[Newspoetry] Low Power FM

[Joe Futrelle]

Hello Newspoets,

I'm applying for a Low Power FM license for Newspoetry.  The idea is
that we could transmit Newspoetry 24/7 on FM at 100 watts, which
would be powerful enough to be heard at least locally here in Urbana.
Low Power FM is very cool and it would be loads of fun to produce
material for it.  We may be able to team up with other local
organizations and share a channel with them.

In order to fill out the FCC forms, I had to write a "Mission
Statement".  Here's what I came up with, comments?

--
Newspoetry's Educational Mission and Low Power FM

Newspoetry's mission is to foster a community based on the desire to
engage the mass media creatively, critically, and constructively with
poetry.  We aim to promote the daily practice of writing poetry in
response to the news in order to show that news is not simply
unmediated information, but is a part of life that effects people
deeply and is connected to other aspects of life from which it often
claims to be objectively distanced.  The work of "newspoets"
furthermore constitutes a documentary record of our changing society
which is richer in its variety of forms and attitudes than
conventional forms of reportage and social science.  Through our work,
we hope to educate, enlighten, and move people who have become
disenfranchised from the society they live in by the homogeneous,
centralized media culture which dominates it.

Newspoetry began as a small newsletter and has since branched out to
become a community hosted on the World Wide Web.  Low power FM
represents a tremendous opportunity for Newspoetry to branch out
further to reach the local community and invite their participation in
our project, either as listeners or as newspoets.  It will allow
newspoetry to address itself to local issues with the same kind of
immediacy, relevance, and creativity which newspoets have demonstrated
in their responses to national and international news.  And it will
allow newspoets to speak to the community in their own voices, which
will underscore the difference in tone between a poetic response to
current events and the authoritative cadence of television and radio
reporting.  And finally, it will allow newspoetry to become an
alternative local news source, offering new and creative variations on
forms such as interviews and live reporting.

--
Joe Futrelle
Editor-within-chief,
Newspoetry dot com