Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web. Today, two notable uses of radio:
The Restorative Radio Project: WNYC reports on an innovative community service project taking place at WMMT, 88.7FM in Whitesburg, Kentucky. There, on Sunday nights, the station produces Calls From Home, featuring messages to inmates from family members. Should families be punished for the crime of one family member? That is the key question the show addresses by bridging the distance via radio. Taking the production a step further, producing Audio Postcards — the station lends recording equipment to families, allowing them to record home life occasions which are sent to the incarcerated family member. The postcards include family gatherings conveying the atmosphere of home, chatty audio letters, and personal messages of encouragement. You can listen here.
A Magazine Extends into Radio and Podcasts: London-based international magazine Monocle has effectively extended its brand with a 24/7 radio station and on-demand podcasts of four signature shows: Section D (design), The Menu (food), The Foreign Desk (international news), and The Voyager (travel). The website promotes its audible content as prominently as the magazine issues. The brand extension works both way, to both retain existing audience and engage new audience, according to editor Steve Bloomfield as quoted in Digiday. “We assumed that people would listen to the radio station who already knew the magazine,” Bloomfield said. “but we found a whole new audience for our magazine through the radio program.”