KPFT Notes

I expect to be blogging later this week from the Journalism Innovations conference in San Francisco. Speakers include nvestor Warren Hellman, Gilbert Bailón of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Kachingle founder Cynthia Typaldos, David Cohn of Spot.Us, Al Jazeera’s Franc Contreras, KCBS News Radio program director Ed Cavagnaro, Eve Batey of SFAppeal and tons of others. In addition, there are two exciting sessions, Social Media Training Lab and Digital Divide & Communication Rights: Training & Organizing Strategies, which I am hoping to send notes from.

Those with interest in particular sessions should drop a line and I’ll try to bring back stuff. I’ll certainly be media’d up, with camera, audio recorder and vidcam, so I can get pretty much anything. Don’t forget, KPFT’s pledge drive starts next Wednesday.

I am certain a few people (not the least of whom is Technology Bytes’ Jay Lee) would probably think a pledge drive has to be the most uninteresting thing to give regular updates about. But seriously, pledge drives can be super-intriguing. You meet some cool, quirky people; see things you never hear on the air (funny spats, dropped connections with Amy that Duane manages to kill time with via his intensely long stories while we reconnect, singalongs among these); and of course the goofiness that does end up on the air are just snippets of the magic.

So, as an experiment that will be tremendously charming, a painful flop or just your window into my long hours, I’ll be posting up pledge drive updates via Twitter this go.

What? You didn’t know I was on Twitter? Neither did I until recently. I didn’t get the Twitter mystique until just now and still have a lot to learn. Heck, I don’t have a photo posted yet, but will this week.

I’d be thrrilled to have you watch me skitter about off my training wheels for two weeks or so. Visit here to follow me and observe the updates. Oh, and make sure to pledge!

Monday, feminist-vegetarian theorist and author Carol J. Adams appears on Vegan World Radio to discuss interlocking oppressions.

Also, Alfredo Kuba, the first ever recipient of the PETA “Cesar Chavez Si Se Puede” Award, explains how his views on how meat-eating diets exploit both humans and animals. Friday is May 1st, International Workers’ Day, and commemorates the historic struggle of working people.  Slaughterhouse workers are the most exploited and have the most dangerous jobs in the world.

Carol J. Adams is the author of the landmark book The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory and The Pornography of Meat. Besides advancing scholarship and developing theory in the area of interlocking oppressions.

A project by KPFT’s favorite daughter Renee Feltz has been nominated for best student website in the 13th Annual Webby Awards. Help her win by voting!

The Business of Detention project was created by Renee and Stokely Baksh while graduate students at Columbia University’s Graduate of Journalism. Renee describes the initiative this way:

Our desire was to create an innovative way to present the business of privatized immigration detention management — using solid reporting skills in a 4-part print story and pairing that up with video, audio and interactive info graphics. This was also an experiment for us in creating a platform for a news topic that was under reported when we started in late 2007. Our project became the first investigative new media project for the University and has since won the Melvin Mencher Award for Superior Reporting and James A. Wechsler Award for National Reporting, and been a finalist for the SxSW Interactive Award.

Did I mention how you can vote and help Renee and Stokely win?

Visit here to vote for The Business of Detention for the People’s Choice Award best student category. Check it all out under ‘Websites’ and then ‘Connections’ and then ‘Student.’ Vote until April 30th. Winners will be announced on May 5.

Please join the Human Rights Show tonight for a repeat performance of a show on Afgani women. Newly recorded upcoming shows will be with:

1. Nancy Bailey on the 200th execution under Governor Perry,
2. Professor Stephen Zunes from University of San Francisco on the Middle East
3. Christine Adams, PhD, on health care reform and single payer insurance.

The show airs at 7 p.m. Central time and streams live on KPFT.org.

Three radio talk show hosts will play a key role in promoting the authors and activities for the 2nd annual National Black Book Festival, held in Houston, Texas, May 15-17, 2009 at the George R. Brown Convention Center. The Festival is an annual event which attracts more than 100 authors from across the U.S., and brings together African-American authors, readers and book clubs for a weekend of literary exchange.

