Current (https://current.org/2003/10/)
American University President Benjamin Ladner decided to remove WAMU Executive Director Susan Clampitt after several private conversations with station employees, the Washington Post reports. Ladner said Clampitt’s problems ran much deeper than a few disgruntled staff members, which Clampitt said explained certain frustrations.
WAMU Executive Director Susan Clampitt was forced out of her job today by American University President Benjamin Ladner. Clampitt had been heavily criticized for her handling of the station’s finances since taking charge in 2000. Ladner named his chief of staff, David Taylor, to oversee the station during the search for Clampitt’s replacement. Earlier Current coverage of the charges against the ousted e.d.
The University of Connecticut’s winning women’s basketball team has renewed a contract for Connecticut PTV to handle local broadcats of its games for five more years. The annual fee paid by CPTV for 17 or more games will rise from $600,000 to $1 million by the 2007-08 season.
Monday, Nov. 3 is National Traffic Directors Day, organized (of course) by Traffic Directors Guild of America. The guild is suggesting that bosses treat each TD and a guest to dinner on a tradeout deal with a nice restaurant. The guild is also compiling a salary survey for release in January, adding TV stations. Last year, 1,500 radio stations participated in the survey, the guild said.
USA Today profiles StoryCorps, the new oral history project from Sound Portraits Productions. “It’s history, bottom-up,” says Studs Terkel. [Current article.]
On the Media’s Bob Garfield calls Terry Gross’s talk with Bill O’Reilly “an uncharacteristically ham-fisted hatchet job.” But he concedes, “[I]f I were face to face with him, it would be hard for me to resist what Gross could not resist.” (Via Romenesko.)
A Washington Post reader decries WAMU’s decision to drop bluegrass, while another supports the changes General Manager Susan Clampitt has made.
Technology analysts predict that Tivo will soon be eclipsed by the DVR-ready set-top boxes offered by cable companies, reports the New York Times.
New Hampshire Public Radio and Iowa’s KUNI/KHKE have started a weblog devoted to 2004 election coverage.
“NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dworkin [sic] definitely needs to look for a new line of work,” opines a Capital Times columnist, weighing in on, yes, the Gross/O’Reilly affair.
David Isay discussed StoryCorps, his new oral history project, on Morning Edition. Also, today’s Talk of the Nation takes up the future of public television.
The creators of the Public Radio Exchange are discussing their monster over at Transom.org.
Jeffrey Dvorkin’s column on the dustup between Bill O’Reilly and Terry Gross reveals that even NPR admits its own liberal bias, charges conservative columnist Brent Bozell on TownHall.com.
In a letter to the station’s listeners, WAMU Executive Director Susan Clampitt defends the station’s spending despite mounting deficits and criticism of her leadership both within and outside of the station. The letter is posted to the WAMU website.
Bill O’Reilly and Terry Gross continue to hash over their confrontation, this time in the Buffalo News. “How thin-skinned can this guy be?” Gross asks of her sparring partner. (Via Romenesko.)
“Do you want to say a few words about my growing lust?” asks Terry Gross of Sean Penn in “The NPR Blooper Reel,” over at The Morning News.
“I don’t trust the woman, I feel that she’s got an agenda,” says Fox News host Bill O’Reilly of NPR’s Terry Gross in the Philadelphia Daily News. “Her sensibilities lie in the area that I’m evil and what I’m doing is bad.”
After a decade of failed efforts to reverse the tide and rescue the system, PBS is in crisis mode, reports Television Week.
Last week a miniature mobile recording studio came to rest in Vanderbilt
Hall of New York’s Grand Central Terminal, marking the debut of StoryCorps,
an ambitious undertaking led by independent public radio producer David Isay. StoryCorps aims to popularize the recording of oral histories by making
it easy for average Americans to interview one another. Each mini-studio,
called a StoryBooth, features tables, chairs, digital recording equipment
and a trained facilitator in a quiet, comfortable setting. Booth users are encouraged to bring older relatives and, in 40 minutes of
talking, tease out their stories. They walk away with a compact disc of the
interview, and another copy goes to a new Library of Congress archive.
“I don’t like the East Coast,” says roving public radio reporter Scott Carrier in The Salt Lake Tribune. “There’s too many people, it’s too flat and there’s too many trees.” A show of Carrier’s photographs has opened in Salt Lake City.