Radio: The Future of Local News

"Radio is immediate. For us it is a way to reach the mother of the family or the father who is working or for the people who are out and about in the city who are doing their thing."

LPFMs are the legal successor to pirate radio stations, broadcasts that saw their programming as a source of diversity and social justice that wider media options didn’t provide. In 2000, the FCC began offering LPFM licenses as an alternative specifically to noncommercial organizations. But under pressure from commercial radio, federal regulations limited where these stations could take root.

"The Internet is good at a lot of things, but it hasn't met a lot of people's needs for local," says Brandy Doyle, policy director for the LPFM advocacy group Prometheus Radio Project.* "The community radio station connects them to the place they live." For full story, click here or on pic.