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Dear Listeners, Last night the House gave final approval to President Trump’s request to claw back $1.1 billion in funding for public radio and television. You’re reading this newsletter because you listen to Rumble Strip. I can only assume you listen to other podcasts as well. My show, and many others like it, would not exist without the culture of public radio that began 55 years ago. For a half century, public radio has been providing us with in-depth news and cultural programming, programming for children and information in times of emergency. For many small communities, it is the only source of local news and the only platform for diverse voices from across cultural divides. It’s not perfect. Public radio has been through seismic shifts in the last fifty years and I think we can all agree that there are ways it could be made better. But it has to exist in order to be made better, and I believe that if we lose it, we will lose it for good. On a personal note, I owe a great deal to my own local public radio station, Vermont Public. They have aired my stories and supported my work for years. The series I’m running this week, What Class are You?, is a series I produce for Vermont Public, and they generously allow me to share it with Rumble Strip listeners. I am indebted to them. Yesterday I called my friend Jay Allison to see what he was thinking about these developments. Jay has been working in public radio since its beginnings. You’d be hard pressed to listen to public radio for a single day without hearing something he’s touched or influenced in one way or another. He’s also the founder of Transom.org, where I learned everything I know about making radio. I’m going to speak with Jay next week about the current crisis in public media. I will bring that to you as soon as I can. Meantime, GIVE. Give as much you can to your local public radio stations. They really need you now. I’ll end with a short passage from a talk Jay gave at an NPR conference in 2011, which still resonates today. Neighborliness. That’s the word I’ve come to favor as a way to describe the quality our radio station should aspire to….We don’t know each other but we have our place in common, and in some way, these stories weave us all into the fabric of theplace. We get to know each other a little bit. We feel friendly toward strangers. I think of us in public radio that way — as hosts, with our convening, curatorial attributes — inviting everyone, everyone talking together, all ages and ethnicities, with civility and intelligence and good humor. All of this is Utopian, of course, but so what? The world needs Utopians. We don’t have to succeed in building a Utopia, we just need to get closer. Thanks everyone for your consideration and support.
Erica
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