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Fighting for Air

"The media reform movement has had tremendous successes in the last few years."


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Published: Feb 6, 2007

reading/lecture

Eric Klinenberg begins Fighting For Air: The Battle to Control America's Media with a story about a chemical spill outside of Minton, N.D. Officials attempted to use local radio stations to issue an emergency warning after the automatic Emergency Alert System failed, but because the stations were run remotely by media behemoth Clear Channel, no one was around to issue the alert. One death resulted. Horror stories like that fill the first half of this well-researched expose on the darkest aspects of the corporate consolidation of America's local media. However, as the title says, this is a fight, and "the media reform movement has had tremendous successes in the last few years," says Klinenberg, associate professor of sociology at NYU. Among those reformers that populate the second half of the book is West Philly's own Prometheus Radio Project (formally West Philly Pirate Radio), which gets a whole chapter about its battles with the FCC to stop deregulation, and its efforts to help set up low-powered community radio stations around the country.

Eric Klinenberg, Tue., Feb. 13, 5:30 p.m., free (registration required), Annenberg School for Communication at University of Pennsylvania, 3620 Walnut St., 215-898-7041, www.asc.upenn.edu/fightingforair.