(Submitted by listener-representative Andrea Prichett to the KPFA Local Station Board, 4-11-15   Developed by Carole Wolfey.  The board has agreed to take up this proposal at their next  meeting, Saturday, May 9, 11 am – 4 pm.   See below for a link to the audio of the board discussion thus far.)

The LSB asks that KPFA General Manager and staff work with community members to develop a coordinated station-wide plan for providing local news and public affairs programming in alignment with KPFA’s mission to cover local events and topics with a depth, insight and broad signal range that no other station can do.

This plan may include exploration of possibilities to increase access to information from the community such as:

1.  Organize an electronic bulletin board to share and utilize news and public affairs information resources from the KPFA community, local organizations and the public.

 

 

2.  Establish a list of people involved with social justice, political, economic and environmental issues from our local geographical areas who we can invite to contribute to local news and public affairs programs as citizen journalists.

 

3.   Expand recruitment and training of program interns for news and public affairs. Articulate requirements for becoming an intern and make these requirement broadly known and available on our website to attract people who are skilled and/or interested in contributing to programming.

 

4.   Develop and communicate a system for programmers to be able to receive and use recorded segments from community members for news and public affairs programs.

 

5.  Utilize Twitter, Facebook and live stream channels to get up to the minute information for news and public affairs programs.

Coordinate a station-wide system for providing local news
and public affairs programming

6.  Create daily programs or parts of programs that focus primarily on local community news and public affairs at predictable and regular times during the work week.

 

7.  Develop a protocol that clarifies when/how to cover breaking news in our signal range and to pre-empt programming in significant and emergency situations.

 

8.  Expand use of video channel and live streaming channel to cover local news and public affairs and cultural events.

 

Communicate regularly with listeners and viewers
about local news and public affairs.

9.  Develop outreach materials to let people know about station coverage of local news and public affairs programs and feature it on the website, the video channel, Twitter and Facebook. Include information about all the station resources including KPFA, KPFB, KPFA video channel, KPFA Facebook, KPFA Twitter, KPFA on You Tube and kpfa.org with program archives.

 

10.  Post written local news and public affairs stories on the KPFA website so that they can be accessed through computer searches.

 

11.  Increase (through training and recruitment of volunteers) our capacity to provide responses to emails and calls that are received at the station.

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Here’s the audio of the Local Station Board’s initial discussion of this proposal as well as a discussion of policies and procedures for pre-emptions and special programming at KPFA.