“Full disclosure!” snorted my daughter Laura when I told her what I was working on. “Nobody discloses everything. Nobody told me when I gave money to John Edwards that some of it would be used as hush money.”
Which is something to keep in mind as this column shifts from the latest Washington sex scandal to its actual subject—full disclosure as Chicago Public Radio didn’t practice it during its June pledge drive.
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A few days later Olson read my July 17 Hot Type and discovered the existence of Vocalo.org, the bleeding edge Web site/radio station CPR launched on WBEW last May to try to reach a vast young audience that wouldn’t tune in WBEZ on a bet. At the moment it’s primarily an online audio stream, but a tower going up in Porter, Indiana, will soon extend the WBEW signal at 89.5 FM to millions. Vocalo is raw, it’s wild, and one day it may transform public radio. From listening to WBEZ you’d never know it exists.
Malatia originally assured WBEZ staffers that their station and Vocalo would be funded by entirely different sources. But in late June he told them some Vocalo grants hadn’t come through on schedule and WBEZ would make up the shortfall. Vocalo finished the year about $600,000 in the red, double expectations. WBEZ was short $887,000. “The good news is that we have net assets that take care of this,” Malatia told me. “But this year we’ll have to be very careful.”
“Public radio is not a lemonade stand.
So if I were Malatia I’d explain that the totally separate marketing of WBEZ and Vocalo is a business decision intended to benefit both brands—not a stratagem for deceiving donors. And I’d concede that Olson had a point and promise to review the pledge pitch.
Which is fine. But Vocalo is an audacious new response to that mission, and the WBEZ audience has been told nothing about it.