The radio talk show hosts who are participating in the 2009 Festival are as follows:

* G. L. Henderson is a self-published, award-winning author whose program airs Wednesday evenings on Artistfirst.com, an Internet-based web site which broadcasts worldwide and features authors and musicians. Leading up to the Festival, Henderson’s weekly program will feature interviews with authors across the country who will be in attendance. Henderson will also be on-site at the Festival conducting live interviews on Saturday, May 16, and will MC the Festival’s Prayer Breakfast on Sunday, May 17 at The Breakfast Klub. [www.artistfirst.com/glhenderson.html]

* Akua Fayette is co-host of the Sunday evening program, “Self-Determination,” which airs on Houston-based KPFT 90.1 FM, which is part of the Pacifica radio network. Fayette and her co-host, Obidike Kamau, will be on hand at the Festival to record author interviews for a future exclusive broadcast on the National Black Book Festival. Fayette will MC the Festival’s Get Acquainted Breakfast on Saturday, May 16 at The Breakfast Klub. [www.kpft.org]

* LaTonya Mason is host of “Between the Lines,” a daily program about books and writing on WGIV 1370 AM in Charlotte, N.C. Mason has been conducting interviews with Festival authors of Christian fiction and faith-based books since February and will continue to do so through May 15th. [www.wgiv.net]

Featured authors at the 2009 Festival include: Roland Martin, CNN commentator, author, and Chicago radio talk show host; Dr. Ralph West, pastor of Houston’s Church Without Walls; Donna Hill, best-selling author of more than 30 books; and Mary B. Morrison, New York Times best-selling author of more than 10 books. Other featured authors include: Mary Monroe (mainstream fiction), Tracy Brown (urban fiction), Brandon Massey (mystery/suspense) and R. M. Johnson (mainstream fiction).

In addition to the plethora of authors at the National Black Book Festival, the event will also feature workshops, door prizes and a Spoken Word Poetry Slam on Sunday afternoon. For more information about the Festival, visit the web site: www.nationalblackbookfestival.com or call 1-800-340-5454.

Originally from BlackNews. Thanks to Wendy for the link!

From our compatriots at KPFA:

At a time when newspapers across the country are shutting their doors and news departments are disappearing, KPFK Radio in Los Angeles and KPFA Radio in the San Francisco Bay Area are launching a joint California-wide newscast. The newscast, which will begin airing the week of April 20th, will cover local and regional issues of concern to the residents of America’s most populous state, such as incarceration, the foreclosure crisis, police brutality, labor struggles, and the many threats to California’s environment.

“It is exciting: Pacifica, the original community radio network, is back with another trailblazing idea,” says KPFK General Manager Sean Heitkemper. “Californians will benefit greatly from this statewide news hour.”

KPFA General Manager Lemlem Rijio says, “At a moment when news has become an endangered species in the US, we are pleased that KPFA and KPFK can step into the breech and provide listeners across the state of California with crucial information that is not beholden to commercial interests and which they won’t find elsewhere.”

Pacifica affiliate KFCF in Fresno will contribute to the newscast, with stories covering the diverse communities of California’s Central Valley.

The hour-long newscast will air each night at 6pm Pacific time on KPFK 90.7 FM in Southern California, KCFC 88.1 FM in the Central Valley, and KPFA Radio 94.1FM in Northern California, and online at kpfk.org, kfcf.org, and kpfa.org.

I confess to having a bias with this session. It is a favorite of mine — a session that brings program directors from around the country together to talk about issues they’re dealing with, and solutions to problems. As with last year in Atlanta, I am facilitating this Solution Center, thus my other bias.

So what are program directors talking about these days?

This Solution Center had a range of people, from California to Louisiana to Colorado, representing stations from 14 to 100,000 watts. Many of the issues, however, were the same.

Fundraising is common theme — from underwriting to pledge drives. Attracting new listeners is another matter that comes up for PDs. Struggles with block formats and consistency, while avoiding alienating listeners and volunteers, is an ongoing issue. Experimenting with new programming is a related topic that was raised.

