November 6, 2024 • 59 mins
Lacey Kendall, a highly experienced professional in the field of broadcast media and communication, has an extensive background in various roles such as Recording Engineer, Broadcast Media Consultant/Host, Broadcast-Media Consultant, Professor, Radio Announcer, Co-Founder of a real property brokerage, Chief Executive Officer of a consulting firm, Syndicated Radio Program Host, and Founder of a non-profit organization. With a Master's degree in Communication Studies and a strong foundation in radio broadcasting, Lacey excels in advising, managing, hosting, and teaching various aspects of the media industry.
Lacey was the driving force behind CSU San Bernardino's Coyote Radio. She served as an executive producer for the highly successful radio program “My Awesome Empire” for six years before moving to the Palm Desert CSUSB Campus, where, in 2019, she was asked to create a new radio station for the campus. She helped create Paws Radio, a fixture in the Coachella Valley community.
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Episode Transcript
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Erin Brinker (00:00):
Erin, welcome everyone to the making hope
(00:02):
happen radio show. I'm ErinBrinker, as we discussed in our
last episode with Dr DravonJames, we have the power to
change the way we think andexperience the world no matter
what is happening around us. Wetalked about gratitude, and I'm
starting a new tradition on thisshow of expressing my gratitude
at the top of each episode.
Today, I'm grateful first foryou, the listener, for the time
(00:25):
we spend together. You mean theworld to me. I'm grateful for
family, community, and most ofall, for a loving, engaged,
omniscient, omnipresent Creatorof the universe who has made us
in His image and knew us beforewe were born. An easy life is
not promised, but joy can befound even in dark places.
Please know that you are bothloved and worthy of that love,
(00:48):
and I'm grateful for that.
I can't think of anyone in theInland Empire who has made a
bigger impact in broadcastingthan my guest today. Her warm
and welcoming voice andpersonality have accompanied us
in our daily lives on stationswith formats as diverse as the
community itself, and she hasdedicated her life to training
(01:12):
area college and universitystudents to be ethical,
entertaining and skilledbroadcasting professionals.
You're going to love thisconversation with the great
Lacey Kendall. One of the joysthat I I have had in my
broadcasting career is to talkto people who have made an
impact, a significant impact, tothe field in which they work.
(01:34):
And today is one of those daysI'm joined by Lacey Kendall. She
is a legend in broadcasting andcommunity support in the Inland
Empire. She can be found onwhere she started. She founded
rather Coyote Radio at CSUSB,and that's the San Bernardino
campus in the 1990s paws radioat the Palm Desert campus,
(01:54):
hosted award winning shows,including my awesome Empire
education inside and others.
She's been heard on kcaa, kvcrand kcal, FM and emceed, more
events than I'm sure anyone cancount, or it would take a while,
at least, and more, more, mostimportantly, I think she's
trained 1000s of young people inthis and on this crazy business.
First of all, Lacey Kendall,welcome to the show.
Lacey Kendall (02:20):
Thank you so much Erin for having me. This is a
great pleasure.
Erin Brinker (02:24):
So So tell us. How did you get your start in
broadcasting? Well, I'll
Lacey Kendall (02:30):
tell you, I when I was a kid, when I was going
into the fifth or sixth grade,we moved here from Long Beach
out to inland, the inland area.
And when we did, my dad starteda new job before we had found a
house, so we lived at theHoliday Inn, right there, next
(02:52):
to the 10 freeway for aboutthree months, while my mom and
dad, you know, found time in theevenings and on the weekends to
go look for a home for us. Andthere wasn't a lot to do during
those three months. I'm an onlychild, so I spent a lot of time
sitting in front of the windowthat was KFX, m and k duo, which
(03:13):
was which was their home was inthe Holiday Inn, and they had a
big window there, and you couldsit outside on the grass and
look in and watch the announcerstalk and and in the manner of
KFX Sam, there was a one ofthose old kind of PA speakers
(03:34):
mounted under the eve of thebuilding, and you could hear
what he was saying. So that wasthe first time I became
interested in anything media,other than watching TV. And I
just thought that was reallyinteresting. And one day, I had
been out there for days and daysand days, and the gentleman, his
name was Johnny K he was theprogram director and the
(04:00):
afternoon radio announcer, andhe looked through the window and
he said something to me, and Isaid, I can't hear you. I don't
know what you're saying. And heeventually invited me to come in
and take a tour. And of course,I said, Wait, hang on. I gotta
(04:20):
go ask my mom. So, so I ran tothe room, and I came back, and I
said, Yeah, and he gave me atour. And I just very distinctly
remember saying to him, how comegirls don't do this? Because
this was like, I don't know. Itwas like the 70s, early 70s,
something like that, earlier,mid 70s. And he said, Well, if
(04:44):
you ever were interested inthis, I would say head forward,
because girls will be in heredoing this very soon. I'm sure
of it. And. I said, Oh, okay.
Anyway, he was very nice to me.
And then few years later, I waslooking at going to college at
(05:06):
San Bernardino Valley College toget my general ed requirements
out of the way. And my mom anddad pushed me to explore some
different things. And I wasreally in high school. I was
really into electronics. I liketo build radios and all kinds of
goofy things, soldering thingstogether. And anyway, one of my
counselors suggested that, oh,and I also wrote for the school
(05:33):
newspaper in high school. So Ijoined the school newspaper at
San Bernardino Valley College.
And I went from really, reallyliking it to really, really not,
oh yeah, and I, and I, I thinkit was the environment. I think
there was, there was a lot ofhard suggestions in those days
(05:55):
to change a hard news story intoa more feature story that was
kind to administrators and and Ihad moved up to the editorial
board, and I said, well, they,they taught us that you, you
really shouldn't do that, thatthat's yellow journalism. And
(06:15):
they said, that's true. It's thekind of journalism we're doing
right now. You, You guys are notdoing any story on San
Bernardino Community CollegeDistrict Board meetings. Okay?
So I said, Okay. And, and then Iwalked furiously to my
counselor, and he said, Well,let's try some other stuff too,
because you're justexperimenting right now, right?
(06:36):
And I said, Yeah. And he hesaid, How about some radio and
TV courses and, or first, hesaid radio. And I went radio,
and my exact words were, oh, mygod, that is so lame. And, and
he said, I said I would takesome TV classes, though. And he
(06:58):
said, Well, you gotta take radioclasses first girl, you work
your way up. So I did. And youknow, to finish that out, I I
ended up doing a year's worth ofclasses, and by the time it
became I was able to take TVclasses and TV production
classes, I thought that TV was,was not interesting at all,
(07:22):
because every any program oranything you do is only as
strong as the very weakestperson in on the team. So, and
I've never thought about that,but you're right, yeah, if the
audio guy misses something andsomebody's mic is off for a few
minutes, or the camera guideisn't right on this, on the on
(07:44):
the shot, or the cues are late,or anything like that. It
doesn't matter how good you ranyour department. So I did. I
didn't like working on projectslike that, and normally I I
gravitated towards anythingwhere there was more people, the
better. Being an only child, Ijust wanted to do everything
(08:05):
around a bunch of people, butdidn't like that. And I liked
that radio every, every time Iwent in there and went on the
air on kvcr, it was as good as Icould, or did make it, or as bad
as I didn't. And so it was allon me, and I had the power to
make it better or better, andand I liked that. I liked that
(08:29):
very much. And then I got hiredthere to work at kvcr, and I
worked with your first job, myfirst job, God, Erin, you had to
ask. So it was working at kvcr,which was a magical and very
important moment to me. And Ilove everybody there, very, very
much. But the show that I gothired to do was they said, you
(08:52):
can, you can say what you want,do jokes, you can interview
people. You can kind of make ityour show. But it is called
bluegrass alive, and you will beplaying bluegrass music and
calling yourself cousin, Lacey.
Cousin
Erin Brinker (09:07):
Lacey. Okay, I full disclosure, I love
bluegrass music. Oh, I do too.
Now it is filled with musicianswho could just play that heck
out of their instruments, yeah,
Lacey Kendall (09:17):
without plugging them in exactly. Yeah. I do too,
and I've been to lots ofbluegrass festivals and
everything. But, you know, theolder I get, the more that comes
back to me. My friends love toin, in moments I don't know, in
goofy moments. They they like tocall me cousin Lacey.
Erin Brinker (09:36):
I love that. I love that you're like, No, I was
not on Hee Haw, yeah. Was not onHiva,
Lacey Kendall (09:41):
yeah. They don't really care about the bluegrass.
They kind of like that cousin.
Lacey sounds sort of Hickey, youknow. So anyway, I did that, and
then soon I got a job at lovingand gentle kql, h and then, oh
my goodness, um, I worked atkme. Then, and then eventually
at kg Gi. And I worked at KD Uo,which was Elevate, very elevator
(10:08):
music. But I think, believe wecalled it easy listening, easy
listening, or adultcontemporary, yeah, yeah. And I
had, I had wanted to work atkcal. I listened to kcal as a
kid, and I interviewed for myhigh school newspaper a guy
named Randy childs who was fromRialto like I was, and he he was
(10:30):
very nice and very handsome, andI did a big story about him. And
I thought, man, once I starteddoing radio, I thought, and it'd
be great to work with Randychilds works. And anyway, I I
kept applying and doing tryoutsat kcal, and I kept getting
(10:51):
turned down, and they'd say,come back in four or five
months, when you put some moreinto it. And then finally they
hired me, and I said, my friendsall said I hadn't, I hadn't done
any rock and roll before, so youguys would never want me. But
why did you? And he said,exactly for the opposite of what
(11:12):
your friend said, I liked itthat you had worked at an easy
listening station. You playedbluegrass, you played country,
you played jazz on K, U, O, R,and, and he just named all
these, these formats I'd done,and he says, what that says to
me is, you've had lots ofbosses, and you're trainable.
Oh, indeed,
Erin Brinker (11:35):
Yeah, indeed. It also says that you love music,
Lacey Kendall (11:38):
yeah. And I, and I did, I a lot of those stations
I started and I went, well, themusic's really weird, mom, but
you know, the station's fun tobe at. And then, you know, I got
better and better with it and Iand what I've learned through my
whole life is, when you exposeyourself to a different kind of
music, you end up saying tosomebody, after a week or two,
you say, I hate all of it exceptone artist. And oh my gosh, this
(12:04):
artist is so different and sogood. And then a few weeks
later, it's, I hate all theartists except this one, this
one and this one. And it justcontinues to grow until you say
the only one I don't like incountry music is, you know. And
so I can say that in in jazz, incountry and bluegrass, in rock,
(12:26):
in heavy metal, oh, andChristian, Christian
Broadcasting. And for a longwhile, I worked in positive
country, which is Christiancountry, and I enjoyed that
quite a bit. And so, yeah, soexpose yourself to anything, and
(12:46):
you find out what you like, andyour your love for it grows, and
the depth of what you like tendsto expand. You
Erin Brinker (12:56):
know, I'm thinking about jazz because of of all the
genres that you talked about,it's the one I understand the
least, and often they're thebest trained musicians, because
you have to know all the rulesbefore you can break all the
rules. And did you find your didit take a while for you to warm
up to jazz? Or did you like itright away?
