To find out what folks are listening to, forget those high priced or even the lesser-priced consultants naming names like Joe McCarthy's been reborn. Ask students. The past two years, when my students in the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University cited what they listened to--if they listened to radio at all--"This American Life" was most often cited, and with great enthusiasm. Ira Glass was the radio name they knew and the most requested speaker. This year, not one student has mentioned the show or its host/creator. Now students claim they listen to "Morning Edition," the "Weekend Editions;" and that's it. It's a change: few students in past years listened to those flagship programs, though some acknowledged that their parents did. Few students listened to public radio at all. Still, while ads for NPR characterize their listeners as those who had posters of Susan Stamberg on their dorm room walls, the name has zero recognition among my students. Even after I tell them about hearing Susan's voice on ATC, her New Yorky tones reaching into my geodesic dome in the woods in Alaska, the name, the reference, jogs no memories - only my own middle-aged ones.

    Mostly, my students listen to the music they download for free on MP3; some listen to radio on the internet (including logging on to the NPR.org and local station WNYC.org websites) not heeding geography or time zones. The way we/they listen to radio, conceive of radio, has changed. It's possible that some of the changes in listening have something to do with the dismal track record of public radio in attracting what's euphemistically called "new talent," implying that all who work in the medium are talented and/or old. If we - and I'm not sure who "we" are - want to coddle/train/ encourage the next generation of radio makers, we'd damned well not teach them to imitate the old ones; even those programs still in the toddler stage. In an era when the form is no longer completely time-based (when rewind was impossible and the medium ephemeral, transitory) more manifestations and permutations can be tried and maybe heard. That's one of my goals as a teacher at Columbia: sonic expansion, telling stories accurately and still differently, overcoming boredom and imitation, enabling students to find their own way to be radio makers, and listeners.

    Each spring, in the radio workshop class, students produce a weekly half-hour newsmagazine. They chose the name. Last spring, it was "Compared to What?" Apt for the 10 quirky students, aged from early 20s to early 40s who each week challenged themselves and each other to stretch the medium while still being informative and listenable. Most of the time, they succeeded; sometimes they did so so well that I wished I could, after all these years, write/produce/think as well as some of them.

    This summer, in my Summer Camp job as Editor of the NPR/WNYC weekly hour long magazine, "On the Media," I hired nearly a dozen of my former students as freelance reporters. My experience working with them was frequently preferable, more professional, than my dealings with allegedly seasoned reporters. None of my former students ever said they, "...weren't inspired to make a change right now," as one veteran radio producer told me when only one line was left to complete an edit. They did the work, for it IS work (sometimes one hopes, artfully done).

    Last academic year, 13 students completed Radio Masters projects at Columbia; a half-hour documentary on a subject they proposed and had approved by a faculty committee. Some were remarkable for their inventiveness, for the quality of the writing, the original subject and approach; at least one was barely listenable. Not all come out as fully formed documentarians; all come out with basic chops; most with skills enabling them to work anywhere, in almost any capacity, from board op to show producer to host and reporter. PRI and NPR and local stations and dot coms hire them; potential employers call recruiting these students. They know they may well be better (and 'cause they're newly minted, cheaper to hire) than your basic Current reader. I read the ads in the back of Current; I realize that my students and I could well be competing for the same gigs.

    Radio at Columbia has grown in the past few years, since John Dinges, former Managing Editor at NPR news came on board. Under Dinges, the radio classroom has become a state of the art digital workroom with ProTools stations for each student; the students broadcast work live to the web; adjuncts and classes have been added; and the medium's gotten some respect from the begrudging television profs and their well groomed charges. Still, John is the only full-time faculty member assigned to radio...and he's seeking tenure as a print teacher! Though all students must take some radio (as little as three full days), they are inevitably taught by an adjunct, one of the nearly half dozen of us who work in radio, (generally as freelancers), and teach on the side. The administration still doesn't see fit to hire more radio profs, even as they add faculty to print, TV, and the now ill-named "new media."

    I'm in my third year as adjunct at Columbia; it may be my last. Ironically, as with so many aspects of radio, of public radio, the pay is too low to stay (with nothing for prep time, no benefits, no office, no guarantees). It's part of the future talent quandary. Columbia's become a kind of farm team for public radio, praises be. But since they're not adequately paying those who're doing the teaching, teaching talent may move on. Nevertheless, Columbia at least IS generating competent, creative reporters for the medium...something public radio's been unable to do. Few folks can afford a year at J school, or even want to do such a thing; other means must be found for the academic, the adults, the workers, the low on time and funds.

    Years, years back, NPR traveled around with a sideshow of reporters and engineers to put on workshops; I was the fortunate recipient of several of these generally weeklong events. The workshops worked: I still have most of my notes, and find myself teaching some of the things I learned those years ago. The workshops must be brought back, if there's to be a next generation of radio talent not dependent on academia; and must be brought back if the current crop of reporters is to improve, if the old farts like me are to continue to contribute, and in ways more interesting and LISTENABLE than most of what's currently on the air. There's the other part of the quandary: while we may decry the lack of new bods, what about the lack of older ones, those reporters with that trendoid word, gravitas? The reporters who can tackle a complex subject and transform it into good, sonic radio. So few around, really. So few who are able to be full-time independents. Good ones. Yes, that's open to interpretation, but in my new dual role as reporter and editor, I'm seeing just how few there are. It's scary. But that's for another rant.