My Tuesday surprise

Everyone has their favorite things that they like about public radio, and with our spring fundraiser starting on Monday, yes--we of want you to be thinking along those lines. Me? I like surprises--something that takes my world view and just kicks it down the road. My latest "driveway moment" came while I was drinking my morning coffee on Tuesday. NPR science correspondent Joe Palca was talking about research into using the unique mix of bacteria we leave behind us wherever we go as a means of identifying people whether they have left their own DNA behind or not.

As a natural-born paranoid, that got my attention. But what really blew my mind was one of those "Everything you know is wrong" experiences. Like most people, I know that we have a lot of bacteria riding along with us. But in his set-up, Joe said, "In fact there are many more bacterial cells in and on our body than human cells." To which his interview subject replied "As far as I'm concerned, the human body is just a large microbial habitat." Yikes! We're outnumbered! This is a whole new way of looking at myself. In addition to public radio web guy, North Country boy, father, husband, and occasional poet, I now had to think of myself as a cruise ship made of meat, with a small crew of human cells catering to the whims of a vast cargo of bacteria as they sailed the Islets of Langerhans.

This led me to look up information about how the ruling majority affected us, discovering that bacteria have a large role in determining what we eat, and whether we are prone to be fat or thin, and other things we thought were under our control, or at least under the control of our own genes. I hadn't had such a good paranoid meltdown in months. Thanks, Joe.
If public radio has blown your mind, let us know in a comment below. And don't forget to drop by online, by phone or by mail, to renew your support for North Country Public Radio.

Big Web Pow-Wow, part 2

Thanks for weighing in last week about where NCPR should be going in exploring new online platforms and future online strategy. The main takeaways so far from listeners encourage us to go slow, to think more deeply about our real strategic needs, and to not lose sight of our core mission as broadcasters. You can read all the conversation so far at this address:
http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/blogs/brainclouds/2010/02/big-web-pow-wow.html
Last week's post was pretty "top-level" in its approach. I'd like to ask you to weigh in now on some specific areas we are talking about exploring.

First is a new approach to the front page at ncpr.org. We propose to make page one more "newsy." Right now, news is available only in headline form there. We'd like to move the news one click closer--putting at least one story onto page one in full, with photos and direct audio links. We'd like to include more timely content about network programs, rotate new features through the home page more often, and make page one run deeper--including some NPR blogs, as well as NPR and other national features. The numbers driving this decision tell us that the average NCPR visitor is coming to the site only twice a month. A more news-heavy approach, starting at the home page, we hope, will encourage more people to put ncpr.org onto their daily news beat.

Second is a different approach to social media such as Twitter and Facebook. To date, our presence there is primarily driven by feeds that automatically put archive NCPR news and blog content into the social media space. We propose to move the clock ahead a little, giving more info about what's coming up instead of what's gone by. And we hope to use these platforms to engage the audience in story and program incubation, and to build such features as our winter and summer reading lists. And we hope to get more of the NCPR staff engaged with these platforms to post about what's happening in their areas.

Third, we hope to reorganize our approach to the music and arts of the region online, creating a more lively and two-way conversation about local music, regional arts, and cultural life--using new blogs, social media, and listener-submitted media in a more interactive way.

There are more areas where we are looking for change, but these three ought to be plenty for today. Give us your thinking in a comment below.

Big web pow-wow

Sorry for being a day late with the Listening Post this week. Yesterday NCPR had an all-day retreat to have a big think about our future in online media. This is the first time since ncpr.org was launched almost ten years ago that we have all gathered together around these issues. A lot has changed in the intervening years. The most important top-level changes have occured in three areas:

1. The notion of a single web site as a destination toward which the audience is directed is outmoded. An online media operation must now be able to function across multiple sites and platforms--to go to where the audience goes--as well as to bring the audience to where the media operation lives.

2. The notion that an online media operation is one that "talks" while others "listen" is outmoded. People have the expectation of two-way communication and active participation. Instead of being the folks that own the microphone, we are members of a social network comprised of NCPR and "the group formerly known as the audience."

3. The notion that the online media operation creates the content and the audience talks about the content is outmoded. Part of a public service mission online is to put tools in the hands of citizens to create media directly, or to collaborate in the process by which online media is created.

There is a lot of tactical thinking involved in addressing these new realities. We are hoping that Listening Post readers can help us with that thinking. Where do you expect to find an active NCPR presence? What kinds of interaction do you want to have with the NCPR community? What is missing from our service that you think should be within our "wheelhouse?" What are we wasting time on that doesn't well serve the community? What questions are we forgetting to ask? Let us knows what's working or not working for you in what we offer on various platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and mobile devices, as well as at ncpr.org.

More at Big web pow-wow, part 2

In a Name

When Shunryu Suzuki (one of the earliest teachers to bring Zen Buddhism to the US) came to California his English was very poor. He asked a passerby in a San Francisco park the question in my poem below. The straightforward reply encouraged him that here was fertile ground for Zen.

Suzuki Roshi Discovers America

What do
you call
that black
bird there?

Blackbird.

Most of the names of NCPR programs follow a similar pattern: The Eight O'Clock Hour, Music for a Monday Afternoon, FM in the Morning, etc. I could say it was due to our advanced spiritual state, but no, we just can't come to consensus on anything clever and exciting. Coming up with good names is hard. No doubt Eve vetoed many of Adam's "best" ideas, when he legendarily named the animals. "Platypus? Really?"

NCPR has a new program in the works, and rather than settle on some pedestrian in-house pick, we have decided to reach out for suggestions. Jonathan Brown, known to most of you as our All Before Five host and news reporter, will be launching a new hour-long music program leading into the weekend. Regarding format, Jonathan says, "I'll play rock, folk, blues, R&B, soul, alt-country and roots from the '60s to new stuff. Each set will mix more well-known (and probably older) tracks with newer songs that listeners may not be familiar with."

So, what do you suggest, besides The Rock, Folk, Blues, R&B, Soul, alt-Country and Roots Hour? While you're at it, feel free to suggest alternatives (by preference non-scatological) to any of our other generic program names.

When instant gratification isn't quick enough

If you've dropped by the NCPR news page in the last couple of days, you may have noticed the new way we are handling audio--providing an embedded "zipper" to play our news features. Greater geeks than I maintain that the online audience has, on average, the patience of a piranha and the attention span of a Labrador pup. While I am not one inclined to compare the ncpr.org audience to any kind of animal, I take from this that quicker and easier is better. In the past, our audio links launched an outside player, which took time to load, then more time to get started. By then, many of you were three websites down the road, shopping for Etruscan nose flutes on eBay, twittering about Facebook, or whatever it is you do when not camped out on our website.

Now you can get to the story much quicker, and much easier. Which part of "right now" don't we understand? No part. Please let us know how this works for you, and anything else we can do to make gangway for your power surfing experience.

Must-see TV

You may think of this as a call for prayers. Tomorrow morning, Team NCPR will be in the WPBS-TV studios, going mano-a-mano with the News 10 Now crew as we battle for glory on a taping of Whiz Quiz, hosted by Glenn Gough. Forget the Yanks and Phillies--this is the must-see match-up. On deck for the honor of public radio: station manager Ellen Rocco, station engineer Radio Bob Sauter, assistant news director David Sommerstein, and yours truly. Up for News 10 Now--well, who cares really?