Lacey Kendall (13:15):
I've always kind of liked some of it, but like
you, I didn't understand it verymuch, but when I started this
jazz station out in theCoachella Valley, pause radio,
the thing was, we did ourresearch, much like at coyote
radio. We were trying to figureout a format for coyote radio.
(13:38):
Initially, when I startedhelping CSUSB and and somebody
said to me, or I read, theysaid, a college station, if it
is a if it is a rock station,and you have a commercial rock
station in town, it's alwaysgoing to be the crappy version
of, in our case, kcal, if it'scountry, it's going to be the
(14:02):
crappy version of K frog. Ifit's, you know, whatever it is,
it's going to be like that. Sothe stations that have done best
across the US, that are oncollege campuses, are those that
found a very unique pathway thatnobody else could do back in
Erin Brinker (14:20):
the day they they, there was a lot of alternative
music coming out of collegeradio station. So as grunge was
getting started, or, you knowthat other movements with this
kind of more obscure artist,more local artists, because they
have more flexibility. Theydon't, they don't, they don't,
they're not beholden to acorporate brand. Mm, hmm.
Lacey Kendall (14:41):
So that when, when I was there at coyote
radio, I said, Okay, these arethe topics that I came up with
after few weeks of thinkingabout it. We could be classical,
which no student will ever gofor, because nobody plays it out
here. We could be jazz, but Idon't know. How well that would
fly in the Inland Empire. I saidwe could be reggae that's
(15:07):
extremely popular with collegekids, and there is, of course,
no reggae station in town. Or wecould be all local bands, and
that seemed to have moremagnetic effect than any of the
other ones I suggested. And sowe tried to explore that a bit.
(15:30):
And as we started collectingmore music from local artists,
it worked out really. Worked outreally well, because we were
hearing it and we were going, ohmy god, the music here is so
good. These bands are, arereally, really good. And the
thing that was neat about thatwas, you've, you probably have
noticed that over the years,when I was a kid and you were a
(15:51):
kid, Erin radio stations used tohave the local band spotlight on
Friday or Saturday night orsomething, you know, yes,
anyway, they've that hascompletely disappeared, as you
may have noticed, and and whenit, when the station does do it,
they're doing, I don't know whatthey're doing, but they've got
(16:15):
something pre arranged, becauseit is been found to be very in
these days, very litigious. Likethe drummer will say, Hey, you
guys make money off of playingmusic, and you played my music
and I did not give mypermission, Oh, for that song to
(16:35):
be played in the local and sostations started getting sued
by, are
Erin Brinker (16:40):
you serious, Goofy? And these are bands that
nobody had heard of. It's, it's,I mean, how are you going to get
hurt if you're never heard
Lacey Kendall (16:48):
exactly, but I don't know. The people get in
their 20s, and sometimes theyhave a dad that's, that's an
attorney and and they've donethat, and so stations are just
like, yeah, we're not going todeal with all the personalities
in some local band and do that,but we could pull that off on a
(17:11):
college campus because we're notin we don't make money at any
college radio station. We don'tmake money off of playing
anybody's music. We make what,what income our university
campus makes by tuition, and weare, first and foremost, a
(17:34):
learning laboratory ofbroadcasting. And so because of
that, the any anybody trying tosue really doesn't land the same
way. You can't sue and say that,you know, whatever College
Station made money off of youbecause,
Erin Brinker (17:54):
because you didn't, they did not selling
advertising or not
Lacey Kendall (17:58):
selling advertising. So, so that doesn't
work. And then what we did was,as the station got really
popular, then we we had the thetwo attorneys for Cal State, San
Bernardino, draw up a contractthat that makes it very clear.
It says we do not make money offany artists music on this
station. We are, however, happyto share your music with our
(18:25):
1000s of listeners and to talkabout your band and your music
and your performances, and wewill never use this music for
anything other thanentertainment and student
learning on our station, andyou, by signing this, are giving
us permission to play it forexclusively, exclusively the
(18:48):
reason that we just gave, Oh,that's fantastic. And they, they
Yes, and they excitedly sign itand say, When am I going to be
on? When are we going to be on?
We're telling my mom, gotta tellour moms and and all of the cute
girls, so you know, or cuteboys, whatever. So anyway, it's
worked very well for coyoteradio. And then when I got to
(19:11):
you, started asking me aboutjazz. And then when I got to
pause radio, I did someresearch, and they had a jazz
station in Coachella Valley, andit was extremely popular. It was
always one of the top threestations for a long time, and
the owners sold the station, andthose the the company that
purchased that station purchasedit exclusively for the purpose
(19:36):
of creating the CoachellaValley's first FM news and talk
station, oh, and so there was nojazz station. So there there
was, there's one station therethat plays standards, which is
like Bing Crosby and FrankSinatra and stuff like that, but
not really the. You know, thereal jazz and so I wanted to be
(20:01):
I wanted to do something that Iknew that was already an
audience for and and thereweren't a lot of students
involved in the program beforewe were on the air. So I kind of
got to have my say, and I justmade sure the the dean who had
hired me at the Palm Desertcampus to do this that she liked
(20:26):
the idea, and she did, and shewas very encouraging. And so I
said, then we're going to thenwe're going to be jazz. So we
just spent months loading musicuntil we had, oh my like 2000
songs in there. And I will tellyou something really, really
neat that happened. So I went tothe I went to the public library
(20:47):
in it was Indian Wells orsomeplace off 111 and I went in
there one day and I said, Hey,by chance I saw the sign when I
was driving by, and it said, youhave music. By chance. Do you
guys have any jazz? And shegoes, Oh, boy, do we come on
over here. And so she walks meover, and there were rows and
(21:11):
rows. Oh, that's great. And Isaid, Oh my gosh, this is huge.
Where'd you get this? And shesaid there was a jazz station in
this town, and it was always oneof the most popular three
stations. And it got bought andthey turned it into a news
station, and somebody thereoffered it at called and said,
(21:35):
you wouldn't be interested inour entire archives, would you?
And I said, Oh, my God, that isso great. I am going to be here
a lot. And so they let you checkout 25 CDs at a time. And I was
researching and reading, and Ihad two friends who had had done
(21:55):
an extreme amount of work injazz, and they were guiding me,
and we had lists, and I'd gothere and get 25 and I'd be back
three days later, after weuploaded all of it, I'd get 25
more. And did that for, yeah,two years, and now we load music
every Thursday, but it's NewJazz, Jazz that just came on out
(22:18):
on the market, like Samara joyand we three and some of these
really great young artists thatare that are coming out and and
doing some really groovy jazz.
Erin Brinker (22:32):
So are you getting the kind of traction and
audience that the former jazzstation had? Do people know
you're there? I
Lacey Kendall (22:39):
think, based on our data, I think we don't have
the money to promote ourselves,but we do have a giant
electronic built bulletin boardone, and every once in a while,
we get some extra grant moneythat allows for printing, and
we'll print some little flyers,and we'll drop them at music
(23:00):
stores and at events orbusinesses where those that that
like jazz might shop, and we'lldo that, but I estimate the
audience there. Don't tell mystudents, because they think
it's a half million people, butI'd estimate it to be about two
(23:21):
to 4000 recurrent listeners thatare mostly from the Coachella
Valley, and that is, sounds likea small number. Would sound like
a small number to my students,but for a college radio station
that doesn't have an an FM towerwith a very long signal and a
(23:45):
stream as well, for one thatdoesn't have all that it's, it's
extraordinarily good. That is,that is good. That is very good
if you, if you say, give us acall and tell us what you're
thinking someone's going to callso it feels very real to them
and and they treat it very, veryseriously. So I like that
Erin Brinker (24:09):
is the program growing the radio and television
program, you know, at PalmDesert campus,
Lacey Kendall (24:16):
yeah. So it started out as a as a radio
station, and then we had apandemic, and that kind of
stalled my work, but I've workedto the whole place is
soundproof. It is a radiostation, and now it's a
multimedia learning lab. Andstudents go there and they can
learn digital audio productionand multi track mixing. We teach
(24:42):
them Adobe Audition, whichmarries well into Adobe
Premiere, so they can learnabout creating video. We have
handheld devices that can beused for extremely high quality
recording of anything in thefield, and we've had. Everybody
from nurses students to historystudents, go out and introduce
(25:05):
people in the field and dointerviews, much like you and I
are doing, but doing it face toface, coming back and learning
how to edit it, to create anaudio project instead of a some
kind of report for theircoursework and and that's served
(25:25):
them very well. We have a remotebroadcast field device that
works off of battery power andcellular or Wi Fi or plain old
telephone system, and we've doneremote broadcasts, and a couple
years ago, I said, I want tooffer something that will
(25:49):
enhance learning for allstudents here at this campus.
And so I got a grant, and Ipurchased a whole lot of virtual
reality, virtual augmentedreality equipment, and started
learning that. And what we'vedone is we've since been invited
by the X real lab, which is a avery innovative laboratory that
(26:18):
is at the San Bernardino campus,where students are creating
immersive reality experiencesand tours, and they're creating
games and writing code and doingsome really, really
extraordinary work over there.
So I said, they said, we'd like,we like the work you're doing.
(26:38):
We'd like our programs to marry.
And I said, Yeah, I would. Iwould like that too. So now
we're also known as the x realmulti media lab of PDC, but I
like to call it now themultimedia library. And the
reason is, we're doing somethingdifferent. We don't have
(26:59):
computer science students there,but we have all kinds of
students from a variety ofdisciplines, and so my staff and
I, I have a student staff, andwe have done quite a bit of
research over the past fivemonths, and We've sought out any
kind of immersive experiences ineverything from from places all
(27:26):
over the world to war zones.
There's a Time Warner or someonelike that, they created a a it
is recreation, but it is a quiterealistic and scary feeling
experience of what it's like tobe on the front lines of World
(27:52):
War Two, and you're in a bunkerand people are dying around you,
and it looks, it looks veryreal, and we have offered video
that was captured by one of thestudents at the San Bernardino
campus, the only immersivereality, 360 video where You can
put yourself in Gaza before andafter the, you know, the war
(28:21):
there
Erin Brinker (28:25):
so is this would be this be used by students who
want to be tell a journalist or,you know, like, Yes, oh my gosh,
yeah, wow.
