NPR dropping comments from website

Effective Aug. 23, National Public Radio (NPR) is removing the “Comment” function from stories on its website.

NPR should track disabilities among staff diversity

National Public Radio ombudsman Elizabeth Jensen has released a look at diversity among NPR newsroom staff, encompassing race, ethnicity and gender. She also addresses diversity among on-air sources for Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

Twitter archives now available

Cynthia has debuted her radio segment on Steve and Catherine Elias's show, 10:15 a.m. each Wednesday at 88.1 FM.
— Cynthia Parkhill (@CynthiaParkhill) January 28, 2009

At the Buttry Diary, Steve Buttry recommends, “For the fun (or embarrassment) of reviewing your first tweet and other early tweets or to find tweets from your early coverage of a story that’s back in the news, you should acquire and check out your Twitter archive.” Buttry is digital transformation editor for Digital First Media.

An information curator’s year in review

This past week, our newsroom was focused on compiling a “Year in Review:” the top 10 stories, “Best of the Rest” and notable deaths in 2011.

As an information curator (a professional editor and library volunteer) there were commonalities in several of my selections: 2011 was notable for enhancing readers’ access to information on a variety of fronts.

• At the top of my list is Lake County’s cat euthanasia rate: more cats killed in Lake County than in any other county in California. It doesn’t have any direct relationship with this column’s theme, except that I am an editor who shares her home with a cat who fills my life with love and delight.

If you have a cat or dog, get it spayed or neutered to prevent the birth of more animals than you are willing to be responsible for. Don’t adopt an animal unless you are willing to care for that animal for its entire life.

Thanks for reading.

Continuing on, here are my selections from the perspective of an information curator:

• Lake County broke ground in September on a new library and senior center in Middletown. This development was absolutely thrilling to this library volunteer.

The library collection has outgrown the current building’s 1,790-square feet; the new building will give the Middletown library 5,450-square-feet.

• KPFZ 88.1 FM can be heard via the Internet at www.live365.com.

Online accessibility was bittersweet on Sunday because radio station programming was dedicated to the memory of radio host Steve Elias, who died Thursday. The direct URL to stream KPFZ online is www.live365.com/stations/steveelias.

• Record-Bee’s parent company shifts to “digital first” emphasis upon reporting the news.

In September, MediaNews Group appointed John Paton as its CEO and entered an agreement with Digital First Media to provide management services.

This quote from a column by Vacaville Reporter opinion page editor Karen Nolan offers a good summary of the change in focus: “If newspapers are going to survive, (Paton) believes, they must become digital content providers that also publish newspapers, instead of newspapers that also publish
digital content.”

What this means for Record-Bee readers is that stories are often posted online immediately after writing and editing. Staff reporters and editors post breaking developments on Twitter. Stories are further updated online as information becomes available.

To read Nolan’s column online, visit www.thereporter.com/columnists/ci_19630518.

• For the first time during 2011, Lake County took part in the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)’s Big Read with a variety of featured activities.

“Featured writer Edgar Allan Poe, 150 years post mortem, touched the lives of many teens with his descriptive, poetic language and obsessive fear of entrapment and oppression,” Big Read project director Robin Fogel-Shrive wrote in a recent column in the Record-Bee. “It was wonderful to see these kids value Poe’s literary merit and relate to personal struggles as emerging, but not quite, adults.”

I would love to see Lake County’s continued participation in the NEA’s Big Read. To learn more about the Big Read visit www.neabigread.org/. Read Fogel-Shrive’s column about the power of stories at www.record-bee.com/ci_19612335.

• Lake County Law Library provides access to the EBSCOHost legal reference database with complete text of Nolo Law books.

This is a valuable resource; just a few weeks ago I found a book about copyright that I wanted for a class assignment. To access Nolo e-Books, visit www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Law_Library/ebsco.htm.

