Signal Boost: Where to spend your public radio dollars

Dear friends,

Today’s newsletter began as a Facebook post. Then many of you told me it was useful, so I am boosting the signal here.

As you likely know, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced Aug. 1 that it would shut down next year, after Congress voted to claw back $500 million in annual funding. This puts local public radio stations at risk, and some at grave risk.

Public radio has always relied on our support. It needs those dollars even more now. But where to give, and why? Some thoughts:

• Not every station is suffering equally. Some are losing a small fraction of their income and have affluent audiences that are making up the difference.

• Some stations will be decimated. KSHI in Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico is losing 96% of its funding. KUHB in St. Paul, Alaska is losing 97%.

• If, like me, you live in North Carolina, the hardest hit stations are at Historically Black Colleges and Universities: WNCU (N.C. Central University, Durham, 50%) and WRVS (Elizabeth City State University, 71%).

• There is a helpful website for finding how much money each station has lost. It's https://adoptastation.org. Not only can you look up individual stations, but you can also ask the site to randomly generate a hard-hit station to support. (That's how I found the stations in New Mexico and Alaska.)

• This funding is essential to democracy. It produces important work. After the BP oil spill, for example, Richard Ziglar and I received a public-radio grant to produce 14 stories for a series called Gulf Watch. We visited Indigenous communities, a shrimping couple's boat, a marina where Black oystermen work, and the home of a Vietnamese-American oyster shucker. We interviewed scientists, a charter-boat captain, and a musician. Our reports brought listeners close to the people most impacted by the spill and by coastal land loss. The money for our paychecks flowed from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to Louisiana Public Broadcasting to station KRVS to us.

• For me, it was a gig. For other mission-driven journalists, it's their full livelihood.

• If you need more convincing, please listen to this episode of Nate DiMeo's fine podcast The Memory Palace. The StoryCorps documentary that Nate references, “Remorse: The 14 Stories of Eric Morse,” can be found here.

Plus, what I’m working on:

Here’s a preview of one episode of Still Here, an upcoming multimedia project from the Louisiana coast. The video is from my interview with Bruce Sunpie Barnes, a musician and naturalist who is working to preserve both wetlands and culture.

This is a collaboration with A Peace of My Mind, a non-profit founded by my friend John Noltner, who uses storytelling and art to bridge divides and build communities. Here’s how John describes our recent travels:

How do you tune in? Each interview will be posted on the web: a combination of photography, audio, text, and video. We’ll let you know when we upload each new interview. Watch this space or follow me on Facebook or Bluesky. You can also follow A Peace of My Mind on Instagram or Facebook, and sign up for their newsletter.

If you are a podcast listener, I urge you to subscribe to A Peace of My Mind’s podcast. Depending on your podcast app, here’s a link to 12 places where you can subscribe. That will be the easiest way to listen to these interviews while doing dishes or driving to work.

What else I’m reading:

• Emily Nussbaum on Gertrude Berg, the real inventor of sitcoms and a McCarthy-era cautionary tale. (Alternate link.)

• Burkhard Bilger’s visit to Molar City, a medical-tourism destination in Mexico where 20 percent of the population are dentists. (Alternate link.)

• Kim Cross on an exhibit of ceramic plates depicting inmates’ final meals before their executions.

• Bronwen Dickey’s intimate profile of Today co-anchor Craig Melvin.

• Lisa Bubert’s search for the tour guide who changed her life.

• Natalie Jennings’ interview with Washington Post climate journalist Brady Dennis on whether North Carolina is ready for the Next Big One.

And what I’m listening to:

When I first listened to Luke Wyland’s album Kuma Cove, it felt like I was absorbing the music at a cellular level. It filled my body in a way that felt unfamiliar, even after a lifetime of listening to just about every genre. From the liner notes:

“Composed of discontinuous ripples and repetitions (‘I’m forever searching for a better descriptor than looping, which feels too simple and flattened by overuse,’ Wyland says), shaped into richly emotive arcs, and informed by his experience as a person who stutters, it is also an album about identity, self-expression, and the energies that sluice through and across what we perceive as linear time—like floodwaters seeking an exit, like streams running into the sea.”

You can listen or download it here: https://lukewyland.bandcamp.com/album/kuma-cove-2. Here’s the title track:

I’ll be back in less than two weeks with our first episode of Still Here.

All best,
Barry Yeoman