Lacey Kendall (28:35):
And history students come to explore. Some
students came in the other dayand they said, for our history
class, we are studying ancientLatin America. And they said,
with they told us, Professorthat we could come here and
because it feels really boring,this is what he said, because,
because it feels really boring,that maybe you could, with the
(28:57):
virtual reality, you could findsomething that would make it
feel more where we could itwould be more interesting than
reading about it in a book. Soyou're like,
Erin Brinker (29:06):
face to face with a Mayan or an Aztec, yeah.
Lacey Kendall (29:09):
So wow, I went looking, and I found some
extraordinary video of chinitaand Teotihuacan and where they
could project themselves andmove around, and it look it's
very, very realistic and veryhigh definition. And they could
(29:30):
walk around those places andexplore them and feel like they
were there. And it's easier towrite a report on something when
you feel like you've alreadybeen there. Oh
Erin Brinker (29:39):
my gosh. That's incredible.
Lacey Kendall (29:41):
So our students are doing some really amazing
things by coming there andasking us, saying, Hey, I have
an assignment coming up. Can youfind something about big bin in
London, England? And I go, Oh, Iknow. I can get that one. Yeah,
I'll get you, I'll get you a fewthings. You just make a. Will
put down some time and reservean hour or so here, and we'll
(30:07):
have it ready by the time. What
Erin Brinker (30:08):
about make believe places like Hogwarts?
Lacey Kendall (30:11):
Yeah, oh, you know what they have. They have a
very, very realistic, immersiveexperience where you can go in
the the enterprise, ooh, StarTrek. And it's, it's very, very
real. Oh, that's wild. It seemslike it's a like some NASA
(30:33):
video, you know? So there is,there's a lot of stuff out
there, and creators like the thepeople like the students and
faculty on our San Bernardinocampus, those creators who are,
who are computer scientists, arerecreating things that are not
(30:54):
tangible anymore, and becausethey they know they have the
skills to create these kinds ofvisual experiences. They are
creating opportunities forstudents to feel something that
expired 100 years ago or more.
Erin Brinker (31:12):
I gotta think that, you know, with all of the
Hollywood types who have summerbungalows or not, summer winter
bungalows in Palm Springs andthe greater Palm Springs area
that that it, it doing whatyou're doing is it, is it
getting attention from peoplewho work in the industry?
Because it, it just, you know,whether it's people doing who
(31:35):
want to do voiceover work,people who want to work behind
the scenes and lots of differentthings, production, audio,
video, etc. Are you getting anyof that attention yet?
Unknown (31:46):
No, but my well and maybe yes, the Palm Springs Film
Festival reached out to mystudents and gave them all free
admission to attend last year,but they asked if they would
help them with some very funprojects and and I thought
outstanding. Yeah, I thoughtthat was wonderful. And they put
our logo on all of theirprograms and everything, and it
(32:10):
was a magazine that that wasgiven to folks that were
attending the Film Fest. And Ijust thought that was a lovely
thing for them to do. Indeed, itmust have been through the radio
station that they became awareof us, I would think so.
Erin Brinker (32:22):
Let's switch gears and kind of talk about changes
in the industry, in inbroadcasting. I mean, I'm sure
when you were a little girllooking through the window at
that first radio, through thefirst radio, at the first radio
station, that you couldn'timagine all of the things that
have happened in in the rate,not only in radio, but in all of
you know, all the internet, bestinternet based radio, so all the
(32:45):
streaming services, you know,YouTube, and you know all the
ways that people communicatewith their audience. It's
changed a lot, and it's changedrelatively quickly, the
dramatically in the last, say,30 years. Kind of talk about
what that's been like goingthrough that?
Lacey Kendall (33:02):
Yeah, well, when I got into this, I wasn't old
enough to realize that thingsdid change like they do. You
know, I kind of thought thatthat my world was probably not
too different from my mom's, mydad's or my grandmother's, but,
and now, as I've gotten older, Irealized that I realized with
greater depth my own world, buthow different it is from my own
(33:25):
world 20 years ago and so on andand I never would have foreseen
that everything would godigital, and things that used to
be big and heavy and metal andgigantic towers and all of these
would be replaced by littlesemiconductors and transistors
and and so forth that thatinitially weren't very good, but
(33:49):
have gotten to be far better inin many cases, and provide
greater clarity for a greaterdistances. So I like all that. I
kind of like that I liked in theold days when things were very
analog. I liked that people onthe radio were, were creative
(34:10):
makers of of radio
Erin Brinker (34:14):
and and true entertainers
Lacey Kendall (34:17):
and true entertainers. There's a man
named Stu and he worked at atkcal for many years. And I
remember when I was very young,one of my friends at school said
that guy is, he's a song Smith,a tune Smith, or something like
(34:39):
that. And I said, What's whatSmith? What's a Smith? And he
says, Smith is somebody thatcreates. And he said, the way he
mixes the music goes from thissong to that song. It's, it's,
it's something he does it in away nobody else does. And it,
it, it shows that he's. Reallydifferent, and it's a skill. And
(35:03):
then I got to know him, and Iworked there for many years, and
I realized, oh, my god, yeah,this guy really does. It's, this
is there's a lot of art andtechnique and things like that.
And there is still in, in manyways, there is still that, um, I
I, I don't like the how broadmedia has become, so that
(35:32):
everything only has a limitedamount of potential listeners or
viewers. Televisions experiencethat and radio has two it's like
the old saying, Is it 300channels and nothing's on? Yeah,
exactly. I think that you
Erin Brinker (35:52):
have a knitting channel, yes,
Lacey Kendall (35:55):
yeah. I have a joke in my house. It's like when
it's commercial aftercommercial, they'll say, What
are you watching? And I said,Oh, I just decided to tune into
the car insurance network, youknow, or whatever it is, yes,
Erin Brinker (36:12):
the pharmaceuticals network, because
every ad is like the you havediabetes, do you? I
Lacey Kendall (36:19):
decided to tune into the diabetes network
tonight. Um, so it seems likethere's so much but, but
everybody's only good at a veryniche thing, and then I really
like that. I don't really likethat. I also am very concerned,
as I'm sure you were wondering,I'm very concerned about what
(36:43):
it's done to news and media andjournalism, yeah, in that
respect, and and I certainlydon't like that. Erin, I've been
working with a group ofprofessors and local journalism
practitioners in the InlandEmpire and the Community
(37:06):
Foundation and CSUSB got a grantto help them pursue other grants
that might assist in thecreation of some sort of
meaningful project that wouldhelp journalists in the Inland
Empire, reconnect, regrow,rebuild and re serve us, because
(37:33):
in our network, in our region,much like Many other communities
around the United States radiostations have slowly, one by
one, they've decided, Oh, we'renot going to have news in the
morning. First it was theevening, and then it was oh,
we're getting rid of it at noon,and now we're getting rid of it
in the morning, so musicstations never have even the
(37:57):
headlines or anything. And oneby one, more and more and more
just started getting rid of it,and then hedge funds started
buying our newspapers, as theyhave here in the Inland Empire,
yup, and they get rid ofjournalists, and they triple the
ads to try to make as much moneyby selling, by paying as little
(38:23):
as they possibly can, and theywork to find that balance. And
so we've ended up in a spotwhere a lot of very small
communities have and we havecitizens in our community that
have no idea about things thatare going on in our community.
(38:44):
They don't know much. They don'tknow anything about the
politicians in the area, who iswhat and where he came from, and
what his background or herbackground or expertise is, and
and they what we've found, andhas been discovered over and
(39:08):
over in the last several years,is that when a small community,
or even one the size of theInland Empire, when you lose
your localized media, then whathappens is, when people are ill
informed on things that aregoing on in the community,
(39:28):
pollution rises because it'swith no investigative local
reporters. There's no one thereto say what's going on over here
and do a story on it, and justcrime and corruption tends to
grow because the community isn'tupset about it, because the
(39:50):
community doesn't know about it.
And so anyway, we are in thatpredicament. We're not like a
lot of communities. Is wherethey have become. What is it
news deserts, but we're sort ofDr TC Corrigan calls us a news
mirage. We have, oh, mygoodness, I believe we have 14
(40:12):
different radio stations in theInland Empire proper, and then
lots of newspapers, but thenewspapers all are carrying the
same thing because they're ownedby the same people. Yes, of all
of those radio stations, there'skvcr and kcaa, and that's it.
(40:37):
All the others are just playingmusic or some form of
entertainment or new, not news,but entertainment or some sort
of music or something. And sothat's that's hurting us a lot.
We had the city of Bloomington,some of the folks over there
(41:00):
made it, negotiated a deal, anda third of Bloomington was on
track. Until recently it see CBStelevision in Los Angeles got
wind of it and did a report andstarted asking questions, how
can a third of Bloomingtonsuddenly be given away to
(41:23):
warehouses? Yep,
Erin Brinker (41:27):
I actually saw that on a YouTube video. And
Tobin, I said, Tobin, come inhere. My Tobin being my husband,
for those of you all who don'tknow, come in here, like and I
just stumbled across it, and Iwas absolutely gobsmacked. And
Tobin said, Yeah, this is what,you know, there's some, some
community members in the areawho have been talking about
this, but I didn't reallyunderstand what was happening.
(41:48):
I'm horrified.
Lacey Kendall (41:50):
Yeah, yeah. I am.
I am too. And the one good thingis that this group of folks that
are working with the CommunityFoundation and with local we are
calling them practitioners,because we're not just going for
radio stations and newspapers,but there are some people that
are doing alternative media orEmerging Media as their
(42:16):
foundation and are doingextremely well, and that would
include their folks like AnthonyVictoria, who you may hear on
kvcr Every now and then, AnthonyVictoria is doing some really
Wonderful journalism work, andhas, I believe Anthony's the
(42:40):
one. He has more followers thanthe Sun and the Riverside press
enterprise put together. Oh,wow, but it's a blog, and he's
doing very serious, ethicalinvestigative journalism on the
the warehouse situation going onall over the Inland Empire and
(43:00):
investigating when and where andwho and paid. Who got paid what?
Companies have created some sortof pact or partnership with
leaders in that city, where thecity gets a great deal of money,
but they lose all this land andso forth.
Erin Brinker (43:25):
And Bloomington is an unincorporated area, and
people who bought homes outthere, it was because they
wanted a little land for theirlivestock, if they had it,
horses and other things, andthey wanted neighbors not to be
right on top of them. Theydidn't want the cookie cutter
world. And they, you know, therewas a strong sense of community
in Bloomington and so to towatch this happen is horrifying,
(43:46):
with everybody going, what theheck is going on?
