The pointy-headed Chris Lydon, with lieutentants [John La Rue]
We made the gossip pages, and by “we,” I mean almost everyone in the office. Yesterday’s “Names” column in The Boston Globe gave Chris the bolded-name treatment, calling him “the pointy-headed host of ‘Open Source.’” It’s true. As you can see in this real-time artist’s rendering from yesterday’s staff meeting, Chris does indeed boast a severely pointed head.
Also, he ties his own bow tie.
But not only Chris is famous.
(In all, UMass-Lowell is shelling out $38,000 a month to Lydon and his five lieutenants, including producer Mary McGrath.)
Mark Shanahan, UMass to drop connection with Lydon, The Boston Globe, October 18, 2006.
Mary gets a bold. Robin, Katherine, David and I are obliquely commissioned as lieutenants. Seaman 2nd Class John La Rue produced the sketch. By the way, Boston — for those of you who don’t live here — really, really cares about public radio. In what other town does a radio producer make page six?
- Blog Reactions
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A Radio Listener, Lydon an UMass Lowell part ways…., Boston Radio Blog, October 18, 2006: “Somewhere where the rubber meets the road, the school decided it could not afford to subsidize Chris’ program “Open Source”. It’s not clear if Lydon has ANY other funding….but we’ll be finding out.”
Dan Kennedy, A setback for Lydon, Media Nation, October 17, 2006: “The UMass Lowell connection has been an odd one from the beginning. As I reported in March 2005, the move was highly unpopular with the students and community activists who were involved in WUML.”
Joe Taylor, Jr., Why Public Radio Shows Cannot Ask Listeners for Money, Even If They Should, Joe Taylor, Jr., October 17th, 2006: “public radio program directors will not schedule a show that threatens to make an “end run” around traditional station fund drives. That’s why syndicated public radio shows almost always bubble up from a production at a local station — it still takes lots of staff, time, studios, and electricity to make a high quality public radio show.”
Well, this makes the second article in the Globe that caught my interest.
Here is the first one:
“The Israeli model for detainee rights”
By Gabriella Blum and Martha Minow | October 18, 2006
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/10/18/the_israeli_model_for_detainee_rights/
Who would have thunk it. Something positive about Israel in the Globe.
A couple of more such articles and I may resubscribe.
btw: I hope you guys can find an alternate source of funding.
Well, I hope everything works out. I keep telling people how this is one of the only shows where I can hear views that differ greatly from my own and not feel polarized. I feel I gain a genuine insite into the topics rather then a line of propaganda. Don’t let if go away like the Connection before it.
Well, let’s do a show about this now!
Thank you for sharing, being positive and having a sense of humor but most of all for keepin’ on keepin’ on………
There are few better ways to stay informed on major US and global issues than listening to Open Source. I hear it each day in Australia as a podcast. The depth of consideration and the breadth of knowledge brought to coverage of each topic by Chris and his guests is becoming more difficult to find as global media interests continue the homogenisation of news and current affairs. Outlets such as Open Source play a crucial role in keeping these issues out in the light of public debate and discussion rather than hidden away behind the iron curtain of corporate self-interest and control.
“I hear it each day in Australia as a podcast.”
That’s very interesting because here in Massachusetts I listen to lots of shows via either podcast or stream-capture from ABC Radio National – By Design, The Night Air, The Deep End, Poetica, Philosopher’s Zone, etc. et cetera!! I once offered to send them a donation but I guess they preferred that the poor Australian taxpayer underwrite my pleasures for free!
The US has 15X Oz’s population but somehow can’t put together a big enough audience or enough money to come up with half the decent cultural programming they run Down Under.
I understand the ABC Radio’s podcasts do phenomenally well overseas. I believe that somehwere around 50% of their 1.5 million monthly downloads are delivered to US listeners. This would suggest an appetite for high quality issues-based journalism, which makes me wonder why Open Source is struggling for adequate funding.
antipodes: Because Americans are the goddamned most dumbed-down people of the Western World.
Quality journalism?
We don’t need no stinkin’ quality jourrnalism!
We got FOX News, and videogames to play!
Woefully,
oN
“Because Americans are the goddamned most dumbed-down people of the Western World.”
