On the Media explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of "making media," especially news media, because it's through that lens that we literally see the world and the world sees us.
While maintaining the civility and fairness that are the hallmarks of public radio, OTM tackles sticky issues with a frankness and transparency that has built trust with listeners and led to more than a tripling of its audience in five years.
Since OTM was re-launched in 2001, it has been one of NPR's fastest growing programs, heard on more than 200 public radio stations. It has won Edward R. Murrow Awards for feature reporting and investigative reporting, the National Press Club's Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism and a Peabody Award for its body of work.
Airs: Satudays at 5 a.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. on KSTX 89.1 FM
Website: onthemedia.org
About the Hosts
Brooke Gladstone
Brooke started out in print journalism, writing on defense policy, strip-mining, broadcasting and cable TV. Her freelance pieces (on topics ranging from orgasmic Russian faith healers to the aesthetics of Pampers to NPR's near fiscal crash) have appeared in the London Observer, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and The American Journalism Review among others. She also covered public broadcasting for Current, wrote and edited theater, film and music reviews for The Washington Weekly.
In 1987, NPR's Scott Simon asked her to fill in as senior editor for his still-new program, Weekend Edition Saturday. Eventually they gave her the job, and a couple years later, she became senior editor of the daily news magazine, All Things Considered. She was awarded a Knight Fellowship at Stanford in 1991 and a year later she was in Russia, reporting on the bloody insurgency of the Russian Parliament and other stories for NPR.
In 1995, NPR created its brand new media beat and gave it to Brooke, who covered it for six years from NPR's New York in midtown Manhattan, until she was tapped by WNYC several subway stops downtown to help re-launch On The Media. The program was reborn in January of 2001. It has since tripled its audience and won quite a few awards by brazenly showing how the journalism sausage is made.
Brooke has won several awards too, including an overseas press club award and a Peabody. Recently, the Milwaukee Press Club recently bestowed on her the Sacred Cat Award for lifetime achievement, but sadly, On the Media's staff stubbornly refuses to perform any of the associated rituals.
Bob Garfield
Bob Garfield isn't exactly a media whore, but he's extremely promiscuous.
In his non-radio life, Bob for 21 years has worked for Advertising Age, where his ad-criticism column has made him an institution, like the Red Cross. Or San Quentin.
Bob is a founding contributor to the Watchdog Blog of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. He's been a contributing editor for the Washington Post Magazine, Civilization and the op-ed page of USA Today. He has also written for The New York Times, Playboy, Sports Illustrated and Wired and been employed variously by ABC, CBS, CNBC and the defunct FNN as an on-air analyst. As a lecturer and panelist, he has appeared on four continents, including such venues as the Kennedy Center, the U.S. Capitol, the Rainbow Room, the Smithsonian, Circus Circus casino, the Grand Ole Opry, the U.N. and, memorably, the Westward Ho! Motel in Grand Forks, N.D.
He is now writing his third book, Listenomics, on his Adage.com blog in full public view. His first book, Waking Up Screaming from the American Dream, was published by Scribner in 1997, favorably reviewed and quickly forgotten. His 2003 manifesto on advertising, And Now a Few Words From Me, is published in six languages (although, admittedly, one is Bulgarian). Garfield co-wrote "Tag, You're It," a snappy country song performed by Willie Nelson, and wrote an episode of the short-lived NBC sitcom "Sweet Surrender." It sucked.
