Happy Fathers' Day from Cory Booker
UPDATE: I apologize for the incoherence of what follows. Special thanks to Doug Doyle, WBGO's news director, for sending me the press release that sparked their news item (now published here), and to Cephas Bowles, WBGO's General Manager, for taking the time to discuss funding for public radio in the comments section below.
I've slightly modified the post to fix a few things that the press release helped me sort out.
I don't know much about Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark, but I want to know more after hearing a news report this morning on Jazz 88, WBGO (if you're not a member, you really should be*).
I'm upset that there isn't coverage about this anywhere. I can't get quotations, and what you're getting is a brain dump of what I heard when I was driving twelve hours ago instead of responsible reporting.
Doug Doyle, the WBGO News Director, talked about a new Center for Fathers in Newark. It's specifically for fathers who are out of work or newly released from jail. Mayor Booker said something to the effect that fathers are a critical part of the life of Newark; that how they fare affects Newark's stability.
Mayor Booker made a comment that I can't clearly recall now, but I remember thinking that he wasn't talking about the equality of the sexes, or of the poor and underprivileged, or of providing handouts to the needy; he was talking about a center where men could learn to be independent men and good fathers in tough times. [From the press release: "With the opening of this center, we are now providing the tools that or fathers need to succeed - as men, as parents and as residents of Newark."]
I hope that I heard correctly. I'd like to know more, but I can't find a thing about this new center out there.
I'm not big on spending money unnecessarily, but seeing a local politician highlight something that would make such a big difference to his environment is really compelling. I wish him well.
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* Yes, I know that I shouldn't like Public Radio. I still don't understand what it means to be a "A private corporation funded by the American people", as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) claims to be, nor how the differences between the CPB, PBS, and NPR really matter, if the CPB funds PBS and NPR -- it still sounds like our tax money, just filtered through more layers of bureaucracy. But if they're going to fund it anyway, I'm not going to ignore it out of spite; and if I really think that people should pay for what they want, then WBGO is well worth paying for.
Labels: Cory Booker, local government, Newark, Spending
posted by Jake Freivald @ 10:11 PM
1 Comments
1 Comments:
Thanks for the nice comments about WBGO's "Newark Today", the WBGO News Department and News Director Doug Doyle. WBGO believes in providing important and intelligent information about people, events and things occurring in our area.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a quasi-governmental body, based in Washington, D.C., which provides small operating grants to eligible public radio and television stations nationwide.
The FY08 appropriation was approximately $400 million dollars. That is, a little more than $1 per American citizen--not much money by any measure.
These grants typically represent some 10 to 20 percent of the average public radio station's annual operating budget. It represents nine percetn of WBGO's current budget.
Stations must meet certain operating requirements (e.g. hours of operation, staff size, audience size) to be eligible for the grants.
The grants are very important to the stations and are used to leverage other monies each station requires for its day-to-day operation. Without these grants, many public radio and television stations would have a far greater time providing the unique services that they offer.
From my perspective, this is federal money well spent. Public broadcasting stations enhance the country's overall quality of life and take diverse voices, ideas and culture to communities that may never hear these things.
Cephas Bowles
General Manager
WBGO
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