Desperately Seeking Salem

Happy Halloween everyone! Hope your doorstop is met with many zombies, vampires, princesses, and no one from the Jersey Shore! If you’re in my neighborhood, you might just meet the Hungry Little Caterpillar in the flesh.

This month has seen a high water mark and a sad low tide for the Salem blogging scene.

First, the bad news. Have you seen Salem Every-other-weekly’s best-of ballots for this year? The editors seem to have gotten rid of the “Best Salem blog” entry that this blog won last year.

That’s too bad. Not because I had any disillusion of winning again (just look at what happens to your hit counter for a few months when you go and have a baby in the middle of winter, when everybody’s online), but because this was EatSalem.com‘s year to take the prize.

EatSalem has blossomed from a one-man labor of love into a thriving community where 15 contributors regularly post content about the Salem food scene. It was first to get to the Trader Joe’s story, and it is the first place to go for news about Salem’s burgeoning foodie scene. Its bloggers post every day and it attracts thousands of uniques daily. Count on your fingers and you’ll see that that is a greater monthly readership than many print products in town.

So I’ll say it here without any quibbling.

Best Blog of 2010: Eat Salem.

Here is some more good news.

Best blog posts of October 2010:

1. Salem Music Surge. Have you been to Alva Isle’s great blog about the independent Salem music scene? No? Perhaps because it’s only been around for about two months. Alva’s been discovering all the great things about Salem’s shows and music venues and has been blogging up a storm about being new in Salem and trying to be a part of something (I totally get it). After nearly two years here, I can tell you the best thing about Salem may be that you can actually be a part of something here. Welcome to Salem! I recommend you start reading this blog at the beginning.

2. LoveSalem. If you know nothing of chickens in Salem then you probably don’t consume a lot of local media. But if you’re hot for hens, a good place to catch up is at LoveSalem, whose writer is recounting the latest news about the local urban chicken scene, including coming workshops about how to build your coop. Prepare for Salem’s first-ever Summer 2011 Coop Tour!

3. HineSight. Blogs are great for documenting processes and sharing them with the world. Take this great Salem blog, HineSight, whose writer often picks up local green topics. Here, he writes about his dream to build a tree house. He didn’t build it for his kids, but for himself, as a platform upon which he can experiencing the changing forest around him. The post shows how you can write a longer post with lots of pictures and still keep people reading.

4. Northwest Nest. For your Halloween, sticking-it-to-Martha perusal, I give you Northwest Nest and DIY Studio, whose pictures of Halloween crafting are timely, fun, and put my own mummy cupcakes to shame.

5. Get Real Estate blog. Melina Tomson bravely posted a list of the “best” schools in Salem this week, according to the recent report card that came out. I know from my own recent house hunt how dicey this topic is. Just look at the person you become when you throw the topic of what’s best for your children into the equation. Who doesn’t want the best for her child? But do report cards really tell a story you can trust?

I have written frequently about the statements I encounter about my adopted hometown as a newcomer. Among the most disheartening have to do directly with my field of business — telling stories about people and place.

Salem, I was told very early on, suffers from a lack of comprehensive media coverage. Yes, we have a Gannett-owned newspaper,  a floundering every-other-weekly, and a community television station, but for a community of 150,000 people — and a capital city at that — there is a surprising dearth of media.

These gaps are, I believe, being filled by the ever-growing community of bloggers that are emerging from the woodwork.

But there is a major hole that gapes even still:

Radio.

But, Emily, you ask. There’s a logo right there on your blog? The one with the tiny Oregon Pioneer and the snazzy, RKO-inspired bolts of red lightning streaming from a radio tower. The one where the Willamette Valley wave looks like a shark fin ready to take down the capitol building…

Well, we don’t have a radio station yet.

But we have a frequency: it’s 88.5 FM. And if people are willing to step up and support a very important project, we might, within the year, have a place to tell the Salem stories that aren’t being told.

What’s the Frequency, Karen?

