7 minute read
KQED’s New Voice
On Air Journo
Six minutes before my interview with Alexis Madrigal—the Oaklandbased, renowned journalist and sta writer at The Atlantic who was named May 14 as co-host with Mina Kim of KQED’s public a airs radio program, Forum—our connectivity fl ounders.
“Hey Lou! I am stuck in line at a commercial nursery right now. Text me your number and I’ll call you as soon as I wrap up here,” Madrigal writes in an email.
In my mind, I foresee the implosion of a carefully structured afternoon
Alexis Madrigal brings a hyperlocal voice to KQED’s ‘Forum’
By Lou Fancher
with several interviews stacked up like airplanes poised for takeo in the pre-Covid-19 era. In my gut, anxious butterfl ies fl apping their wings in anticipation of my speaking with Madrigal temporarily pause, but remain. The hovering Lepidoptera remind me this is a guy who’s authored two well-received books; reported for Fusion, Wired and Fresh Air; and interviewed the likes of Ta-Nehisi Coates, Steve Kerr, Stacey Abrams, Van Jones, Colson Whitehead and others. He » covers everything from literature to technology, social media, politics,
—Alexis Madrigal
«science and energy, and recently co-founded and led at The Atlantic the COVID Tracking Project, a 400-person, volunteer-driven initiative to compile and publish data about the outbreak. But, I argue, he is at this moment, simply a man in need of backyard plants.
I text my number and wait. “Sorry— this errand has turned into a nightmare. Call you as soon as I can,” comes his rapid reply.
I have a sudden flashback, combined with pandemic-style paranoia and PTSD thoughts due to 15 months of isolation and working remotely: The first time I interviewed Michael Krasny, Madrigal’s predecessor who retired in February 2021 after 28 years at KQED, a calendar mixup had his staff scouring the Bay Area to locate him. Eventually discovered having lunch with a friend, Krasny flipped his script with alacrity, apologized and immediately engaged in a long, pleasurable interview. Are landscape transactions and hosts hiding in the weeds eating lunch a kind of KQED gauntlet through which interviewers must pass to gain access to radio host talent? Is this a test to see if I have chops equal to a live radio host forced to improvise when a line drops?
After all, Madrigal once experienced having a featured guest “stuck in a mammogram” and tells me later that the gut-clenching fear of a line drop with his one remaining guest “added extra energy.” But no, replies to my questions submitted to Forum’s Kim, about how her 10am hour will differ from Madrigal’s 9am slot, have arrived promptly and by deadline.
Madrigal’s hour is aimed at hyperlocal stories. Kim’s hour comes with a mandate to explore current affairs “through the lens of race, justice and equality.” It is shared statewide, so listener calls come from parts of the state beyond the Bay Area.
“For now, the plan is for the 9am hour to cover topics that have more local relevance and the 10am hour more statewide relevance,” Kim says. “But I’d like to think a lens of race, justice and equity is shared across both hours, since it’s part of the American experience, every newsworthy story and every cultural shift. In some ways, stating this explicitly as a lens is a way of making that point. The hours will sound a bit different, of course, because Alexis and I are different people. But we share a belief in the power of collaboration to achieve more for our listeners than either of us can do alone. I don’t know yet exactly where that will take the show, but I know the seeds are there for something great.”
Hours later, after our valiant, flailing efforts to conduct the interview while he simultaneously grappled with landscape commerce, Madrigal matches Kim’s enthusiasm.
“What I’ve said to Mina, and believe about Forum, is that in the best version of Forum, Mina and I are very tightly connected,” he says. “For me, coming not from live radio, and Mina, a seasoned and excellent live-radio host, I want to be with her, not sequestered. One of the big draws of this job is learning from and working with her.”
Madrigal joins the Forum team with a boatload of ideas about perspective and content. Governing his approach are insights gleaned from the COVID Tracking Project: the public’s desire to believe or disbelieve certain information, the distribution of rebalanced social media power and the trouble it causes for slow-to-change institutions and agenda-aimed news »
«outlets. “The stronger institutions like KQED are, the better they’re able to combat free radicals disrupting the transmission of good information.” He avoids being prescriptive, but says that leading a story with what you know and what you don’t know is crucial. “When you get into reporting things that are likely to happen without qualifying it, you get into trouble.” He cites as one example the mask debates after public health authorities used tactical information—giving multiple reasons not to wear masks instead of simply saying they wanted the masks reserved for health care workers. “Saying something to get someone to do something, instead of because it’s true and well supported by evidence, has bad repercussions.”
Even so, he believes journalists and radio hosts are abandoning folk wisdom that tells them they know what sources the public finds trustworthy. He and others are turning to real-time data: evidence shows people are more likely to believe what their doctors tell them about the vaccine than what they hear from a random person on the street. “Eventually, we’ll come to a new equilibrium based on a solid information ecosystem,” he says.
He insists that rebuilding and supporting the work of local journalists, placing less emphasis on nationalized or right-versus-left positioning of stories and reducing broad-stroke narratives will provide more transparent, nuanced, relevant and salient information. As for content, his expansive interests fall into public health and health disparities, ’90s hip hop and West Coast rappers, housing inequities related to racism, radical anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, the history of the Aztecs—he mentions Fifth Sun, a new book retelling Aztec history by Camilla Townsend and based solely on the texts written by the indigenous people—and more. In 2021, on the cultural side he’s fascinated with how every generation does something new with the internet. “How it looks differs from the 1990s to today, with young people rapidly making memes that evolve,” he says. “Kids are making media. It’s totally thrilling to see that.”
Madrigal also hopes to bring to the partnership with Kim ideas about what the digital form of Forum might become. “Right now, it’s mostly just posting the episodes online,” he says. “We need to go after resources to figure out what the digital presence of a show like this should look like.”
Mourning the demise of alternative weekly newspapers that offered extensive local events listings, he ponders a “local internet” world. A favorite Twitter suggestion he received is tied to having more local voices on the radio. The suggestion to visit the Bay Area’s roughly 100 cities is a natural fit for Madrigal’s interest in hearing from Port of Oakland longshore workers, construction workers in San Ramon, local journalists and business owners throughout the region and others.
A conversation with a new radio host is incomplete without asking about past favorite and future hopedfor interviews. “Probably the most personally meaningful one was at my first City Arts and Lectures, big-stage interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates,” Madrigal says. “He had just published Between the World and Me and was an incredibly sought-after figure, a beautiful writer. It was really terrifying and nerve-wracking; thousands of screaming fans. It was a moment I’ll tell my children about when they actually start to care about these things.” Another memory is of a story about prize-bull breeding. He dove into the metrics, found a rich voice and unexpectedly landed on one of those moments when the perfect voice and a compelling, effective story emerge to create meaningful news.
Most desired for a chat after June 21, when he is in the Forum chair at 9am, is Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green. “I have to go for a total hometown play,” Madrigal says. “He’s one of the most brilliant people to talk about basketball. I want to give him space to talk about his life.” Former CDC Respiratory Disease Chief Nancy Messonnier runs a close second. Madrigal says she was “booted from talking in public and has more pieces of the pandemic puzzle to offer.”
Kim says she hopes people who call in or speak as guests on Forum feel it’s safe to be honest. “I know how hard it is to be vulnerable, and I am constantly floored and humbled by the courage of listeners who put themselves out there,” Madrigal, demonstrating his own kind of vulnerability and honesty, writes in an email a few hours after our conversation ends. “Great talking with you, Lou! Thanks for bearing with me as I navigated that intense professional landscaper supply store. That was brutal. And I’m so glad we got to spend that more relaxed time afterwards.” ❤
