(Originally posted at WAMU's The Conversation )
I understand your confusion. You believed it was your inability to multi-task which posed the greatest risk on the roads in the District of Columbia. Those of us unable to eat a sandwich, make a phone call, have a shave and negotiate the Tenley Circle in rush hour all at once.
But you'd be wrong. Recently our marvellous au pair Oksana, who arrived on Independence Day with a spotless drivers' license from the Ukraine attempted to take what's enticingly called the "DC Knowledge Test."
Here - you have a go.
1. How much room should you leave while passing a cyclist? Four feet?, five feet?, three feet?
2. What is the maximum speed in a DC alley? 25 mph? 15mph? 10mph?
3. How close must you park to the kerb? Within 24 inches? Within 9 inches? Within 12 inches?
4. What is the minimum tread on your front tires? 4/32 ? 6/54? 3/36?
5. How far ahead of a right turn must you use your turn signal? 50 feet? 100 feet? 200 feet?
6. What do you do if there is a funeral ahead of you? (plough on through it, perhaps? or does it depend whose funeral?)
OK, I draw the line at that one, because as she completed the answers on the DMV computer, she began to think it was hers they were talking about. And, subsequently, she narrowly failed. We'll have to study the motorist's version of Trivial Pursuit a little harder.
Am I alone in thinking this is hard, or in the case of 6, obvious, and somewhat arbitrary? How many did you get right?
Those maniacs in white vans who overtake you on the South West freeway - do they really know this stuff?
Answers 3, 15,12,4/32,100
Friday, October 31, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
News Judgement for Dissidents
Thanks to the columnist Cal Thomas, I'm reminded that Alexander Solzhenitsyn didn't spend all his time campaigning against the ruthlessness of the Soviet Union.
The dissident, who died recently at the age of 89, also had a great deal to say about the western media:
"People have the right not to know" he wrote in 1978. "The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information."
I read this guilt-inducing assertion after retiring for the day from a hot beach in South Carolina this past summer. Guilty, because in our air-conditioned vacation apartment I felt the need for my daily fix, and weakened to watch the drama-laden instantaneous babble of evening cable news.
The endless speculative punditry about the Obama campaign's next response to the McCain campaign's response to the last Obama campaign attack ad, reminded me of one of my rare dissenting acts during my tenure as a BBC News producer in New York, an organization which is usually very good at deciding what we don't need to know.
I had refused London's instruction to charter an executive jet to fly to the Carribean Island of Mustique where the late Princess Margaret, a storied and colorful but self-indulgent and isolated member of the British royal family was about to undergo a minor operation on her nose. This was a low point of one of the BBC's more paranoid periods, when they convinced themselves they had to compete with the tabloid press by masking celebrity-driven stories with some perceived social significance. Unfortunately, the jet was chartered by our Washington office, filled with reporters and producers who could have been more productively employed, and this insignificant nonsense, paid for at the BBC listeners' expense, hit the air; soon (of course) to be forgotten.For the record, amidst the worldwide human misery that BBC correspondents cover on an hourly basis, this was very much an aberration in judgment. Which brings me back to Solzhenitzyn.
He knew thirty years ago that much of the drivel masquerading as "news" can be safely ignored. Which is why the choices serious journalists and broadcasters make in what, and what not, to cover, are critical.
Not only are we spending listeners' money wisely (reminder to colleagues, they pay our wages) but they trust us to make informed choices about what is significant, educational, or simply helpful, and what is not, so their valuable time isn't wasted.
Memo to vacationing self: less "Hardball", more beach volleyball next summer.
The dissident, who died recently at the age of 89, also had a great deal to say about the western media:
"People have the right not to know" he wrote in 1978. "The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information."
I read this guilt-inducing assertion after retiring for the day from a hot beach in South Carolina this past summer. Guilty, because in our air-conditioned vacation apartment I felt the need for my daily fix, and weakened to watch the drama-laden instantaneous babble of evening cable news.
The endless speculative punditry about the Obama campaign's next response to the McCain campaign's response to the last Obama campaign attack ad, reminded me of one of my rare dissenting acts during my tenure as a BBC News producer in New York, an organization which is usually very good at deciding what we don't need to know.