Do you know how hard it is to get a license to transmit radio with an FM frequency?  Willamette University chemistry professor Karen McFarlane Holman knows.

Ten years ago,  Karen, whom I met this week, moved to Salem. And like many of us out there who love this place but recognize what things might be, she couldn’t believe we didn’t have a radio station.

In her 20s, Karen had worked as a DJ at KCSB in Santa Barbara. She saw what wonders a community radio station could offer — its incomparable mix of real peoples’ voices and real peoples’ stories. Community radio has an unpolished authenticity that can be charming, entertaining, relevant and important.

Just what would it take to get one?, she wondered.

Well, it takes years. YEARS!

By the time Karen started looking for opportunities to get Salem a radio frequency of its own, the FCC hadn’t accepted new applications for FM stations for ten years. It wouldn’t open the process to new stations for another five years.

Then, it happened. In 2008, Karen and her team of volunteers secured a license from the FCC for a new FM station, right here in Salem.

There were some rumblings in the local media, but not much (is it any surprise that other media aren’t really interested in reporting the story of another medium?).

Some people began talking, but not much.

Some people began donating, but not enough.

And then, the complaining and the questioning began. What ever did happen to that plan for a radio station? I’ve heard it, you’ve thought it, we’ve all been there.

The Current Status of KMUZ

By Karen’s account, the group building the station have cut all of the extras to drastically reduce the amount of funding it needs to get the station on the air — the bare minimum it needs to keep its frequency.

They began with a proposal that would cost $300,000. The current proposal requires $30,000 to get the project off and running.

If the station doesn’t go live by August 2011, its license expires.

I have some theories why the station has encountered so much difficulty in raising money. For one, these are difficult times and everyone is cash-strapped, especially anyone trying to get new projects afoot. People are more inclined to donate their money to support the needy than to a radio station that would ostensibly serve us all.

But the larger problem still, I think, is that people who have never encountered community radio  in their community (read: Salem) don’t really know what to expect from such an experience. They worry it might be overly politicized.  Or it might be too similar to NPR, if that’s their experience of programmed radio (you either love NPR or you don’t).

A lot of people new to Salem read this blog. So I have a request. I am asking not just because I want my own radio show (and you can have one, too, if we get a radio station!). I am asking because I am a fierce proponent of having more opportunities for Salem to tell Salem stories.

• Follow KMUZ on Twitter.
• Friend KMUZ on Facebook.
• Volunteer to help run the station.
• If you’ve had a great experience with community radio before, write it in these blog comments and let people know.
• And people, people please! Donate to the station.

Media aren’t just fluff and filler in our lives. They are the way we reflect our society and our culture back to ourselves. If we don’t have the avenues to tell our stories, our city remains the same old place with the same old tired memes.

We don’t always get the media we want or deserve. But if we have it in our own hands, we have more power to shape our own story in a way that is intentional and meaningful.

My last free blogging class at Clockworks Cafe and Cultural Center will take place tonight at 6:00 p.m.

It is an intro to blogging session focusing on how to go about conceiving a successful blog project.

Be there early to get a good seat!

In the meantime, you can bone up on the lessons learned from the previous two classes: Here and here.

See you tonight!

Have you ever heard of a story that better fit the category: Good News for People Who Love Good News?

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, the television show known for its dramatic reveals and its tear-jerking finales, has brought its most recent project to Salem.

And this time, the recipients of ABC’s largess aren’t the owners of a dilapidated and outmoded single-family home, but the School for the Deaf, whose Lindstrom Hall (site of the popular Halloween Haunted House) is being remodeled and renovated to accommodate a new dormitory.

Gotta say I always get more than a little excited when the national media pick up on a Salem story. Usually, it’s urban chickens or the housing market (even better if it’s Solarize Salem!), but this one can’t be beat.

You probably know someone who is working on the project as a volunteer.

Even if you don’t watch a ton of TV, are a little shocked at the media fracas around this, and are generally skeptical about anything touting superficial changes as a means to personal transformation (include me in this group), it is impossible not to get behind this particular makeover…

I am loving the Statesman Journal’s play-by-play of the process. A feeling I’m not hooked on? Reading the S-J comments of people who are concerned about the price of the haunted house going up.

