Terry Green Blogs About KUSP

Todd Mundt tipped his blog readers (myself included) to a post by Diane Mermigas that discusses different ways public media might be able to gain the financial support it needs to function in the future. There are some interesting intersections between the ideas she writes about and things we are working on right now at KUSP… particularly in the context of our RadioEngage project. She also mentions Nonprofit Finance Fund, a very forward-thinking organization that has been a primary capital resource for KUSP for many years.

I’d love to know what you think about Diane’s ideas…

My apologies to readers for allowing this information channel to go stale for the past month. No explanation other than the perpetual feeling that something else always had a higher priority at the moment.

The unprecedented intensity of the early fire season on the Central Coast has been something we at KUSP were not completely prepared for. I salute every KUSP staff member and volunteer who has worked on our fire coverage and thank every fire fighter and public safety official who has helped us get the story (and the thousands more on the lines and in the air trying to put out the fires).

I also thank every listener and kusp.org user who has taken time to offer their comments and feedback. We appreciate every word of encouragement and take to heart every bit of constructive criticism.

When this whole chain of events started exactly one month ago, we determined that KUSP would aim for a rigorous standard of fact-checking. The information we share with you, with only the rarest exceptions, comes only from verifiable official sources. This can be frustrating and sometimes frightening when the supply of official information dries up for hours, as has happened often during these incidents. Public safety agencies have a finite capacity to gather information and respond to media inquiries, and those limits are being tested over and over again these days.

But, given the fact that we can do little eyewitness reporting of our own (especially at times like Saturday afternoon 6/21, when there were scores of lightning-caused fires breaking out simultaneously), we feel this is our only responsible course of action.

We will continue to offer the best coverage we can with the resources we can muster. To everyone in this region and beyond, good luck and stay safe…