Month: March 2016

Picture this:

You’re in your twilight years – many years from now!  🙂

You’re talking to your grandchildren about what they missed from this great “old” mass medium called radio – circa the early 2000s and dating back to the 1990s, the 1980s, the 1970s, and to even more ancient times during the Twentieth Century.

Your young audience looks at you glassy-eyed.  They’re confused.  They’ve never heard this “radio” thing you’re so excited about. But one brave youngster finally asks if there’s anyway they let hear what you’re describing.

Well, thanks to an organization formed about two years ago by the Library of Congress (LOC), you’ll be able to positively respond to that request.

During the end of February 2016, the LOC’s Radio Preservation Task Force (RPTF) Conference – Saving America’s Radio Heritage: Radio Preservation, Access, and Education  – brought together scholars, archivists and all manner of radio lovers from throughout America and beyond, to talk about ways to find and preserve radio programs, documents and history.

Denison University Associate Professor Bill Kirkpatrick was one of the conference attendees, and he spoke with the RPTF ‘s National Research Director Josh Sheppard, National Recording Preservation Foundation Executive Director Gerald Seligman, the Archives Center’s Audiovisual Archivist Wendy Shay and myself.

So check out the feature Prof. Kirkpatrick produced using those interviews, along with archival tape, for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ ACA-MEDIA podcast.  

Happy listening!

Last month, through a collaboration between Goggle and Indiana University’s Archives of African American Music and Culture, an exhibit exploring the “Golden Age” of Black Radio debuted online.  To hear NPR’s feature about this unique digital exhibition, click on the headline below.

Archive Spotlights The “Golden Age” Of Black Radio

In addition,  you can view and listen to this exhibit – organized in four parts –  by clicking here.

Don’t miss Part I of the  Golden Age of Black Radio: The Early Years.  Writer Richard Durham’s pioneering radio dramas are talked about in interviews with late veteran DJ Jack (the Rapper) Gibson and Durham’s wife Clarice Davis Durham.

Many of the audio clips featured in this fascinating online exhibit were pulled from interviews recorded for the Smithsonian Institution’s multi-award winning radio documentary series, Black Radio: Telling It Like It Was.

This 13-part series aired on public radio stations nationwide and featured the voices, stories and insights of African American men and women who worked in front of and behind radio’s microphones from its earliest days through the mid-1990s.

Happily, I was one of the three writers/producers who brought the Black Radio series to life, and who interviewed some of the many colorful radio personalities and innovators.

So visit this historic online exhibit at your leisure…and enjoy!

Late last month, one of the Facebook articles featured by the Zinn Education Project of the nonprofit Teaching for Change organization, honored Muhammad Ali and his historic rise to fame in a Miami, Florida arena fifty-two years ago.

A young Ali, then known as Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. – his birth name – won the heavyweight boxing championship title in a stunning upset.

To read this article and learn about writer Richard Durham’s connection with Muhammad Ali, click on the headline link below.

http://zinnedproject.org/2016/02/muhammad-ali-boxing-title/