I’ve been staying in the San Francisco Bay Area this week and stumbled upon an AM talk radio network that is new to me: the Black Information Network. The format mirrors that of conventional 24-hour all-news stations like KCBS, Los Angeles’ KNX, New York’s WINS or Philadelphia’s KYW, with regular headline news, business and entertainment segments alongisde breaks for local weather and traffic. But that’s also supplemented with short segments on Black history and other topics for Black audiences.

A quick search informed me that it’s actually owned by iHeartRadio and went on the air June 2020 with 15 stations, now up to 31. I found BIN while tuning around the dial on 910 AM Berkeley, in the East Bay of the San Francisco metro. Even before hearing an ID the station immediately stood out from the sports talk and conservative talk that otherwise predominates on the AM dial.

One striking difference is a lack of conventional commercials. Instead, corporate sponsors are identified in a manner more like public radio underwriting. IHeart CMO Gayle Troberman told AdExchanger that they limited the sponsors to just 10, in order to “ensure that our journalists don’t have to write sensational headlines and be motivated to drive clicks[.]” In the same interview BIN CEO Tony Coles said they’re doing some custom branded content, which it seems isn’t too different from what you more often find in podcasting, even on shows from public radio organizations.

I’m surprised I missed BIN’s launch last year, but perhaps it was better to stumble upon it and have the pleasant surprise. Though different in approach and tone than what many folks from progressive community radio might prefer – it is definitely more mainstream – in my listening the emphasis on Black issues, history and culture is nevertheless front and center, and the network does not shy away from the politics of race. The mix is lively and useful.

Although still a national, rather than local, endeavor, It’s good to hear commercial radio try a new approach to news, an area that has seemed drained of investment as the “news” portion of the “news/talk” format on most stations has been pushed definitively to the conservative talk side, with most of the news limited to top- and bottom-of-the hour headlines and maybe some limited drive-time programming. I am curious to learn how this network evolves, especially if it expands to more cities.

The post Tuning in Black Information Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Jennifer is back from travels, that included Hawaiian community radio, to join Eric and Paul. First up, a question: is “pathfinder” a good replacement for the word “pioneer,” the latter of which has an unfortunate colonial heritage? Listener Pat Flanagan suggested it to us after we asked for input a couple of episodes, so we provisionally adopt it here to talk about people who are finding new paths for our favorite audio media.

Jennifer updates us about a new pathfinding low-power FM station backed by the San Francisco Public Press, and announces that the call for papers is open for the next Radio Preservation Task Force conference in October 2020.

Paul reports back from Podcast Movement, where some 3000 podcasters of many stripes met for 3 days in Orlando, Florida. He remarks on the wide variety of podcast email newsletters he learned about, and the Podcast Brunch Club. We note recent allegations of plagiarism against a popular true crime podcast, using it as a launching point for a discussion about journalism and ethics in community broadcasting and podcasting.

Show Notes:

• Call for Papers – ‘Century of Broadcasting: Preservation and Renewal’ Conference
• Podcast #192: Saving Radio History with The Radio Preservation Task Force
• Muni Diaries
• San Francisco Public Press
• Podcast #191: How an LPFM Produces an Hour of Hyper-Local News Every Weekday
• Podcast Movement 2019
• Preserve This Podcast
• Podcast Brunch Club
• The Adventure Zone podcast
• NY Times: Popular ‘Crime Junkie’ Podcast Removes Episodes After Plagiarism Accusation

The post Podcast #208 – Radio and Podcast Pathfinding in San Francisco and Podcast Movement appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Every weekday an all-volunteer reporting staff produces an hour of original, hyper-local news for WOOC-LP’s “Hudson Mohawk Magazine,” serving the Troy, NY area. A focus on mission and a concentration of resources on journalism helps the station accomplish this daily feat.

Steve Pierce is the Executive Director of Media Alliance, which operates WOOC inside the Sanctuary for Independent Media. Steve tells us how that organization grew out of the Independent Media Center movement of the 2000s, adding the solar-powered radio station to its complex of three buildings in 2016. By prioritizing public affairs programming and local service, the station is able to funnel dozens of volunteers into its flagship news program.

Any community media organization looking to produce local reporting will find valuable takeaways in this interview.

The 20th anniversary of the birth of Indymedia at the Battle of Seattle is coming this November.

Underlying this is a nearly forgotten history of independent media that connects unlicensed radio, pre-social media open publishing on the internet and the birth of LPFM. With your help we want to record and document this important history at Radio Survivor.

To do this we need to get to 100 Patreon supporters by July 1. That will help give us the resources we need to begin this work in time for the N30 anniversary.

Show Notes:

• WOOC-LP at the Sanctuary for Independent Media
• “Hudson Mohawk Magazine” podcast
• Nieman Reports: “More Power to Low-Power FM“
• Indymedia
• Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center
• “Independent Media in a Time of War” with Amy Goodman can be viewed at Kanopy using your public library
• “Collateral Murder” at Wikileaks
• Dee Dee Halleck

The post Podcast #191: How an LPFM Produces an Hour of Hyper-Local News Every Weekday appeared first on Radio Survivor.

While looking for info on a BBC session recording of the 1980s new wave / post-rock band Talk Talk I stumbled upon a version of the band’s Radio 1 broadcast on a site called Past Daily. Digging into its archives I discovered a treasure-trove of audio archives, from a 1991 CBS Radio world news roundup reporting on the Civil Rights Act of 1991 and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, to a rare live concert recording of David Cassidy, the former teen heartthrob who passed away last week.

Archivist Gordon Skene is the person behind Past Daily, and I immediately dropped him an email asking for an interview so I could learn more. Skene is a music journalist, and in the early days of the CD he worked on the digital remastering of analog master tapes from record labels like Vee-Jay and Specialty. He then worked with Rhino Records, helping to produce box sets like “Great Speeches Of The 20th Century,” “Great Moments of the 20th Century,” “The 70s’ Culture Box,” “The Baseball Box,” and “The 80’s Culture Box,” earning him two Grammy nominations in the process.

Skene was kind enough to answer my questions over email, and what follows has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

PR: What is Past Daily? And, what is its history?

GS: Past Daily was originally called Newstalgia and it was part of another blog around nine years ago. The parent site was very political and contentious, and it also used a very small portion of my archive. So I left that site about five years ago and started Past Daily, which I wanted to fashion after the French radio station Radio France Internationale, running the gamut of news, history, talk, music and pop culture, all in one place.

I realized that not everyone responds to the same thing, and unlike a radio station, [with a website] you don’t have to listen to what you don’t want to in order to get to what you do want. [That’s] better for me, so I can mix it up and keep it interesting. I am amazed at the eclectic tastes of most people, though.

PR: Are these recordings from your own archives?

GS: Yes. I’ve been collecting recordings since 1963.

PR: What is the source of these recordings? Were they recorded by you off the air, in the studio, or a variety of sources?

GS: It’s a variety of sources. I perfected the art of dumpster diving in radio station trash cans as a kid. But I have also gotten things from stations, networks, [and] traded with other institutions. I don’t collect “old time radio,” so those recordings I have run across, I [have] usually traded with institutions or collectors who have news/public affairs discs they don’t want. I’ve also gotten things from garage sales, swap meets—a whole pile of different places.

PR: What motivated you to share them with the world?

GS: I didn’t want to drop dead and have this warehouse full of stuff no one knew about, [or have it turn out] that spending a good chunk of my life collecting could very easily wind up in the trash or sold on Ebay. I am also horrified by the lack of history knowledge many people have, particularly during a time when knowledge of what has happened before is crucial. I also wanted to introduce people to things they may not be familiar with, especially music. In a weird way, it’s my version of giving things back.

We tend to not learn from our mistakes because we forget. We’re living in grave and dangerous times, and knowing that there is something that has happened before that has had a different result is crucial to us as a people and a society. The more people are aware of what has happened and what has gone on before, the better off we are.

That’s one of the reasons I am such a stickler for the best quality sound when I post something. I don’t want people to get hung up on something because it’s old. I want them to listen to something and learn from it.

Sometimes you just can’t get around [the sound quality]. For example, I have a lot of shortwave broadcasts from World War II—German radio, French radio— that weren’t recorded under the best conditions to begin with, but they are crucial because most people haven’t heard them. Anything [with sound quality] that I absolutely can’t get around, I offer a caveat [for]. Like last night, when David Cassidy died, I ran a concert he did in Rotterdam that was broadcast by VPRO in the Netherlands. Well, the sound was pretty crappy—it came from either a bad AM radio broadcast or a shortwave broadcast. But it’s one of the few examples of David Cassidy during that period in a concert setting. So I ran a brief disclaimer and posted it, because it was important to run, from a historic standpoint.

PR: Do you have copyright on any of these recordings, or do you obtain permission from the copyright holders to share them?

GS: It goes in several different directions. Past Daily is a free site. I don’t charge for anything. I am also a non-profit. That said, I also license material from my archive for films, TV and commercials. I always preface anything I provide with obtaining permission from the copyright holders first.

As far as running stuff on my site, particularly newer material, I usually ask the artist if I can run something of theirs. Ten times out of ten they are thrilled. Which is why I don’t run any commercial recordings on my site. Particularly with concerts and [live] sessions, those are used as a way of promoting an artist or band without depriving them of income via commercial disc sales. The commercial recordings and the concerts/sessions represent entirely different versions of a song and, if anything, [the live versions] promote the idea of buying the commercial recording, as well. Being a two-time Grammy nominee, I am very much on the side of the artist.

PR: Have you considered storing copies on a public archive, like the Internet Archive?

GS: I plan to turn everything over to the University of California Santa Barbara at some point. As much as I like Archive.org and appreciate what they’re doing, I consider 99% of it to be a document dump. In other words, you have to know what you’re looking for in order to make it work. Otherwise, you get lost or you’re confronted by a pile of material that either isn’t relevant or it’s listed by date with no listing of contents. Or, it’s someone’s 5,000th generation dub from one of those “Golden Days Of Radio” [internet group members] whose recordings are mostly all crap and who do history no favors.