I must say, I look forward with some trepidation. My last TV appearance was with Glenn's old colleague from his WWNY days, on Dan "Danny Bee" Burgess' Saturday morning cartoon show, 50 years ago. There's a reason we're in radio. While my boss Ellen is, of course, radiant and youthful, and David could be considered cute in an Eddie Munster kind of way, Radio Bob resembles the current Archbishop of Canterbury following a powerful psychotic episode, and I look like someone who may have a bomb in his shoe, or an appetite for "braaiinss." We'll just have to see. I'll be having fish for dinner--it's brain food.

Best year ever

Thanks to everyone who has been calling and writing this week in support of NCPR, and particularly to those who re-upped or became new members during String Fever this afternoon, when through a semi-annual lapse of judgment, they put the over-caffeinated web guy in front of an open microphone. This how we get it done: with a bluegrass band answering the phones, special padded kneelers in the pitch room, and the enthusiastic encouragement of all the folks you don't hear on the radio every day, as well as those you do.
It takes a lot of different skills to float this boat, and your support floats a team that excels in every way, recognized throughout public broadcasting not only for great radio, but for great membership services, a premier underwriting program, innovations in major giving and special projects and new media--in general, for getting a bigger bang for smaller bucks than anyone else in the business. You make this all possible. We're well on the way, but don't stop now. We still have about $80,000 to raise between now and Saturday at 8 pm to make our goal. The real goal--same as ever--to make next year our best year of radio ever.

Kindness of strangers

All of us who work in public radio, and in all sorts of public service not-for-profits, can declare along with Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, "'I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." We aren't quite the lilies of the field who "toil not, neither do they spin;" we toil a lot. But for our raiment (fine or otherwise) we have always been in the faith business. Faith in the value of our efforts, and faith that the community will provide for its support.

It's come time once again (starting Monday) to put that faith to test, as we do each year in our fall fundraiser. It would be easy to view this regular exercise as a burden, both in the making and in the hearing, but the longer I work in public radio, the more I see it as an opportunity. We get to see our faith born out, year after year, in a way that no other endeavor provides. There is no compulsion, there is no exchange regulated by "the invisible hand of the market," there is only the giving and receiving of gifts. And for the giver, there is a rare opportunity to value something based on one's own experience and circumstance, not on a bar code readout.

I am not among those who want to change the business model of public broadcasting to something more "scientific" and "predictable." I predict that we'll do just fine. You just have to have a little faith.

Memory v. history

We're fortunate, in these hard economic times, to have with us many people whose life experience extends back to the Great Depression. There is a crucial difference between memory and history. History tends to repeat itself, not because we are incapable of learning from the past, but because the job of learning is much harder when it must come from the dry pages of recorded events. Learning from the people who have "been there and done that" works a lot better. For example, to understand the prevailing economic theories and conditions that led to the collapse of the world economy 80 years ago, you might turn to history. To learn how to eat cheap while patching together a living, a living memory is what you need.


This summer, NCPR is putting modern North Country teens together with people who were teens during the Depression in a project called Common Wealth, Common Wisdom. Working together, teens and elders will pool their experiences of hard times, using audio, video, pictures and text, sharing the results with the NCPR and audience and the world through broadcast, webcast and social media. We welcome back former NCPR reporter and founding All Before Five host, Gregory Warner, who ramrods the project along with radio producer Laura Starecheski, now a professor at the City University of New York. Please check out the project on the NCPR website.

Deep obeisance

Sometimes you just gotta give it up. So here it is--massive props to NCPR's code developer Bill Haenel, so great a geek that I am not worthy to lick his mousepad. His pioneering work in the wonky world of geodata has made North Country Public Radio the very first station or network in public broadcasting (or anywhere else in media that I am aware of) to be able to render all of its library of content onto maps.

Before you yawn, consider. One of the great defects of the internet has been that it serves communities of affinity at the expense of communities of residence, sucking huge amounts of attention and energy out of the places where people live, and transferring it into the no particular place of cyberspace. Reattaching "whereness" to the content of the internet can go a long way toward redressing that imbalance.

If, that is, others decide to follow the trail blazed by Bill for NCPR. Most work on internet mapping has focused on one-off efforts to map a particular sequence of events or group of related content. These efforts age out of relevance quickly, and apply only to a tiny fraction of content produced. Bill's approach is holistic instead, incorporating place into the DNA of everything NCPR releases into the wild. If other media follow suit, for the first time there will be "places" in cyberspace that actually correspond to the places where we live. To see some baby steps at exploiting these new capabilities, check out the map links on the home page at ncpr.org.

What you paid for

For the first time since I started at NCPR in 2001, I was out of town for one of our fund drives, presenting at the National Federation of Community Broadcasters conference in Portland, OR. I worried (needlessly as it turns out) that the world would stop turning if I wasn't working the crank. And what a turn! You came through with astonishing generosity in down economic times, pushing us nearly 10% over our goal of $175,000. And everyone back at home worked a little extra to keep the website fresh and interesting while I was away. What can I say? The only proper response to such an outpouring of support--expressed in its sincerest form, cash--is sweat and excellence, sweetened with gratitude. You have the first, and certainly the last.

And the evidence is coming in that we can be moved toward excellence in serving the community that supports us. NCPR News is once again making news, taking home two regional Edward R. Murrow Awards from this year's round. The first is for continuing coverage of the impact of war at home. You find these stories on our Fort Drum community page and on topic pages for Peace and War, On the Home Front, and The National Guard. David Sommerstein took home honors for sports reporting for his story "Native Americans in baseball's past and present." And the NCPR website was recognized as the best among among small-market radio stations in the region (which encompasses New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.)

Your gifts also support excellence at National Public Radio, whose largest source of revenue is fees paid by station affiliates like us. National Public Radio has won three prestigious Peabody Awards for news coverage this year. They are for reporting on the 2008 earthquake in China, a three-part investigation of the unanswered questions surrounding two men convicted of the 1972 murder of a prison guard and held in solitary confinement for 36 years at Angola prison, and for "The Giant Pool of Money," NPR's collaboration with This American Life.

You give what you can; we try to give our best back. The results are--well--pretty special. Thanks again for your generous support.

As usual

The Spring Membership Drive begins on Monday, and the studio is in a preparatory frenzy as usual. And as usual, you will find an alluring assortment of goods and services to encourage your support (including some stuff that can only be characterized as highly cool). And you will hear the usual public radio celebrities, national and home-grown, making the case for member support. The usual volunteers will staff the phone room and chow down on the usual food and snack donations. So it has been for many years--fifty weeks to make the radio, two weeks a year to make the members who make it all work.

But these are not usual times; these are hard times. Like you, we are tightening our belts as much as we can--thinking hard about where the dollars come from and where each dollar goes. The biggest share of our support comes from small gifts, made by people with ordinary means--the kind of gifts we ask for each spring during this drive. More people than ever may be looking in their wallets this year and concluding that they can't give as much as they could in fatter times. Been there. Whatever you can do is welcome and more than welcome. We never forget who "brung us to the dance."

But if you have been a listener for years, someone who has thought about becoming a member one of these days--this is the day. Start small; dip a toe in the water, but don't kick the can down the road another year. If you're in one of our new service areas along Lake Champlain or on the Tug Hill, welcome. NCPR invested in your community to build this service, please consider returning the favor. And thanks to everyone who has already made a membership gift this year.

All a-Twitter

As newspapers groan and collapse under the twin pressures posed by the financial meltdown and the challenge of making new media pay, we have to wonder if we're next. Already there have been layoffs at NPR and member stations; a few stations have disappeared altogether. Our public radio neighbors are reporting budget shortfalls as underwriters cut back in the face of a dismal retail environment. So far, NCPR is in pretty good shape, but like everyone else, we are sweating about the future.

