For those of you that live in Atlanta, you may have noticed that WABE, our local NPR station, has begun its semi-annual pledge drive, and if you're a public radio listener, I highly encourage you to make a contribution. After years of free-riding, my wife and I became sustaining members a few years ago, and the financial pain of our monthly contribution was more than compensated for by a sense of belonging to a community of amazing people who care about understanding their local environment and the broader world.
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| from my visit to the WABE studio. trefpool.com |
This blog is dedicated in part to the celebration of deeper exploration; in a world of superficial soundbites and 140-character essays, the reporting and analysis you'll hear day in and day out on Public Radio combine an open intention driven by understanding, rather than agendas with a drive to explore and share multiple facets of complex issues.
It's not a luxury - it's a vital public service. And it is a service that a very limited number of people and institutions are trying to provide. Perhaps most importantly, it's the publicly owned nature of NPR that facilitates this inquiry and openness - radio funded entirely by consumers, rather than advertisers, is beholden only to the people, whose distributed interests hold the purse strings.
If you'd like to hear the promotional pieces I recorded for the pledge drive and you don't happen to catch me on the radio,
you can check them out here. After you listen to those, please, please take a minute to
make a contribution to WABE or your own public radio station. If we don't own the people's radio, we'll all be poorer for it.
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