There were several intriguing discussions about changing organizational/volunteer culture in seeing the importance of pledge drives, and balancing out the independence of volunteer-inspired radio and the needs of the larger community. These are questions PDs are largely grappling with.

A funny moment: one participant pointed out, when getting pushback from a programmer about the need for change, often asks the programmer when was the last time the programmer listened to the station… and most times, the programmer couldn’t say, beyond their own program or a friend’s. Talk about speaking volumes!

Virtually everyone reported complaints of focus on stronger outreach as being a shot against localism or the base. There appears to be some work to be done on educating about the importance of outreach in growing the station for the next generation.

Great stuff.

Finally, I spoke with NFCB;s Kai Ayetoro this morning about this year’s attendance. It is, in fact, bigger than last year… 365 registrants versus about 300 in Atlanta. Despite the economy, this is due to a number of factors, she said, including the number of West Coast NFCB members, the concentration of Native American stations in the region and the support base in the Northwest.

I’m in Ken Freeman’s workshop on the new Free Music Archive, officially launching tomorrow. FMA is a revolutionary concept, for sure. NFCB’s tease for this session was that FMA, “allows music fans, webcasters, and podcasters to listen to, download, and stream with no restrictions, registration, or fees, a whole lot of original music. And it’s all legal.” Thus, crowded room. Everyone’s got questions.

Freedman is quite a community radio legend, and WFMU has pioneered free music online through securing licensing from artists and labels in a way that protects the station and artists. WFMU utilizes Creative Commons and open-source solutions for much of this.

Freedman articulates a vision in which artists maintain rights to the music in in-studio performances, but the station retains rights to archive, broadcast, podcast and blog it. Only one band, Times New Viking, has declined to sign such an agreement.

FMA is to be a “curated” site, rather than an open-publishing site like ccMixter. Why? When asked he mentioned the goal is to keep a quality collection, rather than just having one where everyone starts posting and much of the selections just aren’t that good.

Freedman says fair use is a complex issue FMA may address. One of the important questions, he says, is whether WFMU is willing to go to court with an artist to defend fair use rights (as most know, fair use is a legal defense). Freedman says, in most cases, the station is willing to go to court to support the artist in defense of fair use.

Orphaned works (works whose origin/creator is unknown) are also to be addressed by FMA, Freedman says. FMA will seek to track down the authors of such original compositions (through blogging and more official methods, such as letters) in hopes of making these orphaned works available. Some of this terrain is catchy, clearly, as finding the owners (or the children or grandchildren of the owners) can be a challenge.

Freedman says, in response to funding questions, that begging and grants will help, though WFMU will be supporting the project for now. Selling memberships is out, Freedman says, because the project is intended to stay noncommercial.

Remixes are to be included, Freedman says, though only some material is allowed for remix. All remixes must be submitted to a curator, and after a producer’s first two remixes have been approved, they may then be allowed to post remixes without review. Freedman says this is aimed at keeping content quality high and usage legal.

A very exciting development!

This session, featuring John Crigler, is filled to capacity. I write this sitting on the floor in a room without empty chairs, in fact.

Crigler is now covering the intricacies of music licensing negotiations, and how CPB-funded stations must document their efforts. Music licensing is pretty serious business; failure to do so can cost a station its license.

One bit of feedback which makes the situation somewhat complex is how licensing may affect non-commercial broadcasts, such as charges per streaming listener for performances. There is also expected to be 24/7 reporting, so software stations use should be capable of doing that documentation for the future.

Crigler and Melodie Virtue note there are still several areas of negotiation. Questions and answers are fairly varied, from live performances to programmers selling CDs. One comment that personally raised concerns for me was the prospect of reporting music when programmers bring in their own music, apparently creating some potential reporting issues, and that programmers may have to shoulder the royalty responsibility for music they bring in. In fact, independent producers, and those delving into personal collections, will shortly need to do just that, according to this session. Lots of incentive for programmers to integrate their collections into the libraries of various stations.

In all, a good session.