How Hate Media Incited the Coup: Venezuela's Press Power

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 2:57 PM -0500 12/3/02, Doug Henwood wrote:
>>Who do you want to reach? You want to expand your audience. There 
>>are a thousand different directions to go. Let's say that there are 
>>groups you want to reach that you're not currently reaching in the 
>>community, go into those communities, get programmers, give them 
>>training, see what they want to do. Engage in a process of bringing 
>>people aboard. That's the only way you can really do it that I can 
>>think of. The way not to do it is to hire some high-ticket 
>>demographic expert from the advertising industry who comes in with 
>>reams of charts and statistics, telling you, Play this song and you 
>>get this audience. That's not community radio. That's the whole 
>>logic of commercial radio. One-way flow. The whole idea is to grab 
>>people and hook them to listen to ads. Community radio is 
>>developing an audience and an interaction in a community. You talk 
>>to people, bring programmers in. That's the way to do it....
>
>I'm not sure I buy this. WBAI is full of this sort of talk these 
>days - we need to bring in voices from the "community." I never know 
>what this means - what *is* the community? It's usually defined 
>demographically, if it's defined at all. But for these purposes, the 
>"black community" largely excludes that portion of the black 
>population that votes Democratic and goes to church.
>
>And what kind of programming would these voices from the "community" 
>produce? Pacifica radio, and left media in general, desperately need 
>people who know what they're talking about - who have a body of 
>expertise, skill at analysis, and some sense of style to make it all 
>appealing. Are there vast untapped resources out there in the 
>"community"? Where do you start prospecting?

McChesney speaks about giving people training, so he's not thinking 
of "ready-made" programmers untapped in communities that you want to 
reach.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that "for these purposes, the 
'black community' largely excludes that portion of the black 
population that votes Democratic and goes to church."  Who is doing 
the excluding?  WBAI?  The "black community"?  McChesney? 
Demographers for progressive radio marketing?  It's unclear from the 
sentence.

As for "people who know what they're talking about - who have a body 
of expertise, skill at analysis, and some sense of style to make it 
all appealing," I'm not sure what sort of people you have in your 
mind either.  You find Reagan, Clinton, O'Reilly, and the like worth 
watching for us to learn from their styles, but I don't find their 
styles all that appealing.

At 2:44 PM -0500 12/3/02, Doug Henwood wrote:
>>Brooklyn Green loon, Mitchel Cohen
>
>Of the Red Balloon Collective? What a hilarious dude - the very 
>image of the thoughtless hyperactivist. In his appearance at the 
>Brecht Forum, former NYS gubernatorial (goobernatorial?) candidate 
>Stanley Aronowitz singled out Mitch for praise. With that kind of 
>political sense (and his stained shirt), it's no wonder that Stanley 
>couldn't hit the 50k vote mark to keep the Greens on the ballot.

You repeatedly mentioned "Stanley's stained shirt" -- it must have 
annoyed the hell out of you, if it was so memorable.  I agree that 
you should avoid stained shirts and shirtlessness, unless you happen 
to look like Che.  We can probably generate some consensus here on 
"style don'ts," but it's hard to do the same for "style dos."  You 
can easily clone failures, but you can't clone successes without 
marketing cliches, since we are not talking about producing teen 
idols.

We can and certainly should emphasize the importance of learning 
public speaking skills and gaining experience in giving speeches and 
providing sound bites -- for left-wingers who aspire to political 
offices of any sorts, the role of media spokespeople, etc.

Now, concerning "a body of expertise," we do have shortages, 
depending on subjects.  That cannot be easily remedied, though. 
Building up a body of expertise in any subject takes a long time.
-- 
Yoshie

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