Lacey Kendall (43:49):
Yeah, yeah, right. And right under our
noses, right? That's a perfectexample of what happens when
your radio stations stop havingnews in the morning or news in
the afternoon, and there's lessand less stations that are doing
that. And then, of course, ourlocal newspapers, the one of the
(44:10):
things that at in this weekbefore any presidential election
that used to happen incommunities like ours and much
smaller was the editors whoworked on the sports page or on
the news page or on the Featurespage or what have you, these
(44:33):
editors would come together, andthey'd have a unique moment
before a Presidential election,and after spending all year
working on the editorial boardand covering local politicians
and what they're doing andthings that they've done for the
community and blah, blah blah,they would put out an their what
(44:58):
the editorial board. Feels, arethere the best options for
people to vote on in thatcommunity after reporting on it,
and it would be a very wonderfulsource for finding who really is
the best candidate for mayor inthis town and who does this. And
you you'd learn things that theyhad picked up and so forth. And
(45:22):
then they very often tell youwhat they recommend, after years
of being journalists andresearching and doing
interviews, who are the bestcandidates for president and
vice president and things likethat, and that's gone. That's
gone. It's just totally gone.
And
Erin Brinker (45:44):
I liked it, and know exactly what you're talking
about. Even the LA Timeseditorial board or the
Washington Post editorial board,thinking about national
politics, would put out, put outtheir recommendations for for
public offices and and theywould not be filled with
invective. Now it everything.
Everything is we've become acoarser culture. And there's
(46:08):
been a coarsening in the newsmedia that has really divided
people. You can see, I meanthis, this presidential election
that's going to be happeningnext week is, is 5050, if, and
even, even the Nate Silver, whois probably the best pollster in
the country, is saying, yeah,it's, I think it might be. I'm
not going to say who it is. Ithink it might be one, but it
(46:29):
could just as easily be theother. It is that close. And so,
you know, there's the even theconversations, we're not even
agreeing on what's real anymore,and there's so little trust on
national for national media thatthat it is really dwindled down
to what local media is left.
(46:49):
There are groups that are tryingto fix that calm matters up in
Sacramento was started by agroup of journalists, and I
trust them, because I feel likethat they're going to tell me
the truth, there are individualsthat I like who are Matt Taibbi
and and Barry Weiss and, youknow, I watch, I follow Andy No.
(47:10):
And these are not all peoplethat I agree with 100% but I can
trust what comes out of theirmouths and so that they've that
from their perspective, this iswhat they think is real and
true, Ruben Navarette andothers. But you know, the reason
why I can name them is becausethey're not common.
Lacey Kendall (47:25):
Yeah, yeah. Well, I will tell you this, and this
is the good side to that story.
Help is on the way. And these,this group of folks from the
media departments at Cal Stateand at the Palm Desert campus,
and members of the communityfoundation and members of the
(47:46):
media out in Coachella Valley,we are creating an inland empire
media collaborative. Oh, I lovethat. And those that have
demonstrated that they areethical journalists and and
they're really trying to, firstand foremost, serve this
(48:09):
community and and serve it goodthe they're in the collective
we're creating a a certificateprogram, curriculum for a
certificate program wherealready existing journalists can
come and find out what they theycan learn and get certified for
ethical investigative journalismwhen it is wrong to get
(48:33):
information this way or thatway, and and methods, and
methods and sources and thingslike that that they can learn
and and many more opportunitiesthat we'd like to make this
group something that is funded,where it helps fund emerging
(48:55):
students out of universitieswith journalism degrees, and
these citizens and andjournalists that are already
working in our region to getcertified. So there's a
unanimous understanding of whatis ethical and and proper and
(49:16):
and how, where and how we needinvestigations done by our local
journalists, and storytellinghow we how we do that. And so
this collective, what the ideais, is that we will bring
everybody together on a regularbasis, and there'll be
(49:37):
opportunities there for them tocollaborate. And it's it's going
to encourage collaboration to agreat deal. And if I come out
with a story, and I run it on mystation or in my blog or on my
story, what have you i i get tocome out with it first, but then
I share the information with thecoalition. And. By doing that,
(49:58):
you're hearing it from all ofthe news sources and and we're
working together to be a biggerforce.
Erin Brinker (50:08):
I think that's fabulous. I think that as a
nation, we're, you know, andmaybe it comes after this
election. I don't know. Maybe wehave maybe I don't know. Maybe
things have to get a littleworse before they get better.
But I think at some point we'regoing to want to come in out of
the crazy, and I think that whatyou're doing is a big step
forward in that direction. Yeah,
Lacey Kendall (50:28):
I think that'll be I think it's going to be
exciting. I mean, I spent thewhole summer with going and
meeting with differentbroadcasters, writers and
producers of news content fromCoachella Valley and the Inland
Empire, and we're still not doneand and everyone is very excited
(50:52):
about doing this. Everyone isvery energized by being part of
a collective and us together,doing what they thought maybe
was something, fixing somethingthat was dying a really rapid
death.
Erin Brinker (51:12):
So journalism at one point was very non partisan.
You're talking about straightnews versus the editorial pages
versus commentary, etc. Are youfinding that there's, there's a
real desire to just report thestraight news, or at least
identify, if you're somebody is,is is weighing in on a subject
to identify? This is my opinion.
By calling it editorial orcommentary or whatever,
Lacey Kendall (51:36):
am I finding that that people are willing to
report the news?
Erin Brinker (51:40):
Yes, alright, without, without their without
giving their opinion, becausethat's that you would think,
well, of course, but it's not anof course anymore. It used to
be, but it's not anymore. Well,
Lacey Kendall (51:51):
I would say this Erin, and what we're hearing
from these folks is they'resaying of of the the heritage
media so like radio stations andso forth, what they're saying
and newspapers is we, we neverdecided we didn't want to do it.
(52:16):
We simply didn't have the moneyto do it, or we needed to cut
corners, and it was a way to dothat, or, or it seemed like
listeners weren't reallylistening for that. There's a a
very, very, very, one of the topstations in this market with
(52:40):
millions of listeners, and whatthe program director of that
station told me was he held uphis phone, and he says they
don't care to hear it on ourstation anymore. We have a
newsroom right here, and as youknow, we don't use it, and it's
still got all of the computersin here, and it's a broadcast
(53:04):
booth they can go to. They couldsay, now here's so and so, so
and so with the news. But heheld up his phone, he showed it
to him, and he says, they'drather get it from here,
interesting. And I said, butgetting it from there is hurting
them. It is because they don'tknow they don't know that
(53:24):
there's a difference betweenreading something on Facebook
and hearing a journalist say iton a terrestrial radio station,
where they are regulated fortruth and accuracy by the FCC
and the fines for deliberatelybreaking such can be 25 to
(53:44):
$250,000 Ouch. And if you don'tbelieve that deliberately
spewing something that is isfalse or misleading, can that
there's penalties for that oncommercial radio stations and
television stations, look atAlex Jones.
Erin Brinker (54:07):
Oh, it's true. He a billion dollar fine. Yeah, he
million dollars. He
Lacey Kendall (54:11):
was everywhere, and every am station was
carrying him. I used to run theboard at a local station here
that you worked at too, Erin,and yes, and we carried that
show. And then he started sayingthe stuff about Sandy Hook and
that those, they were allactors, and it was found to be
(54:33):
not true, and they told him tostop, and he didn't. And they
find him. And then they said,stop again, and he didn't, and
they find him, and it was eithertwo or three times they find
him, and it just was like, he'smade so much money that he can
just keep paying fines. Yeah,
Erin Brinker (54:50):
for him, it was a cost of doing business. So they
had to make it hurt, and they
Lacey Kendall (54:54):
did. So they had to make it hurt. So they made it
hurt somebody else, and theysaid, then we will begin
finding. Radio stations who aredeliberately Erin Him, knowing
that he is he's saying thingsthat break FCC rules and
regulations. And so they startedfinding these, the stations that
(55:17):
were his carriers of theprogram. And when that happened,
they started going, wink, wink,wink, wink, and just
disappearing, of course, afteranother. And in a in a media
literacy that I taught out inCoachella Valley one year, I
said he's down to only 100stations. And then I taught that
class about five months later,and I looked it up to see how
(55:40):
many stations he was at, and injust that amount of time he it
was one, oh, it was one station,and it was in Alaska. Holy cow,
Erin Brinker (55:49):
yeah. So six, six people in a polar bear, six
Unknown (55:53):
people in a polar bear, and that's all there was. And
now there's not, not even that.
But when you start finding theradio stations and saying he may
not understand the gravity ofthis, even after we find him,
but you have to defend yourlicense on a regular basis, and
if you ignore this after knowingthe rules, as we know you do,
(56:14):
then you will be fined both thebroadcaster And whoever was
running the board at the time.
Erin Brinker (56:24):
So unfortunately, we're completely out of time. I
could talk to talk to you for afour hour show me too. So how do
people find and follow you andlearn more about the programs
that you're working on?
Lacey Kendall (56:36):
Wow, well, you could contact me at CSUSB and or
you could just, yeah, you couldwrite to me at CSUSB, and there
I'm Lacy, just L, A, C, E,y@csusb.edu, and I wish I had my
(56:59):
address here. I'm also Lacey atInland Empire. Go to the growing
inland achievement website andlook up education insight.
That's my radio program. You'llfind every show we've ever done,
including one with Erin andtheir email addresses there to
(57:21):
get a hold of me as well, and Ithink phone numbers too well.
Lacey
Erin Brinker (57:24):
Kendall, thank you so much for the work that you
do, the work that you've alwaysdone. I swear I could listen to
you read the phone book. Youhave such an appealing, warm,
welcoming voice. Thank you forjoining me today.
Lacey Kendall (57:36):
Thank you, Erin, such a pleasure to to be invited
to be on the Making Hopehappened, foundation podcast, I
appreciate you.
Erin Brinker (57:46):
That is all we have time for today, and I just
have one more thought. Theelection is behind us, and
whether you're happy with theoutcomes of local or national
races, I hope your takeaway isthat each of us needs to demand
better from our media. We needto equip and protect ourselves
from lies and manipulations,even from people with whom we
(58:06):
agree. We need to become savvyconsumers of media. We have to
have control over our own minds.
And you know what? You havecontrol over your own mind. Do
not give that power to anyoneelse. Ask yourself hard
questions about what you believeand why, find out what others
are saying about a givensubject, to learn their
perspective and take the time tolearn what is true. It has to be
(58:27):
intentional. And I will tell youthat it's incredibly liberating
to disconnect yourself from whatothers say you should think so
that you can think for yourself.
