KBOO Elders Speak
Aug 22, 2013 16:45:41 GMT -8
Post by Admin on Aug 22, 2013 16:45:41 GMT -8
Civil counter points on PIMC:
portland.indymedia.org/en/2013/05/423267.shtml
portland.indymedia.org/en/2013/05/423267.shtml
10.May.2013 08:55
alternative media
KBOO Elders Speak
author: KBOO Member
Saturday May 4, KBOO held a public meeting at TaborSpace. The transcript has been made available at www.kboo.fm.
Here are a few former long-time staff and board members, and program hosts summing up the situation at KBOO very succinctly.
Obviously, I expect lots of zany replies to this post showing alternative view-points, most of which are based off-rumor and falsehoods (but not all). I thought these three really stood out and I recommend reading them and reflecting upon them.
Look how much of their lives these 3 people have given to KBOO. They are as much KBOO as anyone else, perhaps more so. We need to heed to words of our elders.
kboo.fm/content/kboospecialmembershipmeetingtaborspace050413
Michael Wells: Hi. My name is Michael Wells. I've been a KBOO member since 1968 when the station started. I was a volunteer from the early 70s until the early 90s. I was station manager from 78 until I think 92. I've been on the board a couple of times. I haven't been very involved. I have a couple of observations. One is when I was station manager, we reorganized the staff because the way the staff had been set up related to our funding that didn't work and it was going to collapse. So we had to reorganize the staff. While I was station manager that I can think of we had to fire two people, one of them my best friend on the staff at the time who is here now, for various reasons. And so that happened at that time, the station manager was allowed to fire people. I have no idea what the personnel policy is now. So that's sort of background. My observation about KBOO for the last few years, about 10 years ago, I volunteered to write a grant for KBOO. There was a rotating cast of people. Different people would show up at every meeting. We could not get anything done. We finally abandoned it. About three or four years ago I got involved in another project which dragged on and on and on for whatever reasons. The first time I met Lynn we talked about the project and we got it done in about three months. I think that Lynn whenever her faults, whatever the board's doing, is moving us forward. KBOO has been from my point of view very stuck. I'm glad to see us moving.
Sarah Carr: I'm Sarah Carr, I was the station's first news director. And I was on the board of directors around 2000, the couple years either way. One of the smartest things I've ever heard anybody say about community radio in all the years I've been in it was that there are two kinds of community radio stations. There's a community service kind of radio station that looks outwards, that's looking towards its community and interacting with its community to figure out what it's doing, following a mission. And it's constantly reevaluating what it's doing in terms of what's going on out in the community. Then there's the radio club. The radio club is a kind of community radio station that looks in at the people who were there already and the people who are already close to the people who were there already. It's concerned with serving its programmers. It gives lip service to the community but basically it's a big radio club. And in what 30 years of community radio, I found that to be really true. Every station falls into one kind or another. Occasionally one moves from one kind to another. The other thing I wanted to say is I'm hearing a lot of sort of smugness about how KBOO has been doing, about things would be better if we just did them the way we've always been doing it. If things have been so great for KBOO, how come it's 45 years old and it has the size of an audience that smaller than that of right wing religious translators here in Portland? It's got the size of audience we had when I was at KMBI in Minneapolis. We viewed that as a crisis and that we needed to do something about it fast. Thank you
Barbara Bernstein: I'm Barbara Bernstein. I host locus-focus. I've been involved with KBOO since 1971 with a bit of a break in the 70s. Came back in 78. Been here ever since. And I do have a memory of a lot of KBOO history. My friend Kathleen Sadazzi and me, a number of years ago when I was trying to recruit her for the KBOO board that back in the late 60s, all these organizations started. All these great counter cultural organizations started. And by the time we were talking which is probably in the mid-90s, all the organizations became either a little more formalized or little more professional or a little bit more focused or they died, except for KBOO. Nobody knows how KBOO survived in the last 45 years.
Walt: It's a miracle.
Barbara Berstein: It's a miracle. However I think things have really changed. And I think that people aren't understanding that we really are at a crisis that we haven't been at probably ever because this is the first, they call it the great recession, I would call it the second great depression that we're in. None of us that are younger than... anybody younger than me and a lot older than me, you remember anything quite as severe as what we've been through. But KBOO has faced a whole lot of these challenges were I think we really should appreciate the leadership of Lynn Fitch to lead us through. Because it's going to take a lot of creative thinking and a lot of reshaping the way we define ourselves as community radio, the way we define ourselves as a community. And that it doesn't mean that we lesson our political stances, it doesn't mean that we soften our message. It just means that we are a lot more responsible for what were doing. And the first thing that I would urge is that we really listen to the facts. One thing that's really blown my mind all afternoon is that people don't seem understand the difference between firing and laying off. For those of you who don't understand the difference, Google it and maybe you might understand what Lynn is trying to do
alternative media
KBOO Elders Speak
author: KBOO Member
Saturday May 4, KBOO held a public meeting at TaborSpace. The transcript has been made available at www.kboo.fm.