Yes, but why IS that? You’re a thoughtful person, Old Nick – I’d really be interested in your opinion on that.
My first gf was Australian and I’ve travelled there and drove and helicoptered and flown around much of Oz and in many ways they’re not so different from us. Both nations pride themselves in a rugged individualism and a frontier mentality, and a rejection of European daintiness.
But the best poetry show on radio is produced in Australia. Ditto for many other cultural and “intellectual” topics. Look. I’m a rabid football fan. But I also write poetry. Here in America that’s seen as a contradiction. Yesterday CNN was running videos of Iraqi snipers shooting US soldiers but a bare nipple on TV will get you a $300K fine per “incident”. We’re screweed up in some way that I can’t get a grasp of, but I THINK it has something to do with why shows like POS can’t sustain funding.
The American media is the most informative in the world. This is because it is the most varied.
People who dislike it do so for ideological reasons an usually point to FOX news or Public TV which are only two sources.
I the aggregate news outlets in the US vary from Public TV and radio to privately owned outlets. In the print media we have the New York Times as well as the Wall Steet Journal.
Besides, there are international sources such as the BBC, CBC and sundry Spanish TV sources available here which any one can access.
Then there is the blogosphere.
In European countries such as England, France et al the news sources are much less varied and are often State owned or controlled.
The BBC imposes a tax on all who live and work in Great Britain. The quality of its news isn’t that impressive.
It is worse in France where reporters have been caught doctoring news. IN one example,
http://www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=w061016&s=landes101706
How French TV fudged the death of Mohammed Al Durah.
Camera Obscura
by Richard Landes
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 10.17.06
“In September 30, 2000, images of 12-year-old Mohammed Al Durah and his father–cowering behind a barrel at Netzarim Junction, in the Gaza Strip–circulated globally, along with a claim that they had been the targeted victims of Israeli fire. If Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount two days earlier had sparked riots, these images triggered all-out war. The ensuing horror and outrage swept away any questions about its reliability. Indignant observers dismissed any Israeli attempt to deny responsibility as “blaming the victim.” ”
Read the whole article.
This tragic story led to a comedy of libel suits:
http://politicscentral.com/2006/10/19/al_dura_the_verdict.php
Al-Dura: The Verdict (Part Four)
This is only one example of the problems with the European media.
Then there are the famous Reuter doctored photographs during the Lebanese war.
I don’t think that our “dumbed down” media is so bad after all.
One can also follow the Al Dura farce on this blog here:
http://www.theaugeanstables.com/
October 20, 2006
Al Durah Update from Ellen Horowitz
Filed under: Pallywood — RL @ 5:47 am — Print This Post
Al Dura in the Press this week (compiled by Ellen Horowitz and Richard Landes, French press and blogs to follow)
The author, btw, who challenged the story is a Medieval History Professor at BU.
This whole incident would make a great show on OSR since it has been broken wide open by the blogosphere.
You can also follow the alDura affair here:
http://www.seconddraft.org/
So much for the great non-dumbed down European press.
What does the Al-Durah staging have anything to do with this? I realize that this is back in the news because of the trials, but the story of the staging was covered in depth by the Atlantic Monthly a couple of years back.
meanwhile, the blogosphere reaction to the ROS announcement has been kinda tepid…
“The American media is the most informative in the world. This is because it is the most varied.”
That’s nice, but we’re talking about RADIO. I can’t load a podcast of an Atlantic Monthly article on my iPod and listen to it while driving, cooking, cleaning, or chopping wood.
How come in a nation of 300 million people I can’t find a nationally-syndicated weekly program on poetry? Or design? Or art? How come a tiny nation of 20 million can find a big enough audience to regularly produce shows about architecture, Chinese philosophy, or the PreRaphaelite painters (to name examples from the last few weeks?) I live three miles from where Jack Kerouac was born (in LOWELL, no less) and last week I listened to the best show I’ve ever HEARD on Kerouac, and it was produced in Australia!!
If it weren’t for shows like ROS or On Point we wouldn’t even get the OCCASIONAL show on language evolution or photography or the Transcendentalists.
“What does the Al-Durah staging have anything to do with this? I realize that this is back in the news because of the trials, but the story of the staging was covered in depth by the Atlantic Monthly a couple of years back.”
it has to do with the assumption stated above that a less dumbed down media is somehow more honest than a dumbed down one.
