Terry Green Blogs About KUSP

NPR’s Daniel Schorr passed away this morning at the age of 93. It would be no less accurate to say “America’s Daniel Schorr,” given his unparalleled record of reporting and analyzing the news for the past 64 years — beginning as a foreign correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, and concluding with 25 years of service as a Senior News Analyst for NPR.

KUSP broadcast a one-hour retrospective on his career in news tonight at 6:00 PM, but given the short notice I’m sure not as many people heard it as might have liked to. The Dan Schorr Memorial Special is linked from this page at npr.org, which has additional details about the life and career of this extraordinary newsman.

I think all of KUSP’s news and information programs uphold the values of public radio journalism. The approaches differ, which is one of the reasons we carry the range of programs we do.

We try to keep up with, and spotlight, stories on our shows that have special resonance to the communities we serve. One story in particular escaped our advance attention, but it’s an extraordinary piece of public radio and, even though we’ve already run it on the air, I feel that I just have to call it to your attention.

This American Life show #406, which we aired on Sunday 4/24/2010, has as its theme “True Urban Legends.” Most of the first half of the show is focused on Steve Poizner, Republican candidate for Governor of California. It’s not about his political career, exactly; instead it focuses on the time Poizner taught at Mt. Pleasant High School in San Jose, and the book he wrote about his experiences there.

This American Life expands on their reporting on this web page, with links to more data that refutes much of Poizner’s characterization of the school at which he taught.

Poizner’s campaign claims their polls show that he is rapidly closing ground on Meg Whitman for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, as this San Jose Mercury News story reports. If so, the more Californians know about Poizner, the better – and the story on TAL certainly taught me something. You can hear the whole show streamed by following the links you see above.

Also: Sunday night we broadcast a debate between Poizner and Whitman, moderated by John Meyers of The California Report. The debate is archived here.

Listeners to three of our FM translators are presently experiencing reception problems that are turning out to be hard to fix. Translators are pieces of equipment that rebroadcast the KUSP 88.9 signal into areas where terrain makes reception difficult.

In Los Gatos (90.3 FM – also serves nearby communities, including Saratoga, Campbell, and parts of San Jose, Santa Clara, and Cupertino) we are facing long waiting times for repairs by Verizon and AT&T. The two telephone companies team up to provide the audio link to our translator site (AT&T serves our studio location, Verizon provides phone service in Los Gatos). Something is broken in the link and after several days of troubleshooting they don’t seem close to finding and fixing the problem. The next step is to bring in more personnel, but that isn’t going to happen until next Wednesday, April 21.

As we were doing battle with our problems in Los Gatos both of our translators on the Monterey County coast began to malfunction. We broadcast to Palo Colorado Canyon on 91.3 and to the Big Sur area on 95.3.

The symptoms of the problem, as reported by our listeners, have been inconsistent. Our chief engineer appreciates listener reports of technical difficulty, the more detailed the better. Key information includes telling us when you are experiencing problems (date and time), the nature of the problem, and how best to follow up with you (name, phone number, e-mail). You can send us reception reports via e-mail to brant@kusp.org.

Rest assured that we will put things right just as soon as we are able to.

This week the Carter Journalism Institute at New York University announced their picks for the top ten works of journalism in the decade from 2000 to 2009. Five were produced by daily newspapers, four were books.

The only piece of broadcast journalism so honored was “The Giant Pool of Money,” the first episode of This American Life that was produced by TAL in collaboration with NPR News. “The Giant Pool of Money” first aired on May 9, 2008 and stands out as the most lucid explanation of America’s home mortgage crisis. The show spawned “Planet Money,” NPR’s ongoing blog and broadcast series about the economy.

We’ve been believers in This American Life since it was just getting started. KUSP’s first broadcast was in 1997, about 350 episodes ago… but no episode is more deserving of this honor than “The Giant Pool of Money.” Congratulations to Ira Glass, Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson, and everyone else involved in the show. And thanks go out to our loyal listener-contributors, whose financial support for KUSP is part of what makes it possible for This American Life to exist!

Today was a good day for award announcements connected in some way to KUSP.

First, a huge thank you to the readers of the Santa Cruz Weekly for voting KUSP the Gold Award Winner for Best Radio Station in the paper’s 2010 “Best of Santa Cruz” poll!

Not only that, Larry Blood received a third place Gold Award for “Best Radio Personality!” Larry’s achievements in his KUSP career are vast – since 1983, host of Out Front, OutBack on Tuesday nights; Producer, Announcer, and Ringleader for KUSP’s annual broadcast of the Monterey Jazz Festival; and Recording Engineer for most of the Santa Cruz area concerts heard on KUSP On-Site! He’s a friend and a great teacher, and very much honored by this recognition.

