The Problem(s) of Community Radio

A station I used to work at is in a financial crisis. I don't use that phrase capriciously. Membership has plummeted, the personal people meter rankings indicate that statistically, no one is listening and the volunteer nature of the programmers is caught up in petty discourse defending the value of their shows and lamenting the lack of a marketing budget to promote the programming.

From a staff perspective, most volunteers are a pain in the ass. They navel gaze, they're self absorbed and they have no understanding of audience behavior when it comes to radio tune in. In short, they cannibalize a station's mission by putting their show first.

I talk to a lot of people about why most community radio stations can't get their acts together, but what is really at the root of the problems facing hemorraghing audience, declining membership and shaky financial situations? A few ideas:

Programming Matters

The identifying characteristic of a community radio station is its eclectic program schedule. A volunteer comes in to do his or her show playing bluegrass music, then another volunteer comes in to host a half hour public affairs show about Central America, and then another, and another. Each program is its own universe, but unlike the real universe there is no unifying stardust to make sense of the program schedule as a whole. And that's what the listener needs to stay tuned in: they need to expect something consistent, competently produced and compelling to listen to.

Community radio stations that have let their volunteer programmers languish or not held them accountable are ultimately setting up their stations to become unlistenable...which takes us to Reason #2:

Membership STILL Matters

It's amazing, isn't it? But those fuddy duddy pledge drives still pull in the dollars. Whether you're large NPR station or a little, rural community station, it's a significant part of the station's revenue.

When the programming is uneven, what are you asking people to invest in? Media access? Let's face it: that's a non starter. There was a very dear board member at a community radio station who passionately believed people would give to the station is a media access institution. It's a lovely vision, but it has a lot of problems to it, the chief one being that community radio stations provide access unevenly and without equity. It's not entirely their fault - there isn't much a community radio station do about the fact that more people tune in at 5pm then at 5am.

Most community radio stations, especially those in large urban markets, have fallen into the trap of high cost premiums as a method to lure members, or keep them with the station. The cost per dollar to keep a member has increased. It's a one off, and in the long term, a losing strategy. It's not addressing the fundamental issue of the station, which is that the programming and the scheduling of the programming is failing to attract an audience.

Community Radio Doesn't Get Digital, or Mobile

And the fundamental reason why community radio stations can't get their acts together: the volunteers and the station staff don't have the skills or the vision to piece together a multi-platform community media organization. They're stuck in the community radio mindset of the 1970's and 80's. The volunteers saw the internet in the 1990's and envisioned listening skyrocketing thanks to online streaming. That never happened.

A few stations have positioned themselves as digital first community media outlets: they've  made significant investments in their website, hired personnel to manage volunteer blogs to create a steady stream of web content that by default creates awareness about the station and these stations have also gone through laborious, and at times painful processes to evolve the mindset of the volunteers. And it took time - there is no silver bullet and there is no short term path.

In the early 2000's, foundations - in particular the Knight Foundation - was very interested in participatory journalism, media access and eventually, community engagement. Community radio was poised to evolve and work with a funder to shift their work into more outward facing organizations. It is probably the single greatest failure of community radio as a sector that they did not take advantage of the funding that was available nor had the leadership or the vision to see the writing on the wall. And they are paying for it dearly today.

The Future of College Radio

For those of us following college radio, it's no secret it's in decline. Limited appeal, a headache for their university overseers and inconsistent formats have always put college radio stations at risk for divestment. 

But lately we've seen some pushback: WRAS stunned Georgia Public Broadcasting with a #savewras social media campaign that drew well known musicians who had gotten their start at the college station to the cause. Rice University students took their pleas to "save" their college radio station from being sold to a newly restructured Houston Public Media, a merger of public radio and public television. The Rice station allowed the umbrella organization to move its classical music entirely over to one channel and re-format their other station as all NPR news. 

And there are many others: in Florida, in California, in Minnesota, in Pennsylvania. So what is the future of college radio? And what's the case for it? College radio stations regularly posit themselves as "music discovery" stations - they play the stuff commercial rock or tripe A format stations are too timid to put on the air. Time was, before podcasting and YouTube and social media, nobody really cared what those rinky dink college stations played anyway, and they did serve a purpose to those larger commercial stations as the first filter of music coming down the pike. 

College radio no longer has the monopoly on music discovery anymore. Spotify, Pandora, not to mention our own personal social networks provide an alternative and more effective curation than any college radio station ever could to attract an audience of any size. 

