"Teakettle" by The Spacebase on Flickr.

Brooke Gladstone opens up this week’s “On the Media” with the following lines:

You know, most weeks, we could say something about Fox News (like Bill O’Reilly’s show stalking critics with camera crews, for example), but usually we don’t. Partly because Fox News won’t talk to us, partly because – well – it gets boring.

But this week – there’s the biggest joke in the world. The anti-taxation rallies, dubbed ‘tea parties,’ held by ‘teabaggers’ to protest ‘Obama’s’ ‘tax hikes,’ and ‘reported’ on most heavily by Fox ‘News.’

Mercifully, Brooke has the decency and dignity to lay off the “Teabagging” jokes, which – though hilarious – I have too much dignity to repeat (in print). You can tell, by the inflections in her voice when she mentions “teabagging jokes,” that she probably wanted a rundown of the best. I do too.

But rather than stoop to the level of cable news pundits, she holds back, and passes the reins of reportage over to Bob Garfield.

Who doesn’t disappoint so much as underwhelm. The whole Teabagging thing is stupid. I was hoping he’d tear his douchebag interviewee a new one. The guy – Adam Brandon, press secretary for Freedom Works – helped organize the teabaggers.

Or that he has two first names. You can’t trust a guy with two first names. (I don’t count Bob Garfield here, because the only person I know of with ‘Garfield’ as a first name is a cartoon cat. Who is funnier when he’s not around.)

Nevermind that Bob gets the guy to to admit that, yeah, Fox News helped us out a lot, and we organized the protests while telling everyone that they’re total grassroots things.

Nevermind that the Brandon himself coins a term – and a pretty good one – for fake grassroots campaigns: “Astroturfing.”

Bob seems to go pretty easy on him, despite his pretty weak arguments.

But there are two great moments:

1. Bob mentions Fox broadcasting the news on “its” air – rather than “the” air. Which is pretty telling about how separate Fox News can be from the rest of the world.
2. At the end of the interview, Brandon reveals that he’ll be protesting in in Revolutionary War-era military uniform. With period shoes. That have neither right nor left feet. To which Bob comments: “No right or left, eh? Only on your shoes, my friend. Only on your shoes.”

There are other interesting stories too, including a couple about Twitter. You’d think, given that both Kerry and I work in social media, that we’d be jumping at the bit to talk about it. But that’s the problem. We work in social media. We recap on Sunday. The Lord’s day. I don’t want to talk about work on Sunday.

Saturday, I would have.

This week’s “On the Media” recap has been written by Matthew while Kerry went out roller skating and having a good time and whooping it up with everyone at the rollerskating rink like the ice princess she would be if the wheels were blades.

PSSSH.

“Air” Rollercoaster, originally uploaded by nic0.

I bought a new battery for my iBook last night. Which means that after months of eyeing a room’s outlets anytime I wanted to use my computer, I’m finally back to the land of laptop users enjoying the convenience they paid for.

But part of me wonders if my newfound good technology karma was subtracted from NPR’s today.

While I was at work earlier today, I hit a slow moment while waiting on a CD to burn. And so I hit Twitter, only to find the following tweet from Andy Carvin:

Roller coaster today on All Things Considered; the tape machine crashed so they can’t play recorded stories; live interviews only.

By “tape machine,” he of course means a giant computer, but that doesn’t make it any better. Without that prerecorded audio, the entire program is flying by the seat of its pants.

For what it’s worth, I barely noticed any difference. I think it speaks well for ATC – and the staff’s grace – that despite tech calamity, the only hiccup seems to be a bit of verbal hesitation when an interviewee is a little too eager to start talking before a question is actually asked.

Granted, it’s possible that it was fixed by the time I started listening (still going at 7:00 central, via KCRW), because I’m hearing a few stories I’m pretty sure were pre-recorded.

I really expected everyone to sound less articulate or more stuttery – I now realize why they have the jobs they have.