I had refused London's instruction to charter an executive jet to fly to the Carribean Island of Mustique where the late Princess Margaret, a storied and colorful but self-indulgent and isolated member of the British royal family was about to undergo a minor operation on her nose. This was a low point of one of the BBC's more paranoid periods, when they convinced themselves they had to compete with the tabloid press by masking celebrity-driven stories with some perceived social significance. Unfortunately, the jet was chartered by our Washington office, filled with reporters and producers who could have been more productively employed, and this insignificant nonsense, paid for at the BBC listeners' expense, hit the air; soon (of course) to be forgotten.For the record, amidst the worldwide human misery that BBC correspondents cover on an hourly basis, this was very much an aberration in judgment. Which brings me back to Solzhenitzyn.
He knew thirty years ago that much of the drivel masquerading as "news" can be safely ignored. Which is why the choices serious journalists and broadcasters make in what, and what not, to cover, are critical.
Not only are we spending listeners' money wisely (reminder to colleagues, they pay our wages) but they trust us to make informed choices about what is significant, educational, or simply helpful, and what is not, so their valuable time isn't wasted.
Memo to vacationing self: less "Hardball", more beach volleyball next summer.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Would your blind friend like a drink?
First published at WAMU's The Conversation.
When I was in college in England I had a friend who was blind. George had been struck with a blunt object when he was a young boy. He had little recollection of having seen anything. Going to the pub with George, however, was always fun. George knew how to enjoy a drink, but ordinary British pub-going folk were oftentimes too intimidated by his disability to proposition him directly. "I'd love to buy him a drink....." they would say. "Then ask him if he wants one..." would be my response. He usually did. Then they would offer him cash. "Put it in the poor box" George would say.
At least they noticed him.
I remembered this while I waited on a tense, crowded, heated, and quite terrifying platform at Washington DC's Metro Center on Thursday night, to change from the Red Line to the Blue/Orange. The colored route terminology, of course, makes life no easier for the visually-challenged, but never mind.
A young African-American woman dressed in a sharp gray suit and solid heels was trying to cut her way through the crowd with her long white stick. A mass of preoccupied, twittering, texting, and simultaneously spacially-challenged citizens of the District formed a wall in front of her and she wavered and wandered down the platform towards a brick barrier underneath the escalator bank. "Are you OK miss?" I asked pathetically before she banged into the station wall. "I'm trying to find my way out" she laughed with the sort of ironic sense-of-humor which is a prerequisite of the partially sighted if they are seeking help.
I took her arm and tried to steer her towards the escalator entrance. Still the home-going masses poured forward oblivious and preoccupied. From the other direction came another stick-wielding partially-sighted person. In a scene which would have been much more marketable in the days before political correctness in slapstick comedy, they collided in front of the down escalator and I narrowly averted a mass-casualty disaster by physically manhandling the pair of them onto the up-escalator. As the "Metro Customers" going down carried on regardless, I made a note to strengthen my personal liability insurance (at least I could read the small print).
On the return journey a blue-eyed, silver-haired, slim and smartly-dressed young man was waiting on the platform at the spot where the very back of the metro train should stop. He was wheel-chair bound. When the train came in, it was full. Again, the masses poured out, and their replacement masses poured in. I beckoned the man to go ahead but he saw the crowd inside the carriage and gestured me to get in before him. Fortunately, a gap appeared by accident and he inched his vehicle inside.
The message is clear. If you are disabled, don't travel during rush-hour. You'll risk even more inhumanity than usual. Unless you have to, of course.
When I was in college in England I had a friend who was blind. George had been struck with a blunt object when he was a young boy. He had little recollection of having seen anything. Going to the pub with George, however, was always fun. George knew how to enjoy a drink, but ordinary British pub-going folk were oftentimes too intimidated by his disability to proposition him directly. "I'd love to buy him a drink....." they would say. "Then ask him if he wants one..." would be my response. He usually did. Then they would offer him cash. "Put it in the poor box" George would say.
