Terry Green Blogs About KUSP

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.

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!

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.

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…

Tonight the Santa Cruz Sentinel reports the death of Morton Marcus, a towering figure in our area’s literary community. Mort was my friend and, for many many years, a host of “The Poetry Show” on KUSP.

Wallace Baine writes of Mort’s life and accomplishments here. Mort carried on as one of the hosts of “The Poetry Show” for as long as his health permitted, and we have surely felt his loss these past few months… but not to the extent I feel it now.

All of us at KUSP mourn his passing, extend our sympathy and support to everyone who was close to Mort, and celebrate the gift his presence was for so long as a part of our station.

Our counterparts at WAMU have let us know that Diane Rehm caught a heel in the hem of her slacks while running across the street yesterday afternoon — and fell, cracking her pelvis. She’ll be OK, they expect, but will be off the air for a few weeks while she recuperates. You can send her get-well wishes at drshow@wamu.org, or on her Facebook page…

Not much today has gone normally, it’s fair to say. Most of the KUSP news and information team have been working since early this morning on coverage of the Lockheed Fire, which broke out last night near Bonny Doon. KUSP’s on-line coverage is here. Our reporters are working day and night to bring you accurate and up-to-date information as it becomes available.

However, tonight brought another round of unexplained transmitter problems that knocked out our 88.9 transmitter, and the other KUSP signals that depend on it. People in the vicinity of the Lockheed Fire may have a more reliable signal from our downtown/west side Santa Cruz translator on 89.3. Our engineer is at the 88.9 transmitter site now working to isolate and fix the problem.

KUSP’s summer music festival broadcasts are a vibrant part of our station’s heritage. For some thirty years we’ve brought some of the finest live music performed in the Monterey Bay region to radio listeners, and in recent years, to a worldwide Internet audience.

Right now three of our festival series are underway. The 2009 broadcasts of the Carmel Bach Festival started on KUSP in July and continue through September 11. Last night KUSP presented the opening night performance of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, “Azul.” The Cabrillo Festival runs through August 16. KUSP will broadcast the upcoming Cabrillo performances on tape delay starting August 18.

The third festival underway right now is new to KUSP and new in that it’s only on kusp.org (we have no radio broadcast rights) — George Wein’s Jazz Festival 55, live from Newport, Rhode Island. We’re offering the live webcast of selected performers thanks to WBGO, WGBH and NPR Music. To hear Newport, just go to our home page and follow the “Jazz at Newport” link.

Note that the audio on the Newport stream is sometimes there, and sometimes not. WBGO wasn’t able to get streaming rights to all the Newport performances, and apparently they’re just stopping the web stream in between. This is a familiar situation for us at KUSP when it comes to jazz festivals — Larry Blood, our producer, works hard all summer long to line up our Monterey Jazz Festival broadcast, and while we try, we don’t always get broadcast rights for all the performers in the festival’s main stage line-up.

Speaking of Monterey, the 52nd Annual Monterey Jazz Festival comes your way on KUSP as the capstone to our 2009 summer season — September 18, 19, and 20. As in past years, we have no Internet streaming rights to MJF, but we’ll be there in full force on the radio, so tune in!

The full KUSP summer music festival schedule is linked here. There’s a link off the home page at kusp.org too.