One of many niche topics I’m into is whether a city’s subjective civic reputation actually matches reality. Boston, for instance, is the archetypal Racist City that a comedian leans on for jokes about a racist city. I’m not going to weigh in on that topic, but I’m citing it to say we can’t actually take a racism geiger counter to all the towns and determine if Boston has significantly more of this issue than, say, Philadelphia. Or Phoenix. Or wherever. I just know Boston is the city that primarily wears that reputation and we’re never getting an official update like, “Racism dropped 20 percent in Boston this year, according to the Racism Geiger Counter.”
I also “know”, through our shared oral tradition, that Boston is a tough sports media city, possibly the toughest. But is it? It maybe was at one time, but, as Mike Felger of Boston’s Felger and Mazz radio show keeps indicating, this might be more legacy reputation than reality. There are multiple recent examples of this famously hard bitten sports media culture being as soft if not softer than coverage you’d receive in my Bay Area. Jayson Tatum vs. Jaylen Brown is the latest in a line of stories that town’s official media downplayed.