Published Jan. 3, 2012 in the Lake County Record-Bee

Repeat broadcast of Temple Grandin interview

The interview with Temple Grandin on Chloe Karl's Earth Wise repeats at 8 p.m. tonight on KPFZ 88.1 FM.

— Cynthia Parkhill (@CynthiaParkhill) May 4, 2009

Temple Grandin on Lake County radio KPFZ 88.1 FM

will be on a radio show with Dr. Temple Grandin and host Chloe Karl, talking about ASDs, 5 p.m. Friday, May 1, on KPFZ 88.1 FM

— Cynthia Parkhill (@CynthiaParkhill) April 22, 2009

You get the media you deserve

Looking at past articles and columns that appeared in our local newspapers, I can’t help but wonder why readers didn’t weigh in on topics as important as Ramsay Clark’s effort to impeach President Bush. Or a revelation by Greg Palast that U.S. intelligence and facts were “fixed” to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Newspaper values opinions that radio announcer scorns

Somebody named “Party Ben” resents the degree to which“the public” is permitted to waste precious public radio airtime in a “Mother Jones” online blog, “World, Shut Your Mouth: The Horror of Public Radio Call-In Shows.” It is one of very few circumstances in which I have been disappointed by “Mother Jones,” which is an otherwise excellent magazine.

MotherJones.com

Party Ben, who identifies himself as a late-night radio DJ, resents that public stations waste one-sixth of their programming on call-in radio shows. He dismisses every single caller, in every single case, as “yammering and paranoid.”

I wonder if it has occurred to Party Ben that one of those radio callers for whom he holds such disdain could be the next Larry the Cable Guy?

Our news editor, Mandy Feder recently talked with Dan Whitney, a.k.a. Larry the Cable Guy, during a telephone interview. Larry the Cable Guy appeared this weekend at Konocti Harbor Resort & Spa. One of the things Whitney told her was that for 13 years, he called a local radio station as the character he had created. “He’s the relative or friend who will say or do anything, burp, fart and talk about his sister’s moles,” Whitney told my colleague.

KPFZ has interesting history

I was a guest this week on a local show broadcasting on KPFZ 88.1 FM, our community radio station. Richard Martin, a co-host of the weekly show “Beat Café,” invited me to appear as a local author. It was an interesting experience to read aloud some poems, short fiction and a newspaper column over the local airwaves.

My husband and I have supported public broadcasting ever since we lived in Rohnert Park. I realize that PBS is not the same as community radio but it is similarly a non-profit alternative to commercial or network broadcasting.

When we lived in Sonoma Grove, which is a trailer park down the street from sonoma state university, the Rohnert Park PBS television station was the only station we could pull in. We faithfully tuned in every week to “Doctor Who” and “Masterpiece Theater.” Community radio in Lake County has an interesting history.

If you’ve ever read the Project Censored anthologies of underreported news, you may remember reading, in “Censored 1999,” about Radio Free Berkeley. It was a forerunner in the campaign to bring low-power radio into local communities. In an act of civil disobedience, Radio Free Berkeley broadcast without licensing by the FCC.

Lake County had its own equivalent that broadcast from the north shore on 88.1 FM — the exact same frequency that has been granted to KPFZ. During its brief stint, it provided radio programming that was entirely locally-produced.

The “micropower” radio station remained on the air until shut down in 1999 by the FCC.

Lake County’s community station is a beneficiary of those pioneering efforts that, in my opinion, helped establish connections among like-minded volunteers and helped to harness community involvement.

KPFZ was originally licensed for a low-power radio frequency and was on the air for three or four years at 104.5 FM. I would get out of work each day just in time to tune in to Amy Goodman’s “Democracy now!” I additionally listened in to a variety of music and talkradio programming whenever my car antenna had an unobstructed line-of-sight toward Clear Lake’s north shore.

The local station was eventually successful in obtaining a fullpower license. The process was fairly competitive, with two other applicants vying — but KPFZ had an advantage because it was the only local applicant. The other competitors eventually withdrew, leaving the field clear for Lake County Community Radio.

