Newspapers thrive on this campus. The Badger Herald and The Daily Cardinal compete for your attention every weekday as two of the best daily collegiate newspapers in the country. The very paper you now hold in your hands or read blearily on a computer monitor boasts the largest circulation of any independent student newspaper nationwide.
A robust number of political and issue-oriented student groups share the campus with the thriving newspaper scene. A number of these groups voice opinions through the student publications. The College Democrats, College Republicans and the International Socialist Organization regularly discuss issues on these pages, while many more groups write letters to the editor responding to current campus issues or to a previously published news or opinion article. In addition, many students involved in campus politics publish their opinions online in the form of blogs. Finally, the editorial boards for both papers opine on various local issues. (If this article gets any more meta-descriptive, my head will explode.)
This plethora of student ideas and discussions the student-run media regularly churn out to the student body is essential to resolving any public issue. Our society is built around this assumption, even if its members are often apathetic. The oft-quoted mission statement of UW, to encourage "fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found" is testament.
However, while the printed word in newspapers and the Internet provides a valuable medium for this winnowing, it is not a perfect vehicle for discussion. The radio, a medium that I believe is not used often enough as a carrier of campus discussion, would introduce some aspects of an argument the printed word cannot convey.
Opinion articles, blogs and other chunks of written word are great for carving out ideas, and should continue to be used to their full extent. Still, they cannot replace a good old-fashioned verbal argument. On the radio, discussion members can respond to their opponent as soon as he closes his mouth; they can chisel away at the nitty-gritty details more effectively, without waiting a day or more for a response to be printed; they can pose and pursue direct questions without fear of having the question dodged or avoided in a larger article, and they can quickly clarify any misconstrued statements.
Some sort of organized student radio forum would, I feel, enhance campus discussion, and serve as an important additional mouthpiece for the student groups on campus. Back in October, I would have loved to hear the Muslim Student Association debate the College Republicans on Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. Or to hear the Roman Catholic Foundation discuss their right to student-segregated fees with a member of SSFC. Columnists and bloggers alike could debate each other, interview and be interviewed.
Of course, the "radio" would have to be online. We already have our own student station, WSUM, but the station primarily plays music, with only a dozen talk shows. Of these, only one focuses on current university news and events. Additionally, WSUM’s schedule is less flexible, since a number of volunteer DJs have shows scheduled for a total of 152 hours every week. Most feasibly, the radio would be Internet-only, producing only a few shows a week.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has already set a similar plan in motion. An online-only newspaper, entitled "Frontpage Milwaukee," has launched a set of Internet radio programs. Using the free "blogtalkradio" program, students of the school's journalism department host their own shows. These shows are broadcast live, with the option for listeners to "call in" from the Internet. The shows are then archived, available to be listened to in the future.
If UWM can manage such a system — even though the students do it for a journalism class — I don’t see why Madison couldn’t handle a similar program as well. We have student journalists eager for experience aplenty. The campus teems with politically and socially minded groups, the epicenter of state politics looms just down the street and the existing mouthpieces for news and ideas are quite successful. With a campus like that, I am baffled that only one medium carries the discussion. Such a massive hive of information can only benefit from one more route to the honey.
Jack Garigliano ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in English and history.