College radio has another major disadvantage to any sort of growth or ability to innovate: their university masters are so bureaucratic that they could never have the flexibility to re-brand themselves in a smart and strategic fashion. They could never incubate and experiment in a way that a public radio triple A format station could. (There is one notable exception: WFUV in New York has been able to take its relationship with NPR to capitalize on the growth of NPR Music and submit tiny desk concerts to the growing shelf of music videos that audiences are flocking to. 

So that leads to what options ARE available to college stations? Well, they could become NPR member affiliates. That would add some structure to their formats as well as offer up some national programming that could free up the station's management to do some of the experimentation that WFUV is doing with its tiny desk concerts. Another option would be to take it to the community and identify a need for a community license that is free form music formatted (an NPR station did this in Colorado when the university let it slip they were entertaining offers.) 

Fundamentally though, the fringe is not doing an effective job of making the case for why the radio spectrum should have a home for them. With the ability to stream online and podcast, it's a tough sell - literally, a tough sell, since those college radio stations have a dollar value, some in the tens of millions of dollars. 

Just as community radio stations no longer have a monopoly on providing a platform for marginalized political opinions and as hubs of activism against social injustice, neither do college radio stations for music discovery. And music discovery isn't going away because college radio stations goes away. Far from it. 

Why Social Media for Community Radio

At the National Federation of Community Broadcasters conference, I participated in a panel about social media engagement for community radio. Here are some of the highlights:

• Make content that's shareable. 3 hour archived music shows aren't terribly shareable. Archives are great and have their place, but think about creating content that's appropriate for a digital and/or social experience (and probably on someone's phone.) I wrote a blog post about what's next for community radio in the digital arena. 

• Have a personality! Be a mensch! Lauren Katz at NPR was featured recently in an article about the value of having live human drive social media feeds instead of a bot. 

• Join existing conversations with hashtags. Hashtags are especially useful for community events - and can then be used on Storify to create a more coherent narrative that can be shared and reflected back to your community. 

• Visuals and graphics are important. Tumblr and Instagram are social platforms that are great for sharing pictures and graphics. It's useful to provide an inside look of a station or an organization, like Public Radio Exchange's Radiotopia. 

Thanks to Genevieve Sponsler @PRX for sharing so many compelling examples of how to use social effectively!

What Next For Community Radio?

Although I don't work day to day in community radio anymore, I recently joined National Federation of Community Broadcasters board of directors. I also remain on a few different station listservs. Here's what I've observed and here's what I think needs to happen next.

The Web Is Not Another Tower

A complaint that goes as far back as the hills in community radio is that if the stations would just market the programs, the audiences would come, membership would rise and all would be good. With the advent of a virtual platform, community radio volunteers eagerly awaited the day when their 3 hour blues/punk/rock/alternative/spoken word/public affairs/fill in the blank genre program would all of the sudden be made visible to the thousands of listeners who never knew what they were missing.

Alas, online listening is nowhere close to over the air listening...which is depressing, because there are public radio stations with online streams with more listeners than community radio stations' terrestrial broadcasts. Community radio volunteers are fixated on their programs - and not on content. One of the saddest moments of my community radio life was when a very dear news volunteer at a station asked why the station didn't transcribe the news scripts with the audio embedded inbetween the copy. And yet these are the things that need to be explained to community radio volunteers who center everything around audio.

Having archived shows online is great - but it does little to grow an audience or keep them coming back. The alternative?

Use the Web to Create and Curate Content

The web is so much more than a transcription tool for radio programs. What about a community radio DJ who planned his or her show every week around a genre or a theme and wrote a blog about it online that s/he could point the audience to during the program? Music programmers already program their shows around bands that are coming into town or playing that weekend. How about a community radio station that hired a Director of Community Content Curation (it's community radio - let's have some fun with job titles!) and worked with volunteers to write music reviews, profiles of local bands and Storifies of recent shows and concerts? KDHX in Saint Louis and KBUT in Crested Butte, CO are experimenting with these ideas - they're seeing wonderful growth in online engagement and adding to the cultural vitality of their communities.

Don't Cannibalize Your Mission 

My final piece of advice to community radio stations with lots of volunteers: don't cannibalize your mission of media access by weighting your website down with online archives on the front page. There are several studies that show that people want more than the ability to listen online, live or archived programming. The biggest mistake community radio stations are making is assuming that people ONLY want to listen and that the station's business is ONLY broadcast. The spirit of community radio's mission is to make a community impact: by diversifying the airwaves with community members. We can do that online now as well - which also is a part of our mission.