(Especially you, Laura Conaway – I’m really happy to hear you on ATC!)

I mean, seriously, it was this time in January when we told you about Public Radio Exchange’s Public Radio Tuner application for the iPhone. And even then, the hat tip goes to Andy Carvin, who tweeted about it well before I even had an iPhone.

And now All Things Considered is telling you about it too.

If you didn’t listen to us then, listen to them now. Public Radio Tuner is one of VERY FEW iPhone apps that I still use pretty much every day, after having had the phone for only two months.

NPR has collected all of their Inauguration ’09 coverage onto one helpful page. There are photos, stories, 105 year-olds, and all kinds of maps and interactive goodies.

“On the Media” was all over Twitter today, which was nice.  Also nice was their snark, which I normally only get once a week. The real question is this – was it Brooke or Bob who said the following:

(According to Matthew, OTM might want to check the cover of this week’s “New Yorker“.)

Andy Carvin also deserves a shout out for his Twitter awesomeness from  Washington.

This American Life posted their Inauguration show yesterday, and what I was able to listen to at work today was great.

On a sidenote, today was an intense and emotional day for loads of us. But I have to mention that the moment when I felt the most hope and joy over our new president was this morning, in my car, on the way to work, listening to Morning Edition. I teared up. I laughed. And I went in to work, excited about our collective future.

Even better is something I found thanks to Andy Carvin‘s Twitter feed: the Public Radio Tuner application developed by American Public Media: Over either WiFi or a 3G network, I can now stream public radio stations from around the nation.

 

What this means, most likely, is that if I get off work by nine in the evening, and it’s my post night, I still have about an hour to listen to “All Things Considered” in the car, if I pull up KCRW from Santa Monica, Calif. The time difference makes doing this blog much much easier.

(Or listen to “Morning Becomes Eclectic” on my lunch break. Whatever. It makes up for my burgeoning Tap Tap Revenge habit.)

I’ve been hearing about NPR’s new social networking feature for a while now, thanks to its progenitor, the talented and affable Andy Carvin.

Today, I realized I couldn’t wait any longer. Given that we know that a large portion of our readership is employed by or married to someone employed by NPR, I feel like I’m cheating Andy if I don’t jump in as early as possible.

My first impression: At least it’s better than the “New Facebook.” I know that’s harsh. New Facebook sucks. But it’s still Facebook.  It’s still a major time-drain for a lot of people.

But more to the point, Facebook put a lot of money and time into making something worse than what they started with.

NPR Community is, for the time being, an excessively simple implementation of social networking. And there’s something funky with the layout – headlines butt up to the edge of the browser window, which I’ve always hated.

But if Andy Carvin continues to work the way I know he can work, NPR Community will only expand the functionality of NPR.org in a convenient and easy-to-understand manner, and will do so with limited cost to NPR as a whole.

I’m not saying he’s a miracle worker, but… yeah, I am saying that.

Facebook gets massive money, and then starts sucking. They take a relatively unassuming – and therefore effective – exercise in translating existing communities from the real world to the Web, and transform it into a swollen behemoth every bit as bloated and annoying as MySpace.

The NPR Community, as it now stands, is little more than an account that makes posting a comment easier, and allows you to see what other users are listening to and commenting on. If you have an account on Boing Boing, you know pretty much what this is.

This is Facebook without collegiate drama, without crazy apps. This is good.

Andy Carvin works for an entity that tends to shoot itself in the online foot, but I have complete faith that the NPR Community will only improve from here.

Real social networking seems to succeed only when those in charge don’t quite get it. God forbid Twitter ever starts making money – they’ll probably boost posts to 280 charachters, thereby deleting everything they stand for.

NPR has more than 300 followers, and less than one update.

Talk of the Nation (they don’t update consistently, but they’re awesome when they do)

The Takeaway (Morning news show “for engaged listeners”)

Public Insight allows poses lots of questions (a lot of them from Marketplace).

