John Bracken

Last year I criticized the English-language media, and local public media in particular, for missing the build-up to the mass immigrant marches. We saw a flood of coverage in the days before this year’s May Day protests, including articles looking at the effects of deportations on families in, for starters, the Chicago Tribune, New York Times, and the Chicago Sun Times. Later this week Chicago Public Radio/WBEZ’s Catrin Einhorn is reporting on the Cumbre de Migrantes in Morelia, Michoacan. On Tuesday morning she profiled one of the driving forces of the conference, 58 year-old Southside hairdresser and CONFEMEX founder Marcia Soto.

SOTO IN TRANSLATION: I think it’s a unique event, because until now, we immigrants haven’t had an event where we were the principal actors. There are always events with academics, politicians, foundations, talking about migrants, and the migrants are usually not there. This time, the migrants organized the event, we’ve invited a lot of different people, but the principal actors and the organizers are the migrants.

At the summit, Soto herself will discuss the social cost of immigration on families who leave and on those who stay behind, and she’ll talk about transnational advocacy.

Transnational is the key word: immigrant groups are increasingly active in both their countries of origin and where they live now.

(I have found little blogging, in any language, about the conference, which begins Thursday.)

Chicago Public Radio/WBEZ’s long-awaited schedule change finally took effect this month. (Previous post here.)  I generally agree with Stephen Rynkiewicz’s comments, written before the change, though I dig the Beeb:

Any format change takes the current audience out if its comfort zone, whether in a radio schedule, an evening newscast or a redesigned alternative weekly. WBEZ deserves time to work on a better use of its airtime. Starting with a lineup of BBC and Radio Polonia rebroadcasts, there’s plenty of room for improvement.

Of course, I miss the jazz, and I was sad to lose Encanto Latino, but I liked the idea of the change.  And so far,  I’m fine with the (still likely to be tweaked, I imagine) weeknight programming,  which includes the World and repeats of Worldview . This morning I was happy to (groggily) discover Smart City. On the Media has been pushed back to Sunday at 11. As a consequence, I can now listen to OTM, via podcast, more than 24 hours before it hits the local airwaves. [Last week, OTM interviewed Ron Deibert about Psiphon and had a piece on the Project for Excellence in Journalism's News Coverage Index.] I doubt BEZ loses many listeners due to the podcast, however: any media nerds listening to the show on podcast are likely spending plenty of time with other BEZ programs.

More listener comments, again, made before the change, are at NPR Junkie.

In honor of my new shuffle, I send congratulations to WBEZ for producing the most popular podcast on iTunes, This American Life, as well as the fifth most popular, WWDTM. Apple also debuted iTunes Latino this month. (So far, the highlight is the Ozomatli playlist, which includes Horace Andy, Fishbone and Bad Brains.)

Here’s the iTunes Latino ad with the Kumbia Kings cover of Maldita Vecindad; I prefer the original, which follows.

The radio alarm clock clicked on this morning to the sonorous tones of local blogger, and Chicago Public Radio new media geek, Josh Andrews doing his part on the pledge drive. Pledge drive normally serves as an excuse for sampling the commercial side of the dial. This morning, motivated by the Bears squeaker yesterday, I checked out the local am sports shows. (This despite the fact that I have access to three, and weather permitting, four other good non-commercial stations.) I started with the syndicated morons of sports radio. (Note the up-to-date web site with links to previews of the baseball and football seasons.) I could take only a few seconds before switching Chicago’s own local sports xenophobe, who was, alas, no more compelling

Luckily, I ended up back on WBEZ, pledge drive or no and heard Mandalit del Barco’s moving story on Mayaguez’s Jesus Montalvo, the 55th Puerto Rican soldier to die in Iraq.

“He was the all-American guy, he believed in the United States,” Lopez says. “I disagree with the reasons why they made this war. But one thing is for sure — I really miss him. He was my hero. I have a hole in my heart. That’s the only way I can describe it.”

