At Crosscurrents, we are big fans of Heben Nigatu, Tracy Clayton, and their podcast “Another Round with Heben and Tracy”. Unfortunately, the love isn’t always reciprocated. We have heard them talk about how public radio doesn’t always do it for them.
“I just assume that everything [on public radio] is going to be so straight laced and academic and just sort of boring,” said Tracy Clayton on one of their episodes.
In honor of Another Round’s parent company, BuzzFeed, home of the so-called listicle – you know, 27 dogs wearing socks who will make your day, 11 ways we thought the future would be cooler – we’d like to present our list of the Top 5 reasons why KALW is cooler than your average public radio station
Top five reasons KALW is cooler than your average public radio station.
Reason #5
We put care and creativity into everything we do. We try to go above and beyond with the sound design of our stories, but it’s also the little snippets we make for own pleasure, the things that are never even meant for radio.
Reason #4
We help people reach their dreams. That might sound like a stretch but we have an example to back it up. Just listen to our show “Hear Here”, our local community storytelling project. We seek out the stories of people who live and work in San Francisco and Oakland neighborhoods – and share what we hear on air and online!
Reason #3
KALW is in tune with the local music scene. We have several shows on music that spotlight Bay Area artists as well as people touring through. Every day on Crosscurrents we highlight a local band or musician, and our station is located in a public high school right and the school orchestra rehearses right below our newsroom. It’s our daily soundtrack. It doesn’t get any more local than that
Reason #2
We are more than just a radio station. We incubate all kinds of series and podcasts like, “99% Invisible”, “The Litography Project”, and our newest podcast, “The Specialist”. We partner with local organizations to bring you stories from wide range of places such as San Quentin Prison and the Oakland Public Library. We frequently organize neighborhood events with some of these community partners to get everyone involved. Through our Audio Academy we also participate in bringing up the next generation of creative storytellers.
Reason #1
KALW has this very unique approach to our systems and operations.