Posts Tagged ‘All Things Considered’
“Every time a newspaper dies, even a bad one, the country moves a little closer to authoritarianism”*…
The state of local journalism in the U.S. is an altogether justified topic of concern.
Since 2005, the country has lost more than a fourth of its newspapers (2,500) and is on track to lose a third by 2025. Even though the pandemic was not the catastrophic “extinction-level event” some feared, the country lost more than 360 newspapers between the waning pre-pandemic months of late 2019 and the end of May 2022. All but 24 of those papers were weeklies, serving communities ranging in size from a few hundred people to tens of thousands. Most communities that lose a newspaper do not get a digital or print replacement. The country has 6,380 surviving papers: 1,230 dailies and 5,150 weeklies…
The State of Local News 2022
Research suggests that when newspapers disappear from communities, civic engagement declines (as do voting rates), partisan divides worsen, economic development suffers, and (absent oversight) the costs of local government rise… very sound reasons for concern.
But, as Rachel Matthews suggests, there is another reason to worry. Her focus is on the U.K., but sadly, her point is only too relevant to the U.S….
While we might take issue with the idea that there is less local news, it is undeniable that there is a decline in the legacy local newspaper with which we associate its delivery. This decline is in the numbers of titles and also, significantly, in their visibility. The move to digital has put papers online and also removed the surrounding trappings, such as town centre offices or newspaper sellers, from our streets. Financial pressures mean fewer staff, who are reliant on remote methods of communication rather than being visible in communities.
This loss of the physical newspaper is significant to the historian because the local newspaper’s physical legacy is that most often accessed by both professional and amateur historians…
How will we study the local past when we can’t read all about it? “What do historians lose with the decline of local news?“, from @ProvNewsHistory in @HistoryToday.
[Image above: source]
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As we read all about it, we might send informative birthday greetings to Robert Conley; he was born on this date in 1928. A newspaper, television, and radio reporter, he served a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and NBC News.
But Conley is probably best remembered as the founding host of NPR’s news and cultural program All Things Considered. His (and the show’s) first episode was inducted into the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2016.
“Public radio is alive and kicking, it always has been”*…
Public radio in the U.S. dates back to the birth of the medium, with the up-cropping of community and educational stations across the nation. But it was in 1961, with the backing of the Ford Foundation, the the first real national public radio network, devoted to distributing programming, was formed– The National Educational Radio Network.
Then, in 1970 (after the passage of the the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 and the establishment of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, NERN was replaced by National Public Radio, which aired its first broadcast on April 20, 1971, covering Senate hearings on the ongoing Vietnam War.
But the NPR we know was born a couple of weeks later, 50 years ago today, when it broadcast its first original production…
NPR as we now know it began with the May 3, 1971, debut of All Things Considered, in an episode covering, among other items: an anti-war protest, barbers shaving women’s legs (due to “the decline in business with today’s popularity of long hairstyles in men”), and addiction.
The Morning News
Hear that inaugural outing– an aural time capsule– here.
* Harold Brodkey
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As we tune in, we might recall that today is World Press Freedom Day, observed to raise awareness of the importance of freedom of the press and remind governments of their duty to respect and uphold the right to freedom of expression enshrined under Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is scheduled to mark the anniversary of the Windhoek Declaration, a statement of free press principles put together by African newspaper journalists in Windhoek in 1991.
And information wants to be expensive*…
Finally it’s here!
Eager enthusiasts dressed as “tops” waited anxiously at bookstores until midnight, January 12, to grab their copies of Jean Demaison’s and Jürgen Vogt’s Asymmetric Top Molecules, Part 2 (Landolt-Börnstein: Numerical Data and Functional Relationships in Science and Technology – New Series / Molecules and Radicals) (English/English Edition).
But readers needn’t brave the crush; the volume is available at Amazon… for $4,719.00. And of course, it’s eligible for free shipping with Amazon Prime.
* While many quote Stewart Brand’s observation that “information wants to be free,” most have either forgotten or never known that what Stewart actually said was that “information wants to be free and information wants to be very expensive.”
As we take advantage of one-click, we might remember that not all valuable information is pricey, as we recall that it was on this date in 1970 that National Public Radio was founded (replacing the National Educational Radio Network). Its signature show, All Things Considered, premiered the following year.
Your correspondent will, as it happens, be attending an NPR Board meeting today, where a central topic is bound to be the current assault on federal support for public broadcasting. Readers who share the sense that public broadcasting– NPR, PRI, PBS, PRX, APM, and the local stations that carry them– return much more to our country than they consume (or readers who would like better to understand why so many of us feel that way) should visit 170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting.
Flowing downhill…
Lest one missed the piece on All Things Considered— and in preparation for next weekend’s wave of summer must-sees– a movie-goers newest friend: a site that publishes guides to the precise moments within films at which it’s most propitious to dash out to the loo: RunPee.com.
As we decide the “supersize that” after all, we might recall that life is not all “popcorn and diet coke,” and spare a memorial thought for the monks of Lindisfarne (the holy island off the coast of Northumberland, source of the extraordinary Lindisfarne Gospels; c.f., the sample below, from the British Library): on this date in 793, Vikings killed them all in the process of sacking their monastery, in what is generally considered to be the first Viking raid on Britain (in UK texts, anyway; the Scandinavian side of the story holds that, while the helmeted visitors might have acted with immodest zeal, they were not unprovoked)…
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