I strive to present history in its best sounding light. And I avoid those radio collector groups like the plague. I have never had a good experience with them. From previous experience, I am not a joiner. I was briefly associated with ARSC (Association for Recorded Sound Collections), but they are primarily people who want everything and have nothing in return. Or what they do have exists in a million different forms already. I have never thought of them as a particularly serious group of people.

PR: Do you actively record radio broadcasts or other new material now? If so do you do it digitally or in analog?

GS: Yes. Before they phased it out, I was recording some 30 hours a day of radio materials [on my computer] via the Radioshift application. I did that from 2003 until last year when they no longer offered the radio plug-in. It was perfect because I could record up to five programs simultaneously, and timer-record programs to catch Europe live. I still have one eye on breaking news and capture it via Audio Hijack Pro, but only one thing at a time.

At this point I wanted to dive into some of the geekier and more technical aspects of what Skene does in order to digitize and preserve all these historical recordings.

PR: What’s your procedure for digitizing and preserving these recordings?

GS: The basic procedure is to get a flat (no EQ and no filtering) work master [recorded] on CD, and then upload it to my computer where I use mostly BIAS Peak and Soundsoap Pro. I will use Quattro for speed correction and Audacity if the master source is from tape. It would be great if one program did everything, but unfortunately they don’t. Quattro is the only program I can do running speed correction with.

PR: How do you make that first CD transfer?

GS: A standalone CD recorder, Tascam RW900SL.

PR: What kind of tape decks and turntables are you using for digitizing your analog sources?

GS: Tape decks run the gamut, because the tapes are in so many formats and speeds. The reel-to-reel decks are an Ampex 440–2, an Otari MX–5050–2 and 4, a Technics 1500 and a Tandberg for [slow speed, long-running] 1 7/8 IPS tapes. The turntable is a Technics SP–15 with a Shure SME Arm, Stanton 500 cartridges and a GE VR-II cartridge for 78s and 16″ discs).

Transferring [records] it’s important to get the right sized stylus, because I am a big believer in garbage in, garbage out. So I have a range of disc styli that I use for 78s and 16″ transcription discs with a GE VR-II phono cartridge. The mono LPs get the Stanton 1mm stylus. The object is to get the cleanest transfer, and work from that.

Plus, Sony and Panasonic DAT machines.

PR: As a rough estimate, what percentage of the recordings on your site came from tape or record?

GS: 70% tape, 30% transcription disc (16″ acetate).

The post Past Daily: Living History in Online Audio Archives appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The long-running independent community radio news program Free Speech Radio News announced this week that its last edition will be broadcast on April 28. In a press release, the collective cites a decline in distribution and inability to find a “firm financial footing,” as causes for the closure.

Born from the labor of freelance reporters on strike from Pacifica Network News in 2000, FSRN has provided some of the most consistent grassroots radio news coverage for seventeen years. Two years after its founding FSRN joined back with Pacifica, effectively becoming its flagship daily half-hour national news magazine, syndicated to over a hundred stations.

FSRN remained with Pacifica until September 2013, when the network fell into serious arrears to the news collective, owing about $198,000. At that point FSRN announced that it would close at the end of the month.

Four months later, in Feburary 2014, thanks to listener donations that also included one major funder, the organization resumed independent production, posting daily updates to its website. Then, in May of that year, FSRN Weekly Edition launched, delivering a 29-minute news round-up to dozens of affiliates.

The loss of Free Speech Radio News is truly tragic. It’s unfortunate that community radio stations do not have the collective resources to come together and support such an effort. FSRN has been dedicated to truly grassroots reporting that emphasizes local voices on the ground, with a focus on social justice. The organization’s reporting stands as a strong compliment to community radio stalwarts like “Democracy Now!” by presenting an even more diverse array of voices and stories.

I have and will always admire the work that the staff of FSRN has accomplished, building an international news organization out of a difficult conflict at Pacifica, delivering something that was better and more aligned with the values of community radio—in my opinion—than the program it replaced.

I wish there were a community radio organization, other than Pacifica, that had the resources necessary to support a national program like Free Speech Radio News. I don’t say this to malign Pacifica unfairly. Rather, it’s just an acknowledgement that community radio’s over-reliance on one still-too-centralized and often embattled organization continues to be an achilles heel when it comes to national and international reporting that stands apart from the public radio establishment.

My sincere gratitude goes out to all of the Free Speech Radio News collective members and contributors, past and present.

Here is the full press release:

The post A Sad Goodbye to Free Speech Radio News appeared first on Radio Survivor.

After publishing College Radio Watch on Friday, I was shocked to hear the news that Dan Reimold had died. I was a huge fan of Dan’s work and felt like he was a kindred spirit, with his passion and advocacy for student media. Dan was an assistant professor of journalism at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and also served as the advisor for student newspaper, the Hawk.

I first learned of Dan’s work in 2010 when he approached me while working on a series for his blog, College Media Matters. In his introductory email to me, he said, “My name is Dan Reimold. I’m an impassioned college journalism scholar who has written and presented about the student press throughout the U.S. and in SE Asia. I currently run College Media Matters (CMM), a daily blog focused on student journalism that is now affiliated with the Associated Collegiate Press.”

After checking out his blog, I realized that we were both doing similar work, as far as bringing to light stories about student media. While he was more focused on student press, I have spent my time fixated on student radio. Dan realized that there was crossover and he would periodically write about stories related to college radio. In fact, when he first got in touch with me, he was working on a feature spotlighting influential people in the world of student media, including college radio.

As a former student journalist myself (I was Feature Editor of my high school newspaper and it was a seminal experience for me), I have a deep appreciation for the importance of student press and I’m forever indebted to my former newspaper adviser. He helped us to appreciate not only the power of student media, but also the responsibility we had to cover issues that mattered to our fellow students. We broke stories, infuriated administrators, and probably pissed off classmates. All the while, we learned about our rights and about the freedoms that we enjoyed as student journalists in the United States.

I know that it can’t be easy for newspaper advisers, who must uphold the first amendment, but also have to answer to a boss (whether it’s a school principal or a department head or a school board) who may not be happy about some of the stories that students want to investigate and publish. Things have gotten even tougher following a 1988 Supreme Court decision, which gave principals more leeway in censoring high school newspaper stories.

Dan Reimold was deeply committed to these issues and was a tireless supporter of student media, evangelizing the power of the student press on his blog College Media Matters, on his podcast, in webinars (he was supposed to host one today), on social media, and in print. It was a treat to see him in person last year and we had a great chat about college radio. I also enjoyed talking to him about how student newspapers can be a vital part of college radio history projects, as it’s one of the few places (along with yearbooks), where stories about college radio are documented. On the day we met, I’d spent hours in my alma mater’s special collections, combing through student newspapers from the 1920s.

It saddens me that our lunch back in May, 2014 was the last time that I got to see Dan in person. His voice and work will be sorely missed. I’ll also miss having him as a colleague and as a resource, as he’s the first person that I think of when a college radio story breaks that touches on issues related to freedom of speech.

I think it’s fitting that Dan concluded the biography on his blog with his six-word memoir: Dream Big. Create. Learn. Teach. Repeat.

No doubt many have already been inspired by Dan’s work to do just that.

The post RIP Student Media Advocate Dan Reimold appeared first on Radio Survivor.

I’ve been thumbing through a couple of bound editions of IBS’ The Journal of College Radio from 1970 to 1972 and it’s an incredible look at college radio in that era. Concerns of the day included potential policy changes for carrier-current broadcasters, questions about the FCC’s rules on obscenity (not much has changed!), and excitement about the potential of cable FM. Women were still a college radio novelty as were people of color (there were token articles about each).

One area that I’d love to dig into more is the role of college radio in covering student protests in the 1960s and 1970s. For that reason, the April-May, 1972 article, KZSU Develops Technique in Covering Campus Disturbances, piqued my interest. Written by KZSU‘s Seth Neumann, the article not only outlines how the Stanford University station reported on protests, but also references occurrences at other stations.

Neumann writes,

When political militancy reached the point of direct action at Stanford in the spring of 1967, KZSU was in the almost unique position of having a plant ready made to deal with this new task in reportage. KZSU had an established network of remote broadcast lines and equipment designed for broadcast of speeches and sports events. Fortunately, most of this gear proved adaptable to crisis coverage.”

In addition to outlining equipment suggestions (including small remote boards, CB walkie-talkies, phones, and police scanners), best practices for sources, and safety tips (including “carry a gas mask or legal equivalent”). Neumann cautions:

One thing to watch is your own safety. When things get thick and the tear gas clouds the air, both sides (‘people’ and ‘pigs’) are likely to assume that anyone that they cannot identify belongs to the other side. That is not a ‘safe’ assumption for you. Radio KALX at the University of California at Berkeley had a man arrested that way last year. We have had numerous incidents (one involving the author) in which police officers have chased or beaten KZSU reporters or confiscated walkie talkies from them.”

Neumann also mentions a cautionary tale based on an incident that happened at University of California at Santa Barbara’s station KCSB, saying:

KCSB-FM at the University of California at Santa Barbara was shut down by order of the police in the spring of 1970 because of suspicions that radicals were getting information about police movements from KCSB-FM broadcasts.”

These radio stations in California weren’t the only college radio stations covering student protests in the late 1960s and 1970s. I’m aware of a record produced by Harvard University’s radio station WHRB called Strike: Confrontation at Harvard 1969, which documents the student radio station’s reporting of campus protests. 5/13/15 UPDATE: Listen to the audio here.

If you know of other examples of college radio stations covering student protests, please let me know.

The post College Radio Flashback: Covering Campus Disturbances in the 1960s and 70s appeared first on Radio Survivor.