At least they noticed him.
I remembered this while I waited on a tense, crowded, heated, and quite terrifying platform at Washington DC's Metro Center on Thursday night, to change from the Red Line to the Blue/Orange. The colored route terminology, of course, makes life no easier for the visually-challenged, but never mind.
A young African-American woman dressed in a sharp gray suit and solid heels was trying to cut her way through the crowd with her long white stick. A mass of preoccupied, twittering, texting, and simultaneously spacially-challenged citizens of the District formed a wall in front of her and she wavered and wandered down the platform towards a brick barrier underneath the escalator bank. "Are you OK miss?" I asked pathetically before she banged into the station wall. "I'm trying to find my way out" she laughed with the sort of ironic sense-of-humor which is a prerequisite of the partially sighted if they are seeking help.
I took her arm and tried to steer her towards the escalator entrance. Still the home-going masses poured forward oblivious and preoccupied. From the other direction came another stick-wielding partially-sighted person. In a scene which would have been much more marketable in the days before political correctness in slapstick comedy, they collided in front of the down escalator and I narrowly averted a mass-casualty disaster by physically manhandling the pair of them onto the up-escalator. As the "Metro Customers" going down carried on regardless, I made a note to strengthen my personal liability insurance (at least I could read the small print).
On the return journey a blue-eyed, silver-haired, slim and smartly-dressed young man was waiting on the platform at the spot where the very back of the metro train should stop. He was wheel-chair bound. When the train came in, it was full. Again, the masses poured out, and their replacement masses poured in. I beckoned the man to go ahead but he saw the crowd inside the carriage and gestured me to get in before him. Fortunately, a gap appeared by accident and he inched his vehicle inside.
The message is clear. If you are disabled, don't travel during rush-hour. You'll risk even more inhumanity than usual. Unless you have to, of course.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Egg Stains, Halloween and Headaches
(First published at www.theconversation.wamu.org)
As I become more aware of my own aging process the feast of All Hallows serves as a reminder of a particular social divide which permeates ours, and probably everyone else's, workplace.
I'm privileged to have been invited to a plethora of Halloween parties this year. Some will be those great adult affairs of outrageous costumes and copious amounts of alcohol. Others are pizza and neighborhood trick or treating with the kids and the golden retriever. Much as my alter ego might yearn for the former, as a parent I am compelled to the latter, although some socially conscious friends are offering "combo" parties which start with the kids and end with the booze.
But there's no escaping it. With a beautiful five-year-old and a charmingly mischievous two-year-old I am a fully paid-up member of our office's secret society - the parents. You know us. We're the ones who talk in hushed tones around each other's desks about nannies and insurance and school applications.
We waver between guilt and innocence. One moment I am self-righteous, dumping the "Unfunded Priorities" meeting for a minor toothache and expecting everyone else to rearrange their schedules. Next, the vulnerable victim who, after a sleepless night of wailing and screaming from the crib, creeps around the office medical box in search of aspirin to the sound of guffaws from colleagues about hangovers.
There are the stifled yawns during meetings. The nervous twitch towards the vibrating cell phone. Then there was the day I showed up with chocolate all down my pants (yes - you guessed where), and the afternoon when I opened a spreadsheet to demonstrate a work flow diagram with a giant egg-yolk stain apparently strategically placed down the center.
There is no escape. Most of my co-workers tolerate my erraticism. Let's face it; they don't have any other option. But some of my (mostly) younger, single, colleagues are nonplussed. And every now and then, just occasionally, I yearn for the day when I was nonplussed, too. Was it really that long ago?
But then I remember I'm going trick or treating, with orange juice to follow.
As I become more aware of my own aging process the feast of All Hallows serves as a reminder of a particular social divide which permeates ours, and probably everyone else's, workplace.
I'm privileged to have been invited to a plethora of Halloween parties this year. Some will be those great adult affairs of outrageous costumes and copious amounts of alcohol. Others are pizza and neighborhood trick or treating with the kids and the golden retriever. Much as my alter ego might yearn for the former, as a parent I am compelled to the latter, although some socially conscious friends are offering "combo" parties which start with the kids and end with the booze.
