Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
I love public media.
How about you?

In honor of Valentine's Day, the ultimate Hallmark holiday, I'm sending this little love letter out to some my favorite public media projects.

None of these initiatives has anything to do with romance in the slightest. It's just that I've fallen in love with the spirit behind these efforts, the way they invite people to participate, to get "engaged."

Let me declare my love publicly and shout it from the rooftops, or at least from this little blog, with the hopes that you will: check these innovations out, think about how they might be replicated at your own/local public radio station, plus post your comments here, telling us what we might find in your secret stash of public media chocolates.   read more »

Whenever I start to tell my daughters about something that happened in my childhood, or launch into a story or memory from my past, they break into a twangy, hand-clappin', thigh-slappin' song, "Back in the Olden Days...Back in the Olden Days." Got the picture? If it weren't so damn funny, I might actually feel disrespected.

So, people let me tell you about my first job in public radio. It was at WXPN in Philadelphia, a campus-community station at the University of Pennsylvania. Back then, the station was a neglected jewel with a powerful signal and crappy studios housed in a run-down mansion that was once home to the school's ROTC program. In the winter of 1984, I was a senior at Penn majoring in Women's Studies and Communication. I was invited to take over as host of a long-standing weekly public affairs program called - get this - The Women's Consciousness Raising Hour. Opportunity knocked.   read more »

You are Invited: 2-10-2010, at 2 pm. The National Center for Media Engagement is hosting a Webinar featuring the "Innovative Media Models of MQ2." 

Join us, as AIR Executive Director Sue Schardt tells the back-story of this CPB-funded bold experiment in cross-platform public media.

Listen and learn, as KUOW's Jenny Asarnow takes us to The Corner of 23rd & Union for a show-and-tell of her public art and storytelling project on gentrification in Seattle.

Tune in to hear Kara Oehler narrate a lively tour of the nation's Main streets, and discuss her ambitious collaborative documentary project Mapping Main Street.

Find out what makes these producer-led MQ2 projects succesful and about the challenges and lessons learned along the way. 

Reserve your spot and register for the free Webinar here and now!

Amy Fichter discovered MQ2 project Mapping Main Street through an NPR Facebook post last summer. The artist, who teaches drawing at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, was inspired to contribute her vision to the crowd-sourced collaboration, which aims to document the 10,466 streets called "Main" in the U.S.

Using the gamut of camera technology, from her iPhone to a 1940s-era antique twin-lens reflex camera, Fichter collected a series of "evocative, dream-like portraits" of Main Streets in her home town of Menomonie, and other Wisconsin communities: Eau Claire, Durand, Maiden Rock, River Falls, etc. 

"I believe that living locally is much more conceivable if we really come to know our locale rather than dismissing it as small or boring," says Fichter. "Through working on this project I have learned about who my neighbors are, what they care about, and how they identify themselves. I have learned about the history of these people and places. I have been surprised at the treasures I find."  read more »

A week after President Obama's first "State of the Union" speech, many ideas are flitting and floating through my mind. I didn't hear everything I wanted to hear, but I am reminded that for the first time in eight long, dark years, I was able to watch the speech without empyting my sock drawer, poised to pelt the screen every few minutes, reacting to untruths, hyperbole, smugness, empty rhetoric, saber-rattling, etc.

I don't have any particular comments about Obama's State of the Union speech itself, but I've noticed an abundance of "States of the Unions" in the media lately and thought I might pull a Betsy Ross and piece them together for you.

1. State of the Re:Union is public radio talent quest winner Al Letson's new program funded by CPB and distributed by PRX and NPR. Letson is a gifted storyteller, a griot who blends the poet and the preacher. His documentary Bayard Rustin: Who is this Man? is a reminder why we still need Black History Month, despite actor Morgan Freeman's assertion to the contrary. Letson takes his talent on the road this spring with programs that unpack the meaning of community in diverse places like tornado-wrecked Greensburg, Kansas, the multicultural borough of Brooklyn, N.Y., and the post-timber milltowns of Oregon.  read more »

"Unfriend" was the word of the year, according to the New Oxford English Dictionary, which gave "Podcasting" that honor in 2005. It's only February, but mark my words, "Game Changer" may walk away with this year's honors. 

