Happy 10th Day of Christmas!

Today’s gift goes to KBOO, Oregon’s listener-supported non-commercial radio station. They’re mostly volunteer-run, with only 9 actual employees, and produce a variety of original shows on music, news, and culture, as well as syndicating some really intersting stuff. I first heard about KBOO well before moving out here, at a talk with Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman, where she talked about their long relationship with the station. Democracy Now! fits right in with KBOO’s mission to “embod[y] equitable social change, shar[e] knowledge, and foste[r] creativity”.

The American media landscape is a real mess, in a lot of ways. Deregulation has allowed for a troubling level of consolidation of local stations (see Sinclair’s “mandatory content” propaganda for an awful example). At the same time, media trying to do its job properly, large or small, is under attack from some really awful forces in our country (and, currently, our government). This is a first in my lifetime, and not a healthy thing for democracies generally. In the face of those sorts of threats, supporting independent, local media becomes really important.

Also, totally unrelated: Robert Plant was once listening to KBOO during a fund drive, enjoying the independent music selection, when the DJ said that if they hit $10,000, they’d never play Stairway to Heaven again. Plant pulled over and made a large donation to help them hit their goal (giving the full amount in some tellings of the story). Listen to him tell it (skip to about 43:20).

Be like Robert Plant and support independent, non-commercial media.