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'Spotlight' journalist Walter Robinson, Oscar predictions, Wine Thunderdome

The culmination of Award season is happening this Sunday, so to get warmed up for all of the Academy’s rewards, we talk with someone who has been portrayed in an Oscar-winning film. Walter Robinson was leading the ‘Spotlight team’ of investigative reporters at the Boston Globe in 2002 when they broke the news of decades of sexual abuse among the Archdiocese in the Metro Boston area. We speak with him about the film adaptation of this story, the state of journalism, and more. Plus, we let you know how you can ask your own questions at a special screening of the 2016 Best Picture winner, “Spotlight,” at Garden Cinemas in Greenfield on March 18. 

The Academy Awards invite quite a bit of speculation from the film and lay community alike, with folx everywhere making their own predictions about the winners. We happen to know a certain ringer who’s been mostly on the money for the last few years with their picks, Enzo Belmonte. We speak with him and NEPM’s executive news editor, Elizabeth Román, about our own takes on Sunday’s event.

And, an Oscar party is a great place to have a glass of a late winter white wine as the sun slowly comes back to us. We head to State Street Fruit Store, Deli, Wine and Spirits to pit Italy against Portugal for this week’s Thunderdome.

Christopher “Monte'' Belmonte is host and executive producer of NEPM's The Fabulous 413. He was born and raised in Massachusetts and has been a radio host in western Massachusetts for the last 20 years — the last 17 of them as host of Mornings with Monte on The River 93.9/WRSI.
Kaliis Smith is a radio host and producer for NEPM's The Fabulous 413.