Once you do that, engage withthe media and hold them
accountable. Accountable rather,because truth matters. You've
been listening to the makinghope happen radio show. I'm Erin
(58:49):
Brinker. If you have an idea fora show topic, please email me at
show@makinghope.org That'sshow@makinghope.org. Have a
great week, everyone. You
Erin, welcome everyone to the making hope
(00:02):
happen radio show. I'm ErinBrinker, as we discussed in our
last episode with Dr DravonJames, we have the power to
change the way we think andexperience the world no matter
what is happening around us. Wetalked about gratitude, and I'm
starting a new tradition on thisshow of expressing my gratitude
at the top of each episode.
Today, I'm grateful first foryou, the listener, for the time
(00:25):
we spend together. You mean theworld to me. I'm grateful for
family, community, and most ofall, for a loving, engaged,
omniscient, omnipresent Creatorof the universe who has made us
in His image and knew us beforewe were born. An easy life is
not promised, but joy can befound even in dark places.
Please know that you are bothloved and worthy of that love,
(00:48):
and I'm grateful for that.
I can't think of anyone in theInland Empire who has made a
bigger impact in broadcastingthan my guest today. Her warm
and welcoming voice andpersonality have accompanied us
in our daily lives on stationswith formats as diverse as the
community itself, and she hasdedicated her life to training
(01:12):
area college and universitystudents to be ethical,
entertaining and skilledbroadcasting professionals.
You're going to love thisconversation with the great
Lacey Kendall. One of the joysthat I I have had in my
broadcasting career is to talkto people who have made an
impact, a significant impact, tothe field in which they work.
(01:34):
And today is one of those daysI'm joined by Lacey Kendall. She
is a legend in broadcasting andcommunity support in the Inland
Empire. She can be found onwhere she started. She founded
rather Coyote Radio at CSUSB,and that's the San Bernardino
campus in the 1990s paws radioat the Palm Desert campus,
(01:54):
hosted award winning shows,including my awesome Empire
education inside and others.
She's been heard on kcaa, kvcrand kcal, FM and emceed, more
events than I'm sure anyone cancount, or it would take a while,
at least, and more, more, mostimportantly, I think she's
trained 1000s of young people inthis and on this crazy business.
First of all, Lacey Kendall,welcome to the show.
Lacey Kendall (02:20):
Thank you so much Erin for having me. This is a
great pleasure.
Erin Brinker (02:24):
So So tell us. How did you get your start in
broadcasting? Well, I'll
Lacey Kendall (02:30):
tell you, I when I was a kid, when I was going
into the fifth or sixth grade,we moved here from Long Beach
out to inland, the inland area.
And when we did, my dad starteda new job before we had found a
house, so we lived at theHoliday Inn, right there, next
(02:52):
to the 10 freeway for aboutthree months, while my mom and
dad, you know, found time in theevenings and on the weekends to
go look for a home for us. Andthere wasn't a lot to do during
those three months. I'm an onlychild, so I spent a lot of time
sitting in front of the windowthat was KFX, m and k duo, which
(03:13):
was which was their home was inthe Holiday Inn, and they had a
big window there, and you couldsit outside on the grass and
look in and watch the announcerstalk and and in the manner of
KFX Sam, there was a one ofthose old kind of PA speakers
(03:34):
mounted under the eve of thebuilding, and you could hear
what he was saying. So that wasthe first time I became
interested in anything media,other than watching TV. And I
just thought that was reallyinteresting. And one day, I had
been out there for days and daysand days, and the gentleman, his
name was Johnny K he was theprogram director and the
(04:00):
afternoon radio announcer, andhe looked through the window and
he said something to me, and Isaid, I can't hear you. I don't
know what you're saying. And heeventually invited me to come in
and take a tour. And of course,I said, Wait, hang on. I gotta
(04:20):
go ask my mom. So, so I ran tothe room, and I came back, and I
said, Yeah, and he gave me atour. And I just very distinctly
remember saying to him, how comegirls don't do this? Because
this was like, I don't know. Itwas like the 70s, early 70s,
something like that, earlier,mid 70s. And he said, Well, if
(04:44):
you ever were interested inthis, I would say head forward,
because girls will be in heredoing this very soon. I'm sure
of it. And. I said, Oh, okay.
Anyway, he was very nice to me.
And then few years later, I waslooking at going to college at
(05:06):
San Bernardino Valley College toget my general ed requirements
out of the way. And my mom anddad pushed me to explore some
different things. And I wasreally in high school. I was
really into electronics. I liketo build radios and all kinds of
goofy things, soldering thingstogether. And anyway, one of my
counselors suggested that, oh,and I also wrote for the school
(05:33):
newspaper in high school. So Ijoined the school newspaper at
San Bernardino Valley College.
And I went from really, reallyliking it to really, really not,
oh yeah, and I, and I, I thinkit was the environment. I think
there was, there was a lot ofhard suggestions in those days
(05:55):
to change a hard news story intoa more feature story that was
kind to administrators and and Ihad moved up to the editorial
board, and I said, well, they,they taught us that you, you
really shouldn't do that, thatthat's yellow journalism. And
(06:15):
they said, that's true. It's thekind of journalism we're doing
right now. You, You guys are notdoing any story on San
Bernardino Community CollegeDistrict Board meetings. Okay?
So I said, Okay. And, and then Iwalked furiously to my
counselor, and he said, Well,let's try some other stuff too,
because you're justexperimenting right now, right?
(06:36):
And I said, Yeah. And he hesaid, How about some radio and
TV courses and, or first, hesaid radio. And I went radio,
and my exact words were, oh, mygod, that is so lame. And, and
he said, I said I would takesome TV classes, though. And he
(06:58):
said, Well, you gotta take radioclasses first girl, you work
your way up. So I did. And youknow, to finish that out, I I
ended up doing a year's worth ofclasses, and by the time it
became I was able to take TVclasses and TV production
classes, I thought that TV was,was not interesting at all,
(07:22):
because every any program oranything you do is only as
strong as the very weakestperson in on the team. So, and
I've never thought about that,but you're right, yeah, if the
audio guy misses something andsomebody's mic is off for a few
minutes, or the camera guideisn't right on this, on the on
(07:44):
the shot, or the cues are late,or anything like that. It
doesn't matter how good you ranyour department. So I did. I
didn't like working on projectslike that, and normally I I
gravitated towards anythingwhere there was more people, the
better. Being an only child, Ijust wanted to do everything
(08:05):
around a bunch of people, butdidn't like that. And I liked
that radio every, every time Iwent in there and went on the
air on kvcr, it was as good as Icould, or did make it, or as bad
as I didn't. And so it was allon me, and I had the power to
make it better or better, andand I liked that. I liked that
(08:29):
very much. And then I got hiredthere to work at kvcr, and I
worked with your first job, myfirst job, God, Erin, you had to
ask. So it was working at kvcr,which was a magical and very
important moment to me. And Ilove everybody there, very, very
much. But the show that I gothired to do was they said, you
(08:52):
can, you can say what you want,do jokes, you can interview
people. You can kind of make ityour show. But it is called
bluegrass alive, and you will beplaying bluegrass music and
calling yourself cousin, Lacey.
Cousin
Erin Brinker (09:07):
Lacey. Okay, I full disclosure, I love
bluegrass music. Oh, I do too.
Now it is filled with musicianswho could just play that heck
out of their instruments, yeah,
Lacey Kendall (09:17):
without plugging them in exactly. Yeah. I do too,
and I've been to lots ofbluegrass festivals and
everything. But, you know, theolder I get, the more that comes
back to me. My friends love toin, in moments I don't know, in
goofy moments. They they like tocall me cousin Lacey.
Erin Brinker (09:36):
I love that. I love that you're like, No, I was
not on Hee Haw, yeah. Was not onHiva,
Lacey Kendall (09:41):
yeah. They don't really care about the bluegrass.
They kind of like that cousin.
Lacey sounds sort of Hickey, youknow. So anyway, I did that, and
then soon I got a job at lovingand gentle kql, h and then, oh
my goodness, um, I worked atkme. Then, and then eventually
at kg Gi. And I worked at KD Uo,which was Elevate, very elevator
(10:08):
music. But I think, believe wecalled it easy listening, easy
listening, or adultcontemporary, yeah, yeah. And I
had, I had wanted to work atkcal. I listened to kcal as a
kid, and I interviewed for myhigh school newspaper a guy
named Randy childs who was fromRialto like I was, and he he was
(10:30):
very nice and very handsome, andI did a big story about him. And
I thought, man, once I starteddoing radio, I thought, and it'd
be great to work with Randychilds works. And anyway, I I
kept applying and doing tryoutsat kcal, and I kept getting
(10:51):
turned down, and they'd say,come back in four or five
months, when you put some moreinto it. And then finally they
hired me, and I said, my friendsall said I hadn't, I hadn't done
any rock and roll before, so youguys would never want me. But
why did you? And he said,exactly for the opposite of what
(11:12):
your friend said, I liked itthat you had worked at an easy
listening station. You playedbluegrass, you played country,
you played jazz on K, U, O, R,and, and he just named all
these, these formats I'd done,and he says, what that says to
me is, you've had lots ofbosses, and you're trainable.
Oh, indeed,
Erin Brinker (11:35):
Yeah, indeed. It also says that you love music,
Lacey Kendall (11:38):
yeah. And I, and I did, I a lot of those stations
I started and I went, well, themusic's really weird, mom, but
you know, the station's fun tobe at. And then, you know, I got
better and better with it and Iand what I've learned through my
whole life is, when you exposeyourself to a different kind of
music, you end up saying tosomebody, after a week or two,
you say, I hate all of it exceptone artist. And oh my gosh, this
(12:04):
artist is so different and sogood. And then a few weeks
later, it's, I hate all theartists except this one, this
one and this one. And it justcontinues to grow until you say
the only one I don't like incountry music is, you know. And
so I can say that in in jazz, incountry and bluegrass, in rock,
(12:26):
in heavy metal, oh, andChristian, Christian
Broadcasting. And for a longwhile, I worked in positive
country, which is Christiancountry, and I enjoyed that
quite a bit. And so, yeah, soexpose yourself to anything, and
(12:46):
you find out what you like, andyour your love for it grows, and
the depth of what you like tendsto expand. You
Erin Brinker (12:56):
know, I'm thinking about jazz because of of all the
genres that you talked about,it's the one I understand the
least, and often they're thebest trained musicians, because
you have to know all the rulesbefore you can break all the
rules. And did you find your didit take a while for you to warm
up to jazz? Or did you like itright away?