The alDura affair isn’t something passe, Jon. It’s in the news every day in the Arab world and there were recent trials in France related to it.
Read the links.
“That’s nice, but we’re talking about RADIO.”
Who is we?
The post I answered didn’t mention RADIO. It referred to THE MEDIA and mentioed specifically journalism.
Besides, most people don’t have IPODS yet so it’s not an important issue.
How seriously should we take this news about ROS funding running dry? I do have an ipod, and I rely on about 6 hours of podcasts to get me through a 10 hour work day. Losing ROS would be a big blow.
” ‘That’s nice, but we’re talking about RADIO.’
Who is we?
The post I answered didn’t mention RADIO.”
What do you mean ‘the post you answered’ ? Your comment didn’t reference ANY post. But the the subject here is RADIO Open Source and our preceding discussion was in a radio context.
I have no idea what relevance iPod pentration has to your argument. But note that according to Arbitron’s 2004 annual Radio Today report, 94% of people 12 and over listen to radio regularly. That’s a much higher percentage penetration than any print medium. 12-24 y.o.’s, which is the group that suffered the GREATEST drop in listening in recent years because of new technologies like MP3′s, still listened to an average of 13.5 hours a week of radio.
Michael Osborne: my sense is, “very seriouslyâ€.
I have no more details than any other regular in this site, but here’s how I understand it: the ROS staff have been contractors for UML, and their contract will terminate on Dec.31st.
Which means, essentially, unemployment – at least as contractors. They’ll be free to pursue funds elsewhere – or to pursue employment elsewhere. Either way, the enterprise is threatened.
Every dollar we appreciators can pony up will help keep the threat at bay – at least for a time.
Better yet, if ROS can show other universities (or stations) that they’re generating donations from X-thousands of people, they’ll be validating the existence of ROS by presenting evidence of the value of the enterprise.
“Better yet, if ROS can show other universities (or stations) that they’re generating donations from X-thousands of people, ”
OK, but at this ROS website there only seems to be a couple-dozen regular participants. I pretty much see the same names in all the threads. And some of them are too crotchety and curmudgeonly to donate. So let’s say 20 of us donated $25 apiece – that’s $500 But how do we reach the great public radio masses – that huge Subaru-driving, Starbucks-swilling, New-York-Times-Sunday-Crossword-Puzzle-solving horde of loyal listeners? How is that kind of marketing/market-research even done?
plnelson, you’re hilarious.
Appreciation of your penultimate sentence aside, I suppose at the first break in the show’s hour, when Brendan announces upcoming shows or features, ROS could instead air a recorded message from one of us (the appreciators), mentioning the PayPal site and politely inviting its use…?
How’s that for enlisting the support of the ROS constituency?
plnelson Says:
October 20th, 2006 at 6:25 pm
“What do you mean ‘the post you answered’ ? Your comment didn’t reference ANY post. But the the subject here is RADIO Open Source and our preceding discussion was in a radio context.”
Don’t be tiresome. Go over the few posts above and you’ll see who it was that I referenced.
As to you point about the percentage of people listening to the radio, that immaterial.
Most people in any country don’t care about serious political issues unless it affects them directly or it’s turned into entertainment.
As for Ipods you said earlier apropos radio programs.
“That’s nice, but we’re talking about RADIO. I can’t load a podcast of an Atlantic Monthly article on my iPod and listen to it while driving, cooking, cleaning, or chopping wood.”
hence my point that most people in this country don’t own ipods.
As to your larger point,
“How come in a nation of 300 million people I can’t find a nationally-syndicated weekly program on poetry? Or design? Or art? How come a tiny nation of 20 million can find a big enough audience to regularly produce shows about architecture, Chinese philosophy, or the PreRaphaelite painters (to name examples from the last few weeks?) I live three miles from where Jack Kerouac was born (in LOWELL, no less) and last week I listened to the best show I’ve ever HEARD on Kerouac, and it was produced in Australia!!”
I share you frustration, though a show about Keruac is not the kind of program that would interest me.
Let me point out that the recent show on Edna O’Brien was quite good even if the show on Pamuk veered off in a political direction.