At the same time, there is an explosion of new tools and platforms for distributing public radio, for knitting its members into an interactive whole, for collaborating with colleagues, and in general doing a bigger and potentially better job of serving as the public square. The pace of development and rollout has accelerated to the point where it drags all the blood to the back of the brain.

Which is all I can offer as an explanation for the rise of Twitter, a communication vehicle so ephemeral, so limited in scope, so throwaway it staggers the imagination. If a newspaper is a rag, Twitter is Kleenex. Its motto would be "All the news that fits into 140 characters." While it might have great potential as a new poetic form, Twitter, and much else that is new in new media, offers little to media companies, public and private, that are struggling for survival. It is this conversation, going on behind the scenes in newsrooms and boardrooms around the country and the world, that has us all a-twitter.

Cartoonist Marquil weighed in on the subject today with this offering.

"Out there" is a good thing

One of the things I like about the North Country, and about North Country Public Radio, is that we are a little "out there." A little loopy, often unpredictable, sometimes a little extreme. For example, one would expect any border news station to send a reporter to cover Obama's visit to Canada. But David Sommerstein, NCPR's guy on the scene, was probably the only one to skate five miles down the Rideau Canal to get to this morning's press conference. You would expect a bluegrass music host to enjoy and play old-time music. But Barb Heller has brought a dozen local musicians into the studio today, encouraging the world to play along with the radio, and providing all the sheet music online. One would expect an Adirondack reporter to cover outdoor recreation--maybe from an Olympic venue press booth. But Brian Mann reports from deep beneath Lake Champlain diving on a shipwreck, or from halfway up a cliff on an ice climb. In his spare time he writes a definitive book on the urban-rural political divide.

It's a little intimidating when all your colleagues have "exceeds expectations" written somewhere in their personnel jacket. But that's how we roll. That, and all the coffee.

Breaking new ground

NCPR has put up a lot of new sticks (transmitters, for the radio-jargon impaired) over the last few years. Mostly to fill in holes in our broadcast area that result from the vagueries of terrain, from wilderness regulations, and from protecting the frequencies of our radio neighbors. The biggest remaining hole--sort of like a cavity in a molar that you keep poking at with your tongue--is in the eastern Adirondacks and along the NY shore of Lake Champlain. No combination of horsetrading and technical wizardry would allow us to site a transmitter in New York that would serve the deserving (but NCPR-deprived) communities of Westport, Port Henry and Essex. And so it remained for many years.

Today we announce the launch of transmitter WXLQ, broadcasting at 90.5 fm from Bristol, Vermont. This "filling" in the NCPR smile will serve thousands of new families on the New York side of the lake, as well as provide a better alternative signal to listeners in New York and Vermont on the south and eastern fringes of coverage by NCPR's 88.1 fm transmitter in Peru, NY. This expansion of our service area was made possible in part through friendly negotiation with our neighboring public radio service, Vermont Public Radio. We thank them. Thanks also to the Essex Community Fund, administered by the Adirondack Community Trust, and to two volunteers who provided assistance with signal assessment, Ed French and Carole Slatkin, both of Essex, NY. If you happen to know people in the new broadcast region, please help us to spread the word.

Photo: Tim from Wells Communications, installs a new antenna on an existing tower for WXLQ.

Testifying

Public radio got to me in the 1970s. I started giving not long after I started listening to WSLU, now North Country Public Radio, around the woodstove in our then communal house. I kept a weekly date with Radio Reader; I quickly became a news junkie courtesy of All Things Considered. Saturday was not complete without a visit to Lake Wobegon. Like most members I started out small, but I have kept bumping up my contributions over the years as my means have slowly increased. In good years and bad, I have always set aside something to support the station that completed my education, that enabled me to pretend that I was, if not the smartest guy in the room, then at least one of the better informed ones. Public Radio got me out of my narrow rut in music appreciation (you don't want to know) and opened me up to an eclectic world.

What has that been worth to me? A lot. The question is--what is it worth to you? Tough times are tough times, but they would be a lot tougher without public radio. Take a moment to make one of the soundest investments around. Support North Country Public Radio.

No Comments

Given the overall popularity of sites like FaceBook and MySpace, and the tools of online social networking in general--blogs, comment threads, social bookmarking, video, music and photo sharing platforms, citizen journalism, and on and on--it surprises me how little direct interaction there is between ncpr.org and its visitors. The two bright spots are our Photo of the Day feature, which has attracted since its inception more quality submissions than we can ever use, and the Community Calendar, where a substantial number of each day's events are contributed by visitors online.

Our general listener comment page has, on the other hand, attracted three comments in June, and one each in the months of July, August, and September. Brian Mann, in his new blog Ballot Box, has posted thoughtful and timely essays on North Country politics and the rural divide 19 times in the last ten days. He has received three comments total from the hundreds who have read the posts. Actually he has received five, including two abusive comments from the same writer trying to look like one person responding to another. Those didn't get posted. If the rude and nasty tenor of many political sites is keeping you away, we moderate comments--each is read before posting and will be rejected if it transgresses the bounds of civil public conversation.

We plan to go ahead with such features as the ability to comment on individual NCPR news stories, and to participate on NPR's soon-to-be-released social media platform. But it may be that our audience still does its networking the old-fashioned way: talking in the supermarket aisle and the ice cream stand queue and the at the pancake breakfast. Or perhaps it's just our laconic nature as rural folk. If you have anything to say about that, you can post a comment here.

New connections

Sometimes the clock just sits there, slowly grinding gravel into sand, and sometimes everything seems to happen at once. We're heading into one of the latter times now. Stuff from the back burner, things we have been chipping away at month by month, all come to a head. A lot of the action is being driven by new projects and initiatives from our network partner, NPR.

The big news of the last few days was NPR's acquisition of Public Interactive, the platform host of many public radio websites, and a service provider to many more, NCPR among them. The merger may save us some change in the long run, but it will help most in facilitating our use of content from public radio programs that originate with PI's former parent, Public Radio International, and with other media services PI has under contract. It will beef up NPR's digital shop and will help PI stations play more effectively on the national stage.

NPR is making a big investment in social networking for the public radio community and is set to roll out a platform on which stations can foster their own communities within NPR.org. Look for lots more on this in late September.

NPR has also jump-started stations into the arcanely-labeled field of mobilecasting, making a mix of station and network features available via cell phones and other mobile devices. NCPR expects to join them by November. For those of you who wish your cell phones had a cord and a dial, there will be a regular phone number you can call from any type of phone to get the latest NCPR and NPR news and features. This will make NCPR available for the first time in remoter parts of the region that don't have broadband internet, or cell service, or even radio reception.

Speaking of mergers, I have saved the best for last. NCPR station manager Ellen Rocco is tying the knot this weekend with Adirondack potter Bill Noble. We wish them all the best.

The world looks back

Online, NCPR's main aim is to inform the region about itself and about the world. A secondary aim is to inform the world about the North Country. In crunching the numbers, I am amazed at the way the second task works. One third of our traffic arrives via search engines such as Google. Most comes from North America, but in the last month we have had visitors from more than 100 countries, including 310 visits from the United Kingdom, 99 from Japan, 68 from Brazil, 107 from Austalia, 12 from South Africa, 20 from Jordan, and two from Fiji.

One of the slightly creepy wonders of a good stats package is that I can tell where visitors from a given country or city landed in our site. One of our Fijian visitors viewed an audio slideshow about an Ontario beekeeper. A visitor from Myanmar looked at our series on biofuels. One visitor from Sarajevo went to The Folk Show page; another went to the Community Calendar. Three visitors from China apparently wanted to know about finding nude models in Chestertown. Visitors from Iran wanted to know about trash burning and to hear a review of "My Fair Lady." One Ukrainian likes Celtic harp and flamenco guitar, while our single Paraguayan visitor favors String Fever. UpNorth Music performer Kevin Irwin has at least one fan in Poland. Next door in Germany they are listening to Celia Evans and Scott Shipley.

