you never know

I just got a job at UnionDocs. UnionDocs a documentary arts collective and studio space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (and in fact only blocks from my place!). They also run a residency program, six documentarians live upstairs and collaborate in curating screenings every week of feature length documentaries, with the director around for a post screening discussion.

There is also a studio space and loads of resources for artists and filmakers in the community.

I am proud to be representing this totally unique documentary arts organization!!!

I just finished up an amazing internship at The Brian Lehrer Show at WNYC in New York City. The Brian Lehrer Show is a live, daily, two-hour long call in show that covers issues and news in New York and beyond. Working in live radio was an exciting challenge and I got to pitch and help produce several segments featured on the show, including:

Facebook and Lifeat.com–Social Networking for the Young and Not-so-Young

Spooky Spots

The Mexican Model

Young, Homeless, and Gay

Youth Culture Capitalism

My friends Ann and Kara make great radio. I recently got the opportunity to help them out on two radio docs: one about refugees living in America for Weekend America, and the other about the Berlin Philharmonic for WNYC.

You can listen to them here:
One Thing: From Burma To Indianapolis

Inside The Berlin Philharmonic

Here’s a piece I did for the news about the most recent threat to Internet radio:

Internet_Radio

The Copyright Royalty Board has decided to raise royalty rates –webcasters will have to pay up to a 300% increase in royalty fees on a per-song basis. The consequences of this could signal the end of independent web-based radio shows and podcasts, as Josh Ward from SaveNetRadio says in the piece, and could bankrupt even larger webcasting stations like Yahoo and Pandora.

Record Industry organization Sound Exchange says they just want artists and labels to get paid fairly for their work. But thousands of bands and artists may not get their chance to be heard or discovered, since the proposed fees would reduce the variety of independent programming out there.

For more information, check out www.savenetradio.org

Here are a few reports I produced for a Pacifica National Special about the United States Social Forum, which grew out the World Social Forum.
Nearly 10,000 people gathered from many social movements in the U.S. and around the world. The Forum workshops and events revolved around several issues: labor rights, the environment, Indigenous rights, Immigration, gender equality, and the war in Iraq. Check out the entire Pacifica broadcast of the U.S. Social Forum here.
USSF_Closing.mp3
USSF_Immigration.mp3
USSF_Be_the_Media.mp3
USSF_Youth_Performers.mp3
USSF_Prisoner Family Project.mp3

The Coney Island Mermaid parade last weekend was maybe the best ever–the costumes, the weather, the beach…my friends and I were even in the parade!!!

Here is a news piece I did for WBAI Sunday News about the changes happening to Coney Island and the rumor that this was the last Mermaid Parade:

The Coney Island Mermaid Parade celebrated it’s Silver Anniversary this year with a record crowd of over half a million people attending. But many are saying this will be the last summer of the ‘good ol’ days’ of Coney Island, as developers move forward with a $2 billion dollar plan to drastically remake this historic neighborhood.

Give a listen here:

Mermaid_parade.mp3

The Mermaid Parade is organized by Coney Island USA, a tourism groups that organizes some of the better burlesque/sideshow/freakshow events that make Coney Island so great. Hopefully this summer I will get out there more to record and photograph Astroland while it lasts.

Well we’ve set up virtual shop at that giant open cyber-flea market known as:
MYSPACE!!!
Tom sent me his personal congratulations just the other day.

If you also partake of myspace, please do befriend:

http://www.myspace.com/youneverknowradio

In anticipation of my upcoming podcast “lost,” here is a promo I made- a dramatic introduction to radio like you’ve never heard it before!

I entered the promo in the Public Radio Talent Quest, where you can listen to it and vote for your next “Public Radio American Idol”:

Public Radio Talent Quest Entry

or you can hear it right here:

Lost_Promo.mp3

I recently had the opportunity to attend a gallery opening for “Kawthoolei: The Karen People of Burma,” an exhibit of beautiful black and white photographs by Swedish photographer Kristofer Dan-Bergman.

The photographs were taken in the Mai-La refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border and evoke the dignity in the faces and lives of the Karen people. The Karen, one of Burma’s largest ethnic minority groups, have been fighting for autonomy under a brutal Burma military dictatorship for decades.

The exhibit was a benefit for Outer Voices, a radio and internet documentary project that shares stories from grassroots women activists working in their communities in South East Asia and the Pacific Islands. “Kawthoolei” is their documentary on the Karen and it is one of a continuing series. Listen to Kawthoolei and check out this amazing project at: www.outervoices.org.

The piece I produced about the exhibit aired on the WBAI Arts Magazine.
Listen to it here.

Kawthoolei_Exhibit.mp3

In the spirit of dirty politics everywhere this election season (did it seem even worse than usual this year?), a brief, humorous glimpse into the New Jersey Senate race and all its media antics.
Aired nationally on Pacifica’s election show, Informed Dissent, November 4, 2006.
(Full disclosure: I voted for Menendez (grudgingly))

NJ_Senate_Race.mp3