Be Forewarned

There are cautionary tales of community radio stations who let the kibbutznik mentality almost drive their organizations into the ground. None of these stations have been forced to sell their licenses - but colleges have been divesting their radio licenses for the last 15 years and that is a caution for community radio stations to take heed of. We've lost a lot of towers on college campuses - let's not see community radio stations go next.

In Reach: Finding the Connectors

I'm working with a colleague shepherding a community media organization through overcoming its inertia to make much needed changes. She has no budget, no mandate, and no power. Her success is going to be the result of what I call "in reach" - reaching inside the organization to develop relationships and build trust with the people who can make the organizational change happen.

People are important

Duh. We all know this. But we tend to forget, especially at small organizations, that we can collectively achieve more if we integrate and coordinate with each other, rather than focused on our projects. The trick is figuring out what's important, and that's hard. Everyone sees their small role as essential to the organization - local news reporters especially suffer from this bias, even though in public broadcasting the content that generates the revenue and keeps their jobs from going out the window are national shows. (Footnote: Car Talk is the bohemoth that is keeping public radio audiences tuning in and pledging to their local public radio stations. In public television it's national pledge breaks produced by T.J. Lubinsky. He's like the Rodgers and Hammerstein of TV pledge: you can sing (and occasionally dance to it) and it appeals to a mass of folks, especially baby boomers.)

Leadership is important

Again, duh. But what leadership mean? It means knowing who needs to talk to whom and getting the facts down. If there's one thing working at a public broadcaster will teach you, it's that no one agrees on what the "facts" means (and frequently get them wrong.) So this takes a lot of professional development, a lot of managing by walking around, and indeed, a lot of meetings (and I say this as someone who hates meetings.) In short it takes relationships, and the great leader is the one who can facilitate and referee and empower people to have the relationships that will make the organization stronger.

Resources are important

So many stations are a penny wise and a pound foolish. They don't want to spend the cash on a solid database system that could integrate their accounting, membership, web management and content creation. In the short run, they're right: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But what about the long term? Is there growth in not changing? And more importantly, is it efficient in the long run? Yes, it might be cheaper not to change the system this fiscal year and even the next - but if it means having to hire more personnel, adding to the bulk of HR expenses when an integrated system could mean fewer people doing more work, public media needs to examine where it's putting its dollars. 

Community Radio: What's Next?

Community radio has a problem. Well, it has many problems, but the confluence of competition, digital and lack of foresight has led to an emergency state of affairs. I say an emergency because many community radio stations - which audiences have always been small, but at least growing - are now declining. Anecdotally, each pledge drive feels like a Sisyphean push up a hill, with the boulder landing at the bottom by the beginning of the next drive. It is now common to see 3 and even 4 pledge drives a year, and in wealthy, progressive communities, where raising community support should be like shooting fish in a barrel. What has happened? And where does community radio go from here.

What happened? 

It's always been easy for community radio to blame their woes on others, and with good reason. The Federal Communications Commission, influenced by commercial broadcasters and National Public Radio, have never enjoyed giving up scraps of the spectrum. Some NPR affiliates have publicly and some places quietly mounted campaigns to block these small efforts at media democracy. These are obstacles overcome, battles won: there are about 100 stations that can be called community radio and I would say that their worst enemy at this juncture...is themselves.



Ironically, the purpose of media access - to empower community members by creating access to the airwaves - is now the cause of its demise. Volunteer producers, who have returned each week to host music and public affairs shows, have experienced the sense of entitlement and power a media platform provides. Secretaries, fast food workers, clerks, insurance agents, zoo keepers, high school dropouts are part of the eclectic mix of folks who keep community radio's airwaves humming. But I don't really fault them for falling prey to the vanity media creates in even the most humble person - I blame the paid staff. These are the stewards of media access and these are the people who abdicate all responsibility for the state of community radio today by using the tiring phrase "access" as a defense against their incompetent management.

There are some good examples of well managed community radio stations. KDHX in Saint Louis, WTIP and KAXE in northern Minnesota stand out as organizations that have evolved media access and at the same time made a compelling case for financial support to foundations and community members. Each of those stations will tell you that they had to do some hard, internal work with volunteers and staff to answer that question that so few stations - community or not -  have so much difficulty answering: why are we here? (Hint: the answer is not to broadcast whatever vinyl stash some guy has.)

What's next? 

I don't think the answer to that question is going to be all that different for most community radio stations. At the heart of the issue for many community radio stations is focusing on who they are as an institutions. For KDHX it's being a station of music discovery; for WTIP it's as a community watering hole for cultural and civic issues. Both of these stations have programs that don't conform to its overall brand (KDHX for example has public affairs shows and WTIP plays a lot of music) but the message to the community is very clear about their purpose. Community radio stations needs to figure its purpose. Hint: the answer is not media access. 