All told, the world appears to be getting a somewhat quirky and spotty view of the North Country. But then consider what I know about Fiji--nice beaches, or Paraguay--it's in South America. I have to wonder though, just what do they make of 'enry and Eliza in Tehran.

Rain of soup: the NPR API

For a longtime advocate of emphasizing the "public" in public broadcasting, this is an exciting moment. My online colleagues at National Public Radio have made it the first major media company to hand what amounts to the "keys to the kingdom" over to the public. They have done this via the introduction of an open API, or application programming interface--a mouthful of buzzwords describing a feature that allows the public to access the entire archive of 250,000 NPR stories, and to use them as they see fit within their own sites, pages, and blogs. Included are tools to organize collections of stories by topic, program, series, reporter, and/or search term, and to receive those stories in a wide variety of formats and at varying levels of detail.

Within a few months, NPR stations such as North Country Public Radio will also be able to make their own stories available to the public using NPR's API. So, for example, if you had a blog dealing with environmental issues in the Northeast, you would be able to create a collection of stories on the environment from NPR mixed with local stories from NPR stations in the Northeast. Or a bluegrass fan might collect all the performances by and interviews with bluegrass artists at NPR and mix in performers from the UpNorth Music project. Or you could just grab every story since 1995 about James Brown, the hardest working man in show business. Sweet.



Even better, outside developers are already building new tools to use the API in novel ways. John Tynan at KJZZ has worked out a widget that takes NPR stories by topic and drops them onto a timeline, so you can see how coverage of a given issue develops. Here is a sample of the work in progress. Geoff Gaudreault of Reverbiage has built a widget that combines a 3D globe mapping out the latest NPR stories with an embedded player to listen to the stories. See it work and get the code. At NCPR, we are in the process of switching to the API for all the NPR features syndicated within the site. You can play with the API yourself, and should. Use the "Query Generator" to select and view different slices of the NPR pie. Register to use the NPR API.

Inside the anthill

Things get a little crazy around here during fundraiser time. At the moment I have three windows open to edit frequently updated web pages, two photo editor windows, one email application, a calculator, four web browser windows, a Word document, and an IM chat room connecting the various pitch people throughout the station. And I'm having the least crazy day. The news department is roiling like a kicked over anthill trying to keep pace with developments in Albany.

Radio Bob is just back from an epic arctic journey up Blue Mountain to put us back on the air in the southern Adirondacks after a prolonged outage. And everybody else is teleporting themselves up and down the hall trying to keep the wheels from flying off the fundraising cart.

Left: Why we were off: NCPR's "iceproof" receiving antenna on Blue Mt. before and after Radio Bob climbed the sucker and whacked on it with a hammer.

You all, on the other hand, remain calm, patient and dependable--sending in your usual generous support for our operations, along with a little extra to help celebrate our 40th birthday. We've been able to count on you all these years, and believe me--we remember who "brung us." Our heartfelt thanks to all of you who have supported us in this drive, and a special thanks to our volunteers, and to the businesses who have donated the great daily drawing prizes: Old Forge Hardware, Mountain Man Outdoor Supply Company, Red Truck Pottery and Clayworks, and Northern Music and Video. You can still get your name in the hat for tonight's drawing on a set of handmade serving dishes from Red Truck. And tomorrow's winner can live out his or her rock'n'roll fantasy with a Fender guitar from the folks at Northern. Call 1-877-388-6277 or visit us at ncpr.org before the drive ends.

40 is the new 19

NCPR turns 40 tomorrow. Your fortieth birthday is supposed to be the one you dread--the first stale breath of mortality--but we're pretty excited. And not just because many of us at the station look way back over our shoulders (if our necks can still turn that far) on our own 40 candles. The celebration just happens to coincide with our annual March Membership Drive (Tuesday-Friday). Being ravenous public radio mendicants, we hope you will dig a little deeper this year to help secure our next four decades on the air, or on whatever platforms public broadcasting homesteads by 2048--cyberspace, hyperspace, digital telepathy, or multiverse transdimensional tachyon distribution.

Perhaps the century-old Magliozzi brothers will still be razzing the owners of junker hovercraft, and GK will be the world's oldest as well as tallest radio comedian. You never know. What we do know is that we won't get there without you and your support. To sweeten the deal we have some excellent swag on offer, including a geekly bonanza giveaway for early renewals.

Give early and often, and drop by anytime to see us on the radio.

Hypernation

Animal wisdom tells us that this is the time of year to lay low, to snooze--round the clock if possible. The thermometer is regularly below zero, the once-mellow meadows resemble the surface of the moon. Frogs are frozen freaking solid within the stony mud. But human contrariness insists that this is the time to get everything done, despite the brevity of bleak winter days. A dozen different projects are ramping up to speed all around the station. Fortieth anniversary events, concert plans, next month's member drive, the website redesign, conferences and collaborations, construction work. It never stops.

It all makes me, I confess, a little sleepy. But it must be the same impulse that got Cro-Magnon man through the last Ice Age: Want to stay warm?--Keep running. Just one more day on the trail and it's mammoth blubber for everybody! Unfortunately, it always seems to be the trail today, and the blubber tomorrow. And so it will go until the lilacs bloom. Until then, keep moving, and drink lots of hot chocolate.

Imaginary vacation

I had another writing assignment today, to write about an imaginary vacation for tonight's meeting of a local poet's group, but my nose is so firmly to the grindstone at NCPR that I am doing double-duty. Here is my offering, with apologies to our patient listeners in the Adirondacks, and to station engineer Bob Sauter for involuntarily sharing his little getaway.

Radio Bob's Vacation

At home, his voice mail fills with calls
from WXLH, Blue Mountain Lake.
but at Sosua by the Sea, I imagine Radio Bob
is adoze beside an aquamarine pool.

In his pocket, the cell phone vibrates urgently
but he can't tell it from the Magic Fingers
in his suite's king-size bed.

He turns over the tiny paper umbrella
from a tall cool drink, but it does not
remind him of a satellite dish.

On Blue Mountain, the NYSEG crew plods
through drifts; their bootprints lost in the blow.
I imagine Radio Bob is lost in thought, walking
the beach at Sosua by the Sea, his footprints
filling up behind him with surf.

His radio is tuned to the Caribbean World Series,
to reggaeton during the seventh inning stretch; it blast
sall across Latin America without his lifting a finger.
Life is good at Sosua by the Sea.

At home the transmitters fall like dominoes
away to the south. Homes fall silent but for
the drip of icicles on the sill. And Radio Bob
falls silent, contemplating nothing but the sweet breeze.

Obscure passages

If you have gotten past the homepage at NCPR in the last day or two, you'll have noticed that the new site design is starting to appear. My apologies for the interim confusion, but it is nothing compared to my own. It's ugly down in the crawl spaces of cyberspace. And the basic tools of web design are still primitive. Picture monks in the scriptorium, transcribing obscure passages from Leviticus by tallow lamp. Church Latin has nothing on javascript. What could "for (i=0; i<(args.length-2); i+=3) { test=args[i+2]; val=MM_findObj(args[i]);" mean? All I know for sure is that it is tiny and made of pixels I can barely read. And that you can't get the code wrong without sending people off to fan sites for Romanian calvary collectibles, or injecting heresy into scripture, or creating some other form of disproportionately large trouble. If by mischance you run horribly astray, just keep clicking. Eventually you will come across me in one of the sub-basements, busting my knuckles applying a torque wrench to a gunked-up function. We can help each other find the way back to daylight.

