College radio stations have always been a place for free speech, and freestyle radio programming. Way back when, we had community stations like that. Folks would come in and volunteer their time, play some great music, read some poetry or short stories, and even read news that they gathered themselves; and got their neighbors involved too.

I was heartened to read in the Columbia Journalism Review that this is still going on, at least in Louisville, KY. A woman named Sharon Scott started ART-FM, or WXOX, 97.1 FM on the dial. It began in 2011 in her house. It was a family affair, and then all the neighbors got involved too. They started featuring others on the air, like a World War II vet who deejay’d until he was 98; a group of Iranian women who reported frontline news and shared recipes and language lessons; and more recently a Ukrainian DJ shared dispatches of the war from his soldier cousin.

The low-power community radio station left the living room and got its own building, and as of 2023 had more than one hundred community deejays pitching in. This is the kind of hyperlocal content we need in these troubled times and proof that hyperlocal content is a winner. People who bring stories from the ground. Someone listeners feel they can trust and look forward to hearing from on a regular basis. Stations like ART-FM deliver compelling content from the local community, emergency notifications, and needed, timely information for and from a neighborhood or region.

Scott also wrote a book about running a community radio station saying “real living, breathing humans” are presenting spontaneous ideas and original thought. And she says the air personalities are playing music because it moves them.

People mostly work in radio as a whole, because it moves them, it’s a passion project, we all know won’t make us rich, but it helps us breathe and carry on, in our otherwise mundane lives. 🏘️