Predictions

We're already seeing college radio fire sales around the station. Consolidation is rampant - and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm waiting for the day when a community radio station is put up for sale. Many community stations will continue on the path of the epic struggle to survive with few listeners and even fewer donors. A handful will adapt and invest in technology. The future? It does lie in ourselves.

One and Done...At Your Peril

A public radio colleague, who's shoulders many of us stand on, said to me, "We're teaching the next generation there's one way of doing journalism. There are other ways of doing journalism."

We were talking about community engagement, and how it stands 180 degrees from the one and done model of reporting. He's been a practitioner of engaging communities to reach the people public isn't reaching and isn't connecting to very well. On a national scale, NPR is making an effort in effort in coverage of diverse communities with Codeswitch, but this work is built upon the shoulders of many others community engagement practitioners, and their general managers, who've spent the time and resources to develop trust over time with communities who've perceived bias and/or exclusion.

Reporters and their editors regularly dismiss this perception and indeed embrace it as a veiled compliment as doing their job well. "When everybody hates us, that means we're fair" is the bumper sticker response towards criticism of how journalists cover sticky issues of race, gender and class in America.

I'm not suggesting that the metric for a journalistic job well done is that communities adore you. What I, and another engagement practitioners would say is that community engagement is a tool to cover communities more effectively and more efficiently. The metric to look at then is how many of your new sources reflect the census data of your community; how many are on the air and how often? NPR is taking a tactical view of with Codeswitch, but at the station level, it's an institutional opportunity to think about how to cultivate long term relationships that become more than the one and done story.

That's the other way of doing journalism: to facilitate, to convene, to curate and in the process, REPORT. These activities has previously been compartmentalized. Events people did the convening; social media people are the curators and the legacy reporters are...reporting. What it means for institutions is that all of these people now need to collaborate. It also means for their managers and executives that they need to be thinking strategically about the day to day activities of their convener, curators and reporters.

Most public radio stations are in still in one and done mode, and I say at their peril. People are hungry for institutions they can trust (note: I did not say brand). If you can institutionally develop relationships (re: partnerships) in your community that result in content that tells a full, complex and yes, accurate story about the community, they will support you in turn, even when the story is negative.

The one and done news process is killing trust with our communities. Community engagement can build it and rebuild it so that our news content remains credible for the future.

Don't Knock Government Subsidies, Mr. Sweeney!

I was fortunate enough to attend the Future of News in the flesh last Monday (rather than the 1600 online souls who tweeted and posted comments through an online forum). The scrum that ensued between the Star Tribune with Mike Sweeney and Nancy Barnes on one side and Minnesota Public Radio's head news honcho Chris Worthington on the other was fun to watch.

But I was a bit dismayed at Mr. Sweeney's editorial, which ran in the Strib, lambasting government support for journalism, such as Minnesota's Cultural and Heritage Legacy Amendment which is going to put over $5 million over the next two years into the state's public broadcasters, including TPT, Minnesota's PBS affiliate and the 12 stations that make up the Association of Minnesota's Public and Educational Radio Stations (AMPERS).

Here's the thing: it's not technically "government" support. It's taxpayer support: the money is coming from three eighths of a sales tax that goes into a fund to public media. Like the BBC, the government collects the money, and then it gets sent on to the private, non for profit entities who decide independently, without government interference what to spend it on. I do admit that there is a potential for stations to produce what they think the government wants to keep the money coming in - in that regard, Mr. Sweeney's objections are totally valid. But it's the same issue for commercial media: for all of commercial media's insistence that there are robust firewalls between advertisers and editorial, let's not kid ourselves.

Also, newspapers are under the gun to produce content that generates revenue. The profit margins that supported content in the public interest are over (and indeed some would argue, those reporters often had to fight with their newspapers and television networks to get the support). So are we to expect benevolent sponsors and advertisers to fund reporting that investigates the comfortable and the powerful?

My point is it's not all or nothing. Because public media is getting additional support, doesn't mean they are avoiding covering the government, in the same way that I suspect newspapers will continue to try as much as they can afford to investigate wayward companies who advertise in their pages. What is important to remember is that there is room for both, and in fact, I would argue desirable. The newspapers can keep an eye on the government - and public media can keep an eye on the corporate advertisers who -dare I say it?- subsidize newspaper journalism.