All things made new

Home renovation on the internet can be as messy and frustrating and time-consuming as in the real world. It's also prone to schedule creep, going over budget, etc. If you've been tuned in, you know that NCPR has moved into its 40th anniversary year, and you may have glimpsed our new logo on station correspondence. But so far you have not seen much at ncpr.org. That's about to change in the next few weeks, as we roll out our first complete website makeover since 2002. Things may be a little squirrely during the transition, with parts of the site being updated and part not. We'll do our best to keep the train on the tracks.

The look is intended to be more clean and contemporary, and more user-friendly to navigate and search. You will find that the menus will be consistent in content and location from the home page on throughout the site. The page itself is larger, taking advantage of the shift toward larger monitors in recent years. And we have taken a close look at how people are using the site to introduce some new pages that bring what people are looking for more front and center.
Take a sneak preview of the new design in progress.

It is a test page for the news section home page of the site. Most of the navigation works, sending you to pages in the old site. Some links to new pages do not work, and some of the destinations will have additional and/or changed content in the new design. But let us know what you think, quick, before I mess everything up. Email dale@ncpr.org.

In the family again

All week I have been looking at the home page at NCPR, seeing the holiday themed Photos of the Day, the winter reading list, a gingerbread house slideshow, the holiday specials schedule, etc. Everything you would expect for the holidays, except for the ongoing coverage of a dispute with our public radio neighbor to the south. I had planned to give the matter a rest today, and write some holiday anecdote here, such as an account of my marathon journey across the North Country in belated search of a Christmas tree.

Instead, a real holiday story has just fallen into my lap. As of 1:30 pm, NCPR has reached an agreement in principle with WAMC, Northeast Public Radio, that will settle the conflict to the benefit of all. Read the joint press release outlining the agreement.

Our warmest thanks to all who showed their concern and support. And best wishes to everyone for a joyous holiday season.

In the family

How you report the news when you have become the news is one of the most ticklish problems in journalistic ethics. A case in point is a story that will air in a few minutes on All Before Five, and again tomorrow (Friday) during the Eight O'Clock Hour. Recently, in a rare FCC "filing window" for applying for broadcast licenses, NCPR applied to upgrade its facility in Lake Placid to a higher-power license. Our public radio neighbor to the south, Northeast Public Radio (WAMC), also made an application that, if successful, would transfer the Lake Placid 91.7 fm frequency from NCPR to them.

The news was first aired in the region this morning on Saranac Lake station WNBZ, in a feature story by Chris Knight who, in addition to his duties at WNBZ, is a frequent freelance reporter for NCPR on Adirondack issues. While NCPR is committed to retaining the frequency on which it has served Lake Placid for over twenty years, we needed to find a way to cover the story in a fair and balanced way that would place the public interest ahead of the institutional interests of the station. Toward that end, the station manager and the news director sought advice from the Poynter Institute, an organization that provides training in journalistic ethics. They recommended that we use an outside editor with no connection to either of the parties to the dispute to oversee NCPR's coverage. Suzanna Capelouto, news director of Georgia Public Broadcasting, agreed to fill that role. The reporting by Chris Knight that you will hear on NCPR tonight and tomorrow was edited by her.

NCPR's position on the dispute and links to other coverage, including Northeast Public Radio.

Goldfish and radio

With the writers' strike going on in TV land, all the time-sensitive programs have folded their tents for the duration, and the new series episodes that were already in the can are running dry. Since I find the network and cable news impossible to stomach without the antacid of The Daily Show ready at hand, that leaves me thumbing down through the reality shows, the game shows, the one-and-a-half star movies, the obscure team sports, infomercials, and reruns from the 70s. I kind of knew it was this bad, but I never realized it was this much--from 2 to 998 and back to the top again. Fortunately the south wall of the living room has a hundred feet of books, and the east wall another hundred feet. Then there are the shelves in the back room, and the stash of books burying my bedside table. Also, of course, the neglected gems of the CD collection, and that friend who will always talk to you when no one else is around--the radio.

If it is absolutely necessary to stare at something from my rump-shaped depression in the sofa, a goldfish bowl placed on top of the TV will do the trick. Goldfish plus radio. You can get two fish and name one of them Ofabia Quist-Arcton, and the other Mandalit del Barco. You can paste an NPR logo on the lower right portion of the bowl. You can drape a gaily embroidered runner over the darkened TV.

Rate of Change

Things happen by fits and starts. There are rumors of change, meetings to plan this and that, and lots of waiting in between. Then--and I'm not sure if it's a fit or a start--everything happens at once, creating a level of chaos that requires, as Hunter Thompson says in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, "a real connoisseur of edge work." Such a fearful convergence rules the station today. The long anticipated building renovation is heralded by jackhammers and sawzalls, and the operation of a large orange crawler-thingie that causes the whole structure to shudder and groan as if was being chewed and shaken by a tyranosaurus. The production studio is gutted out to accommodate new gear to serve the next round of the UpNorth Music project. Joel contemplates a stupendous new computer screen that gives one cause to wonder, "How big is God's monitor?" And Radio Bob is teleporting himself back and forth between Waterman Hill, where our new transmitter tower is dragging itself up toward the stratosphere.

Amid this high craziness, more meetings are going on behind the plastic sheets that serve in place of windows in the station kitchen. Whatever comes of this round, it is likely to happen at the same time as everything else.

New territory

Welcome to those of the 348 brand new members of North Country Public Radio who are receiving this newsletter for the first time. Your generous contributions, joined with that of more than 2100 renewing members, have taken us well past our Fall Fundraiser goal to an unprecedented total: $307,912. Thanks to all our wonderful listeners, volunteers, organizations and businesses for an amazing show of support. You're all fabulous.

I think the thing that makes NCPR attractive to new members and listeners is that even though we are on the eve of our fortieth anniversary on the air, we keep doing new things: expanding our base with new transmitters this year in Chateaugay and Schroon Lake, expanding our offerings with new voices and programs, expanding public service through efforts like the UpNorth Music studio outreach project which is just wrapping up its first year, and the North Country Reads one community, one book project, now entering its third year.

Rather than ask listeners to help us maintain a comfortably familiar vehicle to cart us all off into retirement, we ask them to come along while we explore new arts and technologies, while we do our best to remake public service media according to the needs and possibilities of the new century. You aren’t going to believe what we get up to next year. Stay tuned.

Hundreds of villages

It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes hundreds of villages to raise and support a station like North Country Public Radio. All week, that support has been pouring in, from every "crick and holler" in the region, and from former strangers living everywhere from St. Johns, Newfoundland in Canada to La Canada in California. And it takes a volunteer effort on the scale of Hannibal's crossing of the Alps. 116 kind souls signed up to take shifts answering your calls. Hundreds of businesses contributed everything from composted manure to posh weekend getaways to encourage your support, along with copious food and drink to sustain the staff and volunteers. It's an incedible experience to be at the focal point of so much generosity, and a humbling one.

People sometimes poke fun at our "mendicant" business model. But I've got to tell you, it feels good--light years better than sending dunning notices to subscribers. Way better than having paid call services ringing you up at home during dinner. We're proud to do it the old-fashioned way--we ask, you give. And that's all it takes--except for lots of nerve, a powerful jawbone, gallons of sweat, and the amazing support of thousands. So we're feeling great, and we're doing great, well on the way to our goal of $290,000 and 450 new members by Saturday at 8 pm. If you haven't already, please take a moment now to support public radio in the North Country.

