet Letter, produced and directed by Rick Hauser (who with Nancy are in Minneapolis), Elsa’s Labor Series, and ran the program that provided the first $1 million for Vietnam: A Television History.
There were other unique series and specials from WGBH that we were proud to help, not the least of which was Mike Ambrosino’s special Death and Dying and his post-NOVA short lived, 2 year anthropology series Odyssey.
So, again while I have no claim to WGBH credentials, I have had so many wonderful memories with so many of the WGBH staff that I feel connected.
I am now retired, after 23 years as President of the Educational Film Center, producers of a number of PBS specials and a number of telecourses (Economics, Chemistry, Music of the World, etc.) long and still in national distribution.
My more recent experiences include working on a ranch during the winter in the Chiricahua Mountains of S.E. Arizona — clearing riding trails and moving pregnant cattle to lower grazing areas. Nothing of this has to do with Billy Crystal movies but rather with memories of Hoot Gibson, Hopalong Cassidy, Tex Ritter, et. al.
Anyway, thanks for letting me share a little space with one of the very finest broadcast facilities.