News Break
I'm slowly but surely ending my self-imposed embargo on all things related to NPR. I realized several weeks ago that I'd hit the proverbial wall with regards to the news. Between digesting each day's New York Times, whose reading times can vary between thirty minutes to more than an hour, the stream of NPR programs I can hear at work, and all the various other sources of news, I knew it was time for a break. I always seem to regret doing this because I know I'm going to be skimming over important stories that, should they become truly relevant, will leave me with only a cursory understanding. It just so happens that I was in one of those phases where reading books had become the most important thing to me, and I couldn't justify using that time to pour over news stories that increasingly seem to be cut and paste jobs adding reports on new developments to rehashings of older news. As always, I slowly come out of this funk with a renewed interest and start devouring the paper with a renewed sense of urgency and interest.

My problems with NPR stem from a long standing view of mine that they are stridently biased towards devoting vast amounts of time to stories that fit their own agenda, and thus making it increasingly hard for me to listen willingly without feeling manipulated. As with my other funk, I felt that it was time to give NPR another chance. As luck would have it, my decision to turn the dial back to WDUQ just happened to coincide with yet another round of what I call begging, or in their parlance a pledge drive. These pledge drives are what sucks the very life out of listening to the radio. And it's so obvious when they have one going on. The stories seem rushed, the announcers are talking faster, and then out of nowhere here it comes, a pledge solicitation. The most annoying aspect are the lame testimonials and quasi-demands to donate. These are most often associated with Ira Glass, whose pretentious air seems to ooze from his pours through the microphone and out through your speaker. None of these tactics ever make me feel as if I need to pledge.

Finally someone has broken the silence I have suffered in for far too long. A Rant in the current issue of the City Paper hits on so many points and provides such a dead-on critique of the state of DUQ that I wish I could just reproduce the entire column here. To summarize, it seems that Dan Goldberg, a longtime member of DUQ, has grown frustrated by the lack of improvements that result from these increasingly frequent pledge drives. They have apparently picked up some more national content from NPR, but I couldn't tell you what that is, and the local content still sounds the same, as if it were produced in a senior high-school. The most poignant remark Goldberg makes, though, is reserved for DUQ's musical selection that resumes once they've completed their allotment of NPR programming, which he refers to as "all elevator jazz, almost all the time."

Goldberg also makes another observation, which is both the most telling and troubling for stations like DUQ. Anyone with a decent internet connection now has access to many, many stations from around the country whose programming puts DUQ's to shame. Every time I have the chance to listen to the news on my computer at work, I find that I never even think for a moment of connecting to DUQ. Instead, I turn to NJN, a New Jersey station with a steady stream of NPR programming without terrible jazz and professionally produced local content. DUQ, which seems to want to care about the community, can't do so without a more concerted effort to create programming that's worth listening to and making improvements that are noticeable in both content and quality.