Mike Janssen

Mike Janssen Served as Scanning The Dial's original co-authors from Mar, 2008 to Jan, 2010 and is a freelance writer, editor and media educator based in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. He has written extensively about radio, mostly for Current, the trade newspaper about public broadcasting, where his articles have appeared since 1999. He has also worked in public radio as a reporter at WFDD-FM in Winston-Salem, N.C., where he began his career in journalism and filed pieces for NPR. Mike's work in radio expanded to include outreach and advocacy in 2007, when he worked with the Future of Music Coalition to recruit applicants for noncommercial radio stations. He has since embarked on writing a series of articles about radio hopefuls for FMC's blog. Mike also writes regularly for Retail Traffic magazine and teaches workshops about writing, podcasting and radio journalism. In his spare time he enjoys vegetarian food, the outdoors, reading, movies and traveling. You can learn more about Mike and find links to more of his writing and reporting at mikejanssen.net.

A roundup of fiscal woes

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Yet again, much of this roundup of happenings in the world of classical (and jazz) radio relates to money — or a lack thereof.

:: The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. announced this week that it will cut 800 jobs to offset a $171 million budget shortfall. And it could cut even more jobs if the Canadian government rejects a CBC plan to sell $125 million in assets. The CBC’s television arm, which makes up 83 percent of the network’s budget for English-language programming, will see proportionally more cuts, but radio will also take its share. “Repeats will become more frequent to fill the void,” reports the Toronto Globe and Mail.

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Mona’s AMPPR takeaway

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Part 2 of 3 — By Mona Seghatoleslami, West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Spring is in the air, and spring fund drives are on the air on public radio stations around the country. Stations that align their drives with nationally coordinated dates will be starting this Friday (March 28), while others have worked out their own schedules that fall close to these dates.

The Association of Music Personnel in Public Radio conference a few weeks ago dedicated an entire day to topics in fundraising, including how to fundraise in a troubled economy. Here’s a summary of what was discussed in those sessions, along with some of what I plan to do with what I learned.

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Becoming a hub where audiences connect

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Buzz about the microblogging service Twitter continues to grow, and as a user I’m increasingly seeing the fruits of its popularity. I signed up with Twitter early on, but I didn’t start to use it regularly until some months ago. As more people join, the party gets livelier, and the odds of bumping into a stranger with similar interests improve. Meanwhile, people are taking advantage of Twitter’s built-in flexibility and finding increasingly clever ways to use it.

For people in media, this means now is a great time to enter the Twitterverse and connect with audiences. Perhaps more importantly, you can also connect members of your audience with each other.

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What Mona Brought Home from AMPPR (Part 1 of 2)

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This guest post was written by Mona Seghatoleslami, a classical announcer, producer and blogger at West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

I’ve just had my first day of work since I got back from this year’s Association of Music Personnel in Public Radio conference in Fort Worth, Texas. I want to do everything at once; I’m really inspired to try a bunch of new things, and even the mundane tasks at work seem more exciting. That’s probably pretty typical after a conference. The true test will be how I’m doing after a few weeks or months.

I have a whole lot of notes from all the sessions, which I can share with anyone who’s interested. I’d also like to hear from what other people learned and plan to do. For now, here are two things I’m inspired to do.

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