The only thing sacred in journalism any longer is the future, and the way to get there looks more like a treasure map than a road map. Anyone able to shout with authority, “Here’s where we dig!” is taken seriously, and anyone who asks, “Why there?” becomes part of the problem.
But Malatia’s a visionary and a gambler. Vocalo began as a separate Web site, vocalo.org, and a separate frequency, 89.5 FM, which went on the air last May and now broadcasts 24/7, if only to a potential audience in northwestern Indiana of between 40,000 and 100,000 people. Sixteen months ago Malatia wrote a piece hailing his creation for Current, a newspaper that covers public radio and TV. In with the new, he said in language that could only discomfort the old. “We created Vocalo… because we recognized that we had based our work at Chicago Public Radio on certain core assumptions that might no longer be valid…. The challenges require building from the ground up, learning broadcasting all over again.”
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Malatia championed Vocalo as a roll of the dice. “Admittedly, these initiatives are as likely to fail as succeed,” he wrote. “On the road we are traveling, the pavement ended several miles back. This is far more exhilarating than disconcerting.”
Here’s how Malatia described Vocalo in Current and has been describing it ever since: “There will be a website, but it would be wrong to say that it’s the station’s website. Really, it’s the website’s radio station.”
“If I was hearing something that was different and forward-looking and seemed new and compelling,” this staffer answered, “I think that would be an easier pill to swallow. But it’s just so roundly looked down on. Everyone who hears it says it sucks.”
“We expected Vocalo.org to lose some money—there’s a three-year business plan—but it was more than we expected,” says Malatia. “And what really hurt last year was that we were having issues with revenues for 91.5 itself. Those we expected to come in perfectly consistent with our past history.”
If Vocalo doesn’t reinvent public radio, who will? On Monday NPR pulled the plug on Bryant Park Project. Did Malatia make Vocalo huge from the start to leave himself no way to back down? Plenty of people at WBEZ hope not—they’d like to see him shrink Vocalo to the size they think it should have been in the first place—a couple hours a day on WBEZ dedicated to experimental counterprogramming. This isn’t because they’re petty and envious. They want their station to be better than it is. Like Malatia, they’re ambitious.v
