Howard Stern questions Hall of Fame

By Doug Most, Globe Staff

It’s easy to forget that long before he was a radio shock jock and, as of November 2012, member of the National Radio Hall of Fame, Howard Stern was a student at Boston University, where he worked at the campus station and at WNTN in Newton. Never one to shy from controversy, Stern’s latest spat, of which there have been many, is with that very Hall of Fame. Since he was formally inducted on Saturday into the Chicago institution, Stern, who can be heard these days on SiriusXM Radio, has been relentlessly attacking the hall’s director, Bruce DuMont , arguing that the only reason he finally got inducted so many years into his illustrious career was to boost the profile of the little-known Hall of Fame. In an interview with Time Out Chicago magazine this week, DuMont said he had invited Stern to the hall’s Nov. 10 induction ceremony repeatedly. Stern has felt snubbed in years past by the Hall’s exclusion of him, and was in no mood to be wooed now. In a letter to the King of All Media, DuMont wrote: “I have always felt badly about the public displeasure with the Radio Hall of Fame that you have expressed, especially because I am a fan of yours and feel strongly that you deserve induction. I also admit that the induction is long overdue.” Stern did not attend on Saturday and instead used his radio pulpit to respond to DuMont. “Who the [expletive] is this guy? Who is he to say who should go into the Hall of Fame?” According to his radio station biography, DuMont “is Founder and President of The Museum of Broadcast Communications, one of only two broadcast museums in the United States. The Museum includes America’s only Radio Hall of Fame, which DuMont brought to Chicago in 1991.” Stern is not impressed. “The guy who invented the Hall is named Bruce DuMont. I don’t know him. I don’t know what credibility the National Radio Hall of Fame has. I mean, the guy’s trying to get something going. I’m fine with that, but . . . it’s just something that — for years — no offense to Wendy Williams, but they put Wendy Williams in before me.”