Honestly, I'm actually missing William Safire right about now. The conservative Nixon speechwriter of "nattering nabobs of negativism fame" penned the On Language column for The New York Times for 30 years before his death in September, 2009, and before he got a chance to unpack "game changer," a phrase that lately seems to be popping up in print at a Whack-a-Mole's pace. (UPDATE: I stand corrected. See comments below!)  read more »

If you happen to be in Boston on Monday evening, here's a hot ticket: MQ2 grantee Kara Oehler and Jesse Shapins of Mapping Main Street are giving a lecture. But don't let my use of the word lecture make it sound so dreadfully dull. To quote the press release, Kara and Jesse will present a "retroactive manifesto of their collaborative projects."

More about these two manifestarians: "For the past decade, Kara Oehler and Jesse Shapins have been at the forefront of defining the new fields of public media arts and urban database documentary, engaging the interplay between physical, virtual and social space through a hybrid of interactive design, documentary radio, urban photography, participatory storytelling, architectural theory, and experimental pedagogy." 

In other words, they've created some truly cool, memorable, meaningful, edgy, unique...stuff.  read more »

Forgive me, but every time I hear the name “Seymour,” I am reminded of a crude joke I heard as an 8-year old about a mother taking a bath. She calls and calls for her son Seymour to bring her a towel. Worried sick when he doesn’t respond, she jumps out the tub and takes to the streets completely naked calling “Seymour! Seymour!”  Some guy along the way says to her “See more, lady? I’ve seen enough!” Terrible how the stupidest punch lines stay lodged in the brain forever while important names and facts and memories seem elusive as we get older.

The visionary Ruth Seymour has seen enough. Sharp as ever at 75, she is retiring as General Manager of KCRW next month after five decades of legendary service to public radio, including 32 years at one of the country’s coolest stations. She “tells all” in a just-published interview in Los Angeles Magazine.

Like many in the pubradio system, myself included, she too can proudly wear her “I Survived Pacifica Radio” t-shirt (she worked at KPFK), although, since she lives in L.A., I'm certain her t-shirt is far more fashionable and way hipper than mine, just as her station is more mavericky and original than the public radio in my town. Lately, I’ve been appreciating my iPhone public radio tuner app which allows me to listen to Eclectic 24, a KCRW original.

In her parting interview, Ruth asserts, “Over the years… stations have become more like each other, they have become boring…There was a time when the system was young and full of piss and vinegar.” Ah, I remember the days of piss and vinegar well. Thanks to Ruth, KCRW still has that secret sauce. In her farewell letter, she describes the station as "idiosyncratic, daring, independent smart, compelling." Indeed, these are words others have used over the years to describe her. Of course there have been other words, typically tossed at confident women in positions of power. Ruth's interview sheds some wisdom on that, too.  read more »

A listening lagniappe from Open Sound New Orleans:

Exuberant cheering from joyous football fans, emanating from Louie's Corner Bar when the Saints marched over the Minnesota Vikings this past weekend.

Like many of us, I've been glued to CNN watching daily coverage of the aftermath and aftershocks of the Haitian earthquake. The stories of suffering and survival are haunting. My heart aches for the countless people who must live with such agonizing loss of loved ones and painful loss of limbs. Like many of you, I've made donations to various groups providing emergency relief.

As a "news person," I've wondered when the U.S. media will pack up and call it a day. Who exactly makes the decision to send Anderson Cooper home? How does that news director, editor, manager, decide to bump Haiti from the headlines to later in the newscast. Does another disaster or scandal or death of a celebrity have to pass to displace Haiti's spot above the fold? And what will happen to Haiti when she is no longer the top story?

One thing is for sure: Haiti will need to revive its own independent media, its own journalistic voice, to connect people to each other, to provide lifesaving information, to follow the aid money, to hold public officials accountable, and (lest we forget), to entertain people with music that soothes the broken heart. This is where radio comes in.  read more »