But there's no escaping it. With a beautiful five-year-old and a charmingly mischievous two-year-old I am a fully paid-up member of our office's secret society - the parents. You know us. We're the ones who talk in hushed tones around each other's desks about nannies and insurance and school applications.
We waver between guilt and innocence. One moment I am self-righteous, dumping the "Unfunded Priorities" meeting for a minor toothache and expecting everyone else to rearrange their schedules. Next, the vulnerable victim who, after a sleepless night of wailing and screaming from the crib, creeps around the office medical box in search of aspirin to the sound of guffaws from colleagues about hangovers.
There are the stifled yawns during meetings. The nervous twitch towards the vibrating cell phone. Then there was the day I showed up with chocolate all down my pants (yes - you guessed where), and the afternoon when I opened a spreadsheet to demonstrate a work flow diagram with a giant egg-yolk stain apparently strategically placed down the center.
There is no escape. Most of my co-workers tolerate my erraticism. Let's face it; they don't have any other option. But some of my (mostly) younger, single, colleagues are nonplussed. And every now and then, just occasionally, I yearn for the day when I was nonplussed, too. Was it really that long ago?
But then I remember I'm going trick or treating, with orange juice to follow.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Become a Citizen Journalist
Here are two easy ways to become a Citizen Journalist. Go to AskYourLawmaker.org (below) and pose a question. Or visit Meymo Lyons' section of the My Conversation interactive site at WAMU, Washington's Public Radio news station, and suggest a topic or story, and provide information and contacts if you have them.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Young reporters follow in the master's footsteps
On the same day Tim Russert died our Youth Voices class graduated at the National Press Club with their families in the audience.
As usual, we played the five feature stories which will air on WAMU and on our website in the coming weeks to the audience in the First Amendment Lounge. Several alums customarily returned to lend their support to the class.
The Youth Voices project is modeled on one pioneered by Marianne McCune at the New York public radio station, WNYC. The last team won the 2008 Silver Communicator Award from the International Academy of the Visual Arts
http://www.wamu.org/about/press/08/yvcommunicator.php
The graduation ceremony is increasingly poignant for me because when we launched Youth Voices at WAMU there was some skepticism, both from listeners and from within. “Why are you putting those kids on the air?” was a persistent question.
Five years on and this reaction has come full circle as listeners hear beyond the youthful, diverse and often inexperienced voices to the person reporting the story and the issue itself. And a galvanizing bi-product is that members of staff from all over WAMU (and from the wider American University community) offer their skills and time to help out – looking for sponsorship, negotiating for facilities, coaching microphone skills, offering transport, or simply an encouraging word to a student in the frenetic and intimidating workspace of a radio newsroom.
But what’s most important is what hits the air. And thanks to the professional backroom team as well as the reporters, it is public radio investigative journalism of the highest quality, tackling crucial subjects which are often overlooked by us “grown-up” broadcasters, and focus-grouped out of the news agendas of commercial mass media organizations.
The incredible journeys homeless young people have to embark on to fight for survival; whether school uniforms foster discipline or frustrate creativity; why the media keeps howling about the coming of the apocalypse; why coverage of scientific advance doesn’t necessarily have to be about curing MY ailment to be interesting; and why the doctors and the drugs companies have collided to produce an addicted group of thousands of youngsters.
In some of these features, the stresses and challenges confronting our younger generation are evidenced through the subject chosen, and the intelligent script and delivery.
They are never expressed with resignation or frustration, but utilizing genuine, young, humor.
Tim Russert would have approved mightily of the depth of research the young reporters undertook, the professionalism with which they carried out their mission, and the sense of accomplishment, and privilege, to which they all attested publicly in their acceptance speeches. And contrary to what one prominent New York Times columnist wrote this morning (Monday) I’m confident he wasn’t the last one of a kind.
As usual, we played the five feature stories which will air on WAMU and on our website in the coming weeks to the audience in the First Amendment Lounge. Several alums customarily returned to lend their support to the class.