Health Insurance Debate: Excuse Me While I Let Out a Wheezy Sigh

Wow. Just when I thought broadcast news couldn't get any worse, it sinks to a whole, deeper, scummier, darker level. I say broadcast news, but the newspapers are just as bad. If I read one more poll from USA Today or NBC News, I might be forced to take direct action.

I thought the media, and the news media in particular had a public interest obligation. That's what I always hear the print dinosaurs whining about whenever I read yet another cliche about being an ink-stained wretch who wanted to give people the information they needed to function in a democracy. Ummm, apparently those days are over.

The coverage has turned into a window on the bizarre, and yes, I even admit, entertaining, match between the psycho anti-reform folks and the remarkably inarticulate, ill-informed elected Democrats who can't seem to answer the most basic questions about the proposals on the table. (I believe there are 5 - that's what PBS told me, and they are the most trusted news source in America, believe it or not.)

So I was quite gratified when My Man, Bill Moyers brought in his old buddy, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, and another guy to talk about how the media is covering this. But it got me thinking how hard it is for media outlets to make rational, thoughtful news decisions - in this case, broadcasting over and over again the marginal crazies who scream out questions and won't wait for an answer (and lest I am unclear, I am including the single payer folks in this. They are behaving in some cases equally shamefully.)

The toughest part, and I speak from personal experience, about being a journalist is standing by your work. It's even tougher when your organization abandons you (like Sulzberger abandoned Judy Miller, like CBS abandoned Dan Rather). It's tough to stand alone. But if two news people come together to tell the status quo that the news media is covering this "discussion" to the detriment of the public interest, then they're not alone anymore. If we all had a little courage to voice the absurdities of this most recent exercise in news insanity, then maybe we wouldn't be alone anymore.

Copyrighteousness

Congress may be in summer recess, but the goliaths of commercial broadcasting interests are settling in for more battles in the debate over the Performance Rights Act.

In a nutshell: the Recording Industry Artists Association and the National Association of Broadcasters, formerly allies in the fight against "illegal" downloads of music, are fighting over the remaining crumbs of profit left from the broken business model of commercial radio.

The fight is really nothing new. RIAA has been agitating for performance royalties from commercial radio since forever. But what's relevant is that NAB is now feeling the pain of legislation is lobbied for to kill online streaming (and which RIAA was happy to endorse as well) to keep listeners tuned in over the air.

RIAA is now seeing their members, performers, are better served by a different compensation model. One that targets the multiple platforms where music is being consumed, such as iPods, laptops, mp3 players and so on. I listen to all my music on my laptop, hooked up to speakers that I downloaded from iTunes. I maybe buy 3 CD's in a year; I bought 10 albums on iTunes.

Time for NAB to upgrade its business model. Time for them to get some technological savvy. Time for them to play some music people might actually want to listen to.

Not Your Mom's NPR.org...thank God

Got a nice email from the folks at NPR about their new website set to launch July 27. Scott Simon led a video explanation of what to expect and how the features would be different.

All I can say is: thank the Lord. I remember the first website, the one before what they got now. And when they finally updated it in 2006/7, I remember thinking: this is it?

I'll stop complaining, and just say, the preview looks great. They've added a much more powerful search engine, and the layout is significantly more accessible.

Maybe PBS can toodle over to NPR HQ and get some pointers.

The Company Man

Lot of lamenting going on with the death of Walter Cronkite. I'll throw in my two cents: he was the start of the decline of broadcast news, with Murrow and Friendly at the peak.

Certainly the man deserves credit for having the courage (and corporate authority of CBS News behind him) to point out the obvious in Vietnam. And as Media Channel's Danny Schechter talks about on Democracy Now! Cronkite did speak out against media consolidation, albeit well into his retirement.

But when Murrow and Friendly couldn't get CBS to back their investigative ventures, they paid for it themselves, like Harvest of Shame, a 1960 documentary about migrant workers. Covering wars and the White House are very sexy, but I gotta go with the guys getting close to a group of people utterly forgotten and taken for granted.

I suppose, like all of us, Cronkite did the best he could given his environment. We all make our compromises to get along in an unjust, badly managed world; some of us not at all. Conkrite was a person, no more, no less, subject to the powers of the structure that doled out his paycheck and maintained his influential public image. And who could blame him?

I recognize the impact Cronkite had on future television news anchors (great, what a legacy), but it's easy to laud the folks who sat the on the fence and didn't provoke us into action.

