Town and Gown Bridges: Locally Grown

In December of 2005 I made the fateful decision to contact the then current head of Northfield.org, a community-driven website for the city of Northfield, Minnesota. Griff Wigley was a direct, funny, and engaging advocate of citizen journalism and we hit it off well, quickly coming to an agreement to merge his current community news podcasting project with the resources and additional voices of KRLX-FM.

The resulting collaboration that we initiated, soon after dubbed “Locally Grown,” has seen a team of community and student journalists analyze and discuss pressing local issues including zoning, environmental, and civic works. Leader of the Northfield Downtown Development Corporation (NDDC) Ross Currier (left) and Northfield Economic Development Authority (EDA) member Tracy Davis have worked with Griff and the News Department at KRLX-FM to continue this community service through 2007.

Locally Grown Northfield Link.

Radio Best Practices Project

In the Fall of 2005 the staff at KRLX-FM in Northfield, Minnesota began an overhaul of the then skimpy training materials used to educate upcoming on-air staff. Previously training had been primarily ad-hoc and informal, relyintg mostly on the immediate memory of staff at hand.

We decided to change this by writing a comprehensive training reference to be entitled the “KRLX Operator Handbook,” referring to the generic “operator” as opposed to DJ, newscaster, board operator, etc. Covering the basics of audio through the delicate process of selecting music for a themed program, it tackles in a thorough and sometimes entertaining way the basics of working in a top-notch college radio environment.

My work comprising roughly two-thirds of the writing and approximately one quarter of the editing work in this document as well as the vast majority of design and formatting that went into the finished product. Completed in the Fall of 2006, it has since been transferred into Wiki format and will serve as the foundation for future generations of Carleton College radio students.

Operator Handbook in PDF Link.

From the Ground Up: krlx.org

After assuming the position of Producer at KRLX-FM in Northfield, MN, I went straight to work building it’s web presence, then non-existent. By 2003 it was painfully clear that the station needed to incorporate digital content into its repertoire in order to remain relevant in a student sea of early adopters. Burgeoning digital music libraries and portable media were already beginning to threaten the very paradigm that college radio was founded upon and it was no time to be standing still.

It became clear to me that two essential components would work as an extension of both new media’s and radio’s inherent qualities:

1. Accessibility
2. Locality

The web could provide unprecedented access to media beyond simulcasts (audio streaming, in this case) including accompanying photographs, summaries, and packaged audio (later, podcasts). In addition, the strength of radio as a local resource, that is a unique and timely community-centric viewpoint, could give it a distinct advantage over static digital media and information services from other locales.

It occurred to me, from my own perspectives on media and from research into other methods that had been employed with community and public broadcasting, that two distinct interfaces could co-exist. The radio and telephone delivery and feedback mechanism worked but was in some ways outmoded, clumsy and sometimes overly personal. If content was to stream on the web there had to be a feedback mechanism that is entirely web-based, instant and comfortably removed yet able to communicate the essentials. Thus,

• Site-wide commenting at the program, episode and track level
• Instant, web-based feedback mechanism
• Easy access to playlists and logs
• Familiar blog-based program presentation
• RSS / Podcast delivery of programs
• Portal style presentation of program offerings (including iTunes)
• Searchable, dynamic achives

My role in the site was from conception through design, with a team of talented programmers working to build functionality through several different open source CMS platforms including NucleusCMS and Wordpress. These screen captures reflect the state of the website in its first inception in the winter of 2004. The current KRLX website can be found at krlx.org.

Homepage Link.
Playlists Link.
Production Link.
iTunes Portal Link.