Brooklyn, Massachusetts?

If any national organization could tell the difference between Brooklyn, New York and Brookline, Massachusetts, we’d expect it would be National Public Radio. Surely the liberal soccer moms in the affluent Boston suburb donate generously enough to put the town on NPR management’s radar.

But World Cafe’s David Dye didn’t seem to know the difference when he introduced Brookline native Eli “Paperboy” Reed on this weekend’s program.

“This is World Cafe, and our World Cafe Next Artist for this week is a 24-year-old R&B singer from Brooklyn, Massachusetts,” Dye says. (You can hear it for yourself in the first 10 seconds of the streaming audio.)

Maybe the Philadelphia-based host was going for some artsy pronunciation, but Brookline and Brooklyn couldn’t have less in common. Brooklyn is for hipsters while Brookline is for 40-something families looking for a good public schools. Brookline is a small suburb of Boston; Brooklyn is so big that even if you exclude New York’s other four boroughs it’s the second-largest city in America.

Although the rest of NPR’s audience may be trying in vain to book a vacation to Brooklyn, MA, we’re happy that the singer is getting some more notice. Boston magazine reviewed Roll With You in the April issue, and we loved it. Maybe he can write a blues song about the mix up.