Cover It Live...But Expertise Helps

I'm watching the Sotomayor hearing on the Washington Post website (NPR's website was a pain in the ass...not everyone can listen to a radio at their desk, NPR! You lost me.) WP is using software called Cover It Live to provide live updates from their reporters. It's terrific, especially for me, since I am chained to my desk digging into research about public media models for Free Press.

Folks like me can post questions on to the blog, and the reporters respond in real time. Everything from how long can we expect the confirmation to take, what are the politics behind the Judiciary Committee, etc.

Cover It Live is facilitating an interactivity not even broadcast can replicate. But it did get me thinking: you still need people with knowledge of Senate confirmation hearings, ideology, and the politics of U.S. Supreme Court nominations. You still need reporters!

However, to some degree you need fewer reporters. One of the ways Free Press, where I'm working over the summer, is experimenting is crowdsourcing. Cover It Live could be a tool to solicit experts - constitutional law professors, executive directors of watch dog groups like the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, etc. - to contribute. I don't know if Cover It Live has this capacity, but I saw a demonstration of a program used by qualitative social science researchers, AtlasTi, that allows the researcher to group themes across media (so you could have pictures, audio, text cross linked and grouped according to themes you set up). That could be a very powerful tool for reporters to monitor trends or identify issues that come up during events like confirmation hearings.

Al Franken's Future: Remembering Paul Wellstone

As I sat at my desk glued to live vlog streams, press conferences online, and real time blogging when the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that Al Franken would indeed be the next U.S. Senator, I felt a great sense of closure.

Franken's entrance into politics began on October 25, 2002, a date that will remain ingrained in my neurons for as long as I live. The incumbent Senator running for reelection that year was Paul Wellstone, a former political science professor who was challenged by one of his students to put theory into practice. With no money, no party endorsement, and certainly no physical grace to recommend him in our prettified, make-up television world, this improbable candidate won a U.S. Senate seat in 1990 and kept winning.

Wellstone died in a plane crash on October 25 in northern Minnesota, 2 weeks shy of a close, bitter race with the Republican, Norm Coleman. His memorial service brought the Clintons, Ted Kennedy, Wellstone's great professional and personal friend, Senator Tom Harkin from Iowa, and Al Franken. I can still hear Harkin's speech: "Will you stand up for your friend? Will you stand up for Paul Wellstone?" It's corny, but it still makes me teary.

I saw Franken that night after the memorial. (Disclosure: I was the News Director at KFAI Radio at the time and coordinating coverage of the fallout of the Senator's death.) He was crying, his face splotchy. He was moved by the intensity of the events, as we all were, even reporters like myself who knew Senator Wellstone, had been on the campaign trail. I remember one of my reporters couldn't stop crying at the memorial. I wanted to shake her and tell her to keep it together, but it just seemed inhumane. I gave her a hug, and asked her if she could make it through, and she did. I wanted to cry too, but I had promises to keep.

Franken moved back to Minnesota after that (he grew up in Saint Louis Park, a suburb of Minneapolis) and started raising money for the DFL (Minnesota doesn't have Democrats, we have Democrat-Farmer-Labor, thank you very much.) 2002 was a devastating year for the DFL, and Democrats nationally. His hard work paid off: when he announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate, he had won over the notoriously averse-to-change party politics of the DFL.

Franken announced his candidacy in February 2007, won the DFL endorsement that summer, and ran an organized, tight campaign against a tough incumbent, Norm Coleman. The rest as you know is history.

I couldn't help but think of Al Franken's friend, Paul Wellstone, when the judgement came down from the Minnesota Supreme Court. His political career is the phoenix rising out of the ashes of Paul Wellstone's death.

Frankenmediamania

I'm watching the Uptake's live coverage of the news about the Minnesota Supreme Court decision to cede the U.S. Senate race to Al Franken over the incumbent Norm Coleman. It's a mix of citizen journalists, independent media organizations, and a few staff to cover press conferences at the Minnesota capitol, at Norm Coleman's house, at Al Franken's apartment, and they're doing a decent job.

However, it wasn't good enough to keep me because the audio wasn't terrific so I switched to KSTP. But I like the format of bloggers giving the blow by blow with people calling in. It was fresh, and engaging. Now we'll see what the legacy media does with it.

Moved to WordPress Partially

I've moved blogging about things media reform related to my Word Press blog, mediareformgal.wordpress.com. It's protected, so if you want in, send me your Word Press username, and I'll approve you (and then later I'll have to kill you for viewing it - but it's a small price to pay for my brilliant insights.)

My People! My People!

