Don & Mike strike back

Don Geronimo and Mike O’Meara, hosts of a nationally syndicated radio show, lambasted Democrat John Stevens and Potomac News reporter Chris Newman on Friday, the day a story ran about Stevens’ purchase of domain names associated with “The Don and Mike Show.”

Newman’s story dealt with the attacks the hosts made against the 10th District congressional candidate. Stevens said Friday it was not a controversy, and that there are more important issues to discuss. He said he did not listen to Friday’s live show during which Newman spoke with the radio hosts.

Geronimo and O’Meara claim many of the domain names that have anything to do with the “Don and Mike Show” were purchased by the 33-year-old Loudoun software developer so that he could later sell those Internet addresses to Infinity Broadcasting. The addresses owned by Stevens include: www.donandmike.com, www.donandmikefans.com, www.buzzburbank.com and www.homojoe.com.

Stevens would not say as to whether he would sell the domain names to Infinity Broadcasting or not. He said neither Infinity nor Geronimo and O’Meara have ever contacted him about purchasing the domain names.

“I won’t speculate on something that could be as realistic as what would I do if a Martian landed in my yard this afternoon and he asked for the domain names,” he said.

Stevens said he purchased the names to train employees in Web development because the Don and Mike show would attract the public interest.

“The nature of databases is that they need users to interact with them,” he said. “People want to be involved with the radio show because it’s interactive; that seemed like a natural target for users.”

The hosts also were angry about a story that was posted on one of Stevens’ Web sites. The story, which was framed in a Washington Post Web page, said Geronimo was dead. Stevens said the story was a joke, written by someone associated with his company.

“I didn’t write the story. My Web site carried the story. I take responsibility for it. It’s so trivially unimportant as to be laughable,” Stevens said. “A volunteer for the site and a fan of the show wrote it.” Stevens said he does not remember whose idea the story was.

“I can’t remember who came up with the idea. It was so unbelievably irrelevant,” he said Friday. Stevens said many fans of the show found the story funny because of a running joke on the show about Geronimo having a brain tumor.

Geronimo said on the air Friday that he thought the story was terrible and that his attorneys contacted Stevens regarding the matter. Stevens said that although he did receive calls from Washington Post and Infinity Broadcasting attorneys, he did not hear from Geronimo’s personal lawyer.

The fake story that the hosts call a “hoax” and Stevens calls a “joke” was not available to the Potomac News as of Friday evening.

In response to Newman’s question on the air about whether the two hosts had any dealings with Stevens, Geronimo said, “my direct dealings would be getting calls in Florida when I was on vacation, people calling my wife saying ‘I just heard on the news your husband is dead.'”

“When the relationship really went south was when he printed the fake obituary, the fake death story,” O’Meara said. “I had one conversation with him personally where he came across as someone who was not really a fan of our show.”

Stevens said he never had any personal contact with either host.

Geronimo and O’Meara accused Newman of poor journalism and said the Potomac News is “not a real paper,” during Friday’s program. They also used derogatory terms to describe Newman. They said he did not bother to ascertain their point of view in his reporting, and that he did not quote them. Newman’s story did quote from the July 16 show.

Geronimo asked Newman on the air Friday why he would present a one-sided story.

“Why would you write a story in which there are two sides, but only speak to one side,” he said. “Why would you only get quotes from one side of the story?”

O’Meara agreed.

“A lot of the stuff we say on the radio, doesn’t get across what this guy is really about. We can get you more information off the air that is of a more detailed nature,” he said. Toward the end of the show, O’Meara told Newman to call anytime he had a question.

“Give us a call, we’ll answer any question you have.”

Neither Geronimo or O’Meara returned calls to the Potomac News on Friday afternoon.