A little more than four months after ending production, the independent and non-profit daily Free Speech Radio News program is launching the first phase of its reboot with a new website and fresh updates on February 11. Administrative Coordinator Nell Abram said that the new site will feature daily updates, including audio segments ranging from one and a half minutes to five and a half minutes, along with text stories and photo essays.

She said the return is due to two developments. First, “we had a major funder come forward to finance a period of transition while we diversify our funding streams.” FSRN closed at the end of September when it ran out of funds as a result of being owed $198,000 by the Pacifica Foundation, which, as the program’s syndicator was also its primary funder.

The second factor is a successful year-end giving campaign. “We had a lot of support from individual donors,” Abram said. "It was quite moving, given we weren’t even creating a newscast.

“After January 1 we looked at all of that and concluded, first and foremost, we need to get some content out there again, especially for those individual donors who had written checks.”

With this first phase of the relaunch all segments and stories will be free to site visitors and for stations to use. As FSRN ramps up production it will move into a second phase with more consistently produced audio segments. However stations will be asked to pay in order to download and use them on air. Until then, “We can’t ask stations to commit their financial resources until we can commit to consistency,” Abram explained.

The third phase will be resumption of the full daily half-hour news broadcast. But in order to happen both the second and third phases will depend on growth in funding.

Abram said the new major funder came forward with a pledge “the day we went dark. But it took some time to have numerous conversations and discuss goals. He needed to make sure that we had what it would take to move the project forward.”

I asked her why this new funding couldn’t be used to keep the program in production back in September. “He didn’t want just to float us for a couple of months until Pacifica would hopefully come through.” If FSRN has used this donation just to stay in production, it would have only lasted a few months, delaying the shutdown rather than avoiding it. Instead the donor “wanted use to have the opportunity to do the work necessary to broaden our financial base.” FSRN used it as seed money to work towards a more sustainable model.

This donor asked FSRN to determine if affiliate stations would be able and willing to pay for carriage directly, rather than through Pacifica. Abram said that FSRN surveyed “a representative sample” of affiliate stations and found that out of 25 stations only 2 would not be interested in taking the program. “We have commitments in writing from a handful of stations,” she explained. “The other stations verbally committed to bringing us back, but they have to work through their own processes in order to make final commitments. The lion’s share of them were clear that they want FSRN back.”

Last fall FSRN established sliding scale carriage fees for 10 different tiers of stations based upon their total revenue. That will put the program in reach of LPFMs in addition to established full-power community stations. However, Abram acknowledged that most community stations are working with limited budgets for program acquisition, which means “a funding model that relies exclusively on station fees would require a major expansion of our carriage.”

Therefore FSRN is looking to build “a 3-legged funding stool upon which we might sit,” where station fees, individual donations and major funders would each make up a third of the total.

Right now FSRN is working with what Abram calls “a skeleton of a skeleton crew,” because the program was already functioning with a bare minimum number of staff before its closure last fall. Former staff member and long-time correspondent Shannon Young will be handling much of the content coordination from her home base in Mexico, while Abram covers most administrative duties. They will work with freelance correspondents to begin producing stories.

Stations and supporters can look forward to seeing the new FSRN site and content on the 11th.

The post Free Speech Radio News returns on Feb. 11 with daily online updates appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Twitter has 49 million users every month in the US. Facebook has 198 million. There are about 6 million US Spotify users. What about terrestrial broadcast radio, that old-school, supposedly dying analog medium?

Radio has 241.8 million listeners per week, not just per month. Take that, Silicon Valley.

Those numbers are according to Nielsen’s December RADAR Radio Listening Report, which also shows an increase of 700,000 weekly listeners over December 2012, and an increase of 5.3 million since 2009. There was particularly strong growth in Hispanic listeners, accounting for an increase of 372,000 in the last year.

This data illustrates how out-of-whack popular conceptions of popularity and relevance can be, especially those reflected in the press.

As an educated, middle-class white male I certainly know many people who do not listen to terrestrial radio, preferring music services like Pandora or Spotify, podcasts or maybe satellite radio. I also know folks who really don’t own radios, professing them as superfluous when they can listen on their computers, tablets and smartphones.

When the topic of radio comes up at social occasions it’s not at all unusual for the conversation to swing to the theme that “radio sucks,” and that the only radio worth listening to is public radio, and maybe a college or community station, but not too much. Folks inevitably tell me how loading up their smartphones with music, audiobooks and podcasts beats the hell out of relying on the radio, except under extreme circumstances.

Like me, these people are mostly educated and from the middle class. We have smartphones, wifi and more listening choices than we know what to do with. Radio is a choice, mostly not a necessity.

I’ll bet that this milieu isn’t too different from those of most journalists and commentators, especially those working a tech beat. I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of writers mostly only listen to the radio for news, and suffer commercial radio only if they have to. Like so many people I know they have plenty of choices online and elsewhere.

That’s where the “radio is dying” theme comes from. It does not come from radio’s actual fortunes and performance. It’s a perception based upon real data, just not data that is representative of the country as a whole. It comes from our own relatively rarefied experience and the experience of those around us. It does not come from being around and talking to the millions of people who still use radio every week, if not every day.

I’m not trying to deny reality. Radio profits have taken a dive in the last decade (but where are Facebook and twitter profits?). 17 years of industry consolidation obliterated localism and local service in all but the biggest markets, while playlists got tighter, talent was fired and the overall commercial radio listening experience went down the toilet. So, sure, when the internet and mobile technology gave us more interesting, diverse and customizable alternatives, those of us with access took advantage as soon as we could.

But not everybody has access to these alternatives, or the same kind of access. Knowledge workers in a cubicle with constant internet access can jam to Pandora all day long, provided their employer doesn’t block or limit it. But what about somebody working on a shop floor? Or a contractor on a job site where headphones would block out important communication and running Spotify on a smartphone all day would kill both the battery and data caps? The radio is still a reliable companion for someone who drives a car, truck or taxi all day. Radios work great in these environments, and the classic rock, country or spanish-language station beats having nothing at all.

Lots of people choose radio, too. Millions love getting their daily dose of Rush and Hannity, or news and weather on the 8s. Many of these listeners are middle-class knowledge workers, and plenty are middle-class folks who don’t work behind a desk, or who are retired. And many, many of these listeners are not middle class, or are working very hard to stay in the middle class. They are not Luddites, nor are they unsophisticated. No, they get a service that is adequate, useful, or even timely and enjoyable, all for a very low cost and next to no hassle. And there are 700,000 more of them in 2013 than in 2012.

Now, has the commercial radio industry rested on its laurels? Hell, yes. Did big players like Clear Channel foolishly fail to pay heed to the internet threat that began looming at the turn of the century? Most certainly. Did owners squeeze the life out of commercial music radio in search of quick profits? Double hells-yes!

But radio is not a lost cause, nor is it an obsolete medium. Radio’s problems can be solved by radio broadcasters taking a fresh look at their listeners and working hard to deliver better service. Importantly, broadcasters need to take a long hard look at the listeners they’ve lost, and the very hardest look at the potential listeners who have never tuned in.

There is a lot to learn from Facebook, Twitter, Mashable, Upworthy and even Amazon, both from their successes and mistakes. The biggest lesson is to start taking chances, making changes and moving a shitload faster than radio ever has before. I still see debates in the radio press about the classic rock format, and nobody thought would work… twenty freaking years ago!

We need to see new and tweaked formats every month and every year, not every decade.

While adding 700,000 listeners in a year is good news, radio cannot rest on this modest growth. Radio hasn’t totally screwed the pooch, which means there’s still a strong platform to build on. But it’s time to raze some old edifices and build lots of new ones on that platform. Listeners who want radio are there. Take them for granted at your own peril.

The post With 241 million users radio kicks Facebook and Twitter ass appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Unfortunately, the risk associated with unlicensed, independent and clandestine broadcasting in Syria is very present and real. Furthermore, the repressive Assad government is not the only threat.

According to David Kenner at Foreign Policy a reporter working for the citizen journalism organization ANA New Media Association, Rami al Razzouk, was kidnapped by members of the al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) during an October raid on ANA’s media office in Raqqah City. ANA says ISIS confiscated radio broadcasting equipment, and also says they believe Razzouk has been “tortured severely and thus transferred to Der al Zor for further interrogation.”

Kenner notes that “the crackdown is just the latest example of the growing tension within the anti-Assad cause between Islamist radicals and more mainstream rebel groups.” ANA’s radio station operated for three months, often criticizing the actions of Islamist radicals, highlighting their harassment of journalists and other activists.

In an official statement, ANA says that other free radio stations “who claim to oppose this kind of oppression continue to avoid collision with these extremist groups by broadcasting revolutionary and islamic content.” The statement continues, “Our revolution was one for freedom and democracy and freedom of expression. Free media is the only way forward for our country, any party that stands to oppose us will not intimidate us or prevent us from making our voices known.”

Hat-tip to San Francisco IMC.

The post Syrian free radio station raided & shut down by al Qaeda group appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Obadah Alkadri / image: KPBS

Last week I asked what outside and independent news and information sources are available inside Syria. In particular, I wondered what radio outlets are available.

Tom Fudge, news director of KPBS, provides an answer to my question in a story aired last Thursday. He talked with a handful of independent Syrian journalists who visited San Diego in a State Department sponsored trip, one of whom is part of a group that is making clandestine radio broadcasts inside that country.

Obadah Alkadri is the manager of Damascus News Agency and the Alkadri Group for Media Production that were started at the beginning of the Syrian revolution. Alkadri said that his organizations are transmitting from inside Damascus, taking steps to avoid detection by state police. He told Fudge

“So we divided Damascus into 15 sections. In each section we put one radio transmitter. We are playing this radio just for 20 minutes. After that, we turn it off and we will start again in another section, and turn on the other one.”

The main studio is located in Istanbul because Syria has unreliable electricity and internet. They communicate with journalists on the ground inside Syria using satellite phones and internet which are not easily intercepted by local authorities.

Alkadri said that they put transmitters in “liberated areas,” but that they are paying some groups of the FSA to protect their offices.