Lacey Kendall (13:15):
I've always kind of liked some of it, but like
you, I didn't understand it verymuch, but when I started this
jazz station out in theCoachella Valley, pause radio,
the thing was, we did ourresearch, much like at coyote
radio. We were trying to figureout a format for coyote radio.
(13:38):
Initially, when I startedhelping CSUSB and and somebody
said to me, or I read, theysaid, a college station, if it
is a if it is a rock station,and you have a commercial rock
station in town, it's alwaysgoing to be the crappy version
of, in our case, kcal, if it'scountry, it's going to be the
(14:02):
crappy version of K frog. Ifit's, you know, whatever it is,
it's going to be like that. Sothe stations that have done best
across the US, that are oncollege campuses, are those that
found a very unique pathway thatnobody else could do back in
Erin Brinker (14:20):
the day they they, there was a lot of alternative
music coming out of collegeradio station. So as grunge was
getting started, or, you knowthat other movements with this
kind of more obscure artist,more local artists, because they
have more flexibility. Theydon't, they don't, they don't,
they're not beholden to acorporate brand. Mm, hmm.
Lacey Kendall (14:41):
So that when, when I was there at coyote
radio, I said, Okay, these arethe topics that I came up with
after few weeks of thinkingabout it. We could be classical,
which no student will ever gofor, because nobody plays it out
here. We could be jazz, but Idon't know. How well that would
fly in the Inland Empire. I saidwe could be reggae that's
(15:07):
extremely popular with collegekids, and there is, of course,
no reggae station in town. Or wecould be all local bands, and
that seemed to have moremagnetic effect than any of the
other ones I suggested. And sowe tried to explore that a bit.
(15:30):
And as we started collectingmore music from local artists,
it worked out really. Worked outreally well, because we were
hearing it and we were going, ohmy god, the music here is so
good. These bands are, arereally, really good. And the
thing that was neat about thatwas, you've, you probably have
noticed that over the years,when I was a kid and you were a
(15:51):
kid, Erin radio stations used tohave the local band spotlight on
Friday or Saturday night orsomething, you know, yes,
anyway, they've that hascompletely disappeared, as you
may have noticed, and and whenit, when the station does do it,
they're doing, I don't know whatthey're doing, but they've got
(16:15):
something pre arranged, becauseit is been found to be very in
these days, very litigious. Likethe drummer will say, Hey, you
guys make money off of playingmusic, and you played my music
and I did not give mypermission, Oh, for that song to
(16:35):
be played in the local and sostations started getting sued
by, are
Erin Brinker (16:40):
you serious, Goofy? And these are bands that
nobody had heard of. It's, it's,I mean, how are you going to get
hurt if you're never heard
Lacey Kendall (16:48):
exactly, but I don't know. The people get in
their 20s, and sometimes theyhave a dad that's, that's an
attorney and and they've donethat, and so stations are just
like, yeah, we're not going todeal with all the personalities
in some local band and do that,but we could pull that off on a
(17:11):
college campus because we're notin we don't make money at any
college radio station. We don'tmake money off of playing
anybody's music. We make what,what income our university
campus makes by tuition, and weare, first and foremost, a
(17:34):
learning laboratory ofbroadcasting. And so because of
that, the any anybody trying tosue really doesn't land the same
way. You can't sue and say that,you know, whatever College
Station made money off of youbecause,
Erin Brinker (17:54):
because you didn't, they did not selling
advertising or not
Lacey Kendall (17:58):
selling advertising. So, so that doesn't
work. And then what we did was,as the station got really
popular, then we we had the thetwo attorneys for Cal State, San
Bernardino, draw up a contractthat that makes it very clear.
It says we do not make money offany artists music on this
station. We are, however, happyto share your music with our
(18:25):
1000s of listeners and to talkabout your band and your music
and your performances, and wewill never use this music for
anything other thanentertainment and student
learning on our station, andyou, by signing this, are giving
us permission to play it forexclusively, exclusively the
(18:48):
reason that we just gave, Oh,that's fantastic. And they, they
Yes, and they excitedly sign itand say, When am I going to be
on? When are we going to be on?
We're telling my mom, gotta tellour moms and and all of the cute
girls, so you know, or cuteboys, whatever. So anyway, it's
worked very well for coyoteradio. And then when I got to
(19:11):
you, started asking me aboutjazz. And then when I got to
pause radio, I did someresearch, and they had a jazz
station in Coachella Valley, andit was extremely popular. It was
always one of the top threestations for a long time, and
the owners sold the station, andthose the the company that
purchased that station purchasedit exclusively for the purpose
(19:36):
of creating the CoachellaValley's first FM news and talk
station, oh, and so there was nojazz station. So there there
was, there's one station therethat plays standards, which is
like Bing Crosby and FrankSinatra and stuff like that, but
not really the. You know, thereal jazz and so I wanted to be
(20:01):
I wanted to do something that Iknew that was already an
audience for and and thereweren't a lot of students
involved in the program beforewe were on the air. So I kind of
got to have my say, and I justmade sure the the dean who had
hired me at the Palm Desertcampus to do this that she liked
(20:26):
the idea, and she did, and shewas very encouraging. And so I
said, then we're going to thenwe're going to be jazz. So we
just spent months loading musicuntil we had, oh my like 2000
songs in there. And I will tellyou something really, really
neat that happened. So I went tothe I went to the public library
(20:47):
in it was Indian Wells orsomeplace off 111 and I went in
there one day and I said, Hey,by chance I saw the sign when I
was driving by, and it said, youhave music. By chance. Do you
guys have any jazz? And shegoes, Oh, boy, do we come on
over here. And so she walks meover, and there were rows and
(21:11):
rows. Oh, that's great. And Isaid, Oh my gosh, this is huge.
Where'd you get this? And shesaid there was a jazz station in
this town, and it was always oneof the most popular three
stations. And it got bought andthey turned it into a news
station, and somebody thereoffered it at called and said,
(21:35):
you wouldn't be interested inour entire archives, would you?
And I said, Oh, my God, that isso great. I am going to be here
a lot. And so they let you checkout 25 CDs at a time. And I was
researching and reading, and Ihad two friends who had had done
(21:55):
an extreme amount of work injazz, and they were guiding me,
and we had lists, and I'd gothere and get 25 and I'd be back
three days later, after weuploaded all of it, I'd get 25
more. And did that for, yeah,two years, and now we load music
every Thursday, but it's NewJazz, Jazz that just came on out
(22:18):
on the market, like Samara joyand we three and some of these
really great young artists thatare that are coming out and and
doing some really groovy jazz.
Erin Brinker (22:32):
So are you getting the kind of traction and
audience that the former jazzstation had? Do people know
you're there? I
Lacey Kendall (22:39):
think, based on our data, I think we don't have
the money to promote ourselves,but we do have a giant
electronic built bulletin boardone, and every once in a while,
we get some extra grant moneythat allows for printing, and
we'll print some little flyers,and we'll drop them at music
(23:00):
stores and at events orbusinesses where those that that
like jazz might shop, and we'lldo that, but I estimate the
audience there. Don't tell mystudents, because they think
it's a half million people, butI'd estimate it to be about two
(23:21):
to 4000 recurrent listeners thatare mostly from the Coachella
Valley, and that is, sounds likea small number. Would sound like
a small number to my students,but for a college radio station
that doesn't have an an FM towerwith a very long signal and a
(23:45):
stream as well, for one thatdoesn't have all that it's, it's
extraordinarily good. That is,that is good. That is very good
if you, if you say, give us acall and tell us what you're
thinking someone's going to callso it feels very real to them
and and they treat it very, veryseriously. So I like that
Erin Brinker (24:09):
is the program growing the radio and television
program, you know, at PalmDesert campus,
Lacey Kendall (24:16):
yeah. So it started out as a as a radio
station, and then we had apandemic, and that kind of
stalled my work, but I've workedto the whole place is
soundproof. It is a radiostation, and now it's a
multimedia learning lab. Andstudents go there and they can
learn digital audio productionand multi track mixing. We teach
(24:42):
them Adobe Audition, whichmarries well into Adobe
Premiere, so they can learnabout creating video. We have
handheld devices that can beused for extremely high quality
recording of anything in thefield, and we've had. Everybody
from nurses students to historystudents, go out and introduce
(25:05):
people in the field and dointerviews, much like you and I
are doing, but doing it face toface, coming back and learning
how to edit it, to create anaudio project instead of a some
kind of report for theircoursework and and that's served
(25:25):
them very well. We have a remotebroadcast field device that
works off of battery power andcellular or Wi Fi or plain old
telephone system, and we've doneremote broadcasts, and a couple
years ago, I said, I want tooffer something that will
(25:49):
enhance learning for allstudents here at this campus.
And so I got a grant, and Ipurchased a whole lot of virtual
reality, virtual augmentedreality equipment, and started
learning that. And what we'vedone is we've since been invited
by the X real lab, which is a avery innovative laboratory that
(26:18):
is at the San Bernardino campus,where students are creating
immersive reality experiencesand tours, and they're creating
games and writing code and doingsome really, really
extraordinary work over there.
So I said, they said, we'd like,we like the work you're doing.
(26:38):
We'd like our programs to marry.
And I said, Yeah, I would. Iwould like that too. So now
we're also known as the x realmulti media lab of PDC, but I
like to call it now themultimedia library. And the
reason is, we're doing somethingdifferent. We don't have
(26:59):
computer science students there,but we have all kinds of
students from a variety ofdisciplines, and so my staff and
I, I have a student staff, andwe have done quite a bit of
research over the past fivemonths, and We've sought out any
kind of immersive experiences ineverything from from places all
(27:26):
over the world to war zones.
There's a Time Warner or someonelike that, they created a a it
is recreation, but it is a quiterealistic and scary feeling
experience of what it's like tobe on the front lines of World
(27:52):
War Two, and you're in a bunkerand people are dying around you,
and it looks, it looks veryreal, and we have offered video
that was captured by one of thestudents at the San Bernardino
campus, the only immersivereality, 360 video where You can
put yourself in Gaza before andafter the, you know, the war
(28:21):
there
Erin Brinker (28:25):
so is this would be this be used by students who
want to be tell a journalist or,you know, like, Yes, oh my gosh,
yeah, wow.
Lacey Kendall (28:35):
And history students come to explore. Some
students came in the other dayand they said, for our history
class, we are studying ancientLatin America. And they said,
with they told us, Professorthat we could come here and
because it feels really boring,this is what he said, because,
because it feels really boring,that maybe you could, with the
(28:57):
virtual reality, you could findsomething that would make it
feel more where we could itwould be more interesting than
reading about it in a book. Soyou're like,
Erin Brinker (29:06):
face to face with a Mayan or an Aztec, yeah.
