If WBHM’s recent shift away from classical music baroque your heart, then there’s not much we can do for you (except maybe suggest Pandora). In the meantime, Birmingham’s public radio station is taking a greater interest in local news, even bringing newspaper people on the air.
And, they let us sit on the good furniture.
Beginning this week, WBHM will feature Wednesday segments with Birmingham Weekly columnist Kyle Whitmire (I promise I won’t write about myself in the third person again) and Birmingham News columnist John Archibald (booo!!!).
Archibald gets the morning shift, with a segment called “Plugged.” It promises a more heady agenda, focusing on hoity-toity themes. This week’s segment, which you can hear here, focused on trust, whatever that is.
Meanwhile, I get the afternoon shift, talking about who’s backstabbing whom at City Hall and County Commission. The first segment focused on Jefferson County’s last minute attempts to avoid bankruptcy, the mayor’s wrecked plans for free bus fare and his pesky problem of being sued by the SEC.
Not that this is any sort of competition, but in our first week, I totally whipped Archibald at this radio game. However, he does have a better head shot than I do, which through the wonder’s of Photoshop, I’ve now made even better. My photo, which is at least five years old, dates from my first pathetic attempt to grow a full beard.
But neither of us topped the radio professional. Yesterday, WBHM’s Tanya Ott took Mayor Larry Langford to task for his recent unpleasantness with the SEC and on-going Justice Department investigation. According to Langford, the federal investigations into him are the evil machinations of his campaign opponent Patrick Cooper and, of course, the media. It’s all one great conspiracy.
I’m still waiting on my black helicopter.
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In their Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Race Beat, journalists Hank Klibanoff and Gene Roberts interviewed the journalists that covered the Civil Rights Movement to reveal how they responded (slowly at first) to the desegregation of the South. They also use private correspondence and unpublished articles to show how the media didn’t respond. The full picture captures one of the most exciting, controversial, and thrilling times in American history through the eyes of the reporters who were there. To hear a bit about this book from one of the authors, Hank Klibanoff, come to the Birmingham Civil Rights Insitute, Wednesday, April 23.