Joe Taylor, Jr., Plneslon and Pleh have recently shared thoughts on how public radio could be paid for in the future. Plnelson:

There’s a complete disconnect between payments and services provided in the public radio model! I contribute money to local NPR stations which support programs I DON’T listen to and then I listen for FREE to programs from other stations I’ve never paid a cent for. It’s insane. It’s like buying tickets to Celtics games so you can go to Boston Chamber Music Society concerts for free.

Joe Taylor:

under the present public radio hierarchies, shows cannot raise funds on their own from listeners.

Folks on the Open Source blog are asking Christopher and his team to post a PayPal address so they can send in donations. Which would be fantastic if Lydon were producing a podcast from his own office. But, to get Open Source on the radio, he cannot — under any circumstances — accept a single dollar from a listener.

By its own charter, NPR cannot raise funds directly. And public radio program directors will not schedule a show that threatens to make an “end run” around traditional station fund drives.

Finally, here’s the way I like to remember public media pledge drives:

Via Jake (in more ways than one?), the Boston Globe’s Alex Beam asks how the Kroc donation in November, 2003 has changed NPR. His answer is, not enough. But he finds a silver lining at Navy Pier:

So, if you pumped $225 million into the public radio system — the Kroc endowment spins off about $10 million a year — listenership would go up, right? Um, no. At a big NPR confab in Philadelphia last week, programmers learned that “the public radio audience is starting to decline after long, steady growth,” according to Lydon’s blog…What was once an insurgent radio movement now sounds like Chet Huntley reading the evening news. Call it NPR Classic. But NPR management won’t put the old warhorses like Cokie and Linda out to pasture for fear of alienating the loyal listeners who answer the bell during pledge drives.

The solution? NPR Remix. Chicago Public Radio is setting up an alternative public radio station, which NPR itself once was, to rope in younger, hipper listeners. “It’s going to be focused heavily on the region, with plenty of user-generated content,” a spokeswoman explains. Plus they have a sense of humor; check out their website, www.secretradioproject.com . It won’t be a secret for long.

• World Cup Joy: Ecuador is, my cousin-in-law was sure to tell me, the most dominant team in the tournament so far. Frustration: Trinidad and Tobago pulled off a miracle for about 60 minutes today before the world's fifth-most famous Lillipudlian entered and brought us back to reality. (I owe an apology to my lunch companions for so rudely staring at the TV over their shoulders over burritos today.) We can still listen to the dreams of Radio Open Source,which tackled the world's biggest social event with World Cup on Wednesday and an ongoing discussion. (Thanks to Jake for the tip.) From Brendan's introduction:

…as an American it’s my fate to never really care about the American soccer team…

This year Trinidad and Tobago made the tournament, according to the BBC favored to win at 1000 to 1. The “Soca Warriors,” they’re called, from a Trinidadian dance. The evening the warriors qualified, podcaster Georgia Popplewell recorded noise on the street in Trinidad that she describes as “blaring car horns, rhythm sections, stream of consciousness, slightly distorted audio and the sounds of a country in the throes of ecstasy.”…What is it for you? Did you marry into a soccer nation? Were you born in one? What was your best World Cup summer?

• Global Voices is onto its second podcast episode, with skype interviews and a mention of some soccer tournament.
• Lost Remote reports that "Mark Cuban is the sole investor in a upcoming website called ShareSleuth which will focus on investigative business journalism." More info at Talking Biz News.
• Chris Pirillo says NPR needs OPML. Sounds good to me:

I’m asking the NPR gods: please give us a single, permanent OPML URL? You can keep the same dichotomy, just put in a more transportable / importable format. If the NPR OPML is always at the same URL, we can always have the latest set of NPR shows a finger-click away.

• Nerd War: Star Trek v. Star Wars
• Gnarles Barkley goes retro. (To put this into perspective, imagine some hippsters in 1977 dressing up as Hope and Crosby, or Astaire and Garland.)