On to the next level

Thanks to everyone who suffered patiently last week and this while we struggled to recover from a major hacker attack on ncpr.org. We have almost everything back in shape, and now that the worst is past it is possible to see the episode in a more positive light--in a Darwinian sort of way. Having someone delete all our many thousands of audio files, like the prospect of being hung in the morning, concentrates the mind wonderfully. Consider the Permian extinction—the asteroid might have been very bad news for the dinosaurs, but it caused the little proto-rodents to kick their whole game up to the next level, on their way to becoming saber-tooth tigers, giant sloths, spider monkeys, and you and me.

I just don’t want you to think that I broke every page at the website--except the pledge page--in order to channel your attention toward our fall fundraiser, scheduled to leap out of your radios beginning 6 am on Monday. The pledge page and all member information are housed on high-security servers not connected to our public website and they were not affected. So--on to the next level, which in this case involves reaching a score of 290,000 points--if you’re playing a buck a point. But we are fearless and somewhat maniacal. With your help we’ll get there; you’re top players.

I look forward to hearing from you in the coming days.

Slack time

I seem to have been avoiding vacations lately, taking less time each year, dragging a laptop and cell phone everywhere, just in case. But I broke down and took a few days off in Maine this week, leaving the portable electronics at home. And the world seems to have kept up its regular rotation, even without me working the crank. I don't know why this should come as a surprise to me, considering that I fully expect the tide to rise and fall on schedule off Wells Beach whether I am there to watch it or not.

But we give so much to our jobs, if they engage us--all that time and sweat, all the plotting and the brainstorms. It should, by rights, all go to the devil as soon as we hit the outskirts of town. And the many places that try to do public radio without me--VPR, NHPR, WBUR, Maine Public Broadcasting, WAMU--they all (from my highway listening) seem to muddle through somehow. I can't explain it; I'll just have to rest up a little and give the matter some thought.

Looking in the mirror

If you ask somone to describe what they look like, they will usually stare blankly for an uncomfortable number of seconds, then tentatively offer a very few general details. As an organization, we found ourselves in that position recently, having engaged the services of that institutional version of the police sketch artist, a logo design firm. Like many approaching forty, we had decided that our old look was getting harder and harder to pull off, and that something saying "Twenty-First Century Me" was in order. Having worked as a graphic artist, I had some notion what a convoluted process this might become. It takes the sharp ears of a dog to hear the hints of direction, and the armored hide of a rhino to survive the feedback.

We have gone through multiple meetings and two extensive sets of sketches without getting quite there yet. But an unexpected bonus of the process has more than compensated for the angst and crossfire. For the first time in a long time, people all over the station are debating our essential identity, purpose, and meaning as an organization. And not just the usual loudmouths like me. We hope the visual fruit of the process will suit us and suit you as well. And we hope our designers will survive our zig-zagging and contradictory demands without constant recourse to whiskey. But the bull session is going great.

Shifting sands

Like many of you, I am a big fan of Chris Lydon, you might even say (to borrow one of his favored adjectives) an enormous fan. So it is with very real regret that I report the end, for now at least, of his innovative and lively evening program Open Source. The producers were unable to put together secure funding to continue national distribution, and made the difficult decision to suspend production this week. Chris has been a great exploiter of both the countertrend—an unabashed intellectual in the age of dumbing down--and of the coming trend--building a radio program upon the swiftly shifting sands of a community of bloggers. That community lives on at the Radio Open Source website, and I encourage you all to visit, join the conversation, and help in the process of either reestablishing the program, or inventing an even better platform for this remarkable radio talent and his remarkable team.

While it might be tempting to do something conventional to fill out this weekday evening slot, NCPR has decided to continue to cast its lot with innovation, introducing a new program--a new kind of program--for public radio audiences. Fair Game, with host Faith Salie (a Rhodes Scholar and a comedian), disassembles the news and events of the day and, with the help of newsmakers, notables, musicians and comics, reassembles it with wit and humor into something new. Please give it a listen, beginning Monday, July 2 at 7 pm, and let us know what you think.

Outside the box score

Covering an area the size of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, NCPR does not have the option to covers sports news in the same way your hometown paper or broadcaster can. There are just too many schools, sports, teams and events for us to do a comprehensive job. In fact, you could mark our graduation from being a college-based station to becoming a regional community broadcaster from the date that our intrepid station manager had to inform the university trustees that we would no longer be carrying Saints home games live. In a station retreat exploring the new possibilities of micro-journalism, Brian Mann maintained that the best that we could provide, given our huge footprint, was "the ethical illusion of localism." Ethical in the sense that we try to create a true reflection of the rich diversity of North Country life in all its aspects and locales, but illusion in the sense that we can't cover life in Glens Falls, for example, to the extent that the Post-Star can.

So what we look to do in sports reporting is to find the stories that best capture a slice of the sporting life unique to the region, that highlight athletes and sports that are shaped by the region's geography, weather and culture. And we look for sports you aren't likely to run across in the ESPN headlines. This has taken our reporters down some unique pathways, following wilderness marathoners and ice climbers, talking to students who write hockey poetry and profiling zamboni drivers, covering rutabaga curling and NASCAR bobsledders, an ironworker decathalon and the competition to create the world's loudest car stereo. This "outside the box score" approach to the topic has brought our news team carriage on national programs such as Only a Game, and frequent broadcaster awards for individual features. This week, the 2007 National Edward R. Murrow Award for Sports Reporting went to Brian Mann for his August 2006 feature on the Mountaineers Old Boys from Saranac Lake, local favorites in the 33rd Can-Am Rugby tournament. Give it a listen on today's news page, or in the news archive.

Geek pride

The leaves are halfway out, the black flies are all the way out, and lightning is driving the golfers off the course behind the station the way the angel with the flaming sword evicted humanity from the Garden. A perfect May day in the North Country. But it can do its worst outside, as long as the power holds out—I’m deep in the guts of ncpr.org and might as well be in a mine for all I care about the weather. Tweaking screenloads of gibberish to make infinitesimal improvements in the community calendar, rendering down volumes of old static content for the few drippings that will add to the savor of the database. I may not be able to move mountains, but I can move domains--clicking away in the half-light and chuckling to myself.

Aside from the somewhat rarified pleasures described above, yesterday brought a long-awaited satisfaction. A public version of NCPR’s homebrew web content management system, Public Media Manager, has long been on offer to other stations in the public broadcasting system. And I was beginning to feel like a guy who puts all this good stuff out by the road, and weeks later, no one has taken a thing. No more. First dibs goes to the Bloomington, Indiana community station WFHB, who filed off the software’s serial numbers, installed a roll bar and Hollywood mufflers, painted it all metalflake purple, and took it out on the road. Check it out: http://news.wfhb.org.

It’s like watching the kids grow up. I think I’ll print out a screen shot and tape it up on the refrigerator.

Five ounce bag

Ever since I was a kid, everything has been getting smaller—phones, computers, stereos, my old neighborhood, the dollar—everything except soft drinks and baseball players. So one of the pleasures of working online is the seemingly infinite expansiveness of the work space. I think of my twin monitors as viewscreens on the bridge of the Enterprise, peering into vast domains as I bark orders and warp my way through galaxies of cyberstuff.

NCPR Online is entering the seventh year of its voyage to explore strange new worlds, so I’ve been doing a complete fresh backup onto the studio computer: tens of thousands of files, gigabytes of audio, video, and pictures, whole library stacks of text. Six years of work by a hardworking bunch. All this vastness squeezing down the tubes of the internet into what? A bite-size corner of a five-ounce hard drive. It just doesn’t seem right. The sucker must be made of dilithium, or neutronium or something. Right under my desk. It’s a wonder it doesn’t collapse into itself like a black hole. Or reach some critical mass and explode, blasting out the windows with the long lost voices of Jody Tosti and Gregory Warner, blowing off the roof with old news and art exhibits, festooning toxic blog debris miles downrange. It scares me just to look at it.