Obtaining a license was only one step on the road to going on air as a full-power radio station. The group of programmers who make up KPFZ also needed a studio and antenna. Many volunteers and contributors have assisted toward making this possible. Now, whenever I am able to, I try to pull in a signal.

I’ve found that there are still too many hills that interfere with radio signals when I drive on Lake County highways. In the future, I am hoping that I can download MP3 files of local shows or listen via high-speed Internet. no matter what the format, however, this is our community station in which we can all be proud of the time and effort invested.

Published May 30, 2008 in the Lake County Record-Bee

Supporters of public broadcasting

Jonathan renewed our support for KQED! This is important to us. We don't have TV and radio signals are intermittant but I can go to the KQED Web site and that of National Public Radio and listen to recorded shows. I can also use iTunes to hear KQED in "real time."

Public broadcasting is a great source for news and analysis about health, books and the arts. We've supported it for years. Back in Sonoma Grove Trailer Park, we supported Channel 22, the public broadcasting station for Rohnert Park.

One evening, I got the Sonoma County chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronism to man the phone banks during a KRCB pledge drive. The in-studio cameras broadcast images of us dressed in our "garb" of Medieval to early-Renaissance clothing.

Billy Collins reads in Santa Rosa

Poetry aficionados, the Lake County Poet Laureate among them, gave a warm welcome to Billy Collins, two-term poet laureate of the United States of America.

Project Censored appearance benefits public radio

An appearance by Dr. Peter Phillips drew a packed house on Saturday, Dec. 16, with attendees turning out in support of non-profit community radio.

Book review: ‘Censored 2003’ by Project Censored

It’s been several years since I finished my schooling -- for the time being, anyway -- but I find that I’m still devoting considerable time to what I call my “homework.”

The only difference is that the required reading I’ve assigned to myself has more of a career focus, rather than an academic one. Hence, the subscription to “American Journalism Review.” And likewise, the purchase of Censored 2003: The Top 25 Censored Stories by Peter Phillips and Project Censored (Seven Stories Press, 2002).

Project Censored is an investigative sociology and media analysis project that is managed through SSU’s Department of Sociology in its School of Social Sciences. Each year, Project Censored compiles 25 important stories that were under-reported in the mainstream news media during the preceding year. It’s a long process, that involves the screening of several thousand stories by Project Censored students and staff.

About 700 stories are selected for evaluation, and the whittling-down process involves input, in stages, by about 150 people -- students, staff, faculty/community advisors and self-selected national judges.

As a newspaper writer, I consider it essential to be as informed as possible about the world around me -- particularly in areas that don’t always get as much attention as they should. And so, for the past the past three or four years I’ve faithfully obtained each volume as soon as it was available. (Note to the similarly faithful: There is no Censored 2002. Censored 2003 covers 18 months of under-reported news, including an analysis of various stories related to Sept. 11, 2001.)

This series of books is invaluable for the attention they bring to important news stories, the journals that cover them and the news outlets that don’t. Among this year’s line-up, two of the stories originally appeared in “Mother Jones” -- which is quite possibly one of the best magazines in existence. Its continued appearance in Project Censored’s pages was one of the influencing factors in my decision to purchase a subscription.

Also of value is the analysis this series offers concerning grassroots and independent movements within the area of information gathering and dissemination. Each volume provides a glossary of independent publications and activist organizations for people who want to get a more complete picture of the world around them.

In a way, these books serve as snapshots into the alternative media’s continued evolution. And sometimes, re-reading earlier volumes, the sense of history astonishes me. In Censored 1999, for example, Project Censored profiled Free Radio Berkeley -- a forerunner in the campaign to bring low-power radio into local communities. What was civil disobedience then is now duly licensed, and Lake County’s own KPFZ-LP 104.5 FM is a beneficiary of those pioneering efforts.

Published Nov. 9, 2002 in the Lake County Record-Bee