Lacey Kendall (29:09):
So wow, I went looking, and I found some
extraordinary video of chinitaand Teotihuacan and where they
could project themselves andmove around, and it look it's
very, very realistic and veryhigh definition. And they could
(29:30):
walk around those places andexplore them and feel like they
were there. And it's easier towrite a report on something when
you feel like you've alreadybeen there. Oh
Erin Brinker (29:39):
my gosh. That's incredible.
Lacey Kendall (29:41):
So our students are doing some really amazing
things by coming there andasking us, saying, Hey, I have
an assignment coming up. Can youfind something about big bin in
London, England? And I go, Oh, Iknow. I can get that one. Yeah,
I'll get you, I'll get you a fewthings. You just make a. Will
put down some time and reservean hour or so here, and we'll
(30:07):
have it ready by the time. What
Erin Brinker (30:08):
about make believe places like Hogwarts?
Lacey Kendall (30:11):
Yeah, oh, you know what they have. They have a
very, very realistic, immersiveexperience where you can go in
the the enterprise, ooh, StarTrek. And it's, it's very, very
real. Oh, that's wild. It seemslike it's a like some NASA
(30:33):
video, you know? So there is,there's a lot of stuff out
there, and creators like the thepeople like the students and
faculty on our San Bernardinocampus, those creators who are,
who are computer scientists, arerecreating things that are not
(30:54):
tangible anymore, and becausethey they know they have the
skills to create these kinds ofvisual experiences. They are
creating opportunities forstudents to feel something that
expired 100 years ago or more.
Erin Brinker (31:12):
I gotta think that, you know, with all of the
Hollywood types who have summerbungalows or not, summer winter
bungalows in Palm Springs andthe greater Palm Springs area
that that it, it doing whatyou're doing is it, is it
getting attention from peoplewho work in the industry?
Because it, it just, you know,whether it's people doing who
(31:35):
want to do voiceover work,people who want to work behind
the scenes and lots of differentthings, production, audio,
video, etc. Are you getting anyof that attention yet?
Unknown (31:46):
No, but my well and maybe yes, the Palm Springs Film
Festival reached out to mystudents and gave them all free
admission to attend last year,but they asked if they would
help them with some very funprojects and and I thought
outstanding. Yeah, I thoughtthat was wonderful. And they put
our logo on all of theirprograms and everything, and it
(32:10):
was a magazine that that wasgiven to folks that were
attending the Film Fest. And Ijust thought that was a lovely
thing for them to do. Indeed, itmust have been through the radio
station that they became awareof us, I would think so.
Erin Brinker (32:22):
Let's switch gears and kind of talk about changes
in the industry, in inbroadcasting. I mean, I'm sure
when you were a little girllooking through the window at
that first radio, through thefirst radio, at the first radio
station, that you couldn'timagine all of the things that
have happened in in the rate,not only in radio, but in all of
you know, all the internet, bestinternet based radio, so all the
(32:45):
streaming services, you know,YouTube, and you know all the
ways that people communicatewith their audience. It's
changed a lot, and it's changedrelatively quickly, the
dramatically in the last, say,30 years. Kind of talk about
what that's been like goingthrough that?
Lacey Kendall (33:02):
Yeah, well, when I got into this, I wasn't old
enough to realize that thingsdid change like they do. You
know, I kind of thought thatthat my world was probably not
too different from my mom's, mydad's or my grandmother's, but,
and now, as I've gotten older, Irealized that I realized with
greater depth my own world, buthow different it is from my own
(33:25):
world 20 years ago and so on andand I never would have foreseen
that everything would godigital, and things that used to
be big and heavy and metal andgigantic towers and all of these
would be replaced by littlesemiconductors and transistors
and and so forth that thatinitially weren't very good, but
(33:49):
have gotten to be far better inin many cases, and provide
greater clarity for a greaterdistances. So I like all that. I
kind of like that I liked in theold days when things were very
analog. I liked that people onthe radio were, were creative
(34:10):
makers of of radio
Erin Brinker (34:14):
and and true entertainers
Lacey Kendall (34:17):
and true entertainers. There's a man
named Stu and he worked at atkcal for many years. And I
remember when I was very young,one of my friends at school said
that guy is, he's a song Smith,a tune Smith, or something like
(34:39):
that. And I said, What's whatSmith? What's a Smith? And he
says, Smith is somebody thatcreates. And he said, the way he
mixes the music goes from thissong to that song. It's, it's,
it's something he does it in away nobody else does. And it,
it, it shows that he's. Reallydifferent, and it's a skill. And
(35:03):
then I got to know him, and Iworked there for many years, and
I realized, oh, my god, yeah,this guy really does. It's, this
is there's a lot of art andtechnique and things like that.
And there is still in, in manyways, there is still that, um, I
I, I don't like the how broadmedia has become, so that
(35:32):
everything only has a limitedamount of potential listeners or
viewers. Televisions experiencethat and radio has two it's like
the old saying, Is it 300channels and nothing's on? Yeah,
exactly. I think that you
Erin Brinker (35:52):
have a knitting channel, yes,
Lacey Kendall (35:55):
yeah. I have a joke in my house. It's like when
it's commercial aftercommercial, they'll say, What
are you watching? And I said,Oh, I just decided to tune into
the car insurance network, youknow, or whatever it is, yes,
Erin Brinker (36:12):
the pharmaceuticals network, because
every ad is like the you havediabetes, do you? I
Lacey Kendall (36:19):
decided to tune into the diabetes network
tonight. Um, so it seems likethere's so much but, but
everybody's only good at a veryniche thing, and then I really
like that. I don't really likethat. I also am very concerned,
as I'm sure you were wondering,I'm very concerned about what
(36:43):
it's done to news and media andjournalism, yeah, in that
respect, and and I certainlydon't like that. Erin, I've been
working with a group ofprofessors and local journalism
practitioners in the InlandEmpire and the Community
(37:06):
Foundation and CSUSB got a grantto help them pursue other grants
that might assist in thecreation of some sort of
meaningful project that wouldhelp journalists in the Inland
Empire, reconnect, regrow,rebuild and re serve us, because
(37:33):
in our network, in our region,much like Many other communities
around the United States radiostations have slowly, one by
one, they've decided, Oh, we'renot going to have news in the
morning. First it was theevening, and then it was oh,
we're getting rid of it at noon,and now we're getting rid of it
in the morning, so musicstations never have even the
(37:57):
headlines or anything. And oneby one, more and more and more
just started getting rid of it,and then hedge funds started
buying our newspapers, as theyhave here in the Inland Empire,
yup, and they get rid ofjournalists, and they triple the
ads to try to make as much moneyby selling, by paying as little
(38:23):
as they possibly can, and theywork to find that balance. And
so we've ended up in a spotwhere a lot of very small
communities have and we havecitizens in our community that
have no idea about things thatare going on in our community.
(38:44):
They don't know much. They don'tknow anything about the
politicians in the area, who iswhat and where he came from, and
what his background or herbackground or expertise is, and
and they what we've found, andhas been discovered over and
(39:08):
over in the last several years,is that when a small community,
or even one the size of theInland Empire, when you lose
your localized media, then whathappens is, when people are ill
informed on things that aregoing on in the community,
(39:28):
pollution rises because it'swith no investigative local
reporters. There's no one thereto say what's going on over here
and do a story on it, and justcrime and corruption tends to
grow because the community isn'tupset about it, because the
(39:50):
community doesn't know about it.
And so anyway, we are in thatpredicament. We're not like a
lot of communities. Is wherethey have become. What is it
news deserts, but we're sort ofDr TC Corrigan calls us a news
mirage. We have, oh, mygoodness, I believe we have 14
(40:12):
different radio stations in theInland Empire proper, and then
lots of newspapers, but thenewspapers all are carrying the
same thing because they're ownedby the same people. Yes, of all
of those radio stations, there'skvcr and kcaa, and that's it.
(40:37):
All the others are just playingmusic or some form of
entertainment or new, not news,but entertainment or some sort
of music or something. And sothat's that's hurting us a lot.
We had the city of Bloomington,some of the folks over there
(41:00):
made it, negotiated a deal, anda third of Bloomington was on
track. Until recently it see CBStelevision in Los Angeles got
wind of it and did a report andstarted asking questions, how
can a third of Bloomingtonsuddenly be given away to
(41:23):
warehouses? Yep,
Erin Brinker (41:27):
I actually saw that on a YouTube video. And
Tobin, I said, Tobin, come inhere. My Tobin being my husband,
for those of you all who don'tknow, come in here, like and I
just stumbled across it, and Iwas absolutely gobsmacked. And
Tobin said, Yeah, this is what,you know, there's some, some
community members in the areawho have been talking about
this, but I didn't reallyunderstand what was happening.
(41:48):
I'm horrified.
Lacey Kendall (41:50):
Yeah, yeah. I am.
I am too. And the one good thingis that this group of folks that
are working with the CommunityFoundation and with local we are
calling them practitioners,because we're not just going for
radio stations and newspapers,but there are some people that
are doing alternative media orEmerging Media as their
(42:16):
foundation and are doingextremely well, and that would
include their folks like AnthonyVictoria, who you may hear on
kvcr Every now and then, AnthonyVictoria is doing some really
Wonderful journalism work, andhas, I believe Anthony's the
(42:40):
one. He has more followers thanthe Sun and the Riverside press
enterprise put together. Oh,wow, but it's a blog, and he's
doing very serious, ethicalinvestigative journalism on the
the warehouse situation going onall over the Inland Empire and
(43:00):
investigating when and where andwho and paid. Who got paid what?
Companies have created some sortof pact or partnership with
leaders in that city, where thecity gets a great deal of money,
but they lose all this land andso forth.
Erin Brinker (43:25):
And Bloomington is an unincorporated area, and
people who bought homes outthere, it was because they
wanted a little land for theirlivestock, if they had it,
horses and other things, andthey wanted neighbors not to be
right on top of them. Theydidn't want the cookie cutter
world. And they, you know, therewas a strong sense of community
in Bloomington and so to towatch this happen is horrifying,
(43:46):
with everybody going, what theheck is going on?