Swing away the gantry

Radio people are as susceptible to their fantasy lives as anyone else. There are three basic fantasies endemic to the public radio crowd. There is the hot DJ fantasy—“Just let me have my own show and I can put together all that great music that gets lost in the shuffle. Etruscan nose-yodeling just doesn’t get the airplay it deserves.” Then there’s the Ira Glass fantasy—the pernicious desire to put together long-form essays that are witty, ironic, hip, intimate and surprising. How hard can it be? (Don’t make us play the demos.) But the most serious condition arises from the Garrison Keillor fantasy. “Let’s put together a two-hour variety program, with a studio audience, aired live. Garrison does it once a week; surely we can do it once. Doesn’t it always turn out great when Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney and the kids put together a show in the barn in those movies from the ‘30s?”

Weeks of sweat and panic later, drafting help from anyone unwise enough to come in range, we’re finally almost ready for tomorrow night’s live Open Studio special. Now we know how Garrison does it—decades of experience, scores of bodies, tractor trailers full of equipment, and a limitless supply of nerve. Maybe we’ll tackle Ira next; or maybe it’s time to launch Bagpipe Fever.

Tough sledding

Radio Bob is on arctic safari today, hauling radio gear by snow machine up through the ice fields on Blue Mountain. If his mission to replace our damaged antenna is a success, we will be able to stop apologizing to everyone in the central and southern Adirondacks, who have had the insult of no radio added to the injury of a late spring storm. The Blue Mountain facility is a central distribution point for us, feeding our signal on to other transmitters in North Creek, Lake George, Glens Falls, Newcomb and Speculator. We hope to have good news soon. Thanks to everyone for their patience.

This has been a tough week for public broadcasting infrastructure in the North Country. Mountain Lake PBS suffered the collapse of its 400-foot broadcast tower during bad weather on Lyon Mountain. On the other hand, it looks like cell-phone service will soon be extended onto the currently uncovered stretches of the Northway, with the just-announced agreement between the Spitzer administration and Verizon.

It pays to be humble before the power of the weather, though as it turns out, the weather will humble us whether we agree or not. But this just in—the good news I hinted at above--Radio Bob reports the fix is done, and all the transmitters are on. Weather permitting, of course.

Dread air

It was 4:25 am when my phone rang and the voice of Radio Bob delivered the prerecorded message “Gee! It’s awfully quiet here at North Country Public Radio.”--the silence detector on the transmitter telling me that my hasty training as cub radio tech acolyte was about to be put to the test. My first reaction was “Good grief, don’t you realize you’ve reached an English major?” But I was soon engaged in remote viewing of the dimly-understood station automation system via my laptop at home. No joy. So I put on my coffee and drank some clothes and by 5 am was at the station, clueless, but proud to serve. First I woke Joel Hurd from his well-deserved rest to interrogate the transmitter, then I woke Radio Bob in mid-getaway at a downstate hotel room. Yelling “Help” real loud is within my skill set.

Soon Bob was talking to Joel in the studio on one cell phone, and to me—exiled to our Waterman Hill transmitter shack to read dials—on another cell phone. This made it hard for him to use his hand puppets. While Joel may be an engineer, he's a production engineer, and compared to a radio engineer, that’s about as relevant as being a choo-choo engineer. As for me, the web manager—that may sound techy, but web geeks think radio technology is made up of tyuubes and—things. Actually, with the online stream still working, I was thinking “Ha—so much for the legacy platform, it’s time for the true masters of cyberspace to rule. MWAA-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Some hours later Bob had distilled enough information from the mash of our ignorance to make a diagnosis, and Ellen Rocco and Sandy Demarest dispatched themselves south on a high-tech treasure hunt. They brought back a brand new stochastic deverbillator (or something like that) and a mere eleven hours after the dreaded call, we were back on the air. For those who take an interest in the technical specs; it was a metal box, sort of rectangular in shape. I think it may have contained both tyuubes—and things.

Pretty good radio

Fundraiser is coming around again, starting Monday, and one of the things it brings to us twice a year is an opportunity to reflect on just what it is we do. At NCPR, the job set is so eclectic that demented dilettantism might be a phrase that captures the spirit. You might say that it is our job to make ADD look good. So we endeavor to be great at being pretty good at everything. This puts us in line, I think, with the spirit of work as practiced in the North Country, where every job description has the closing caveat borrowed from auction notices “And much miscellaneous, too numerous to mention.”

There are a whole slew of projects on the burner, ranging from the UpNorth Music studio outreach project to the North Country Reads one book, one community project. We will be helping public broadcasters do better online via shared resources at PubForge. I find that I will be involved in creating and maintaining a PubForge wiki—and I don’t know a wiki from a kiwi—but I’m willing to give it a shot. We’ll be turning some attention toward a new project, the Public Radio Talent Quest. There’s a new Book by Email, There’s a new audio play by Betsy Kepes set in an 1890s schoolhouse. We will be building a big chunk of webspace to examine the “Summer of Love” during its fortieth anniversary year. You get the point—we’ll try nearly anything, and I think our track record is, well--pretty good. There’s a lot more to public broadcasting than grabbing a signal off the satellite and passing it on to your radio. At least that’s what we think—when we have any time to think.

Postcard of doom

Writing in haste again, taking a break between sessions at my annual geekfest, the Integrated Media Associates Conference, this year in Boston. Nice for me, because I get to bunk with friends in Medford and hang out a little with my daughter in her adopted town. Yesterday was the hard-core techie sessions, with a higher concentration of bluetooth ear phones and bitty foldout keyboards than anywhere outside freshman orientation at MIT. Once again, it's the end of the world as we know it, according to keynoter Michael Rosenblum, video journalism guru. The explosion of services like You Tube represent the tipping point from old media to new. That is, from centralized, cash-fat and exclusive media, to lean, inclusive, democratic media. "Adapt or Die!" is the cry. The difference this year is that CEOs and senior producers are joining the ranks of the believers and the terrified. The message is received, but what will be done with it is totally up for grabs.

Somewhere the mix of social networking, blogging, visitor submitted video, audio and text will intersect with professional curation, the necessary resources, and the deep storytelling expertise of old media to create a synthesis that doesn't have a name yet. At least that is the hope. The alternative looks like holding stock in buggy whips and Betamax. That expressionless psuedo-personality The Market, as always, shrugs and says "Tough noogies." Next up, a day of sessions at MIT, with the title (ominous to many in the room) of "Beyond Broadcasting."

Close to the bone

So much of the news, particularly the headline variety, just flows by, lost in the background clutter of life. Another bombing, another storm, another debate, a new candidate, a famous passing, an expert head articulating a sage opinion. We are poorly equipped to absorb information via newscasts and sound bites. Our ears have been trained by a hundred thousand years around the campfire, and what we want is a story. The news is beamed to us from without, but a story is something we can climb into and experience, as if it had happened to us. This is the power of narrative, and when the right story comes along, it not only sweeps the news aside, it colors our hearing of all the news thereafter.

I think of the dry-as-dust debate now current on the costs and prospects of the war and the merits of this strategy or that for going forward--the carefully tuned language, the assembling of consensus around various resolutions--and then I think of the story this week about a horribly wounded soldier and his brother’s reassignment from the war zone to Walter Reed in order to care for him, and of his family’s move to DC to help out. I could put myself in the place of the soldier, or the place of the brother, or the displaced sister-in-law. I could not put myself in the place of the committee chair or the think-tank pundit. And so I hear the war news now with an ear borrowed from that family’s experience.