The Youth Voices project is modeled on one pioneered by Marianne McCune at the New York public radio station, WNYC. The last team won the 2008 Silver Communicator Award from the International Academy of the Visual Arts
http://www.wamu.org/about/press/08/yvcommunicator.php
The graduation ceremony is increasingly poignant for me because when we launched Youth Voices at WAMU there was some skepticism, both from listeners and from within. “Why are you putting those kids on the air?” was a persistent question.
Five years on and this reaction has come full circle as listeners hear beyond the youthful, diverse and often inexperienced voices to the person reporting the story and the issue itself. And a galvanizing bi-product is that members of staff from all over WAMU (and from the wider American University community) offer their skills and time to help out – looking for sponsorship, negotiating for facilities, coaching microphone skills, offering transport, or simply an encouraging word to a student in the frenetic and intimidating workspace of a radio newsroom.
But what’s most important is what hits the air. And thanks to the professional backroom team as well as the reporters, it is public radio investigative journalism of the highest quality, tackling crucial subjects which are often overlooked by us “grown-up” broadcasters, and focus-grouped out of the news agendas of commercial mass media organizations.
The incredible journeys homeless young people have to embark on to fight for survival; whether school uniforms foster discipline or frustrate creativity; why the media keeps howling about the coming of the apocalypse; why coverage of scientific advance doesn’t necessarily have to be about curing MY ailment to be interesting; and why the doctors and the drugs companies have collided to produce an addicted group of thousands of youngsters.
In some of these features, the stresses and challenges confronting our younger generation are evidenced through the subject chosen, and the intelligent script and delivery.
They are never expressed with resignation or frustration, but utilizing genuine, young, humor.
Tim Russert would have approved mightily of the depth of research the young reporters undertook, the professionalism with which they carried out their mission, and the sense of accomplishment, and privilege, to which they all attested publicly in their acceptance speeches. And contrary to what one prominent New York Times columnist wrote this morning (Monday) I’m confident he wasn’t the last one of a kind.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
My Banking Fantasy
First published at http://www.theconversation.wamu.org
Dear Mr. Calamity Bank Executive,
First of all, we offer our sincere condolences over the collapse of your banking empire. Incompetence, greed, and poor decision-making surrounded you in the marketplace, and conspired against the prudent decisions you made throughout your illustrious years with the Calamity Bank. During that time, you took a humble side street mortgage brokerage and made it into a Wall Street titan through sheer daring, and a great deal of customers' money. Sheer bad fortune and meddling politicians conspired for your downfall.
The good news is, as citizen shareholders of the new American Bank of Taxpayers' Revenge (ABTR), we are delighted to welcome you as a new customer.
First of all, we're allowing you an overdraft facility of $10,000. This will be at an interest rate of 29.99 per cent, is secured on your reduced retirement assets and your condo in Virgin Gorda, and is freezable at any time we choose.
I am also happy to confirm we are issuing you with our new gold-embossed credit card. I am delighted you chose the picture of the window-leaping stock-broker for your image, and the flexible 31.5% rate of interest. Please be careful when going on vacations lasting more than four days. A 24-hour delay in payment will lead to a doubling of your interest rate and adversely affect your credit score. You'll be delighted to learn that we will subsequently be bombarding you with junk mail and junk email offering you dubious new ways to over-stretch your finances in the future.
In any event, from time to time, we will need to consult Equifax to confirm your credit score. This inquiry will, in itself, lead to a reduction in that credit score, and your rate of interest may increase as a result.
Once again, welcome to the American Bank of Taxpayers' Revenge. If you have any questions, our 24-hour "Bankers Away" call center is at your disposal. After listening to four lengthy automated messages, and repeating your account number three times, you will be placed on hold until someone in New Delhi is available to speak with you.
Please note; this letter, and the 92-thousand sub-clauses you will find in 4-point italics in the enclosed brochure, will serve as a binding agreement between you and our powerful firm of international lawyers. Please read it carefully. Especially if careful is a word you have only recently heard.