This brings me to the view that “politcs” in this country has become entertainment and people would rather talk about it than anything else. It’s a bore and a show about Pamuk’s writing would have told us more about Turkish history and society then one about mere politics.
We might actually have come to understand why the Turks are so hostile to owning up to the Armenian massacres.
I do think we should have more shows about literature and the other arts.
>> ‘…“politcs†in this country has become entertainment and people would rather talk about it than anything else. It’s a bore…’
McLuhan’s aphorism about the medium being the message was updated by the late Neil Postman in his brilliant and prescient 1985 work, “Entertaining Ourselves to Death”, when he said the medium is the metaphor.
The dominant forms of communication – in the case of the West over the last 60 years that’s been TV – exert the most influence on the formation of a culture’s intellectual and social outlook and considerations.
Postman says TV, as a form, is built on the age-old principles of entertainment and show business and, as such, makes everything it touches into a “show” and an entertainment. We see fragments of the world through the prism of TV news, which has all the traits of show business – exciting music, eye-catching graphics, attractive news anchors and slick and quick stories. It trivialises everything. The audience never has a chance to find out and understand what affects them directly, and how they’re affected.
In TV news and current affairs there’s little of the dialectic, the examination, the conversation. The constant fractured stream of images and statements and faces and wars and commercials and comment and music and sentiment and touchdowns and coiffured hair and gleaming teeth and so on makes it almost impossible to understand the relevancy and discern meaning out of this entertainment called “news of the day”.
It’s almost impossible to construct a line of thinking out of this stream, so no wonder people aren’t engaged. No wonder they’re bored and depressed and just want more entertainment to distract them from all this misunderstanding and confusion. Back to Postman: The “shrivaled and absurd” nature of TV has delivered us the nature of our public discourse.
My point (sorry to crap on and on and on…): ROS gives us everything corporate media doesn’t and cannot. It provides a measily 5 hours a week of coherent, serious, rational examination and conversation of issues and topic proposed by its audience, where Chris, his guests and the audience can “deep dive” to investigate the paradoxes, the contradictions and the complexities that are the real stuff of life in the world.
I’ll chuck into a paypal account for that.
BTW… How about a program re-examining the work of Postman. He seems more relevant now as we move into a world dominated by the even more fragmented medium of the net. Will we ever share a common coherent outlook again, or will life become a series of totally mediated individual moments? Check out Thomas de Zengotita on this, as well, at http://dir.salon.com/story/books/int/2005/03/04/de_zengotita/index.html
What he said.
“In TV news and current affairs there’s little of the dialectic, the examination, the conversation. The constant fractured stream of images and statements and faces and wars and commercials and comment and music and sentiment and touchdowns and coiffured hair and gleaming teeth and so on makes it almost impossible to understand the relevancy and discern meaning out of this entertainment called “news of the dayâ€. ”
Which is why, except for sports programs, I seldom watch TV.
I nominate the Antipodes of 12:10am October 20 http://www.radioopensource.org/the-globe-on-lydon/#comment-34033 as a fundraiser, spoken, written- whatever form. Great comment!
There is some good TV, some of it very good- you have to look for it- be aware. Bill Moyers, Frontline….American Masters series etc. HBO I hear has been doing high quality film productions. I don’t watch TV either, been out of the habit for many years. I know I am missing the scarce good stuff.
Thanks for the link to Zengotita. He wrote an article for Harpers in 02- “The Numbing of the American Mind”
He starts with this quote:
… the massive influx of impressions is so great; surprising, barbaric, and violent things press so overpoweringly–”balled up into hideous clumps”–win the youthful soul; that it can save itself only by taking recourse in premeditated stupidity.
–Friedrich Nietzsche
then Z. says:
Nietzsche was not thinking I.Q. or ignorance when he used the word “stupidity.” He meant stupidity as in clogged, anesthetized. Numb. He thought people at the end of the nineteenth century were suffocating in a vast goo of meaningless stimulation. Ever notice how, when your hand is numb, everything feels thin? Even a solid block of wood lacks depth and texture. You can’t feel the wood; your limb just encounters the interrupting surface. Well, numb is to the soul as thin is to a mediated world. Our guiding metaphor. And it isn’t just youthful souls either.
