Non-Com KALW’s Key to Station Greatness

On a Shoestring

From Audrey Dilling, kalwnews.org:

I didn’t need to know about News Director Holly Kernan’s Murrow or Sigma Delta Chi to understand that there is something special going on at KALW News. Week after week, KALW is churning out oodles of well-crafted stories — stories that may take place in San Francisco, but are captivating no matter where you are. As a curator of Public Radio Remix, I can’t get enough of them. Yet, KALW’s newsroom has a tiny budget and a staff of only nine: Holly, her cohost, two engineers and five producer/editors.

In the following interview, KALW News Director Holly Kernan told me how KALW does (and doesn’t) make it all work.

CORWIN: How are you pulling it all off?

KERNAN: Oh man, it’s not easy.  We are all overworked and underpaid.  But it’s just that we’ve put together this stunningly creative team here.

We started this newsroom from scratch in 2004 to try to fill the void in local media left by shrinking commercial outlets.  A couple premises were at the center of it.  One was that arts and creativity would be at the center of our news coverage.  Another was that we would strive to have the highest possible quality reporting and production, even though we had no staff — I think we started with me as a half-staff.  So our formula was to have professional editors and a newsroom with community volunteers and student reporters in our training program.  We try to help them skate the creative edge and do really high quality work; and our newsroom ends up looking like the community we serve.

CORWIN: What are you prioritizing in your newsroom? How do you decide what to cover?

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