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 […]
Archive | Journalism
Podcast #208 – Radio and Podcast Pathfinding in San Francisco and Podcast Movement
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 […]
Podcast #191: How an LPFM Produces an Hour of Hyper-Local News Every Weekday
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 […]
Past Daily: Living History in Online Audio Archives
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 […]
A Sad Goodbye to Free Speech Radio News
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 […]
RIP Student Media Advocate Dan Reimold
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 […]
College Radio Flashback: Covering Campus Disturbances in the 1960s and 70s
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 […]
Free Speech Radio News returns on Feb. 11 with daily online updates
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 […]
With 241 million users radio kicks Facebook and Twitter ass
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 […]
Syrian free radio station raided & shut down by al Qaeda group
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 […]