“There is some good TV, some of it very good- you have to look for it- be aware. Bill Moyers, Frontline….American Masters series etc. HBO I hear has been doing high quality film productions. I don’t watch TV either, been out of the habit for many years. I know I am missing the scarce good stuff.”
The ONLY TV I ever watch is football games.
If there IS any good TV out there is must be VERY scarce and far between. I don’t know what you think is good on HBO – my wife and I have occasionally rented some of their series on DVD, e.g., Sex and the City, Deadwood, Sopranos, etc, and found them to be lurid, predictable, formulaic, with a few MOMENTS of brilliance.
I think that’s the problem with TV drama in general – the pressure of having to produce a new episode every week within the narrow constraints of a predefined set of characters, and settings is IMPOSSIBLE to do well. What if all of Shakespeare’s plays had involved the basic settings and characters of just MacBeth or just the Tempest? Even HE would run out of ideas, and HBO’s writers are not Shakespeare!
The problems I had with PBS were twofold:
1. Their “thinking man’s” shows like Nova were getting dumber and dumber every year (or I was getting smarter, but I doubt that). The quality of what I was seeing on shows like Masterpiece Theater was slipping and simply didn’t compare with live stage productions or what I couuld simply read in a book!
2. The relentless pandering to the older boomers with antique shows, cooking shows, and endless fund-raising repeats of Simon and Garfunkle in Central Park and Roy Obison in concert, put me on the verge of sending money to one of those right-wing groups dedicated to cutting CPB’s funding! Because we contribute money to WGBH (for radio) we get their members’ magazine – have you seen their program schedule? It’s GHASTLY!
With programming like that, it’s no wonder that WGBH TV suffer from the same affliction as WGBH radio – they’re in almost permanent fund-rasing mode.
I have to laugh at your sense of humor. Yes I agree. It really has been a little while since I said to myself “I am glad we support WGBH for that” But it happens. We just don’t go to it often ( and that is good!) Mostly lately it’s the high definition (HD) programs:great travelogues (ie Visions of Italy and Rudy Maxa’s series), the Great Museums series (trips to museums around the world. You go inside and get great blow-ups of the paintings, sculpture… so clear and detailed, you are THERE), programs on astrophysics ( a la “the Elegant Universe”), the Simon Shama Series on the History of England, the excellent Nature series- especially the one on the flora and fauna of Ireland.
The more I think the more I can throw at you…. But you are right that they are not coming so fast anymore- or maybe I am not looking at the guide or turning the “tube” on that often. I have not caught Moyer’s Faith and Reason. I taped but still have not watched Scorsese’s on Dylan. I like Frontline, now online on demand. My support goes for this too no?
But the medium is really the message and for the thrills you need a big screen and HD. Then the fat sizzling in the pan is fascinating.
We just happened to catch Barbaro that fateful day at the Kentucky Derby on our black and white set with the rabbit ears. Exciting TV.
More on Postman… He didn’t want his critique of TV to be regarded as some elitist whinge so was quick to point out that his problem with the medium was not that it was “junk” per se.
He thought junk was what television did best, and claimed to get as much enjoyment from the trivial as the next viewer. What’s more, he didn’t think junk TV seriously threatened anyone. (He wasn’t around for Big Brother!).
His concern arose when TV aspired to rise above the trivial and become the platform for society’s critical conversations. For Postman, it was when TV presented itself as the forum for examination and consideration of what was important that it was at its most dangerous. TV can’t help but trivialise everything, including what’s important.
“What’s more, he didn’t think junk TV seriously threatened anyone. ”
I disagree with that for two reasons -
1. is the sheer TIME that seductive junk on TV consumes in peoples’ days. If you ask the average person why they don’t read a daily newspaper every day like people used to, the most common answer is that they don’t have time. Yet these same people find plenty of time to watch TV. On the other hand, I read the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, not to mention The Economist, Scientific American, and several other publications. And I’m not some old fogey who has nothing better to do than sit in his rocking chair and read and ruminate. I hold down a fulltime job and I’m a painter, photographer, and poet. How do I do this? I don’t watch TV!
2. The other way TV is pernicious is that makes people THINK they are informed. They confuse TV journalism with real journalism and so, after seeing a 4-minute report on something on CNN, they feel “informed” and go on to something else.