Dear Mr. Calamity Bank Executive,
First of all, we offer our sincere condolences over the collapse of your banking empire. Incompetence, greed, and poor decision-making surrounded you in the marketplace, and conspired against the prudent decisions you made throughout your illustrious years with the Calamity Bank. During that time, you took a humble side street mortgage brokerage and made it into a Wall Street titan through sheer daring, and a great deal of customers' money. Sheer bad fortune and meddling politicians conspired for your downfall.
The good news is, as citizen shareholders of the new American Bank of Taxpayers' Revenge (ABTR), we are delighted to welcome you as a new customer.
First of all, we're allowing you an overdraft facility of $10,000. This will be at an interest rate of 29.99 per cent, is secured on your reduced retirement assets and your condo in Virgin Gorda, and is freezable at any time we choose.
I am also happy to confirm we are issuing you with our new gold-embossed credit card. I am delighted you chose the picture of the window-leaping stock-broker for your image, and the flexible 31.5% rate of interest. Please be careful when going on vacations lasting more than four days. A 24-hour delay in payment will lead to a doubling of your interest rate and adversely affect your credit score. You'll be delighted to learn that we will subsequently be bombarding you with junk mail and junk email offering you dubious new ways to over-stretch your finances in the future.
In any event, from time to time, we will need to consult Equifax to confirm your credit score. This inquiry will, in itself, lead to a reduction in that credit score, and your rate of interest may increase as a result.
Once again, welcome to the American Bank of Taxpayers' Revenge. If you have any questions, our 24-hour "Bankers Away" call center is at your disposal. After listening to four lengthy automated messages, and repeating your account number three times, you will be placed on hold until someone in New Delhi is available to speak with you.
Please note; this letter, and the 92-thousand sub-clauses you will find in 4-point italics in the enclosed brochure, will serve as a binding agreement between you and our powerful firm of international lawyers. Please read it carefully. Especially if careful is a word you have only recently heard.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
NPR grabs karaoke mic, sings "My Way"
FIRST PUBLISHED AT MY STATION'S INTERACTIVE WEBSITE, http://conversation.wamu.org
PLEASE SIGN-UP !
About once a week, I get an email from a listener who is frustrated that we "covered up" an NPR segment with "insignificant" local news, arts, traffic, or weather.
If you share this sentiment, I have some good news for you.
NPR has signaled its intentions to forge ahead with its multi-million dollar expansion of NPR.ORG, this week launching its own version of The Conversation and announcing a $2.5 million training scheme for its reporters to learn how to write and shoot pictures for the web.
I saw a similar type of "convergence" happen at the BBC when the News Division merged radio and TV and made reporters file for both. Some took to it, some didn't. One unforgiving TV manager, appraising an erstwhile radio reporter's work on camera, coined the phrase "you definitely have a face for radio".
Then the web arrived and BBC reporters now have to file there, too. This undoubtedly increases reporter efficiency in covering stories across several media, but there are still frequent complaints from the reporters and producers that they have less and less time to gather the facts, background and color they need because they're too busy filing. Consequently, quality sometimes suffers.
But for public radio devotees, this will increase choice. There will be program options, platforms, and resources at NPR.ORG which local public stations can't replicate via plain old radio transmitters. Thanks to the web, for the first time NPR is a broadcaster in its own right. And if we cover-up Frank Deford with a local story, you can get him at NPR.ORG.
This is a brave new world for all of us in public broadcasting and I'd like to be able to say there's been a thorough debate and dialogue on these issues within the industry. But there hasn't. And NPR's strategy will lead to huge challenges for stations. Will NPR.ORG lure listeners away from our signal and onto the NPR website? Will members then decide to contribute less during membership campaigns, or to give elsewhere? If our audience numbers fall, will potential corporate sponsors find WAMU less attractive? And, as a result, will NPR's nose spite its face, since 60% of NPR's revenue comes from its member stations?
Aware of the concerns, NPR has been a supportive partner with local stations in other new media ventures. Thanks to these collaborations, you can get WAMU news updates on your mobile phone, or hear a podcast of Diane, Kojo or Metro Connection.
