Radio Ambulante steers Spanish-language pubradio in new direction

Radio Ambulante, an ambitious monthly radio show and podcast which hopes to revolutionize Spanish-language radio, launched its pilot episode today. Radio Ambulante (which roughly translates to “radio on the move”) is the brainchild of acclaimed Peruvian-American writer Daniel Alarcón, whose novel Lost City Radio, was named Best Novel of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Washington Post, also claiming the 2009 International Literature Prize. Also on the Radio Ambulante team are Martina Castro (managing editor of KALW News), Mandalit del Barco (general assignment correspondent at NPR West), entrepreneur Carolina Guererro, and journalist Annie Correal, whose work has aired on NPR, WNYC and This American Life. The show is based out of KALW-FM in San Francisco, and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting serves as the program’s 501(c)3 fiscal sponsor. The pilot episode, “Moving: Migration, Exile, and Travel,” weaves together four stories centered around “moving,” a thematic structure similar to that of This American Life.