{"id":3841,"date":"2011-03-02T11:20:16","date_gmt":"2011-03-02T16:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=3841"},"modified":"2011-03-02T12:13:52","modified_gmt":"2011-03-02T17:13:52","slug":"how-slate-magazine-gets-you-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/03\/02\/how-slate-magazine-gets-you-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"How Slate magazine gets you wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

Slate, the online news and culture journal, has a front-page story today that excoriates NPR listeners.\u00a0 Not NPR, mind you — but you.\u00a0 You listening, right now.\u00a0 Here’s what Farhad Manjoo has to say<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I’m an NPR groupie. I listen to public radio for several hours a day\u2014more often than I watch TV, more often than I do actual work.<\/p>\n

There’s only one thing I hate about my daily companion: my fellow listeners.<\/p>\n

Not all of them\u2014just the ones who write in to complain whenever anything related to pop music, celebrities, technology, or other subjects that appeal to people under 40 comes across their precious wireless.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Manjoo’s main beef is that so many listeners gripe when NPR (or our other public radio programs) fiddle about with pop culture.<\/p>\n

Here’s why Manjoo is wrong.\u00a0 First, I think snobbery is under-rated in our society.\u00a0 Our listeners should be asking discerning questions about the people and musicians we ask them to listen to<\/p>\n

Is Justin Bieber worth a story?\u00a0 Or even Michael Jackson?\u00a0 Maybe so, but it’s not a given.<\/p>\n

I for one am happy to wrestle with the idea of whether this kind of “pop star” deserves even a small blip on our collective radar screen.<\/p>\n

(I happen to come down on the side of Yes in the case of Jackson, No in the case of Bieber.)<\/p>\n

I think our listeners also see (or hear) NPR as a bastion of non-youth culture.\u00a0 Yes, we want to introduce artists and ideas that evolved after 1980.<\/p>\n

But it’s only natural for people to feel a little defensive when kiddy culture (especially mediocre kiddy culture) makes it over the transom into our more deliberate, discerning news and culture magazines.<\/p>\n

We understand the danger that comes when cool cultural institutions (the A&E Network, anyone?) get swamped with “audience-building” gimcrackery.<\/p>\n

I say this as someone who is producing a story for tomorrow morning’s newscast about a rap artist from Glens Falls.\u00a0 And I’m a big fan of our afternoon music line-up, which includes hip-hop and reggaeton as well as bluegrass and oldies.<\/p>\n

But one of the reasons I love working in public radio is that our audience is made up of people who talk back to their radio, demanding quality and taste, not just popularity and the Latest Thing.<\/p>\n

Read Manjoos article here<\/a> and leave your comments below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slate, the online news and culture journal, has a front-page story today that excoriates NPR […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[15],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3841"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3841"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3842,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3841\/revisions\/3842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}