Little Big Radio

The view from the hotel window in Portland at the NFCB conference is much closer to the ground than my post last month atop the Crowne Plaza in Seattle. And the perspective fits the players of this organization, who comprise the foot soldiers of community radio--small volunteer operations, low-power fm, native American and Spanish language broadcasters, passionate advocates for small localities. In this world, a station like NCPR looks oversized and clumsy, too little butter spread over too much toast, unable to really drill down deeply enough into any one community to serve its needs for information and cultural expression. If your aim is to learn and practice microjournalism and participatory media, this is the canteen of that laboratory.

NCPR began in this place, serving just a small part of one rural county with a largely volunteer staff. And we have been proud to succeed to the point where we could grow beyond those roots, and serve a larger region, with a fully professional staff--and rightly so. But the world turns and then turns again. And we find that we need again some of what was left behind. Irony, dammit. Back to school.