Running only 20 minutes at a time should make it quite possible to run the transmitters off of batteries. A lead-acid motorcycle battery can run even a 100 watt transmitter for quite some time.

I would like to know a few more technical details about the broadcasts. For instance, are the broadcasts all on the same frequency? That would make the most sense to me, since it would not require listeners to try and relocate the signal on the dial.

It would be interesting to know how the broadcasts are publicized.

It’s likely that the government knows about the broadcasts, but it may be advantageous to keep some unpredictability in their timing. This is a tactic that has been used by unlicensed broadcasters around the world looking to evade detection. Of course, the challenge is in making sure your intended audience is able to find and listen to your broadcast.

I am not at all surprised to learn that there are brave journalists broadcasting independent radio inside Syria. Radio transmitters can be small, light and portable, easily set up and taken down quickly. At the same time, even low powered broadcasts can reach thousands of people at once. Even when power is unreliable both transmitters and receivers can run on rechargeable batteries.

Especially when the internet and electricity are not easily available, radio is still an important and viable tool for communications freedom.

The post Independent journalists broadcast clandestine radio stations inside Syria appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Vintage Radio at WLUW (Photo: J. Waits)

In honor of the 2nd annual World Radio Day on February 13, Fundación Comunica and the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) are creating a series of short radio pieces on the topic of radio. They are inviting radio researchers and broadcasters to submit their radio story ideas online through October 19. The resulting series, “Did You Know That?”, will be “a series of short (1.5 to 2 minutes) radio spots in which broadcasters and researchers, can share their facts, figures and anecdotes about radio with the world.”

If a story idea is accepted, UNESCO will call the person who submitted the idea in order to record the story by phone. The piece will then be edited and shared with radio stations all over the world, including “international broadcasters, 257 public radio broadcasters, and other UNESCO partners” as well as online.

What story would you like to tell the world about radio?

The post Pitch Your Radio Story for World Radio Day appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Development director Alan Searle says that, “it is important to note that FSRN made it through our recent cash flow problem thanks to the generosity of hundreds of our listeners and many affiliated stations.”

He says that FSRN position was further improved because their “major funder”–presumably the Pacifica Foundation–made payments bringing them current through July. Provided that these payments continue to be made on schedule and listener donations continue at the rate of about $5,000 a month, then FSRN “will avoid another crisis.”

I have not been shy in signing the praises of FSRN, which continues to produce excellent daily coverage of un- and under-reported stories about people’s struggle for freedom, justice and equality around the world. That the staff and reporters of FSRN have been able to do this independently and non-commercially for more than a decade is nothing short of remarkable and admirable.

I am very pleased to see FSRN meet its most recent financial needs, and certainly hope continued funding comes through.

The post Supporters help Free Speech Radio News reach funding goal appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Producing a daily, grassroots and nonprofit with an international scope is not an easy business. Free Speech Radio News has been pulling it off for more than a dozen years, since Pacifica Reporters Against Censorship went on strike from the Pacifica Network and turned their efforts to an independent, collectively run newscast.

While FSRN is independent, it’s still heavily reliant on the perpetually embattled Pacifica Foundation for much of its funding. On its website FSRN says, “A major funder is suddenly unable to meet its contracted obligations to pay us.” So, unfortunately, once again FSRN is facing a shortfall, needing $75,000 by June 30 to keep the program on the air. As of Wednesday they were 40% of the way there, with about $30,000 donated.

Unlike many other syndicated public radio shows, FSRN is very flexible in making the show available to community stations at whatever funding level they can afford. Frankly, $75k isn’t that much money, especially for a program heard on 114 stations. For Pete’s sake, that kind of money barely funds the Car Guys’ laugh-track budget for one week. Yet, that sum will help FSRN produce a daily (not weekly) half-hour, featuring truly local on-the-ground reporters around the world. Therefore I sincerely hope that community radio listeners and supporters can come together to help keep FSRN going.

FSRN has set up a page for easy online donations.

The post Free Speech Radio News asks supporters to “keep the flame burning” appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The post The art of avoiding hyperbole in radio interviews appeared first on Radio Survivor.

This Sunday folks in Portland, Maine will be able to participate in the Great Northeast Radio Rally.

This free event (PDF) is being sponsored by Blunt Youth Radio and the Maine Arts Commission and will be held at the University of Southern Maine and at the Space Gallery in Portland. “Audio producers” of all ages are invited to attend the conference, which will feature sessions, workshops, panel discussions, and an Audio Slam competition. Some of the topics covered will include tips on pitching stories to NPR, how to cover elections for radio, and information about doing oral histories.

Similar to events such as the Grassroots Radio Coalition’s annual conference and Allied Media’s DIY Radio conference, the Great Northeast Radio Rally should be an excellent opportunity for people getting started in the art of radio.

While you’re checking out the event, you should also take a look at the work being done by the Blunt Youth Radio Project. Through the program teenagers, some of whom are incarcerated, learn how to do radio and end up producing a weekly Monday night show on local community radio station WMPG.  Stories created by these young radio producers have ended up airing on NPR and BBC.

If you want to take a listen to other youth-produced radio projects, take a look at YouthCast (where there’s even a piece produced by a Blunt Youth radio journalist about Hurricane Katrina), Radio Diaries (which includes a Teen Reporter Handbook and list of youth radio resources, including stations airing material produced by young people), Youth Radio, MIT’s Terrascope Radio, and Generation PRX.

The post Great Northeast Radio Rally in Portland this Sunday appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Editor’s Note: Radioactive Gavin has collected more than 300 articles on radio and digital music over the past 3 months for Common Frequency. This is the second in a series of seven posts he is contributing, looking back at the end of a rough year in radio.

When Stephen Colbert gave a ‘medal of fear’ to a seven-year old girl at Jon Stewart’s Rally for Sanity, many of us laughed hard at NPR’s expense. And it felt good. If you missed the clip, fast forward to the 49:00 mark.

“Oh no, not NPR,” Colbert jokes. “If their employees attend Jon’s rally, someone might think that NPR is liberal! No one could tell from the free pledge drive hemp-fiber tote bags they use to carry their organic kale roll-ups to their compost parties.”

Of course NPR is a source of timely news reporting on stories like private prison industry connections to Arizona’s SB 1070, and sneaky Senate maneuvering that prevented a potentially 95-5 or 98-2 vote for years.

But recently Ira Glass complained publicly that his colleagues sound like “talking robots.” To make matters worse, liberal satirist Harry Shearer points out these days “the initials stand for nothing.” Even the stuffy Financial Times calls NPR “smug and boring.” Ouch.

Restricting staff attendance to a comedic performance staged at the Washington Monument led to hilarious mockery of NPR and other press outlets. But beyond the related discussion about NPR’s coverage of hate groups, and the snore-inducing arguments about ethics codes, why is the press so scared of what the haters might say?

NPR went right ahead and gave critics all the ammunition they could eat, by firing Juan Williams before the rally even happened.

Before I can get to the most interesting parts of the NPR identity crisis, we should revisit the chain of events surrounding civil rights historian and former journalist Juan Williams.

The plot of NPR vs. Fox News, starring the honest black man and the mean white lady, was never very original. Hindsight being 20/20, it seems public debate was degraded yet again during October by conservative demonology and fake freedom of speech hypocrisy.

First Juan Williams, who is a black news analyst for NPR, makes racist statements to suck up to his other employer Bill O’Reilly on Fox News. Then the civil rights historian and former journalist gets a phone call from NPR informing him he’s been fired. Immediately Newt Gingrich and other conservatives demand an end to public funds for NPR. In the midst of pledge drive season, stations receive calls from “viewers” who promise to stop “watching.”

Next NPR’s CEO Vivian Schiller pours gasoline on the fire by ticking off the National Alliance for Mental Illness. Facing the cameras, she jokes Williams should have kept his feelings to himself “his psychiatrist or his publicist, take your pick.” Schiller subsequently apologizes for the way the termination was handled. And now NPR’s Board hires a law firm working the NBC-Comcast merger to lead a review of the dismissal.

The elephants eat up the opportunity to deliver a heaping pile of dung across the broadcast spectrum and the cable TV landscape. Luckily, a few in the press keep their senses despite the stink.

Civil libertarian Glenn Greenwald points out that NPR’s firing of Juan Williams “threatened to delegitimize” all “fear-sustaining, anti-Muslim slander.” With so much of the emphasis of Endless War built up around a foundation of hate and racism, he concludes “there are too many interests served by anti-Muslim fear-mongering to allow that to change.”

Adam Serwer writes in Williams’ old paper the The Washington Post, “It’s clear from the context that Williams wasn’t merely confessing his own personal fears, he was reassuring O’Reilly that he was right to see all Muslims as potential terrorists.”

Indeed the subject had come up on October 18th in the first place because a week earlier Bill O’Reilly’s remarks on The View caused Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg to walk off the set in the middle of his interview.

But hey, at this point you’ve gotta feel sorry for Juan Williams. Sure, first he signed a new $2M contract with Fox News, and now he’s got a book deal. But his new book will “focus on free speech and the growing difficulty in America of speaking out on sensitive topics.” Wouldn’t you hate to try and explain how difficult speaking out can be while banking millions as a commentator?

Plus, the poor guy must have some conflicting voices inside his head, considering his earlier writings on the psychology of hate. “Common sense becomes racism when skin color becomes a formula for figuring out who is a danger to me,” wrote Williams in The New Republic back in 1986.

While reading back over so much controversy about NPR throughout the past few months, a key perspective emerged as more interesting than the rest of the pack. Regardless of NPR’s grounds for firing Williams, there is little hope of satisfying The National Review. Their claims about NPR’s left wing leadership hinge on judgements about “abortion-rights groups and environmental activism in particular.”

But what about other journalists of color who have worked within the NPR system?

During four years of work for NPR, Kiss the Sky author Farai Chideya saw no evidence of particularly liberal leadership, insisting instead the network is “run by a Beltway cohort.”

