Josh Shepperd

This interview is so clear & quietly devastating. Public media as we understand it is over.

This is not about the end of NPR & PBS. They might be able to find ways to continue to make programs. Instead of content, this is about the capacity to broadcast at all - antennae, transmitters, licenses. 🧵

cpb.org/pressroom/Co...

The corporation for public broadcasting shutting down is awful news for people looking to keep public media’s mission alive.

a brief thread on what it means for public radio:

For real… they are just everywhere so people eat and drink from there all day long.

I also ate this sesame opera cake, quite unique. Sorry, but Paris is the best city in Europe. 

I ate this matcha red bean cream cake today in Paris. Almost too beautiful to consume. But only almost…

Column: The Corporation for Public Broadcast is ‘winding down.’ What does that mean for public radio and TV? The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced it is “wind-down” operations. What does this mean for public radio and TV?

Column: The Corporation for Public Broadcast is ‘winding down.’ What does that mean for public radio and TV?

I talk with media studies professor and public media expert Josh Shepperd for an explainer. In short, it's dire

Gift 🔗

Anyway thanks to Nina Metz for giving me the floor so thoroughly in this piece.

We’ll never fully recover the 98+% of national coverage that public media is mandated to provide. We need a concerted movement to commit to public services as a social good. That’s the only way that we might recover some of this lost infrastructure.

The cuts aren’t just a reduction in services, it’s a cunning attempt to socially engineer how and what information rural communities receive. And it’s a move to force frequency sales of hundreds of signals to religious and conservative interests by forcing stations out of FCC “compliance.”

Column: The Corporation for Public Broadcast is ‘winding down.’ What does that mean for public radio and TV? The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced it is “wind-down” operations. What does this mean for public radio and TV?

I gave an in-depth interview with my hometown Chicago Tribune about what’s going to happen to NPR and PBS, and how cutting public media is part of a broader anti-democratic ideological project.

Allison Perlman (UC Irvine) and I are still writing the official "History of Public Broadcasting" update for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and Current, public media's trade journal. Current will print it. Prescient project.

Mellon Foundation The Mellon Foundation makes grants to actively unlock the power in the arts and humanities that helps connect us all.

“American Academy of Arts&Sciences reports 96.3% of humanities grads age 23-32 fully employed. Earnings in humanitiess comparable to social/life sciences, job satisfaction levels too. A serious mismatch bw actual employment for hum grads +general perception."
www.mellon.org/voices/human...

When we rebuild our public media up from the ashes it will need to be much bigger, bolder, and better funded -- not so dependent on private capital and corporate sponsorships, but truly public. It will need to be more democratic, more independent, and capable of withstanding two-bit fascist regimes.

Notable that this is coming from the major center-liberal newspaper of Israel. Also the oldest. Equivalent to a Washington Post pre-2025.

The victim identity Israel built over generations now fuels its denial of genocide in Gaza ***

“Israelis are engaging in a classic genocide denial tactic. Any mention of Palestinian suffering is seen as a threat to the nation's image and survival.”

Many congratulations to @cmorari.bsky.social for being promoted to Full Professor!

That, my friends, is a Parisian lemon cake shaped like a lemon. Yes it was expensive, and yes I ate one and it was delicious.

Is NPR erasing diverse voices?

NPR's Diverse Sources Database - an incredibly resource for qualified experts from underrepresented and marginalized perspectives -- is GONE. Click any link to the former directory and it just says "not found." One example: guides.library.columbia.edu/findingsources

Paris. Mood.

Gaza: BBC's Jeremy Bowen goes onboard a plane dropping aid The BBC's international editor was on a Jordanian flight as it dropped supplies into Gaza.

"The Israelis don't want us to film out of the window at the devastation inside Gaza. But I've spent 10 mins looking at it with my own eyes and I can tell you communities in the north of Gaza, that I knew well, are flat. There's nothing left of them."

Jeremy Bowen

www.bbc.com/news/videos/...

“Nationally, 47 percent of instructional higher education faculty work on a part-time, contingent basis, often facing low pay with little or no benefits or job security.”

Adjunct faculty deserve fair loans and debt relief! This legislation—which AAUP endorses—gets us closer to this aspiration.

Defunding Big Bird: The Politics and History of Public Broadcasting. A Conversation with Josh Shepperd. - Then & Now In this episode of then & now, guest host Dr. Ben Zdencanovic welcomes Professor Josh Shepperd, Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and Director of the Libra...

I enjoyed talking to UCLA's Luskin Center for History and Policy podcast "Then and Now" about the origins and possible future of public media. Thanks to Ben Zdencanovic.

They were closed last year when we went! Today open, and it is an excellent collection that includes the extremely important Van Eyck "Madonna of Chancellor Rolin" that might honestly be the highlight of the entire painting collection at the museum. Plus no one in the room.

Hieronymus Bosch owl detail from Le Louvre today. Vibe.

I bought weird new glasses and I'm eating 4000 calories per day and losing weight at the same time.

Ok it’s settled. I live in Paris now.

Thanks to @publicbooks.bsky.social for publishing my short piece on disability, erasure and @ashleyshoo.bsky.social 's brilliant "Against Technoableism.

Seafood pastry in Paris. More beautiful in person, and somehow an entire buttery meal yet light at the same time.

Décryptage | Sale temps pour les médias publics américains En tant que directeur général de trois stations de radio communautaires émettant dans les Appalaches – deux en Virginie et l’autre en Virginie-Occidentale –, Scott Smith s’attendait à recevoir de mauv...

I talked to Montreal's La Presse newspaper about why US public media is being cut by the GOP.