My belief is that its both sense of place, and sense of identity, which will ensure the survival of local stations, and are probably key to the success of NPR.ORG, as well. In the ears and minds of listeners, public radio stands for original content, properly sourced information, decency, constructive dialogue, good citizenry, and, in the stations' case, localism.
I've recently dabbled in the online community "Twitter". While there is the occasional gem of a contribution, most of the dialogue centers on relaying information gathered by others (websites, TV shows, blogs) or self-centered trivia from users concerned about their over-use of sugar substitutes in coffee and the like.
The challenge is to originate strong programs, and build on our unique strengths while maintaining our authenticity. We will stand or fall on our ability to deliver distinctive programs which truly belong to the WAMU Community. Hot Jazz Saturday Night, The Kojo Nnamdi Show, and The Big Broadcast are today's examples. But we'll need to be constantly inventive going forward. WAMU can do on air and on the web what NPR cannot - put Washington D.C.'s citizens at the center of the universe.
For all the debate about distribution platforms, it's still all about the content, not where it resides. And we're still your local station.
PLEASE SIGN-UP !
About once a week, I get an email from a listener who is frustrated that we "covered up" an NPR segment with "insignificant" local news, arts, traffic, or weather.
If you share this sentiment, I have some good news for you.
NPR has signaled its intentions to forge ahead with its multi-million dollar expansion of NPR.ORG, this week launching its own version of The Conversation and announcing a $2.5 million training scheme for its reporters to learn how to write and shoot pictures for the web.
I saw a similar type of "convergence" happen at the BBC when the News Division merged radio and TV and made reporters file for both. Some took to it, some didn't. One unforgiving TV manager, appraising an erstwhile radio reporter's work on camera, coined the phrase "you definitely have a face for radio".
Then the web arrived and BBC reporters now have to file there, too. This undoubtedly increases reporter efficiency in covering stories across several media, but there are still frequent complaints from the reporters and producers that they have less and less time to gather the facts, background and color they need because they're too busy filing. Consequently, quality sometimes suffers.
But for public radio devotees, this will increase choice. There will be program options, platforms, and resources at NPR.ORG which local public stations can't replicate via plain old radio transmitters. Thanks to the web, for the first time NPR is a broadcaster in its own right. And if we cover-up Frank Deford with a local story, you can get him at NPR.ORG.
This is a brave new world for all of us in public broadcasting and I'd like to be able to say there's been a thorough debate and dialogue on these issues within the industry. But there hasn't. And NPR's strategy will lead to huge challenges for stations. Will NPR.ORG lure listeners away from our signal and onto the NPR website? Will members then decide to contribute less during membership campaigns, or to give elsewhere? If our audience numbers fall, will potential corporate sponsors find WAMU less attractive? And, as a result, will NPR's nose spite its face, since 60% of NPR's revenue comes from its member stations?
Aware of the concerns, NPR has been a supportive partner with local stations in other new media ventures. Thanks to these collaborations, you can get WAMU news updates on your mobile phone, or hear a podcast of Diane, Kojo or Metro Connection.
My belief is that its both sense of place, and sense of identity, which will ensure the survival of local stations, and are probably key to the success of NPR.ORG, as well. In the ears and minds of listeners, public radio stands for original content, properly sourced information, decency, constructive dialogue, good citizenry, and, in the stations' case, localism.
I've recently dabbled in the online community "Twitter". While there is the occasional gem of a contribution, most of the dialogue centers on relaying information gathered by others (websites, TV shows, blogs) or self-centered trivia from users concerned about their over-use of sugar substitutes in coffee and the like.
The challenge is to originate strong programs, and build on our unique strengths while maintaining our authenticity. We will stand or fall on our ability to deliver distinctive programs which truly belong to the WAMU Community. Hot Jazz Saturday Night, The Kojo Nnamdi Show, and The Big Broadcast are today's examples. But we'll need to be constantly inventive going forward. WAMU can do on air and on the web what NPR cannot - put Washington D.C.'s citizens at the center of the universe.
For all the debate about distribution platforms, it's still all about the content, not where it resides. And we're still your local station.
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