Although her African-American issues program was canceled and she no longer works there, Chideya blogged on Huffington Post recently that “this country needs NPR, now more than ever.”

She says they fired Williams for acting as hype man for Bill O’Reilly, the same thing he has been doing for years.

Do I think NPR fired him because he is black? No. Do I think NPR kept Williams on for years, as the relationship degraded, because he is a black man? Absolutely. Williams’ presence on air was a fig-leaf for much broader and deeper diversity problems at the network. NPR needs to hire more black men in house on staff as part of adding diverse staff across many ethnicities and races.

It also needs, broadly, a diversity upgrade that doesn’t just focus on numbers, but on protocols for internal communication. Among the revelations in this incident is that the Vice President of News fired Williams by phone without giving him the opportunity to come into the office and discuss it.

In 2009, minorities represented less than 9% of the radio work force despite making up at least 34% of the population. In 2008, the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council (MMTC) calculated that minority news employment was statistically almost zero at English language, non-minority owned radio stations.

MMTC co-founder David Honig credits the collapse of minority employment in radio journalism to “word of mouth recruitment from a homogenous workforce.”

Considering the FCC’s own report on the need for diverse broadcast ownership — that the “welfare of the public” requires “the widest dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources” possible — Honig wants stronger equal employment opportunity enforcement.

So would Republican presidential hopefuls agree with him, that a more diverse NPR would be a better use of public funds? Do the elephants care about the quality of news that’s accessible in the peanut gallery?

Or are they grandstanding and whipping up ill-informed Americans into a frenzy in the name of Muslim-bashing? Despite a desperate need to change course in the Middle East,  this fall the GOP laughed all the way into office as NPR war reporters joined up with the rest of the subservient national press to please the Pentagon with their favorable coverage.

Listen critically to NPR’s reporting of US foreign policy and you will hear selective storytelling shining favorable light on CIA activities, and so-called experts providing dodgy history lessons on Afghanistan. While popular anchors parrot unsubstantiated claims about Iraq, and others kiss up to conservative politicians, commentators smirk their way through reactionary antagonism of whistle-blowers.

To me, it is no wonder that the anti-Iraq War invasion contingent of NPR’s audience seems so totally placated, four elections later.

It’s debatable whether those at the top of the right-wing echo chamber are in fact willfully misleading their audiences when it comes to funding radio with tax dollars. Either that or they’re afraid of what they don’t understand as usual.

Public radio station revenue is mostly made up of individual and business contributors, with less than 6% coming from direct federal, state and local government funding combined.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) funds barely 10% of all public radio budgets. NPR itself is funded mostly by member station programming fees and corporate sponsorships, and receives no government funding for operation costs.

Reality may be liberal, as the saying goes, but it’s plausible that at least one hundred million Americans are not. They don’t need Newts or Mama Grizzlies to tell them not to support NPR. Many of them dislike public radio because it sounds like liberal propaganda for an elite educated audience. Public radio executives rarely admit the need to think outside the core, but I’d say plenty of critics are accurate in their assessment.

Not long ago, my Radio Survivor colleague Matthew Lasar pointed out the disgust he felt when he heard Terry Gross and guest Will Ferrell laugh about the poor slobs who buy clothes at Marshall’s and get their hair done at Supercuts. Stay classy, Gross Air.

Feminist Music Geek Alyx Vesey blogged in August that Gross leans heavily on assumption and often attempts to “box interviewees’ responses into preconceived trajectories.” However Vesey and her fellow watchdogs were much more concerned with “sensitive white male condescension” from Bob Boilen of All Songs Considered. “Particularly in his dealings with women and the output of female artists,” she added.

Well, in November Bakari Kitwana wondered aloud on Huffington Post if Terry Gross should go the way of Juan Williams, considering her interview with Jay-Z about his new book Decoded. You decide, couldn’t what Kitwana heard be described as “sensitive white female condescension?”

“To be sure Juan Williams revealed his bias by openly, expressing his personal opinion. Terry Gross didn’t do that. Instead the bias is more subtle and insidious and lurks in the line of questioning,” Kitwana wrote. “And Terry Gross never goes off message.”

In a nearly hour long interview with a self-made record executive mogul and entrepreneur worth at least half a billion, on the occasion of the publication of a book he deems a coming of age story for his generation, the most pressing questions on the table range from insight into drug dealing to why rappers grab their crotches?

Given how pervasive the narrative Jay-Z calls “history re-running its favorite loop” has become, Kitwana says it will take much more than firing journalists like Gross and Williams to purge it from our culture in America.

As the Executive Director of Mississippi Public Broadcasting Judy Lewis learned in September, you don’t mess with Gross Air.  The beloved daily talk show was reinstated on that affiliate’s schedule after Lewis pulled the plug, following listener complaints over sex talk on the program. Then Lewis was canned instead. (Technically, she resigned.)

Make no mistake, it is very clear that many in my parents’ generation love Terry Gross and the other veteran voice talents. About 1 in 10 Americans tune in at some point every week. Even with the US economy teetering on the brink of collapse and the rest of the radio biz in a tailspin, NPR is experiencing boom times. As Radio Survivor noted one year ago, despite it all, NPR keeps growing.

Environmentalist Bill McKibben’s favorite public radio personality is the wittiest of them all, Ira Glass. McKibben makes Glass the centerpiece of his recent feature for the New York Review of Books, admiring his “commitment to covering the 330 degrees of life that didn’t show up on the newscasts. It’s about life the way most of us experience it, where heartbreak or lunch is as important as stock prices or distant revolutions.”

Back in August, Ira Glass drew knowing applause from a sold-out crowd at Seattle’s Benaroya Hall with the admission he listens to NPR stories thinking, “I would be a better person if I can get through this story.”

“The world they describe is much smaller than the real world,” he continued. They sound like “talking robots. The aesthetics of the language is so stiff.”

The goal for the creator and host of This American Life, is to “add fun, joyfulness and surprise” to stories. According to reports, he noted onstage that this “never happens in broadcast journalism,” which is “a failure of craft.”

Calling to mind Patton Oswalt’s over-the-top bit about NPR is author James Wolcott’s recent piece for Vanity Fair, called The Sound of Sanity.

Today NPR is just about the last outfit that hasn’t retrenched and retreated from Marshall McLuhan’s global village but instead has extended its feelers to tap even the faintest faraway dot on the map with a moving story to tell, navigating near-impossible terrain if necessary.

This can lead to borderline self-parody, too many dispatches from remote villages about the dying native craft of flute-making narrated by a correspondent who sounds as if s/he majored in empathy at Deepak Chopra Junior College, a mourning dove with a microphone.

But the beauty of radio is that the ambience of other countries, other cultures, fills the sonic background with no camera eye imposing a single dominant message-image (a close-up of scorched belongings to signify the ravages of war), and no reporter standing in the foreground, colonizing the frame with a face full of concern.

The Financial Times applauds NPR for being “the closest America comes to the BBC.” However, “it is also a bit smug and boring.”

74% of Spot.Us users surveyed in September think public media is higher quality than their commercial counterparts.

So, we get it, masses of college graduates love NPR, even if it is more Wonder Bread than organic kale roll-ups.

Meanwhile, grassroots activists shoot off their mouths about lapdog coverage, journalists of color wonder when their fair share of the workforce will come, while corporate-backed Republicans attack NPR for serving up smooth sounds of sanity, safe for the three-car garages of liberal elites.

For the future of public radio, quite possibly the most important critique of the NPR brand is inaccessibility. Fans of small “d” democracy, libertarians and much of the community radio movement feel the bigger the member station, the more editorially closed off from real people.

Plenty of listeners dedicated to the low end of the FM dial are concerned so-called corporate “persons” have too much influence on the big pubcasters.

For example, one blogger writes, “KBYU should not use the public airwaves to solicit donations from listeners until it first makes complete and regular disclosures of its finances.”

The editor of a free daily email series called LUV News, Jack Balkwill, was quoted on the excellent Keep Public Radio Public website in November, writing:

Corporate sponsors include the taxpayer-bailed-out General Motors, Citibank, and Bank of America. Others include Citgo Oil, Mastercard, Visa, BP Oil, Dow Chemical, and Fox Broadcasting.

Throughout the day, NPR’s programs: Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, The Diane Rehm Show and others invite guests from the corporate funded think tanks to opine. These people are clearly paid to sell out the American public. Transnational corporations get sycophancy in return for their investments to the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation, Hoover Institution, Cato Institute and so forth, and what they expect is obedience to their philosophy of lower corporate taxes and higher corporate welfare, at any cost to the public interest.

When legendary Simpsons voice actor Harry Shearer, host of Le Show on KCRW, found out NPR wouldn’t cover his new feature-length documentary on either of the network’s two flagship news programs, he set out to buy underwriting announcements instead. But NPR’s legal department ruled he couldn’t use the words “documentary about why New Orleans flooded” in his spots, so he fumed on Huffington Post that at NPR the initials stand for nothing.

If NPR doesn’t stand for National Public Radio anymore, what does it stand for?

In an Op-Ed during the Williams fiasco, former NPR foreign editor and current KPCC Pasadena news director Paul Glickman offers this simple answer: “NPR is the premier broadcast news organization in America.” And he’s right.

Well over 30 million Americans tune into their local NPR member stations every week, and the plan is to grow audience numbers to 50 million people over the coming decade.

NPR’s own research shows millions more Americans would, too, if public radio becomes more lively and less serious. Researchers found the perception of inaccessibility to be the greatest barrier to entry.

“Inherently, news and information is NPR’s sweet spot, and understanding how that was unfolding in the world of news and information was the primary goal of this study,” vice president of programming Margaret Low Smith told Current in September.

News consumers from various demographic groups feel excluded. Confirming comments from Ira Glass, the summary proposes a more conversational tone in news delivery. “There is an appetite for… people sounding more like real people.” Sorry Host Whisperer, but your days may be numbered.

