Members of Fairbanks Open Radio's Content (Programming) Committee met Saturday morning at Noel Wien Library to discuss priorities for adding content to this web site, improving the web site. The Committee will focus initially on providing and encouraging others to provide news items, essays, and opinion pieces, focusing on issues of special local interest inadequately covered by other media outlets. We will work toward additional audio content for podcast or download, hoping eventually to provide streaming audio Internet radio.

The Committee agreed on the importance of maintaining the distinction between factually accurate news and information on the one hand, and opinion pieces on the other; these will be maintained in distinct portions of the web site. We also agreed that written public comments should be accepted from anyone without registering in a portion of the web site; only if this leads to volume or abuse beyond what we can handle administratively, will we consider imposing restrictions.

Claire Alix, Dave Lacey, Jenn Peterson, Don Ross, David Bantz, Don Barry, Sharon Alden, AnneLine Rochet, and Fran Mauer attended the meeting and briefly toured the technology for adding items to the FOR web site, under guidance from Jenn Peterson. Other Committee members include Birch Pavelski. Abel Bult-Ito, Joan Leguard.

The Committee's next meeting will be 6:30 pm Wednesday 19 December at Gulliver's Books on College Road.

What started off as a potluck celebration at Stone Soup Community Center last Sunday evening developed into an incredible and vibrant planning session.

We've spawned 5 subcommittees who will be concentrating on various aspects of bringing our radio station to the air.

Here's the list of subcommittees:

1) Content Development - Develop our Website, Make an Internet Stream, Plan our Content for the Airways

2) Studio - Find Us a Place to Live Now, Help us Develop a Longterm Studio Solution (Ester Library?), and Build Us the Thing

3) Engineering and Application - Get Us The License

4) Fundraising/Publicity/Outreach - Money, People...Money, People

5) Training - Train Us to Run a Radio Station, Train Others to Run a Radio Station

Are you interested in being on any of these subcommittees? Go ahead, make history. Email us and tell us where you want to make a difference: forboard@bluewiretek.com

This afternoon the Alaskan Federation for Community Self-Reliance (Fairbanks Open Radio's parent organization) submitted its application for a non-commercial FM license. We're all exhausted and relieved and grateful. We could not have done this without the support we've received from all of you over the past year and a half.

Now what? Well the wait begins. We don't know how long the process will take, but it could take a year or more.

And while we're waiting, we will be working on hiring a director for FOR and recruiting would-be citizen journalists to man the website. And, of course, we'll be fund raising. We need 100K to bring this thing to fruition after all.

Thank-you everybody!

Cloudberry B & B will be hosting a benefit auction for Fairbanks Open Radio this Sunday at 4. Come and hear about our progress, find some deals, and meet new and old friends.

As you may know, the filing window for FCC licensing is fast approaching. Our engineers and lawyers are hard at work getting our application ready, but they need to be paid. And, once we get our license, we'll need to actually build a station! We need your help!

Despite the beautiful spring weather, every seat was filled for FOR's first Citizen Journalism 101 class. The class discussed the broad trend of citizen journalism, how to use the FOR site to publish articles, and effective audio editing techniques to make podcasts and radio segments.

We will be holding this 2 hour class several times throughout the summer. Tune into the FOR site for class time announcements.

Are you interested in helping bring citizen journalism to Interior Alaska?

FOR has developed a short class to help you get acquainted with the new website. We'll show you how to publish articles on the FOR site as well as how to post pictures, music, podcasts, and video clips. We'll also talk about how citizen journalism can be used to create a robust and successful community radio station!

Saturday's class will be held at the Fairbanks Professional Center. Space is limited, so please sign up as soon as you can. If the class fills up, we'll schedule a second one in order to accommodate everybody.

We're gearing up for October's filing window. Now is the perfect time to get involved in this very important project.