We love WNYC, ’cause that’s where Brooke and Bob work.

BBC2 has very informed-sounding accents. (Granted, a lot of people who work in public radio have very informed-sounding accents. It’s almost like a job requirement).

Those of you with election addictions should hit up NPR Politics. They live-tweet election results and conventions! This is awesome if you don’t have cable.

Give some retroactive love to the BPP.

Consider all songs with Bob Boilen.

Laura Conaway and company are much cooler (and way less scary) than my college economics professor on planetmoney.

If you’re a public radio show with a Twitter account and we left you off the list, leave a comment and let us know. We’ll get you added right away.

Unlike 34,368 other Twitter users, we don’t follow @hotdogsladies; he seems far less inclined to shake the haters off than the fans, but once in a while, he’ll go on an insight spree.

This is pretty awesome, but we’re still not following.

Besides, it’s inaccurate. Robert Siegel doesn’t host All Things Considered on the weekend. Every other program he mentions is a weekend program.

Thus concludes the daily conformation of my innate nerdiness.

So yesterday, the Bryant Park Project got canceled. I’m sure you heard about that. If you’re just joining us and are wanting to hurl a few pebbles at the NPR Goliath, go here.

Yesterday morning, I heard that BPP was canceled via their Twitter feed and fired off a rather spiteful post after having only been awake for 10 minutes or so. In retrospect, this probably wasn’t the best idea. Matthew had to go and do some damage control and I didn’t feel any better.

As Matthew pointed out, I work in new media. Or, rather, current media. The internet hasn’t been new since 1997. It’s so hard for me not to take this personally and for me not to see the BPP’s cancellation as anything less than a blow to people who understand the marriage of traditional media and the internet. The BPP is great at this pairing – it’s possibly the best thing they do.

I’ve been reading a lot of listener responses today, and one of the recurring themes is how much of a very personal relationship that listeners have with this show. We get tweets from Laura in the morning, sometimes just seeing if anyone else is awake or asking for story tips, sometimes congratulating us on our new jobs, new houses, and new thoughts. We know the hosts by name and know that when we write them, not only do they read it but they often reply.

But if they can’t make it, what does that mean for the rest of us who are struggling to convince our traditional media outlets to embrace the internet?

If anyone has any ideas, I’ll hear you out.

She took the just-announced cancellation of NPR’s “The Bryant Park Project” personally. I suppose that’s good; it means I didn’t do something horrible right before waking up.

You see, Kerry works in New Media, like the BPP does. The problem with working in New Media is that it hasn’t been new since 1996. Or 2001, depending on how long you think things can stay “new.”

The luddites don’t realize it’s not new anymore.

It is critical for “traditional” media to adapt, not merely to the existence of the Internet, but to adapt to the new ways people consume information via the internet.

The Bryant Park Project gets it.

They never seemed like they were making an effort to blend radio reporting, blogging, Twitter, and podcasting, but they did so, effortlessly and naturally.

Meanwhile, you can’t podcast anything but individual stories from Morning Edition or All Things Considered – if they’re already the most emailed from the day, or if they’re determined, by some mysterious cabal, to be the story of the day.

Steve Inskeep doesn’t maintain or contribute to a Morning Edition blog.

The point of my post – and Kerry’s earlier – is not to just spew vitrol towards people who might not deserve it. The blame really lays at the feet of the economy, and the drying-up of underwriters who are too short-sighted to see that their investment will return greater profits by helping a program like the BPP.

Some small actions can be taken. I don’t know if they’ll save the BPP. It sounds like the axe has already fallen, but we might be able to keep NPR from dropping something so great in the future.

Kersten Upmeyer tweeted some phone numbers that friends and supporters of the BPP should be calling:

• NPR media relations: 202-513-2300
• NPR listener service: 202-513-3232

Please call and let them know how you feel about their decision to cut the brightest, boldest, and most successful New Media experiment on the radio.

Just, uh, try to be polite.