Of course a mix of digital strategies could help increase public access. No doubt streams and podcasts will continue driving listenership. In July, NPR’s Facebook page surpassed one million fans. In September they launched a handsome Tumblr blog, stripped-down and appealing to visual learners like me.

They’re also finding that Twitter data lets NPR glimpse a “future of app-loving news junkies.” Facebook and Twitter combined now account for 7-8 percent of traffic to NPR.org, an amount that has doubled in the last year, according to Nieman Journalism Lab.

That’s just the beginning. Digital initiatives include PBCore, the new internal API for NPR news gatherers, iPad optimization, projects with silly acronyms like PMP and AAPP, even a new team of comment police for NPR’s web platforms.

The Argo Network, which aims to cover 12 distinct topics in 12 hyper-local newsrooms is a cool idea. Plus, how does adding reporters to all 50 statehouse beats sound? Open Society Foundations put up the seed money for that project, called Impact of Government.

One of the biggest dreams is significant investment in more than 300 new positions for reporters and editors in top markets. Despite a budget calling for unnecessarily bloated salaries, when I consider the news crisis we’re facing nationwide, I say bring ’em on.

“This is public media’s moment,” Libby Reinish of Free Press wrote in October. “We must rebuild the charred remnants left behind by commercial media’s slash-and-burn tactics, and we need all hands on deck in order to raise a new foundation for American journalism in its place.”

Keep in mind, her article on NewPublicMedia.org was about the Prometheus Radio Project’s barnraising with community radio station WGXC in upstate New York. But “Building a Radio Station, Building a Movement” was also a reminder about the blueprint (.pdf) Free Press has envisioned.

Bringing together all our public interest journalism resources — including community radio and NPR, cable access and PBS, nonprofit startups and independent bloggers — means thinking critically about the “premier broadcast news organization” in America. Keeping track of what the public’s biggest news network is up to can help all of us move forward from this identity crisis.

I agree with Farai Chideya that Americans need a more robust, more diverse NPR. What do you think?

The post Radio’s Fall – Part Two: NPR’s ‘Liberal’ Identity Crisis appeared first on Radio Survivor.

NPR’s Ombudsman Alicia Shepard wonders out loud how much coverage NPR should give groups like Westboro in this post.

The broadcast raises issues regarding the obligation of a network like NPR to dedicate time even to a radical group with a small following and extremely offensive views. Does this type of broadcast represent the public interest? The term “public interest” has always been a bit weighted, so it may be best to view this through analogy. The Ku Klux Klan, for example, traditionally has held a number of extremely offensive views, yet, legally, even they have the constitutional right to assemble. Similarly, the Westboro Baptist Church, although its small following holds a number of extremely offensive views, is also, in theory, entitled to enjoy the benefits of a public radio network.

NPR’s original description of the Westboro Baptist Church went like this:

Members of Westboro Baptist Church plan to protest the funeral of Elizabeth Edwards on Saturday. As NPR’s Barbara Bradley Hagerty reports, the fundamentalist church says she brought on her cancer by doubting God.

The Topeka based church run by Fred Phelps is best known for its view that God hates gay men and lesbians… and frequently pickets military funerals. Now they’re turning their wrath on Elizabeth Edwards, the estranged wife of former Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards. They plan to picket her funeral in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her crime? After her son died in a car accident in 1996, she said that God could not protect her boy… and that she was not asking God to cure her cancer. The Westboro website said because of this, she is, quote, a resident of hell.

It may also be helpful to consider the following coverage of the Westboro Baptist Church by NPR, the only additional coverage by NPR since the original spot. In this article on Elizabeth Edwards’ funeral, the group received a relatively brief mention:

People came out with posters and banners to create a line of love, to block an anti-gay group from Kansas picketing the Edwards memorial service. The Westboro Baptist Church is known for protesting outside military funerals. But there was far more love than hate at this gathering. Cate Edwards wanted her mother to know that.

Should NPR really be expected to uphold such a high level of equality? People should know that idiotic, radical groups like this exist, but the question remains: How much time should they receive? What do you think?

The post Hate groups. How should NPR handle them? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

If I were anywhere near Detroit this weekend I would grab a seat at the Allied Media Conference. Held at Wayne State University, this is the 12th annual conference put together by Allied Media Projects. Sessions focused on media, technology, community-organizing, social justice, and the DIY ethos all began today. With topics ranging from radical comics to culture jamming to creating gender inclusive online games, it’s sure to be a fun conference full of creative and engaged media fans.

Of interest to me, is that an entire conference track is focused on radio. “Radio Active: From the streets to the airwaves” is being coordinated by Prometheus Radio Project and the Community News Production Institute of People’s Production House.

Prometheus is doing a live radio webstream from the event (9 to 5:30 tomorrow and 10 to 1:30 on Sunday), in case you want to tune in to hear what they’ve got in store. Radio sessions will include “Build a Mini Radio Transmitter,” “Radio as a Tool to Transform, Organize and Build Community,” and live broadcasts. Other radio-related sessions include a discussion about “Open Source Internet Radio,” and “Your Phone is Your Microphone.”

Later in the month, Prometheus will be doing more radio how-to’s in Detroit at the United States Social Forum.

The post DIY Radio hits Motown for Allied Media Conference appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The Knight Foundation has taken a lead in funding grants for promising new ideas for journalism, in particular those that exploit opportunities in digital media and are local in focus. The Knight News Challenge Grant is providing $2.74 million in funding to twelve projects that aim to inform specific geographic communities. The winners were announced at the Future of News and Civic Media conference at MIT and this year two grants are going to radio organizations.

The PRX StoryMarket is a project that allows any person to pitch or help fund the production of a story for a local public radio station. When the amount of money raised for a particular story is sufficient then the local station can hire a professional journalist to produce it. Proposed by PRX CEO Jake Shapiro, The StoryMarket received a $75,000 challenge grant and is built on software developed for a 2008 challenge winner Spot.us, which uses a similar model for online news in four cities, including Los Angeles and Minneaplois. The project PRX is the Public Radio Exchange which is seven year-old online market for public radio content.

Public radio station WBUR in Boston received a $250,000 challenge grant to create a laboratory in a Boston courtroom that aims to establish best practices for digital court reporting. Called Order in the Court 2.0 the project’s courtroom will have a designated blogging area with wi-fi and the ability to stream court proceedings live. The project, headed by WBUR executive editor for new media, John Davidow, will also publish a daily docket on its website and develop a wiki for common legal terms.

Once again, it’s impossible not to notice that the innovation happening in radio is coming from non-commercial, and in this case, public radio. This segment of the radio industry readily embraced the internet while at the same time emphasizing local service. I’m glad to see the Knight Foundation recognize the fruitful potentials in the merger of this old media with new.

The post Two Knight News Challenge Grants go to radio orgs appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Warning Sign at KZYX. Photo by Jennifer Waits

At the radio station where I DJ there are a number of different types of shows, but for the most part singular DJs are in charge of designated time slots on the schedule.

A few programs are run in a collective style, with different staffers taking over DJ duties from week to week. And for many years there was a weekly news program that relied on submissions from a range of DJs in order to fill up its allotted 60 minutes of airtime. I know that this show in particular was a challenge for those running it, as there was the constant need to hustle for stories from volunteer DJs and consistent contributors were few and far between.

CKDU (a campus/community station in Halifax) runs a similar show called The News Collective on weekday mornings, featuring news, documentaries, and investigative pieces.

No doubt inspired by this program, CKDU’s Program Director Tarek Al-Zand will be leading a conference session in Canada about “Collective Radio Making” next week. He’s on a quest to learn about other examples of radio shows featuring input by multiple DJs, so if you’ve been involved in some sort of collaborative or collective radio project or know of examples of programs that fit that bill, please share your comments below or get in touch with Tarek.

I’d also be curious to hear about the successes and challenges inherent to these collective radio endeavors.

The post Seeking Radio Collectives appeared first on Radio Survivor.

As we reported last week, radio stations in Somalia have been pressured to cease playing music by militant Islamist groups. Under threat of violence, these stations opted to replace music with all-talk formats, punctuated by sounds of animals, nature, and machinery.

On Tuesday the government of Somalia actually ordered four Mogadishu radio stations to play music again and threatened to shut them down if they didn’t. Two stations began playing music after this order and two others shut down out of fear about how militants might react. In a bizarre twist, the government took back its order for stations to play music shortly after issuing it. According to an Associated Press report, the conflicting edicts from the government and insurgents are taking a toll on stations. The AP article states:

“A director of the Somaliweyn station, Abukar Mohamed Hassan Kadaf, said his station went off-air but resumed broadcasts 20 minutes later when the government appeared to change its mind.

Kadaf said he was not sure about the future of Mogadishu-based radio stations, ‘because each side is telling you to do his bidding.’

Radio workers said they felt trapped between violent insurgents who are known to stone people to death and an ineffectual government that controls only a few blocks of the capital city and cannot protect them.

‘We are confused. We don’t know what will come next,’ Kadaf said.”

It’s an unfortunate situation and although these recent government interventions may have been an attempt to protect media freedom, that clearly can’t happen unless the station owners and staff feel safe from violence.

The post Radio Stations in Somalia Threatened Again over Music appeared first on Radio Survivor.

With Music Banned from Somali Radio, What will DJs Play?

There are growing concerns about the control that militant groups are wielding over citizens and media outlets after music was banned from Somali radio on Tuesday and school bells were outlawed from a Somali town on Thursday.

Today’s New York Times reports that, “Insurgent groups in Somalia have increasingly alienated the population by imposing a harsh interpretation of Islam, stoning people to death and amputating the hands and feet of thieves. They have also issued strict edicts controlling the more mundane aspects of daily life, banning things like bras and soccer games in their territory.”

According to another story in the New York Times, music is one of the most recent areas of focus:

“At least 14 radio stations here in the capital [of Mogadishu] stopped broadcasting music on Tuesday, heeding an ultimatum by an Islamist insurgent group to stop playing songs or face ‘serious consequences.'”