Potter says. . . “( and that is good!) Mostly lately it’s the high definition (HD) programs:great travelogues (ie Visions of Italy and Rudy Maxa’s series), the Great Museums series (trips to museums around the world. You go inside and get great blow-ups of the paintings, sculpture… so clear and detailed, you are THERE), ”
I guess there’s two ways to respond to that . . .
1. I’ve BEEN to most of the great musems of th world; I’m an artist and I like to travel and I can’t imagine a TV even coming CLOSE to doing justice to a real musum experience. I once spent the better part of the afternoon gazing at the Prigioni at the Accedemia in Firenze. To see the gradual, hand-wrought transition from rough, formless stone to smooth skin textures in a single block of marble is something impossible to capture on TV, no matter how high-definition. I find this to be true of TV in general – it’s mostly just a pale shadow of the real thing.
2. Allowing that there are SOME things on TV worth watching you then have the problem of FINDING them. There are about 20 “radio” programs I listen to regularly on the Internet. The BEST of them might only have about 30% of shows I’m interested in. But the great thing is this: I can go to the website of “Fresh Air”, say, or “Poetica”, say, or “On Point”, and quickly glance at the archive, identify the topics that look interesting, and pull them off the web as MP3′s, without investing more than a few MINUTES of my time. There’s no equivalent of that on TV. With TV, by the time you find out, say in a conversation with someone, that ther was a great TV show on last week, it’s GONE!
“1. I’ve BEEN to most of the great musems of th world; I’m an artist and I like to travel and I can’t imagine a TV even coming CLOSE to doing justice to a real musum experience.”
True enough; but today, in the US, many museums don’t come even “CLOSE to doing justice to a real musum experience.”
TV, is a waste. Not even woth debating that point.
As for radio, it’s programs, even at their best don’t come close to the experience of reading an intelligent book on any topic.
There some books, pinelson that you can download on your MP3.
Check out your local library.
You can even find lectures on art and music there as well as philosphy and history and orf course, for those who must, politics.
plnelson: Regarding your Numero uno.I have been to some of the greatest museums of the world as well (I am actually headed to the Prado next week and look forward to it), and I agree that the museum experience is quite different from watching a camera scan a painting in high def, HOWEVER that is an experience of the painting, perhaps better than an artbook can convey or even and in person experience in some cases if you cannot get close. If one cannot get to the great museums of the world, OR in deed one had been there, it is still very worthwhile to see these artworks represented and and presented by knowledgeable or enthusiastic hosts. I go back to Kenneth Clark by give me Simon Schama today. This may give impetus to go there OR it may refresh the experience you have had OR it may be something a whole lot better than junk or nothing. I am an “artist’ too- ( when my hands are working) I majored in art history have my BFA spent my college days roaming the Met in NYC. and I I love to travel too but I am not an elitist snob about my experiences, and I am not calling you one, but lucky you to spend an afternoon gazing at the Prignoli. Some will never get there. And there are places you might not get I would venture to say. There are too many places to go, too many things to see in one life.
Regarding your #2, I agree. I just heard a forum “Should the US Get Out of Iraq”, with George McGovern John Murtha & others in a panel presented by Brian Lehrer, WNYC. TV will have to catch up. As I said- Frontline is doing it. There are others.
“OR in deed one had been there, it is still very worthwhile to see these artworks represented and and presented by knowledgeable or enthusiastic hosts. ”
But you can do that better with a good coffee-table book.
HD TV is still very low-res compared to good printing in a good book. Even 1080 non-interlaced has about the same content resolution of as a high-quality art-book would fit into a 3 or 4 inch image. Good books have plenty of excellent commentary and description. And you can look at the book any time you want for as long as you want, and you can fast-forward or rewind (sorry “turn the pages”) very quickly to get to other works you’re interested in.
Good coffee-table art books are expensive, but not NEARLY as expensive as a modern flat-screen TV, HD Receiver, and monthly cable subscription. There are some museums I’ve never been to that I’d love to visit – e.g., the Hermitage in St Petersburg – but I satidfy myself with books for those.
I think you will enjoy the Prado!
I understand that quotes are selective, but you make it sound like my Media Nation item is anti-”Open Source.” In fact, it was just the opposite.
Thanks — and good luck!
Dan Kennedy