Driving across New York State on my way to Northampton, Massachusetts, I checked in to the local NPR stations. This is my favorite part of driving around the United States. NPR affiliates tend to have quirky, local programs hosted by the town intelligentsia/elders.

WAMC is the affiliate in this neck of the public media woods, and sure enough, I hear the telltale tone of local hosts talking about their issue of choice. It was the Media Project. This is going to be good, I thought. I love listening to analysis of media issues, especially from a local perspective.

I was soon to be disappointed. The discussion focused on the woes of the media industry and its effect on journalism in print and broadcast. A few items:

1. The host, Rex Smith, talking about how much he loves advertising. True, advertising has paid for some pretty good journalism. It's also paid for some lazy reporting, serious breaches of ethics, and my personal favorite, led us into a war based on misinformation. One thing was clear: Mr. Smith is holding on to the cultural legacy of advertising supported journalism. I'm not saying there isn't a place for it; however, there are alternatives. Which leads me to point 2:

2. Making the case for alternatives. Mr. Smith's partner in crime, WTEN's Elisa Streeter, at one point glibly responded to a valid criticism of profit driven journalism, with "what's the alternative". I awaited the academic's response, who also turns out to be the executive director of WAMC, Alan Chartock. Here was the moment where a public radio executive could make his case and espouse the ability of public media to take up the mantle. But he had no alternative to offer, which saddened me, but did not necessarily surprise me. Mr. Chartock is one of several public media administrators who have little to offer in the way of innovation.

The broadcast encapsulated in a nutshell the problems facing news managers, who are trapped in the thinking of conventional news production, and public media leaders, like Mr. Chartock, who appear weekly to make curmudgeonly comments about the state of journalism.

These are my people: public radio people. Except that they're not. One came from a newspaper, another was a commerical television anchor, and the lone public radio voice didn't have the knowledge to make a coherent argument about what next steps could be taken to bolster journalism, to bolster public media, to redefine the flow of information.

Follow the Money

The Corporation of Public Broadcasting announced special funding for stations to cover the economic crisis. 

Excellent, especially in a time where newspapers are crumbling and the money honeys' brains seem to shrink in proportion to their already anorexic dress sizes. 

But I was reminded of how not to always believe what's written in front of me. Public radio in particular likes to emphasize the decentralized system - the affiliate system puts more boots on the ground, allowing Papa Bear NPR to distribute "real" voices. And they do. 

However, my prediction is that most of the money will go to the Central Intelligence of public broadcasting: KQED, Minnesota Public Radio, PRX, and it doesn't reflect this in the statement issued by CPB, shows produced by Minneapolis based Public Radio International. Bruce Theriault is the senior VP for radio at CPB; his previous position was a senior executive at PRI. 

I'm not saying they don't deserve them. These stations have the capital to match with CPB; they have proven track records. The powerhouses, like Minnesota Public Radio and KQED, are well ahead of NPR in developing new technology and interactive games.

But the stations most in touch with their communities - and very marginalized members of mainstream society, like migrant workers, refugees, union activists - will be pushed to the side. On one hand the normalization of public media is great: growth in audience, growth in financial support (for radio, not television), growth in creditability. 

On the other hand the stations that have tried to remain as connected as possible by sustaining access, encouraging media engagement, and open doors to the public, are penalized for sticking to a mission that says even if you're in the minority, you still deserve a place on the airwaves. I wonder with public media nesting in the mainstream, where will that place be where the marginalized, the media disenfranchised, those of us left out of the Grand Narrative told by those who don't know us, and don't care. Who will support those stations who are too controversial for CPB to fund because rather than shrinking from the cacophony of voices, they revel in it? 

Where are the Watchdogs?

One of my professors returned an analysis paper I had written for a reading: Who is watching the watchdogs? a report done by the Center for Public Integrity awhile back about the Federal Communications Commission. This opaque agency through structural regulation (mostly deregulation) is responsible for the media landscape we enjoy (suffer?) today in the United States. 

He liked my points but commented that I while I have many insights into the problems of watchdogging the media, I offer few solutions. Fair enough. I did talk to him later and pointed out that I do have some ideas, but a 5 page analysis paper would have morphed into a 12 page start at a thesis. 

So here are my ideas on what possible solutions may be: 

We (the royal we, like the FCC, Congress, the American people) need to rewrite the framework for communications policymaking. The rest of the world doesn't get our slavish devotion to localism. I don't think it has to be an either/or proposition, localism vs. regionalism vs. internationalism. My dream in setting up tcdailyplanet.net was that users, on one website, could see how they were connected to each other, neighborhood to neighborhood, city to city, country to country. The idea of glocalism is strong on the website, but users can also venture out into international waters. How about a news website that shows users the rest of the world is a click, or two, away? The BBC is already doing this quite effectively, much more so than the NYTimes. 

