>doug, does your forwarding this message imply that you support marc
>cooper's views and version of the story? i do not know anything
>about kpfk but if what happened there is similar to what happened at
>wbai, then there seem to be several flaws in his reasoning. to give
>just one example, he suggests that half the blame for the drain of
>funds can be placed on the dissidents because they caused the board
>to hire expensive lawyers, etc and they are now concentrating more
>on removing the old pack than fund-raising. however, raising funds
>from listeners like me and the few other wbai listeners i have
>spoken to, involves reinstating the old ("dissident") crowd. the
>qualitative improvements (by my subjective opinion) in the
>programming, in the last week or two since the reversal of the
>december coup, have been impressive. my prediction is that this will
>bring significant increase/return of contributions from listeners (i
>know i will throw in $100 more to keep amy goodman on the air). i am
>not informed enough about the politics of pacifica and wbai. is
>louis proyect on this list? he had strong (and seemingly valid)
>criticism against what seems to be cooper's views.
Cooper's been in & around Pacifica for over 20 years; LNP3 hasn't. He only knows what he reads on the various free pacifica lists, which are extremely partisan and selective, kind of like LNP3 himself.
I don't know what's been going on at KPFK, but if he's right (and I like Marc personally, think he does good radio, and take what he says on this stuff very seriously), then firing Schubb over the protest of the staff and replacing him with someone with no radio experience is a bit alarming. The Indy Media Centers are wonderful, I'm glad they're around and hope they'll multiply, but they're not the right model for a radio network with licenses in 5 giant metro areas. The challenge for Pacifica is to produce politically and culturally serious programming that's well-done and - sorry, this may sound scandalous - entertaining enough to appeal to an audience larger than the congregation. Cooper can do that. I'd like to do that. I'm afraid the restoration of the status quo ante at WBAI won't do that. Utrice & Co. wouldn't have done that either, of course. We'll see.
The financial crisis - and it's quite bad - is in no small part the result of the boycott. And also the spending on publicists and lawyers by the mediocrities who were running Pacifica. It's a fucking mess.
Doug