Here’s some more coverage of the build, which, taken as a whole, might make those TV /Makeover haters and skeptics warm to the idea:

• Students being sent to Starkey Foundation Headquarters in Eden Prairie, Minn. to learn about the organization’s mission to send hearing aids around the world.
• Local builder Rich Duncan Construction’s kick-ass Halloween-themed site on the build, including lists of what the project needs in terms of volunteers
• The Oregonian’s great reporting on why this construction is necessary
• KATU’s coverage of the Kickoff
• The Salem Business Journal’s coverage
• A message board on AllDeaf.com, which explains the hopes among some deaf members that this project will be a window into deaf culture and not just a makeover show
• Here is Rethink Monthly’s interview with builder Rich Duncan (just click on the podcast play button below the blog post). Amazingly, Duncan got the call about three weeks ago about the project

Personally, I think it’s great to see an important local facility getting updated and modernized, instead of torn down.

You may have heard that the Jondles, owners of Abundant Life Farms, were found murdered last night.

I first met the Jondles last fall when I was interested in learning about how to slaughter a chicken by hand. They also made frequent trips to Salem to sell their farm-raised, organic free-range chickens from the back of a truck.

In an age when many farmers are reluctant to allow journalists entry into their businesses for fear of media looking to expose their farming practices, they were generous, open and kind. At least in terms of their operations, they knew they had nothing to hide.

Living Culture’s Nate Rafn spent a lot of time learning about their farming practices and documented them for his show Living Culture.

From my visit, I  remember being amazed at the happy chatter of the family as it processed the chickens.

As more details of of Scott and Marilyn’s murder become public, as more people comment on the S-J website with their judgments and their hypotheses and their snarky asides, as more people think, with each new revelation that they understand more of what happened, I am reminded:

Every family is a secret world unto itself.  Every man is an abyss where you can’t see the bottom.

Come see me at the Salem Chamber of Commerce Wed. September 1 for my first public talk about blogging.

This event is hosted by the Oregon Chapter of PRSA and is geared towards public relations professionals, but it is also open to the public:

Hopefully this Emily:  Angry shot will confuse you and you won’t read this post as flagrant self-promotion… Should be a great discussion, and I’ll leave the Hulk hands at home.

Here is the official invite:

Capital Chapter members and friends: It’s time to gather the pack.

We’re back for fall with our Wednesday, Sept. 1 luncheon program at the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce. Sign-up details at end.

We’re excited to introduce you to Emily Grosvenor who writes the “Desperately Seeking Salem” blog and teaches magazine writing.

TOPIC: Harnessing Authenticity: Reaching out to bloggers in an age of fractured media

Blogs hold great promise — both as a way to generate conversations in communities and as a means for communicators to spread their messages. Join us for a talk about the power of blogs and for a primer on how to navigate the tricky relationship between public relations professionals and bloggers, especially local ones.

Bio: Before moving to the Willamette Valley, magazine writer Emily Grosvenor worked as a public relations specialist for the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Washington, D.C., studied in Germany as a Fulbright scholar of book publishing, and earned an M.A. in Journalism from the University of Iowa. She keeps an award-winning, hyper-local personal blog called Desperately Seeking Salem and teaches magazine writing at the University of Oregon.

Location: Salem Area Chamber of Commerce, 1110 Commercial St. NE (corner of Commercial and Market Streets NE) in Salem.

Cost:  Program and lunch $15 for PRSA members, $20 for non-members. Program only or student price (including lunch) is $10.

We accept PayPal! Transactions can be made from our Website, under “Events”:
http://www.oregoncapitalprsa.com/

RSVP by Monday, Aug. 30, to this email. spriem@hotmail.com, with your name and title for our roster; or please call your RSVP to at 503-365-8416.

Chapter site: http://www.oregoncapitalprsa.com/