Closer to home is the story of a couple whose car went off the Northway, unseen on a bitter night. The husband froze while his wife tried to raise help in a cell phone dead zone. Anyone who has driven winter roads in the North Country long enough has been in that car, watching the windows frost up, listening to the silence. Years of debate on how and when and who and whether to build out phone coverage along the road has changed overnight. No one will be able to speak on this issue again, without reference to this story. And I doubt another winter will come without a network in place. The various stakeholders will work it out--because the story runs too close to the bone.

Change is gonna come

The program director’s job is one of the toughest in radio. I give regular thanks that it is Jackie Sauter's, not mine. At the core of the job is the mandate to keep the sound fresh, to find voices both diverse and comprehensive, to balance the need for information with the need for entertainment, and to have a global view of everything that goes out over our air. It requires an exquisitely tuned ear, telepathic connection to the audience, a thorough understanding of mission, and a bushel basketful of tact and sensitivity. The test of these qualities comes at times of trepidation and excitement, at times of change, like now.

Beginning Monday, February 5, NCPR will be refreshing its weekday lineup with a number of new programs. At 2 pm weekdays, Dick Gordon, the much-missed former host of The Connection will return to NCPR with his new program, The Story, which looks at the world through the real-life experiences of ordinary people, with the aid of the innovative Public Insight Journalism service. At 1 pm on Friday, we will introduce a variety of limited series and specials, beginning with Radio Lab, the imaginative science series from WNYC. Open Source, formerly heard once a week and a day late, Wednesday at 2 pm, will now be carried live and in full Monday-Thursday at 7 pm. The program offers analysis, commentary and features, developed through a unique network of bloggers and citizen journalists, and is hosted by the peerless Chris Lydon.

To accommodate these additions, weekday broadcast of The World and Performance Today will be moved back one hour, to 8 pm and 9 pm respectively. The Folk Show will also move, from 8 pm to 7 pm on Friday. Please give these new programs an advance peek at their websites above and, as always, let us know what you think about these or any of our programs. Write jackie@ncpr.org.

Makeover

It’s the hinge of the year, when the old passes away to make room for the new. The day has shrunk as far as it will go, and has started to expand toward summer again—no matter what your bones tell you come January. New toys, new clothes and gizmos, books and baubles—they’re just waiting to be unwrapped. Food and festival, company and cacophony, we all cut loose a little before the long wintering-in.

In the spirit of the season, NCPR has renewed the look and content of all our email publications. The shiny new makeover of our daily headlines email began on Monday, including more information on each news story, and adding in all the day’s events from the Community Calendar. There's a new (and improved, I hope) Listening Post. Tomorrow, the new design of our weekly topical news briefs will debut, and come the new year, we will begin a new work in our Books by Email serial. Please drop me a line at dale@ncpr.org with your reaction on unwrapping the new goodies, and any suggestions for improvement. All my best for the season, and for the new and improved year ahead.

You can look it up

Everybody is talking about the Hamilton-Baker Commission's Iraq Study Group Report—what it means and doesn't mean, who is for it and against it, whether each of its recommendations will work or not work, and on and on. One of the truly useful things to come with the internet age is the instant availability of documents that just ten or so years ago would have meant a month's wait and a visit to a major reference library. President Bush received his copy yesterday at 11 am, and by 11:02 am NCPR had a link to the complete text on its home page, and by 11:15 am I had my own copy downloaded to my desktop. I may read all of it, or part of it, but now I no longer have to rely on someone else's interpretation of what it says. This may seem like a small matter, but in the long run, I think it could be analogous to the publication of inexpensive vernacular editions of the Bible. The church was never the same afterward. Not this one report per se--but the breaking of the monopoly hold that the modern priesthood of politicians, pundits and experts of all stripes has on the basic source material of the public conversation.

The NCPR news crew has been diligent about linking to original source material related to their individual stories, but there has never been one location where someone could go to find the public records, the original plans and studies, the text of legislation and agreements and proposals that drive public policy in the region. NCPR Online is now in the process of building a Public Records section to collect primary source documents that relate to all aspects of life in the region. This is a job that everyone can get in on—please. Recommend an archive site, a single document, historical materials, search tools, whatever you have run across that helps you get to the root of public matters in the North Country. Email radio@ncpr.org.

Made redundant

While visiting my daughter Elena a few weeks ago in Boston, I had her place to myself for a few hours while she and my wife left to engage in the retail form of mother-daughter bonding. I thought I would take the opportunity to check out some major-market public radio and tune in WBUR or WGBH and see what they were up to. At first I thought there were just too many buttons and doohickeys on her stereo for me to find the fm tuner—but it turns out there wasn't one. And no clock/radio in the bedroom—and no kitchen radio/CD combo, no boom box, no shower radio. No radio! If she hadn't stolen my favorite Django Reinhart CD when she left town, I'd worry that I had raised some kind of changeling cultural mutant.

As it turns out, she does listen to a little radio--even NCPR—on her laptop. Back when Al Gore and I invented the internet, we had theorized that one consequence might be that people would want to listen to what they wanted to listen to, when they wanted to. But no radio?—ouch! She gets the news from websites and headlines email—she gets music from sharing and download sites; she gets recommendations via web and IM and the murmur network of an active urban scene. In other words, she gets what I get from radio, elsewhere. Just as living a block from the Davis Square T has replaced her need for a car, broadband in the home coupled with an iPod Nano has replaced most of the need for a radio. And she is one of a growing legion. Hang it up with the buggy whip?—I don't think so. But it does underscore the necessity for anyone who is serious about having a future in broadcasting to provide services that are not duplicated or available in the growing elsewhere of new media. The next generation does not listen to network pass-through stations. The network content is—well—on the network, anytime they want it. In the new world, you have to be making your own. And you have to put it where they want it, when they want it. But just for luck, I've put an iPod fm tuner add-on on Elena's stocking-stuffer list.

Telepathy not required

Despite the forces of globalization and the popularity of mega-mall culture, people persist in "going local" whenever they get the opportunity. We may live increasingly in a global village, but we still have to rely on our neighbors. The Malaysian blogger you spend time online with does live in "the village," but he is not going to help you get your car out of the snowbank. And the flavor of local produce in season speaks louder than any ad. This gives me confidence in the future of community-based radio, despite the breathless claims of satellite and internet radio pom-pommers. That--and the consistent enthusiastic generosity of our listeners whenever we ask them to support our work on the air. Customers buy what and when they want, but a neighbor helps out whenever you ask--just as long as the feeling goes both ways. If you think NCPR has been a good neighbor to you in the past year, you don't have read our minds to find out we need your help to get by. Just tune in; we're asking.

Ground Control to Major Dale

We're getting ready to retract the gantry, which is all that restrains the lean, mean fundraising machine at NCPR. Organized, busy, determined, maybe a slight bit maniacal--it's like the flight ops center before a moon launch around here. People whip up and down the halls, focused, too busy for chit-chat. Joel has a headset on one ear and a phone in the other, staring at the waveforms of promos on the screen. June is vibrating at a frequency so high only dogs can hear it. The thank-you tanks are loaded to maximum capacity with mugs and member paraphenalia. Website? Website green to go. Pitch room? Loaded. Pastry product control? Optimum. Caffeination? Roger that. T-minus three days and counting--then we fire this puppy off. Thanks to all for the high-gee ride.