One of the great things about our New Media era is the common use of e-mail in the privileged online world, and the growing availability of this low-cost, speedy communication tool in developing countries. Everyone has a world of potential collaborators and producing partners around the globe just a click away. For the Afropop web site, for example, the possibilities are wonderful: our correspondent in Mali e-mails us a new artist profile; our guest editorialist Angelique Kidjo answers listeners e-mail responses to her thoughts; our sister station in Mozambique e-mails us a request for assistance from the global Afropop community in the wake of devastating floods.

Speaking personally, I am very excited about New Media opportunities. Afropop is rapidly becoming a multi-media service-radio, www.afropop.org, Internet music channels for our site and other customers, television, community events and music lovers' tours to Africa and Latin America. I feel the palette of how and what I create is blown wide open. All the sound recordings, photos, video, interviews, information that has been gathered in the course of 15 solid years of research can now be recycled and given new life on new platforms.

In terms of business, my watchwords are "non-exclusivity," "strategic partnerships," "branded identity," and "link to us".

I'm so sick of hearing people say, "I used to hear Afropop on WXYZ but they dropped the show, and I really miss it." Or "I moved to Resume Speed, Arizona and the local station does not carry your show." When we release our new site (soft launch: December 2000), our fans in the worldwide Afropop community can enjoy our program, anytime, anywhere, on demand. They don't have to be around at 11:00 on a Saturday night. Don't get me wrong. If that's the only time a PD can find a place for us on air, that's better than not being on air. So be it. We will continue to provide our stations with exclusive first broadcasts of fresh shows.

I have this image of some high school student in the year 2086, long after I'm dead and gone, going to the Afropop web site and catching the ambience of Kinshasa Congo nightclubs in the mid 1980s, researching the story of popular Cuban music in the 1990s when Cuban music reasserted itself in the American consciousness, enjoying the unique broadcast style and charisma of Georges Collinet. This mythical student will get turned on by the music and the stories and it will change his or her life. Our online archive will not be some dusty museum, but a living, updated testament to the historically profound and ongoing conversation between cultures worldwide. Liberating us from the blessing and curse of being timely and ephemeral, independent producers' work can live on.

Now for a dose of reality about the state of the web and public radio now: at a recent PRPD session in San Diego, Peter Dominowski reported results of research with public radio listeners on how they use stations' web sites. Bottom line: for all the hoopla about the web, only one in ten listeners listens to anything on these sites. The most successful public radio station web site has 141 listeners to web fare at any given moment. And, overall, listeners are much less emotionally attached to what the web offers than what their radio station offers. Hmmm... so what makes radio so much more compelling? I think it's the listener's relationship with radio personalities. It's the active engagement with the listener's imagination, heart, mind and soul. Our listeners can walk from their bedroom to the bathroom to the kitchen and be listening to the same program on different radios. Your PC is a great place to get targeted information, but will it rise to the level of entertainment and inspiration we know is possible on radio? I think how people adapt to hand-held, wireless Internet devices will go a long way in answering this question.

Public radio will continue to be a primary ally, customer and platform for the work of independent producers. Public Interactive's model of supplying choice content for use by public radio stations on stations' web sites is brilliant model of a New Media-Old Media marriage worth participating in and helping to succeed. Our listeners know and trust public radio as an alternative to commercial media. Independent producers who have contributed so much to public radio's reputation as an oasis of intelligent, inspiring, aesthetically pleasing offerings have great opportunities both in public radio and New Media venues. We can use our production chops and original ideas to rise above the least common denominator of mass media, to bring new voices and unexamined stories to larger audiences. We can forge new partnerships. We can infiltrate mainstream media. Let's master the New Media tools available to us, be business savvy in building partnerships, and keep our eyes on the prize of sharing our values and stories with a more conscious, informed, joyful and sustainable society.

Gotta get back to hacking down my e-mail mountain. Tell me what you think!

Any partners out there with ideas for cool projects? E-mail me.