The Internet must be at the center of communications policymaking. I can't take credit for this idea - there's a very smart lady at the University of Michigan Law School who's written quite a bit about this, and I'm persuaded. I heard a classmate last week bring up her concern about audience fragmentation on the web - this is where the FCC, or Congress, could create comprehensive requirements for what must be included on a website. Similar to the rules (which are long since gone) that every radio station had to broadcast five minutes of news at the top of the hour, every Internet provider would have to have prominent news and information links on user's home page. I would even go so far as to require ISP's to pay into a news and information fund to pay for news outlets to generate original content - they do this in Holland with 10% of the revenues for public broadcasting program guides going to newspapers. You could also start by requiring every public library in the United States to have a news site as a front page on their computers. Which leads me to my next solution: 

Public Libraries: I'm sure I've written about this before. I don't know why they go overlooked, but it seems obvious to me spending a lot of time in various public libraries that they serve an important social function. I spent a couple hours with reference librarians trying to dig up sources for a paper I'm writing - these folks live to learn, and they live to help other people learn. It's their tradition, and they've changed many a life by doing so, Frank McCourt to name one, and one closer to my heart, my grandfather who happened to have some freak gene in his poor, Irish, fisherpeople DNA that sent him to the New London library to read and dream about something greater than himself. 

Public media: this is where the government can play a significant role. We got our 1st Amendment issues about the government getting involved with newspapers. OK. But we already have a public broadcasting system in place with established rituals of funding and firewalls in place to prevent the government from interfering (Congress forward funds public broadcasting by 2 years). A restructuring is in order: regionalizing the existing decentralized system; and expanding licenses for low power FM. Also, a public media trust fund so that member stations can innovate without fear of offending their aging major donors who want things just as they are. 

The master plan behind all of this is simple: the more people are involved in the media, the more they'll pay attention to how it affects them. To those folks who say 'I don't want to be involved in the media, I don't have time' - I say fine. That's why we need regulations in place to make sure people are exposed to relevant information as much as possible. 

Where are the watchdogs in all this? We are! 

Centralizing the Decentralized

We Americans love our local autonomy. It's everywhere in our society from the power of school boards to include intelligent design in science curriculae to the pro-choice and gun rights groups: movements: protecting the rights of the individual.

Our broadcasting system is much the same. Despite mass media's homogenizing influence, we intuitively believe in the uniqueness of individuality, and that it's important.

That's why localism is such a big deal in broadcasting. Our European brethren and sisters across the pond don't get it. Too much navel gazing, too little international reporting. The good of the group must be weighed with the good of the individual - and the group is probably more important in the end.

So I was intrigued when I read this article in the public broadcasting trade rag Current about the new CEO Vivian Schiller.

"NPR doesn’t want to “control and dominate” the web sphere via NPR.org," Schiller said. “If we are successful, it will morph into this constellation of sites” from local stations, allowing listeners to experience public radio “on whatever platform they prefer.”

Schiller's allegiance to NPR's member stations are understandable: just like every other legacy news distributor in the United States, they are trying to keep their revenue streams flush while trying to figure out new ones.

And who are the cash cows that keep NPR afloat? Member stations. They pay millions to carry All Things Considered and Morning Edition, the flagship news programs. If you've ever volunteered for a pledge drive, you know when you ask why they are pledging, national programming almost 100% of the time is at the top of the list. They like the local stuff too, but it comes later. How do member stations stay relevant when audiences can stream online at NPR.org or get podcasts dumped by subscription on their iPods? Schiller thinks it's by bolstering the local relevance of stations.

She'll have many things to overcome, but the largest is the software most stations use for their websites: Public Interactive. NPR bought it last year from Public Radio International, the good folks in Minneapolis who bring you This American Life and the BBC. PI has the advantage of automatically updating a local station's site with content from NPR...the problem is with their small staffs, and I would also argue to some degree, staff who lack competence in new technology, can't create similar local content. You can do all those things on PI - but imagine you've spent the last 20 years making public radio news, and now they want you to take a picture and shoot some video. Some have embraced it (and take damn good pics!). Many have not.

Schiller and Co. will have to overcome, just like newspapers, a technological generation gap on how to produce information, and understanding how it's received and consumed. She knows this, and I say Godspeed to her as she tries to overcome the inertia of a decentralized public broadcasting system.