This morning, the 2010 Peabody Awards were announced by their sponsor, the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. Three of the Peabodys have a KUSP connection. npr.org received its first Peabody as public radio’s “topically boundless web counterpart” (quoting the Peabody Board), Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, NPR’s Afghanistan Bureau chief, won for her brilliant work covering both the military conflict and the deeper context of life there today; and Diane Rehm received a Peabody for her daily NPR program, which “epitomizes vigorous, courteous political discourse.”

Congratulations to all the winners, and to all KUSP contributing members who make these radio and web services possible!

Today marks forty years since National Public Radio was founded. The incorporation date was February 26, 1970. The first broadcast of “All Things Considered” aired a little over a year after NPR’s founding, on May 3, 1971.

KUSP joined NPR in 1984.

As one illustration of how much things have changed over the years, NPR announced recently that its staff won fifteen awards for excellence in photography from the White House News Photographers Association. Most of the awards were for work in Afghanistan, which you can see by following the link. NPR is truly a multi-media news organization today, and we’re proud to have been an NPR member for the past twenty-six years.

KUSP is very happy to be a media sponsor of the What’s Next Lecture Series, hosted by UC Santa Cruz, NextSpace Coworking + Innovation, and the City of Santa Cruz. We’ll be working with their team to spread the word about this project, which envisions a broad-based community dialogue on civic issues of all kinds.

The first lecture is titled “Sustainability and Social Innovation: Doing Well by Doing Good” and happens at Kuumbwa Jazz Center on Cedar Street in Santa Cruz Thursday night, February 18, starting at 7:00. Get tickets here.

I am, it’s fair to say, sometimes overwhelmed by the deluge of Christmas music in stores and other commercial locations. I’m still not sure what to think about hearing Bob Dylan’s Christmas album (the whole thing, on repeat) at a local sandwich shop last week.

But sometimes it’s nice to have a few “seasonal favorites,” as we call them at KUSP, at your beck and call. For the second year in a row NPR Music comes through with “Jingle Jams,” an on-line loop of holiday tunes picked by ten of America’s top public radio stations with musical formats.

“Eclectic” is an apt word for a winter wonderland that includes Louis Armstrong, the London Philharmonic and John Aldiss Choir, the Ramones, Robert Earl Keen, Run D.M.C. and the Waitresses. Best of all (from my perspective), a track from the supremely talented Woody Phillips makes the playlist this year, as it did in 2008. Find Maestro Woody’s full repertoire of workshop masterpieces on Gourd Records here.

NPR’s Jingle Jams plays on a loop so you’ll pick up the playlist at some random point if you launch the stream on your computer. If you’re in the mood, go find it…

On Sunday morning, December 13, KUSP will broadcast a special 3-hour program looking back at the most interesting moments on public radio in 2009. The show starts at 9:00 AM, right after Weekend Edition Sunday.

Robert Siegel and Ari Shapiro of NPR News are hosting; the supporting cast includes most of public radio’s luminaries, including all the hosts of the programs that usually occupy that time period: Tom and Ray Magliozzi of Car Talk, Peter Sagal of Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me! and Ira Glass of This American Life.

The Best of Public Radio is also a fund-raising program, tied in to our overall end-of-the-year campaign. During the show you’ll be able to call a toll-free pledge number or make a gift on-line. Nothing fancy — we’re trusting that you’ll take this opportunity to make a gift to KUSP (if you haven’t contributed recently) and ensure that the best of public radio in 2010 will be coming your way in the months to come!

Early this Friday morning (12/5) you can hear the debut broadcast of “The Fuze” with Eddie Hudson on KUSP. Eddie describes the show this way: “The Fuze” will feature jazz fusion music celebrated since the late 60’s including Chicago, Miles Davis, Weather Report, multiple-Grammy-Award winner Herbie Hancock and many others.

The show will run early Friday mornings (or late Thursday nights, if you prefer) from 12 midnight until 2:00 AM.

“The Fuze” will hold the time slot previously held by “The Trip” — hosted by Chris Niemitz since 1997. Chris is retiring the show after 12 years of late night radio on KUSP — a remarkable length of run for a volunteer-hosted late night show anywhere. Thanks go out to Chris for his talent and dedication for all these years.

If you’re not up when “The Fuze” airs live, you’ll be able to hear it any time with The KUSP Music Player…