WNYC produces some great shows– On the Media and the Brian Lehrer Show chief among them. For the rest of the month, WNYC is experimenting with a new program– its first new talk show in quite awhile. The Conversation sounds similar to Chris Lydon's Radio Open Source (which WNYC airs nightly)– but with a focus on the world's capital city. Last night's show included stories on Iraq, immigration and Net Neutrality. The much-admired Daljit Dhaliwal is hosting this week. The Conversation promisess to feature "a diverse spectrum of people with an incredibly wide range of views."

You’ve probably exchanged thousands of glances with strangers on the subway, on line at the supermarket, or at your local dog run without ever saying a word. But in New York, any stranger can instantly become an acquaintance, or a new friend, when you start a conversation about the issues that matter to you.

The Conversation connects you with the people around you…

How will the show use WNYC.org? How will it use the web? Will they successfully leverage virtual communities like Flickr? What does it have in common with Chicago Public Radio's WBEW experiment? Unlike WBEW, WNYC does not have the advantage of starting with a new station– to add a show, they will necessarily disappoint a set of listeners by dropping an existing show, a reality played out in its comments page .

The Washington Post has an article on Fort Wayne, Ind. native Daemarcus Beasley, US footballer, and my favorite ex-Chicago Fire. Is he, a non-immigrant from a city, the future of American soccer or an exception?

Beasley is a native of …With little or no soccer on TV at the time, he and his brother Jamar, a former MLS journeyman, would head to Soccer House on Coliseum Boulevard in Fort Wayne and buy European highlight tapes. DaMarcus's favorite player was French legend Michel Platini — "the way he commanded midfield" — while his brother liked Pele…"We would go into our backyard and try to emulate moves and do different things, just me and my brother. We really didn't have anyone to play with growing up."

Asked if any of his classmates knew who Platini was, he said: "Definitely not. Nobody knew what soccer was. . . . Things have changed a lot."

But I wonder how much things have really changed–Ft. Wayne kids can now find Zizou and Ronaldinho highlights (and imitations) on YouTube– but are there many more soccer players?

UPDATE: Check out Chicago Public Radio's World Cup blog:

As President Bush said, "you're either with us or you're with the Angolans"
Actually he didn't really say that, but he did say this…
'And some of us older fellas are starting to understand how important the World Cup is for the whole world.'
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=367373&cc=5739

Josh Andrews points out that hipster beverage of choice PBR is sponsoring NRP's All Songs Considered, "the online ghetto where NPR execs send anything that smells "hip" or "indie"….What's next, Urge Overkill on Prarie Home Companion?" (When not blogging, Josh is senior content developer for Chicago's WBEZ, where, among other things, he administers the Chicago Public Radio Flickr group, that I mentioned previously.)

Beer and public radio reminds me of my favorite Saturday morning show. No, not Car Talk, but rather Chuck Mertz's This is Hell on WNUR, brought to us by National Beer. The highlight of yesterday's show was the interview with Time Wise, "author of two new books, "White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son" (Soft Skull Press), and "Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White" (Routledge). Tim wrote the Counterpunch story "Of Immigrants and 'Real Amurkans'"
Today's the first Sunday of the month, which means that WLUW will air the Drinking & Writing Brewery Radio show tonight at 6. The show explores "the connection between creativity and alcohol."

A couple of non-beer related public radio notes:

I had my first experience with XM satellite radio flying on Air Tran last month. I was overwhelmed, flipping back and forth between the country stations America and Hank's Place, Fuego (reggaeton), and Soul Street. Thus, I can now relate to the thoughts of XM subscriber Chris at Code Intensity:

I’m finding I rarely listen to radio. It just plain sucks, so it’s almost irrelevant that it’s free. If I don’t listen to it, then the cost doesn’t matter. XM on the other hand is awesome…. keep free radio, but at least make it compelling, otherwise, free or not, it’ll be irrelevant.

My new favorite weekend Chicago show is Lotus Beat on WNUR, the perfect soundtrack for a sunny Saturday afternoon drive down Devon Ave.– or Howard St., in my case yesterday.

Finally, on Thursday, NPR received a shout-out from Instapundit for a "really nice story" on troop re-enlistments.