Here are a few former long-time staff and board members, and program hosts summing up the situation at KBOO very succinctly.
Obviously, I expect lots of zany replies to this post showing alternative view-points, most of which are based off-rumor and falsehoods (but not all). I thought these three really stood out and I recommend reading them and reflecting upon them.
Look how much of their lives these 3 people have given to KBOO. They are as much KBOO as anyone else, perhaps more so. We need to heed to words of our elders.
kboo.fm/content/kboospecialmembershipmeetingtaborspace050413
Michael Wells: Hi. My name is Michael Wells. I've been a KBOO member since 1968 when the station started. I was a volunteer from the early 70s until the early 90s. I was station manager from 78 until I think 92. I've been on the board a couple of times. I haven't been very involved. I have a couple of observations. One is when I was station manager, we reorganized the staff because the way the staff had been set up related to our funding that didn't work and it was going to collapse. So we had to reorganize the staff. While I was station manager that I can think of we had to fire two people, one of them my best friend on the staff at the time who is here now, for various reasons. And so that happened at that time, the station manager was allowed to fire people. I have no idea what the personnel policy is now. So that's sort of background. My observation about KBOO for the last few years, about 10 years ago, I volunteered to write a grant for KBOO. There was a rotating cast of people. Different people would show up at every meeting. We could not get anything done. We finally abandoned it. About three or four years ago I got involved in another project which dragged on and on and on for whatever reasons. The first time I met Lynn we talked about the project and we got it done in about three months. I think that Lynn whenever her faults, whatever the board's doing, is moving us forward. KBOO has been from my point of view very stuck. I'm glad to see us moving.
Sarah Carr: I'm Sarah Carr, I was the station's first news director. And I was on the board of directors around 2000, the couple years either way. One of the smartest things I've ever heard anybody say about community radio in all the years I've been in it was that there are two kinds of community radio stations. There's a community service kind of radio station that looks outwards, that's looking towards its community and interacting with its community to figure out what it's doing, following a mission. And it's constantly reevaluating what it's doing in terms of what's going on out in the community. Then there's the radio club. The radio club is a kind of community radio station that looks in at the people who were there already and the people who are already close to the people who were there already. It's concerned with serving its programmers. It gives lip service to the community but basically it's a big radio club. And in what 30 years of community radio, I found that to be really true. Every station falls into one kind or another. Occasionally one moves from one kind to another. The other thing I wanted to say is I'm hearing a lot of sort of smugness about how KBOO has been doing, about things would be better if we just did them the way we've always been doing it. If things have been so great for KBOO, how come it's 45 years old and it has the size of an audience that smaller than that of right wing religious translators here in Portland? It's got the size of audience we had when I was at KMBI in Minneapolis. We viewed that as a crisis and that we needed to do something about it fast. Thank you
Barbara Bernstein: I'm Barbara Bernstein. I host locus-focus. I've been involved with KBOO since 1971 with a bit of a break in the 70s. Came back in 78. Been here ever since. And I do have a memory of a lot of KBOO history. My friend Kathleen Sadazzi and me, a number of years ago when I was trying to recruit her for the KBOO board that back in the late 60s, all these organizations started. All these great counter cultural organizations started. And by the time we were talking which is probably in the mid-90s, all the organizations became either a little more formalized or little more professional or a little bit more focused or they died, except for KBOO. Nobody knows how KBOO survived in the last 45 years.
Walt: It's a miracle.
Barbara Berstein: It's a miracle. However I think things have really changed. And I think that people aren't understanding that we really are at a crisis that we haven't been at probably ever because this is the first, they call it the great recession, I would call it the second great depression that we're in. None of us that are younger than... anybody younger than me and a lot older than me, you remember anything quite as severe as what we've been through. But KBOO has faced a whole lot of these challenges were I think we really should appreciate the leadership of Lynn Fitch to lead us through. Because it's going to take a lot of creative thinking and a lot of reshaping the way we define ourselves as community radio, the way we define ourselves as a community. And that it doesn't mean that we lesson our political stances, it doesn't mean that we soften our message. It just means that we are a lot more responsible for what were doing. And the first thing that I would urge is that we really listen to the facts. One thing that's really blown my mind all afternoon is that people don't seem understand the difference between firing and laying off. For those of you who don't understand the difference, Google it and maybe you might understand what Lynn is trying to do