In some cases stations have replaced musical interludes with the sounds of animals, bullets, sirens, and nature in order to comply with the ban. The article explains that militant Islamist groups believe that music is “un-Islamic.” Reports have suggested that station owners and DJs complied with the ban out of fear for their lives and safety.

In addition to the ban on music, Islamists have taken control of some radio stations in Somalia and have outlawed programs (such as BBC and Voice of America) from foreign countries. Yet, there are some stations fighting back against the ban. The article points out that,

“At least two radio stations did not heed the ban. The government-owned Radio Mogadishu and another station, Radio Bar-Kulan, which is mostly produced in Kenya, continued playing music.”

It’s frightening to see radio stations changing their programming due to threats and is a strong reminder about the consequences of war on freedom of the press. Radio can be used as such a powerful force to inform and empower citizenry, particularly during times of war. The work by Interactive Radio for Justice in Central Africa has demonstrated how vital free airwaves and community radio are, making this news about the situation in Somalia even more troubling. According to a Voice of America article today,

“The National Union of Somali Journalists says Somalia’s once-thriving independent media will cease to exist, if the current crackdown on media organizations continues unchecked.”

The bans on both music and bell-ringing also point out debates about the definition of music. Stations have gotten around the music ban by playing the sounds of roosters and engines, yet there are people who find both sounds to be musical. A few years ago I attended the Experience Music Project’s annual Pop Conference in Seattle and one of the most fascinating panel discussions that I saw was focused entirely on the relationship between music and war and how music can be used to both escape from the horrific sounds of violence and can also be used as a recruitment tool for soldiers.

Somalia is said to be a musical culture, so this ban is going to have a huge impact on its citizens who will no doubt find ways to rebel and play music undetected.

The post Music Banned from Radiowaves in Somalia appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The recent earthquakes in Chile and Haiti are a strong reminder about the importance of radio as a communications tool, especially in times of disaster. Haitian radio stations have served to help with rescue efforts and shortwave radio operators in Chile were also instrumental in transmitting tsunami updates and emergency communications.

Along these lines, the organization Interactive Radio for Justice (IRfJ) has been creating radio programs in war-torn regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic in order to help provide information to citizens about their basic human rights. Utilizing local community and Catholic radio stations as their outlets, representatives from Interactive Radio for Justice have created several series of “interactive” radio programs in which listeners can hear citizens asking pressing questions about their legal rights, which are then answered by government officials over the air.

In parts of the world where television, the Internet, and print media are not commonplace, but radios are in nearly every home; radio broadcasts can become a vital educational tool.

Recently I interviewed Wanda Hall, Founder and Director of Interactive Radio for Justice, in order to hear from her the reasons why radio is such a critical tool in her work.

The project began in 2005 in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with one of the main goals being to “create interactive conversation” between citizens and legal officials. The focus have been on regions where The International Criminal Court has been investigating serious crimes such as genocide and war crimes and the radio programs attempt to begin a dialog in order to educate communities about the justice system.

Luckily for IRFJ, the DRC had an established culture of community radio that could be tapped into for the project. In 2008 they also began work in the Central African Republic where “local radio is not as obvious a tool” according to Wanda. She said that because of this, they have teamed up with religious radio stations affiliated with the Catholic church.

In addition to producing programming, IRFJ also works to provide radios to members of the local communities in order to set up “listening groups.” That way, even if residents don’t have access to a radio, they can go to someone’s home to hear the programming. Group leaders are given radios and they establish a specific time each week that they will open their home to their neighbors in order to listen to IRfJ programming. Wanda told me that in these communities the cost of a radio may be equivalent to a month’s salary, so it’s not unreasonable to expect that it’s a luxury item for many people.

For residents in these regions with low rates of literacy and a strong oral tradition, radios provide the main source for news. Additionally, Wanda mentioned to me that newspapers aren’t as popular and printing presses “ground to a halt” during wartime. She added that it’s a “musical society…and so radio is effective…word of mouth is effective as well.” She pointed out that even though there are Internet cafes, “you simply don’t have electricity in these places” and “there’s not enough bandwidth to surf the Internet.”

In the U.S. it’s easy to take for granted the easy access that we have to newspapers, the Internet, and television for news and information. Wanda reminds us that in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the “educational system is destroyed” and there are literally grenade holes in the walls of the schools. She said that people there wonder who is controlling the media, so she is trying to get voices from the community on the air, asking the pointed questions.

In addition to the radio programs that IRfJ is producing, they also did a project called Music for Justice in which the youth of Ituri were encouraged to write and create songs focused on themes of justice and peace. CDs of the music have been distributed to radio stations in the region and the songs are also played during IRfJ programming. The music was recorded in a number of languages and spans a range of genres including pop, rap, and traditional Congolese music.  Tracks can also be heard and downloaded from the IRFJ website.

The IRFJ radio programs (which can be heard on their website) tackle a range of topics, covering listener questions about laws, women’s rights, victimization, and “Rights and Legal Recourse on the Road.” Many of the questions are disturbing in that the abuses that these citizens have suffered are horrific, such as witnessing rapes and murders of family members during wartime. Even though the pain of these crimes cannot be erased, it’s reassuring that these radio programs are both giving a voice to victims and providing resources and education about their rights so that some form of justice may be served.

The post Radio's Critical Role in War-Torn Regions: Interactive Radio for Justice's Work to Empower Citizens in Central Africa appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Listening to the Radio in Minnie's House at Disneyland

A study released this week from the Pew Internet and American Life Project reveals some interesting tidbits about how people in the United States are increasingly turning to the Internet as a major source for news.

However, the report, “Understanding the Participatory News Consumer” (PDF) also highlights the fact that people continue to seek information from multiple sources, including radio. According to the report, in a typical day, 54% of Americans “listen to a radio news program at home or in the car.”  The study also found that 59% of study participants reported getting news from both online and offline sources.

The report goes on to describe the demographic differences between various segments of news seekers. Here’s what they say about those who listen to radio news:

“Looking at those who are most likely to listen to radio news either at home or in the car on a typical day, several demographic groups stand out: those between ages 30-64, college graduates, and those who use the internet and cell phones.

Interestingly, those who are online are more likely to get radio news: 57% of internet users get radio news regularly, compared with 44% of non-users. Similarly, 53% of the cell-only population (those who have dropped their landline and rely exclusively on their cell phone) get radio news on a typical day, compared with 39% of those who rely exclusively on landlines.

Radio news is also a major draw for Republicans and conservatives, compared with Democrats, moderates and liberals.”

To see how those listening to radio news differ from those getting their news from TV, newspapers and other sources, take a look at the complete report. It also shares some really interesting findings about participatory news consumers, who tend to utilize multiple news sources and are more likely to interact with the stories that they consume (by blogging, commenting online, posting to Facebook, using Twitter, etc.).

The post New Pew Internet and American Life Study's Take on Radio News Consumers appeared first on Radio Survivor.

In January of 2000 struggles over the management of the Pacifica Foundation were at a fever pitch. As the owner of five major community radio stations in New York, LA, Berkeley, Houston and Washington DC, as well as the national Pacifica Network, the Pacifica National Board and its executive director were accused of orchestrating a corporate-style consolidation of power and censoring on-air content (for more on that read RadioSurvivor Matthew Lasar’s Uneasy Listening: Pacifica Radio’s Civil War). It was this latter charge that prompted a strike by the group of freelance reporters who contributed to the daily half-hour syndicated Pacifica Network News (PNN). Shortly thereafter the reporters formed a collective to produce their own daily news program, Free Speech Radio News (FSRN).

The station where I volunteered then, WEFT, picked up the program almost immediately, replacing PNN in its schedule, as did a bevy of other community stations. These decisions were driven as much by conflicts between affiliates and the Pacifica Network as they were by solidarity with the striking reporters.

FSRN is my #1 radio program because I have deep respect for the integrity of the organization and the program itself. I’ve been listening since the very start, and even then it showed itself to be very different from any other radio news program in the US. Operating as a worker-run collective, FSRN features reporters from all over the world, many of them reporting on events in their home towns, states and countries. As a result on any given edition of FSRN you will hear a diversity of voices from people of a wide range of backgrounds that stands in contrast to virtually any other radio news program. You will also gain a perspective that differs from that of an American reporter who parachuted into a crisis zone, may not speak the local language, and is otherwise separated from the local people except for those hours when s/he’s actually on the ground.

Showing its roots in the Pacifica Network, FSRN carries forward with a social justice mission, focusing on stories about people and issues that are largely left out of the mainstream news–whether its CNN, FOX or NPR. When reporting on national or global events that are also covered in the mainstream news, FSRN makes an effort to seek out unheard perspectives. For instance, this past week the program featured reports about residents living outside Port Au Prince in Haiti who are receiving less aid than those in the capital, and about activists’ expectations for the president’s State of the Union address.

The strike that created FSRN ended in March 2002 when the program joined the Pacifica Network, gaining both funding and better distribution via Pacifica’s satellite network. That happened shortly after Pacifica pulled the plug on its own PNN. Since then FSRN has continued to bring well-reported truly alternative radio news to 104 noncommercial community and college radio stations.

In 2008 the financially strapped Pacifica drastically reduced its financial support of FSRN, forcing FSRN to rely more heavily on listener donations. That the program has been able to survive is a testament to the resolve of the reporters and the great value its listeners place on this one-of-a-kind enterprise.

If you’ve never heard Free Speech Radio News I strongly encourage you to find it on a local station or listen online.

The post RadioSurvivor's Top Radio Shows – Paul's #1: Free Speech Radio News appeared first on Radio Survivor.

I’m a media geek, hence my nom de internet. And I pretty much have always been, ever since I recognized that there were people, organizations and companies behind the shows I saw on TV and listened to on the radio. I remember reading Billboard and Radio and Electronics in the library while still in elementary school. I always read the paper’s TV supplement and radio listings (yeah, papers once had those) so I would know channels had what shows and what stations played what music — even stuff I had no interest in (as a result, for years I thought Get Smart was an educational program until I actually watched it).