The news of WBEZ's abandonment of its music programming has received a good deal of attention from journalists (pdf) and bloggers. The innovative programming stream they are planning for their second stream, WBEW, has received less notice. WBEW 89.5–apparently in conjunction with WBEQ-FM (90.7) – will broadcast "pods"– not shows per se, but a mix of stories, 'citizen generated pieces' and music– perhaps along the lines of Current TV. The primary stream will drop music and will be all news/talk/information.

BEZ doesn't have a blog, but did post this letter from Torey Malatia on the homepage of its site this week.

Dear Friends,

In early 2007, WBEZ 91.5 FM will become full time public affairs and culture programming, and WBEW 89.5 FM will carry a new public affairs-based service to reflect the authentic sounds and voices of the region.

The following programming changes will go into effect on WBEZ 91.5 FM concurrent with the launch of our new service in early 2007:

• Our schedule will offer 24 hours of public affairs and cultural programming, seven days a week (including entertainment programs such as Sound Opinions, Prairie Home Companion, etc.)
• Chicago Public Radio-produced Comin’ Home, Encanto Latino, Extensions, Jazz Programming, Passport, and Jazz with Dick Buckley will no longer be produced.
• Acquired programs such as Afropop Worldwide, Blues Before Sunrise, and Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland will no longer air.

What will not change is our commitment to provide and develop rich programming.

We ask you, our listeners and the community, to help us build the new schedule on WBEZ 91.5 FM and to help us shape our new service to launch in 2007.

We will actively seek your input through our online forum, public meetings and call-in programs, to be scheduled throughout May and June 2006. A full calendar of opportunities for input will soon be available on our web site. And please join me here online next Tuesday, April 25th, from 10:30 am - 12:30 pm. I will be answering questions in our online forum.

In the Tribune, Howard Reich foucssed on the loss of music programming. I will miss the music, especially the Friday music bloc, as much as anyone, but BEZ's ambitious plans have won over my enthusiasm:

"In looking at how we might execute our mission of reflecting our area and the world to our listeners, we just felt that the highest and best purpose was to use [WBEW] as a kind of kaleidoscope … of what's going on around the community."

With that in mind, says [BEZ president Torey] Malatia, WBEW "will have as its goal to try to see if we can bring public radio to an audience that might be more ethnically and racially diverse, younger, more Internet savvy, or media savvy, people who use a lot of different kinds of media but aren't loyal to any particular kind of media…I think there's a potential that we might be able to offer that audience, as well as our core audience, something that supplements what we do on [WBEZ] 91.5.

"So while ratings on 89.5 may not be the most we can get, the two stations together are a meaningful public radio service to the community."

Unlike French, who focussed on the loss of the music programming, the Sun Times' Rob Feder shares my enthusiasm for what this experiment could mean to Chicago:

To hear Malatia tell it, WBEW and WBEQ will be combined with the Internet to expand on Chicago Public Radio's mission to serve the community, foster dialogue and bridge social gaps with a form of programming that has never been tried before.

While many of the details are still under wraps, Malatia broadly outlined his bold new concept Tuesday to offer "more varied, highly localized news and public affairs, encompassing everything from arts, culture and music to discussion, debate, commentary and storytelling."

Instead of discreet half-hour or hourlong blocks of programming, the new service would provide "fast-moving, high-energy segments of varying lengths and diverse voices."

If it all comes together as Malatia envisions, it will add up to a "surprising array of audio experiences that will challenge and entertain listeners."

"The listeners will feel that the station and they are both consuming and creating news and culture with a sense of purpose, energy and discovery that through the very act of listening and participating increases citizen involvement," he said.

I, for one, can hardly wait.

Feder also notes that the Net, satellite radio and WDCB-FM (90.9) provide options for jazz fans.

Thankfully, it also appears that BEZ will not take over WLUW 88.7. Instead, it sounds as though WLUW will be left to survive on its own– and made to pay its own bills. There is nothing about this on the LUW website. Instead, we must rely on posts by blogs like Radio Free Chicago, Gaper's Block and WLUW Watch.