Lacey Kendall (43:49):
Yeah, yeah, right. And right under our
noses, right? That's a perfectexample of what happens when
your radio stations stop havingnews in the morning or news in
the afternoon, and there's lessand less stations that are doing
that. And then, of course, ourlocal newspapers, the one of the
(44:10):
things that at in this weekbefore any presidential election
that used to happen incommunities like ours and much
smaller was the editors whoworked on the sports page or on
the news page or on the Featurespage or what have you, these
(44:33):
editors would come together, andthey'd have a unique moment
before a Presidential election,and after spending all year
working on the editorial boardand covering local politicians
and what they're doing andthings that they've done for the
community and blah, blah blah,they would put out an their what
(44:58):
the editorial board. Feels, arethere the best options for
people to vote on in thatcommunity after reporting on it,
and it would be a very wonderfulsource for finding who really is
the best candidate for mayor inthis town and who does this. And
you you'd learn things that theyhad picked up and so forth. And
(45:22):
then they very often tell youwhat they recommend, after years
of being journalists andresearching and doing
interviews, who are the bestcandidates for president and
vice president and things likethat, and that's gone. That's
gone. It's just totally gone.
And
Erin Brinker (45:44):
I liked it, and know exactly what you're talking
about. Even the LA Timeseditorial board or the
Washington Post editorial board,thinking about national
politics, would put out, put outtheir recommendations for for
public offices and and theywould not be filled with
invective. Now it everything.
Everything is we've become acoarser culture. And there's
(46:08):
been a coarsening in the newsmedia that has really divided
people. You can see, I meanthis, this presidential election
that's going to be happeningnext week is, is 5050, if, and
even, even the Nate Silver, whois probably the best pollster in
the country, is saying, yeah,it's, I think it might be. I'm
not going to say who it is. Ithink it might be one, but it
(46:29):
could just as easily be theother. It is that close. And so,
you know, there's the even theconversations, we're not even
agreeing on what's real anymore,and there's so little trust on
national for national media thatthat it is really dwindled down
to what local media is left.
(46:49):
There are groups that are tryingto fix that calm matters up in
Sacramento was started by agroup of journalists, and I
trust them, because I feel likethat they're going to tell me
the truth, there are individualsthat I like who are Matt Taibbi
and and Barry Weiss and, youknow, I watch, I follow Andy No.
(47:10):
And these are not all peoplethat I agree with 100% but I can
trust what comes out of theirmouths and so that they've that
from their perspective, this iswhat they think is real and
true, Ruben Navarette andothers. But you know, the reason
why I can name them is becausethey're not common.
Lacey Kendall (47:25):
Yeah, yeah. Well, I will tell you this, and this
is the good side to that story.
Help is on the way. And these,this group of folks from the
media departments at Cal Stateand at the Palm Desert campus,
and members of the communityfoundation and members of the
(47:46):
media out in Coachella Valley,we are creating an inland empire
media collaborative. Oh, I lovethat. And those that have
demonstrated that they areethical journalists and and
they're really trying to, firstand foremost, serve this
(48:09):
community and and serve it goodthe they're in the collective
we're creating a a certificateprogram, curriculum for a
certificate program wherealready existing journalists can
come and find out what they theycan learn and get certified for
ethical investigative journalismwhen it is wrong to get
(48:33):
information this way or thatway, and and methods, and
methods and sources and thingslike that that they can learn
and and many more opportunitiesthat we'd like to make this
group something that is funded,where it helps fund emerging
(48:55):
students out of universitieswith journalism degrees, and
these citizens and andjournalists that are already
working in our region to getcertified. So there's a
unanimous understanding of whatis ethical and and proper and
(49:16):
and how, where and how we needinvestigations done by our local
journalists, and storytellinghow we how we do that. And so
this collective, what the ideais, is that we will bring
everybody together on a regularbasis, and there'll be
(49:37):
opportunities there for them tocollaborate. And it's it's going
to encourage collaboration to agreat deal. And if I come out
with a story, and I run it on mystation or in my blog or on my
story, what have you i i get tocome out with it first, but then
I share the information with thecoalition. And. By doing that,
(49:58):
you're hearing it from all ofthe news sources and and we're
working together to be a biggerforce.
Erin Brinker (50:08):
I think that's fabulous. I think that as a
nation, we're, you know, andmaybe it comes after this
election. I don't know. Maybe wehave maybe I don't know. Maybe
things have to get a littleworse before they get better.
But I think at some point we'regoing to want to come in out of
the crazy, and I think that whatyou're doing is a big step
forward in that direction. Yeah,
Lacey Kendall (50:28):
I think that'll be I think it's going to be
exciting. I mean, I spent thewhole summer with going and
meeting with differentbroadcasters, writers and
producers of news content fromCoachella Valley and the Inland
Empire, and we're still not doneand and everyone is very excited
(50:52):
about doing this. Everyone isvery energized by being part of
a collective and us together,doing what they thought maybe
was something, fixing somethingthat was dying a really rapid
death.
Erin Brinker (51:12):
So journalism at one point was very non partisan.
You're talking about straightnews versus the editorial pages
versus commentary, etc. Are youfinding that there's, there's a
real desire to just report thestraight news, or at least
identify, if you're somebody is,is is weighing in on a subject
to identify? This is my opinion.
By calling it editorial orcommentary or whatever,
Lacey Kendall (51:36):
am I finding that that people are willing to
report the news?
Erin Brinker (51:40):
Yes, alright, without, without their without
giving their opinion, becausethat's that you would think,
well, of course, but it's not anof course anymore. It used to
be, but it's not anymore. Well,
Lacey Kendall (51:51):
I would say this Erin, and what we're hearing
from these folks is they'resaying of of the the heritage
media so like radio stations andso forth, what they're saying
and newspapers is we, we neverdecided we didn't want to do it.
(52:16):
We simply didn't have the moneyto do it, or we needed to cut
corners, and it was a way to dothat, or, or it seemed like
listeners weren't reallylistening for that. There's a a
very, very, very, one of the topstations in this market with
(52:40):
millions of listeners, and whatthe program director of that
station told me was he held uphis phone, and he says they
don't care to hear it on ourstation anymore. We have a
newsroom right here, and as youknow, we don't use it, and it's
still got all of the computersin here, and it's a broadcast
(53:04):
booth they can go to. They couldsay, now here's so and so, so
and so with the news. But heheld up his phone, he showed it
to him, and he says, they'drather get it from here,
interesting. And I said, butgetting it from there is hurting
them. It is because they don'tknow they don't know that
(53:24):
there's a difference betweenreading something on Facebook
and hearing a journalist say iton a terrestrial radio station,
where they are regulated fortruth and accuracy by the FCC
and the fines for deliberatelybreaking such can be 25 to
(53:44):
$250,000 Ouch. And if you don'tbelieve that deliberately
spewing something that is isfalse or misleading, can that
there's penalties for that oncommercial radio stations and
television stations, look atAlex Jones.
Erin Brinker (54:07):
Oh, it's true. He a billion dollar fine. Yeah, he
million dollars. He
Lacey Kendall (54:11):
was everywhere, and every am station was
carrying him. I used to run theboard at a local station here
that you worked at too, Erin,and yes, and we carried that
show. And then he started sayingthe stuff about Sandy Hook and
that those, they were allactors, and it was found to be
(54:33):
not true, and they told him tostop, and he didn't. And they
find him. And then they said,stop again, and he didn't, and
they find him, and it was eithertwo or three times they find
him, and it just was like, he'smade so much money that he can
just keep paying fines. Yeah,
Erin Brinker (54:50):
for him, it was a cost of doing business. So they
had to make it hurt, and they
Lacey Kendall (54:54):
did. So they had to make it hurt. So they made it
hurt somebody else, and theysaid, then we will begin
finding. Radio stations who aredeliberately Erin Him, knowing
that he is he's saying thingsthat break FCC rules and
regulations. And so they startedfinding these, the stations that
(55:17):
were his carriers of theprogram. And when that happened,
they started going, wink, wink,wink, wink, and just
disappearing, of course, afteranother. And in a in a media
literacy that I taught out inCoachella Valley one year, I
said he's down to only 100stations. And then I taught that
class about five months later,and I looked it up to see how
(55:40):
many stations he was at, and injust that amount of time he it
was one, oh, it was one station,and it was in Alaska. Holy cow,
Erin Brinker (55:49):
yeah. So six, six people in a polar bear, six
Unknown (55:53):
people in a polar bear, and that's all there was. And
now there's not, not even that.
But when you start finding theradio stations and saying he may
not understand the gravity ofthis, even after we find him,
but you have to defend yourlicense on a regular basis, and
if you ignore this after knowingthe rules, as we know you do,
(56:14):
then you will be fined both thebroadcaster And whoever was
running the board at the time.
Erin Brinker (56:24):
So unfortunately, we're completely out of time. I
could talk to talk to you for afour hour show me too. So how do
people find and follow you andlearn more about the programs
that you're working on?
Lacey Kendall (56:36):
Wow, well, you could contact me at CSUSB and or
you could just, yeah, you couldwrite to me at CSUSB, and there
I'm Lacy, just L, A, C, E,y@csusb.edu, and I wish I had my
(56:59):
address here. I'm also Lacey atInland Empire. Go to the growing
inland achievement website andlook up education insight.
That's my radio program. You'llfind every show we've ever done,
including one with Erin andtheir email addresses there to
(57:21):
get a hold of me as well, and Ithink phone numbers too well.
Lacey
Erin Brinker (57:24):
Kendall, thank you so much for the work that you
do, the work that you've alwaysdone. I swear I could listen to
you read the phone book. Youhave such an appealing, warm,
welcoming voice. Thank you forjoining me today.
Lacey Kendall (57:36):
Thank you, Erin, such a pleasure to to be invited
to be on the Making Hopehappened, foundation podcast, I
appreciate you.
Erin Brinker (57:46):
That is all we have time for today, and I just
have one more thought. Theelection is behind us, and
whether you're happy with theoutcomes of local or national
races, I hope your takeaway isthat each of us needs to demand
better from our media. We needto equip and protect ourselves
from lies and manipulations,even from people with whom we
(58:06):
agree. We need to become savvyconsumers of media. We have to
have control over our own minds.
And you know what? You havecontrol over your own mind. Do
not give that power to anyoneelse. Ask yourself hard
questions about what you believeand why, find out what others
are saying about a givensubject, to learn their
perspective and take the time tolearn what is true. It has to be
(58:27):
intentional. And I will tell youthat it's incredibly liberating
to disconnect yourself from whatothers say you should think so
that you can think for yourself.
Once you do that, engage withthe media and hold them
accountable. Accountable rather,because truth matters. You've
been listening to the makinghope happen radio show. I'm Erin
(58:49):
Brinker. If you have an idea fora show topic, please email me at
show@makinghope.org That'sshow@makinghope.org. Have a
great week, everyone. You
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