I always wanted to understand how all this mass media got made, who was making it and what machinations affected what we could watch and listen to. That’s what fueled my interest in radio, why I got into college radio, and why I learned video production. I spent some time in graduate school studying the political economy of the media, only to realize being a professor wasn’t so much for me. I produced a weekly radio show exploring both the policy and grassroots angles of media for seven years, and now I blog here about radio.

And, really, until I got out of college I always felt a little bit alone in my interest in the behind-the-scenes of broadcast media, rather than being interested in the shows and programs themselves, like normal people. Graduate school and the rebirth of academic consciousness about media ownership and control in the 1990s showed me that I wasn’t so strange, at least in this interest. At the same time, aside from the short-lived Brill’s Content, there didn’t seem to be much in the way of a mass media publication or program that consistently looked at media that wasn’t intended for a strictly academic or industry audience.

Then I heard NPR’s On the Media. I’m not sure when that first happened–the program went national in 2001, but I think it was a few years before my local affiliate picked it up. Anyway, I recall initially being skeptical of the premise, expecting the program to sound like a radio version of a local media column, covering the coming and going of various executives and on-air talent, reviewing new program line-ups, ratings and the like.

In a manifesto for the program, co-host Brooke Gladstone explains that one of the reasons why she abandoned the typical media beat was that,

I would be asked to do a three-and-a-half minute piece every time Tina Brown passed wind (or so it seemed to me.) I wasn’t interested in that, and I lived in one of the half-dozen zip codes where people genuinely cared about Tina Brown [former New Yorker editor-in-chief].

Instead, she writes that,

I wanted to show how the media sausage is made.

That explains why when I actually heard it, I was pleasantly surprised.

As someone who produced a weekly program that attempted to be critical of the media establishment, I can say that On the Media is more establishment than not, but still critical. At the same time, OTM stands out from a lot of other public radio programming in that Gladstone and co-host Bob Garfield clearly have a point of view, and aren’t afraid to call “bullshit” when they see it.

As employees of NPR and WNYC, the nation’s largest public station, the staff of OTM are themselves part of the media mainstream, yet I think they manage to make the most of their insider status to nevertheless raise serious questions of ethics, truth, and even sometimes, justice. To me, they are credible when they do this because the staff of OTM is also willing to cop to their own oversights, mistakes and prejudices. One of my favorite episodes is from 2003, which they called “Pulling Back the Curtain,” in which they explain and demonstrate how editing, and editing decisions, result in the show you hear each week.

For my taste they focus too much on fine points of journalistic practice and propriety, whereas I would prefer a more systemic analysis of the media system, ownership and the effects of the profit motive. I recognize there’s a need to stay topical, but their frequent analyses of how the print and electronic press covered a particular news story, again, seems more like inside baseball than a more trenchant investigation into why the press chooses to report the way it does.

Still, those are actually minor quibbles with a program that provides more consistent reportage, analysis and criticism of our media system than anything else in broadcast. Sure, FAIR’s Counterpsin does a good job of picking apart mainstream news coverage every week from a progressive perspective, and programs like Democracy Now do frequent analysis of the mainstream media from a social justice point of view. Nevertheless OTM is on the case every week, and through its more conventional public radio approach to reporting often provides a few opinions that I might not otherwise have considered. For instance, I found their show on the music industry last year to be truly informative and penetrating, despite the fact I consider myself pretty deeply into the topic.

OTM’s approach is definitely one of tough love. The staff doesn’t want the mainstream media to collapse and die out. I believe they just want it to be better, and provide greater service to an informed public

The post Radio Survivor's Top Radio Shows – Paul's #2: On the Media appeared first on Radio Survivor.

We reported last week that a study from the Knight Commission was quite critical of the amount of time that National Public Radio stations give to coverage of doings within their signal areas. Now yet another assessment offers the same perspective, this one penned by Leonard Downie Jr. and Michael Schudson over at Columbia Journalism Review. Their essay “The Reconstruction of American Journalism” is even more concerned about the trend, actually, both on commercial and non-commercial stations.

“On radio, with the exception of all-news stations in some large cities,” they write, “most commercial stations do little or no local news reporting.” And they continue:

“A growing number of listeners have turned to public radio stations for national and international news provided by National Public Radio. But only a relatively small number of those public radio stations also offer their listeners a significant amount of local news reporting. And even fewer public television stations provide local news coverage.”

The authors mention a few bright spots, but overall: “local news coverage remains underfunded, understaffed, and a low priority at most public radio and television stations, whose leaders have been unable to make—or uninterested in making—the case for investment in local news to donors and Congress.”

What to do? Schudson and Downie say Congress, specifically the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, needs to get busy on this problem. It should declare local news reporting “a top priority for public broadcasting and change its allocation of resources accordingly.” And the CPB should require every public radio and TV station to produce a minimum amount of local programming and require stations to report to the funding agency on their progress. And Congress should change the CPB’s name to the Corporation for Public Media and give it more money.

Finally: “Congress should also reform the governance of the reformed corporation by broadening the membership of its board with appointments by such nonpolitical sources as the Librarian of Congress or national media organizations. Ideological issues that have surfaced over publicly supported arts, cultural activities, or national news coverage should not affect decisions about significantly improving local news reporting by public media.”

The post New study says "little or no local news" at most radio stations appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Cyrus Farivar in his home studio (from his flickr stream).

Cyrus Farivar is a freelance radio journalist who files stories for programs like PRI’s the World and NPR’s Morning Edition. On his blog he recently posted a breezy and clear explanation of his process for pitching, recording and editing a radio news piece.

As someone who produces an independent weekly radio program on the cheap, I was surprised to learn that Farivar uses the same method for some phone interviews that I do–Skype and software that records the Skype audio:

I use Skype for all my radio-related calls and Audio Hijack Pro to record the sound, which conveniently splits it up into two tracks. Sometimes, many of my interview subjects are tech-savvy and have Skype installed themselves, which can sound quite good.

Since I have access to a studio at WNUR and prefer to do live interviews whenever possible, these days I only use the Skype method when I have to work from home or otherwise can’t make it into the studio.

I appreciate it when media makers take a moment to pull back the curtain and reveal the methods and tools they use to create their magic. I’m certain most public radio listeners never imagine that the reporter they’re hearing is standing in his closet to record his voice tracks like Farivar does. That’s the amazing thing about radio. Because it really is the theater of the mind created only with sound, you don’t need sophisticated production tricks like you would need for TV. All you need is a microphone and a really good story.

The post Freelance Reporter Explains How Radio Is Made appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The Town Hall revealed some tensions between the new and old media camps, with most of the bad feelings on the old media side. The somewhat less well attended Media Future Conference didn’t dwell on this divide, focusing primarily on the online world, including dead tree and television online internet initiatives.

Entirely missing from this weekend’s conference was any mention of radio by any of the panelists or audience. To be fair, I didn’t stand up to speak, and so share some part of the blame for the oversight. What’s even more notable about the omission is that many folks who work for Chicago Public Radio were present in the audience, if not on the panels.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised. Radio went through the big journalism purge nearly a decade ago as the consolidation-frenzy spurred by the 1996 Telecom Act sank in. Indeed it was nearly nine years ago when Chicago went from having two commercial all-news radio stations to just one. WMAQ at 670 AM signed off on August 1, 2000 to become all-sports station WSCR, leaving just 780 AM WBBM holding the all-news mantle. Only recently have newspapers really started to catch up with the carnage.

Even though heavily news-focused public radio has seen its fortunes and audience rise in the last decade–in direct countervalence to commerical radio–it seems like that hasn’t helped restore radio to the front of the public’s mind when it comes to journalism. Despite the rise in ratings, I’d bet the general public doesn’t take much account of public radio, turning instead to TV, internet and newspapers to get news, especially breaking news.

I have to admit this tendency myself. If I’m sitting at home and wonder what’s going on–even with severe weather–I’ll hit the ‘net first. Only on the rare occasions when I’m in my car (which isn’t yet internet-equipped) do I turn to radio for the latest. At least part of the reason for this are the many occasions when I did turn to radio to find breaking news, only to have to slog through endless commercials, voice-tracked DJs or syndicated programming, hearing no indication that a live person was anywhere near the station console ready to jump in with an update, even if just read from wire copy.

It’s too bad, really, since radio journalism still has the potential to cover both breaking news and investigative stories with a style and economy that newspapers, TV and internet are not quite ready for. Though SMS, mobile broadband and twitter show promise for reporting up-to-the-minute news from the field, these still don’t reach a truly mass audience. By contrast a radio reporter just needs a phone link back the studio–cell phone or landline–to file a live report, or a cheap audio recorder to get interviews to bring back via sneakernet.

Perhaps I’m a foolish optimist, but I think the immediacy and frugality of radio gives the medium an opportunity to regain lost ground in the face of the supposed crisis in journalism.  I don’t expect that people will ditch their iPods, smartphones, laptops and cable TV for radio. But when the power goes out, the cell towers are down or you’re simply in one of the many places that still aren’t covered in fiber and wi-fi, radio can still be the conduit of vital news and information. And what are podcasts anyway, but radio programs syndicated over the ‘net instead of the airwaves?

It’s easy to take radio for granted, even for a confirmed radiogeek like me. Yet I think that radio can link up with and complement online journalism and media, as the live, truly wireless sister with better than 99% uptime (no fail whale on the air) and a cost model that makes reaching a mass audience a bargain, even compared to the web.

At the next group meeting for journalists’ therapy, I promise to step forward and reveal my radio addiction and bring the subject to the fore. Radio is part of the media future, wherever you are, unless we all decide to abandon it.

The post Radio, Apparently, Is Not Part of Chicago's Media Future. But It Should Be. appeared first on Radio Survivor.