a possibly premature eulogy for a 501(c)
In 2009, I started volunteering with an organization called Radio Information Service. It's been around since 1976; it started tiny, got huge, gotten smaller again, and now, well. We just shut our doors, possibly for the final time; we've danced on the brink before, but it looks like this is really it.
RIS's tagline is "Independence through Information." We read newspapers, circulars, and periodicals over the air to blind listeners. There are automated services that will translate the day's papers into text, but some people would rather hear a person read out the news than a computerized voice. Also, I'm not sure if they'd cover all of the papers that we once did -- not just the big ones, but all the local niche ones like the Jewish Chronicle, the suburbs' papers, the Pittsburgh Catholic, and so forth. And we'd read the morning's Post-Gazette live on air at 9 am.
More importantly, we read the coupon pages. Someone on a limited budget needs to know what items are on sale where, so they can make up the best possible shopping list. If the circulars were late, we'd get calls.
It was a lot of fun to do. I met some great people. At the time, we were borrowing a local university's equipment, but we were funded separately, and we had a floating roster of around 200 volunteers, give or take. There was a paid staff of sound engineers and volunteer coordinators, and we covered just about any local periodical that there was a shown interest in.
Of course, 2008 was when the financial crisis happened, which means that 2009's state budget was a bloodbath. Lots of non-profits were crippled, if not cut entirely. I won't complain too much that we were up on the chopping block early. Our program was important, but maybe cutting us saved money for another program that was helping the homeless or putting food on someone's table. Hierarchy of needs and all that.
Anyway. I don't know if we lost all of our money or just most. The budget mess happened midsummer. We heard whispers in mid-July that something was going on, and then ... life happened. A good friend of mine died, suddenly, and I wasn't paying very much attention to the finer details of anything else.
When the dust from that settled enough for me to process something was going on, it was done. We were closing the majority of our shows, and folding the rest of the program under the university's wing, so that we wouldn't have to shut down entirely. The paid employees were fired. The (very) few shows we were keeping already had regular volunteers, so the rest of us weren't needed, unless we wanted to be kept on a back-up list for occasional fill-ins.
Just to give a perspective: the website for RIS is still in its 2009 state, and lists 46 programs. After the cuts, we were down to I believe 5 or 6.
We fast-forward here to early 2011. I had been on the fill-in list, although that was an exercise in futility -- dozens of us on a mailing list for the occasional cancellation spot -- but somehow got dropped from it. I got an e-mail in 2011 asking if I was still interested in volunteering, and I said yes immediately.
I hoped maybe we were back on our feet again, but no. We hadn't added back any programs -- we had just run out of volunteers.
But that was okay. The only regular shifts open were morning ones -- which meant driving through morning rush-hour downtown traffic, when I'm usually going to BED at 3 am. I said yes, anyway. I had missed it.
And so, from April until now, I've been part of it again. Tuesdays, I read the Post-Gazette with Lorraine. Even though I've had a concussion the past few months, even though I have trouble leaving my house, even though I can't get out of bed in the mornings to save my life, even though I get migraines, even though I hate traffic, even though it takes me an hour to get through what should be a 25 minute drive: Tuesdays, I am downtown at 8 am.
Back in 2009, I had two (afternoon) shifts, on Tuesday and Friday. Tuesdays were two different local papers -- one Greensburg, one Washington -- and Fridays were the Tribune-Review, aka the conservative paper. I had to read editorial columns by Ann Coulter and NOT punctuate them with "And she's lying." But I figured -- if I'm doing this because I really, truly support their right to information, and NOT JUST their right to information that supports my own political views, then I should suck it up and volunteer where they need me, and that happened to be the Trib.
Now it's the Post-Gazette, which is a liberal-leaning paper that likes to hide the lottery results in an ad for Kenny Ross cars (Our Cars Go Fast!) which means I always miss it when chopping the paper up. They like to print editorial columns from the New York Times, like one by Ross Douthat. I don't know how to pronounce his name, but I remember it because he's a douche.
I've been adding Monday shifts lately, where I read with Dick, who is lovely. It's hard getting up crazy-early two days in a row, so I didn't do that as regularly as my Tuesdays With Lorraine, who is my homegirl, and would side-eye me for saying it like that. :) I also liked to stick around some days and read coupons or the Jewish Chronicle or Pittsburgh Catholic or whatever they needed just because ... well. I'm not doing anything else today, and I was there already. There's something soothing about tearing up a paper, anyway.
A couple of months ago, the university sold the station. The station's new owners aren't going to continue RIS. We haven't found anyone yet who will.
We've gone through a couple of months of waiting for the FCC to clear it, and then winding down the process of untangling the station from the university and over to its new owners. We've been hanging by a thread, waiting for an update. There are other non-profits in the area who work on similar projects, but most of them have budget issues of their own, or don't have the space for us, or whatever.
Also, I'm not an expert on what exactly is going on, so it's possible I butchered the specifics. If something here doesn't make any sense, blame me.
All I really know is that this time, it looks like that's it. We were told not to come in, unless we somehow get a phone call otherwise, and I'm really not expecting one.
I'll get another volunteer job somewhere else, I'm sure, and there will be other services that step in to fill that niche, I hope, and if not, it won't even be the worst travesty of humanity that's happened this week (hi, Troy Davis), but I kind of wanted to set down what it was, and why it was awesome, and why I'm sad that it's probably over now.
