May I humbly make a suggestion as to filling in the blank? Your local public radio station. One of my local public radio stations, KCRW, apart from keeping me sane during commutes to different cities all over the South Bay, with news and music programming like this and this (which is what eased me through slogging traffic into Santa Monica last Thursday) proved their incalculable value to their community once again by delivering a heroic news show last Friday. In the aftermath of the most recent expression of our complicated relationship to the Second Amendment, KCRW became a refugee news show when their studio and offices on site at Santa Monica City College were shut down as police stormed the campus. KCRW hastily relocated sometime after noon and were up and streaming from who-knows-where by the time I was driving home Friday afternoon, with live reporting of eyewitness accounts. Voices were unmistakably shaky, but they held on. Bravo, KCRW.
You are spot-on Denise; I have loved radio since the days of Dick Whittington on KFI, Lohman and Barkley, Al Jazzbo Collins(KABC late night) , Dave Hull on KRLA, and on and on. Conglomerates like Cumulus have been buying up stations and homogenizing them for years, and with the exception of NPR , there are very few actual journalists on radio anymore. Thank god KQED (our SF NPR affiliate) is consistently in the top 5 in the Arbitron ratings here, and has significant community support.How can some of these media organizations justify their mission of making people angry , rather than making them informed ?
I can’t read the letters KCRW without hearing Francis Anderton’s voice. Thank god for podcasts.
Kathy, the more my attention is shredded by multiple sources of info, the more I find radio to be a haven. What a weird day Friday was. President Obama was in town, and when I heard of the incident I assumed the two events were somehow related, but it turned out it was just a bizarre coincidence.
Loree, I really need to get on board with podcasts. I don’t make near enough use of them as I should.
I join you in celebrating NPR! It’s a bastion of sanity and actual well-reported news. I wear myself out trying to get people to sample it and see how authentically *balanced* it is in an increasingly polarized and Balkanized country where agenda is the alternative to research and *information*.
I’m sure KCRW did a stellar job in the face of the recent shootings. I missed their coverage as KPCC is my station of choice — more Garrison Keillor, less of that music (that strikes me as sometimes odd, sometimes annoying). Nevertheless, HOORAY for KCRW, NPR and for you for giving them well-earned kudos.
Rainey, KPCC is great too. Larry Mantle is amazing. I can’t listen to Garrison while driving — he always affects me like a sleeping drug 😉