Endowing NCPR: Adirondack News Fund

Print and mail a form to pledge your gift to the NCPR Adirondack Endowment Adirondack News Bureau Adirondack News Page Chief: Brian Mann Email: brian@ncpr.org Phone: 518-891-9708

NCPR's Adirondack Campaign Committee Chair joins NCPR as a recipient of the Adirondack Museum's Adirondack Museum's Harold K. Hochschild Award. Congratulations Meredith! From left to right, John Fritzinger, Chairman of the Board; Meredith M. Prime; and Caroline M. Welsh, the museum's Director.

Adirondack News Fund Campaign: Only $340,000 to go to reach $2,000,000 Goal

This campaign is about independence - the independence to tell our stories, to capture our voices, to connect with each other across the six million-acre Adirondack Park. Independence is only possible with secure funding free from the influence of funding based on the political or economic environment.

And so we are raising a permanent fund in support of NCPR's Adirondack News Bureau, ensuring our independence and continuity in the Adirondack Park.

Meeting the FINAL Adirondack Service Challenge:

We are so close….generous friends have come together to create a challenge fund to help us reach our ultimate goal of $2,000,000. They hope to inspire those who care about NCPR and the Adirondacks. Margot and John Ernst, Lee and Nancy Keet, Meredith Prime, Michael Ellis and Kathleen Hanna, Sarah and Linda Cohen and Larry and Nancy Master will match every gift of $1,000 or more.

Your gift of $1,000 or more, pledged before January 1, 2009, will be matched dollar for dollar. If you can invest $5,000, it will mean $10,000 for NCPR’s Adirondack Service. If you can invest $100,000, it will mean $200,000 for your station.

*You do not have to pay your full pledge during the challenge year; you simply must pledge and agree to a payment schedule of up to three years.

For more information, please email Susan Sweeney Smith, susan@ncpr.org, call toll-free 1-877-388-6277, or use the printable pledge form mail it to:

Susan Sweeney Smith
North Country Public Radio
St. Lawrence University
Canton, New York 13617

Thanks to our Generous Leadership Donors

• Anonymous Generous Friends: North Creek, Inlet, Glens Falls, Keene Valley, Blue Mountain Lake, Lake Placid, Lake Clear
• Ann Adams & Gerry Kusler
• Jackie Altman
• Michael & Ellen Bettmann
• Chip & Sandy Bissell
• Jack & Eve Bogle
• Jim & Marcia Brooks Family
• Rhonda Butler & David Brunner
• David & Lucy Carson
• Mike & Kathy Clarke
• Sarah & Linda Cohen
• Joe & Rita Coney
• Sara Jane & William DeHoff
• Paul Dooling & Sandra Danussi
• Baird & Nancy Edmonds
• Michael Ellis & Kathleen Hanna
• Margot & John Ernst
• Evergreen Fund
• Gloria Fant
• Jay & Dorothy Federman
• Linda & John Friedlander
• Joan & Reg Gignoux
• Barbara Glaser
• Hank & Marion Hofmann
• Steve & Judy Hopkins
• Jack & Connie Hume
• Tim Kemp & Suzanne Miller
• Chris & Tom Kershner
• Leslie Anne & Jim King
• Bob & Judy Lievense
• Dan & Carol Luthringshauser
• Bud & Joanne Maddocks
• Brian Mann & Susan Waters
• Larry & Nancy Master
• Charles McCutchen
• Ed & Becky Milner
• Allan Newell
• Bengt & Polly Ohman
• Mary Beth & Michael Peabody
• Carol & Glenn Pearsall
• Carol Poole
• Rooney & Dick Poole
• Meredith Prime
• Prospect Hill Foundation
• Pooh & Charlie Ritchie
• Ellen Rocco
• Mike & Lora Schultz
• Grant Simmons
• Harriet & Andrew Singer
• Charles & Sally Svenson
• Susan Sweeney Smith
• Aileen Townsend & Peter Paravati
• Barrie Vanderpoel
• Carter & Julia Walker
• Phyllis Wendt Pierce
• Sandy & Joan Weill
• Tricia & Philip Winterer
• Cecil & Gilda Wray
• Peter & Kathy Wyckoff
• Fran Yardley & Burdette Parks
• Tony Zazula
  

NCPR's Adirondack Service Fund is managed by the The Adirondack Community Trust based in Lake Placid.

About Listening

from Bill McKibben

Think of the Adirondacks and what sound comes to mind? The crack of a beavertail against an evening pond, perhaps, or the pines sighing in the breeze. Depending on the season, maybe the sound of a skate blade cutting into black ice, or the muffled semi-silence of a fat-flaked snowfall.

But 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, only one sound can be heard in virtually every corner of the park: the sound of North Country Public Radio. This vast region, bigger than Vermont or Massachusetts, has no newspaper that reaches every town, no tv station of its own. The only media source that ties together the park comes from the 19 transmitters scattered around the region.

Those antennas transmit dependable news from the outside world: Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and the rest of public radio's national offerings. But they also bring engaged, accurate, and comprehensive coverage of the Adirondacks, knitting together the diverse towns and hamlets.

One day Brian Mann, the Adirondack bureau chief, may be covering the ninety-miler canoe race, or following forest rangers as they try to cope with the bears at Marcy Dam. The next he may be focusing on how tiny North Country parishes cope with the loss of priests, or finding out what life is like inside the park's many prisons. Meanwhile, station manager Ellen Rocco, host of Readers and Writers on the Air, regularly interviews some of the nation's finest authors. Local folk and classical musicians appear many afternoons on the station's diverse music programs. Every year NCPR wins a skein of regional and national awards for its news and cultural coverage; and every year it wins new listeners among all kinds of Adirondackers.

Church supper coming up? Snowstorm appearing on the western horizon? North Country Public Radio is not only the best place to find out, it's often the only place. And in an emergency-the great ice storm of 1998, the creeping forest fires of 2002--it becomes clear just how much all of us who live and vacation here depend on the station. Not only that--if you listen to NPR's national news programs, you've doubtless heard how often NCPR's features are picked up for airing across the country. No station its size matches its contribution to the national network, a real tribute to its journalistic skill.

Now is the chance to guarantee the future of the station. Its listeners and business underwriters continue to be generous in their contributions, supporting the basic day to day expense of running the station with annual pledges. But that support is stretched thin in an area of modest incomes and sparse population. It's hard to make ends meet when trees outnumber people a thousand to one in your broadcast area.

And in recent years NCPR has taken on additional expenses. The Adirondack News Bureau, based at Paul Smith's College, represents the station's unique commitment to coverage of the mountains. But it's extraordinarily rare for a public radio station to operate a satellite bureau, and the cost is considerable. Meanwhile, the advent of new technologies represents new opportunities and new costs. The station's website has become the clear hub for regional news and events--one of the best in the nation. This service needs sustaining support.

And so, for the first time, the station is undertaking a major endowment drive. The money, which will be invested by an external proven team of advisors, will be used to underwrite those new programs that go beyond the daily operations of the station

I believe in North Country Public Radio. I know and trust its staff. Most important: none of us who live or vacation in the Park could really imagine being in the Adirondacks without the station.