I'm really not sure why I'm writing this. Maybe just to get it all out there. It's helped me feel better, I guess. This is my journal, so ... here's what's on my mind.
RIS's tagline is "Independence through Information." We read newspapers, circulars, and periodicals over the air to blind listeners. There are automated services that will translate the day's papers into text, but some people would rather hear a person read out the news than a computerized voice. Also, I'm not sure if they'd cover all of the papers that we once did -- not just the big ones, but all the local niche ones like the Jewish Chronicle, the suburbs' papers, the Pittsburgh Catholic, and so forth. And we'd read the morning's Post-Gazette live on air at 9 am.
More importantly, we read the coupon pages. Someone on a limited budget needs to know what items are on sale where, so they can make up the best possible shopping list. If the circulars were late, we'd get calls.
It was a lot of fun to do. I met some great people. At the time, we were borrowing a local university's equipment, but we were funded separately, and we had a floating roster of around 200 volunteers, give or take. There was a paid staff of sound engineers and volunteer coordinators, and we covered just about any local periodical that there was a shown interest in.
Of course, 2008 was when the financial crisis happened, which means that 2009's state budget was a bloodbath. Lots of non-profits were crippled, if not cut entirely. I won't complain too much that we were up on the chopping block early. Our program was important, but maybe cutting us saved money for another program that was helping the homeless or putting food on someone's table. Hierarchy of needs and all that.
Anyway. I don't know if we lost all of our money or just most. The budget mess happened midsummer. We heard whispers in mid-July that something was going on, and then ... life happened. A good friend of mine died, suddenly, and I wasn't paying very much attention to the finer details of anything else.
When the dust from that settled enough for me to process something was going on, it was done. We were closing the majority of our shows, and folding the rest of the program under the university's wing, so that we wouldn't have to shut down entirely. The paid employees were fired. The (very) few shows we were keeping already had regular volunteers, so the rest of us weren't needed, unless we wanted to be kept on a back-up list for occasional fill-ins.
Just to give a perspective: the website for RIS is still in its 2009 state, and lists 46 programs. After the cuts, we were down to I believe 5 or 6.
We fast-forward here to early 2011. I had been on the fill-in list, although that was an exercise in futility -- dozens of us on a mailing list for the occasional cancellation spot -- but somehow got dropped from it. I got an e-mail in 2011 asking if I was still interested in volunteering, and I said yes immediately.
I hoped maybe we were back on our feet again, but no. We hadn't added back any programs -- we had just run out of volunteers.
But that was okay. The only regular shifts open were morning ones -- which meant driving through morning rush-hour downtown traffic, when I'm usually going to BED at 3 am. I said yes, anyway. I had missed it.
And so, from April until now, I've been part of it again. Tuesdays, I read the Post-Gazette with Lorraine. Even though I've had a concussion the past few months, even though I have trouble leaving my house, even though I can't get out of bed in the mornings to save my life, even though I get migraines, even though I hate traffic, even though it takes me an hour to get through what should be a 25 minute drive: Tuesdays, I am downtown at 8 am.
Back in 2009, I had two (afternoon) shifts, on Tuesday and Friday. Tuesdays were two different local papers -- one Greensburg, one Washington -- and Fridays were the Tribune-Review, aka the conservative paper. I had to read editorial columns by Ann Coulter and NOT punctuate them with "And she's lying." But I figured -- if I'm doing this because I really, truly support their right to information, and NOT JUST their right to information that supports my own political views, then I should suck it up and volunteer where they need me, and that happened to be the Trib.
Now it's the Post-Gazette, which is a liberal-leaning paper that likes to hide the lottery results in an ad for Kenny Ross cars (Our Cars Go Fast!) which means I always miss it when chopping the paper up. They like to print editorial columns from the New York Times, like one by Ross Douthat. I don't know how to pronounce his name, but I remember it because he's a douche.
I've been adding Monday shifts lately, where I read with Dick, who is lovely. It's hard getting up crazy-early two days in a row, so I didn't do that as regularly as my Tuesdays With Lorraine, who is my homegirl, and would side-eye me for saying it like that. :) I also liked to stick around some days and read coupons or the Jewish Chronicle or Pittsburgh Catholic or whatever they needed just because ... well. I'm not doing anything else today, and I was there already. There's something soothing about tearing up a paper, anyway.
A couple of months ago, the university sold the station. The station's new owners aren't going to continue RIS. We haven't found anyone yet who will.
We've gone through a couple of months of waiting for the FCC to clear it, and then winding down the process of untangling the station from the university and over to its new owners. We've been hanging by a thread, waiting for an update. There are other non-profits in the area who work on similar projects, but most of them have budget issues of their own, or don't have the space for us, or whatever.
Also, I'm not an expert on what exactly is going on, so it's possible I butchered the specifics. If something here doesn't make any sense, blame me.
All I really know is that this time, it looks like that's it. We were told not to come in, unless we somehow get a phone call otherwise, and I'm really not expecting one.
I'll get another volunteer job somewhere else, I'm sure, and there will be other services that step in to fill that niche, I hope, and if not, it won't even be the worst travesty of humanity that's happened this week (hi, Troy Davis), but I kind of wanted to set down what it was, and why it was awesome, and why I'm sad that it's probably over now.
I'm really not sure why I'm writing this. Maybe just to get it all out there. It's helped me feel better, I guess. This is my journal, so ... here's what's on my mind.