Listener Candidate

Name:

Robert Payne Send Email

Expertise:

Writer, Environmentalist, Documentarist.

Endorsements:

Committee to Strengthen KPFK

Statement:

I want to serve on the KPFK Local Station Board to advance the income and membership of the station.

KPFK provides my continuing education across the political spectrum -- local, state, federal, and international.

KPFK explores issues ignored in the corporate media noise.

Expenses and lack of listener numbers threaten to silence KPFK. My primary issues, my central concerns, will be money and membership for KPFK.

Interview programs involve telephone expenses. Reporters need per diem for their time and reimbursement for the gasoline and recording equipment. Editing of audio requires software.

KPFK members advocate video to increase news coverage. Video requires cameras, SD cards, computers, editing software, and internet lines for uploads.

New administrations at Pacifica and KPFK present the opportunity to follow the interests and accept the contributions of progressive individuals and groups throughout Los Angeles, California, and the world.

We, the progressives, offer intelligence, experience, and imagination to the world. Pacifica and KPFK expand the university model to allow all voices to be heard.

On the Local Station Board and attending KPFK events, I will meet other KFPK listeners. We can exploit our skills and involvements to present more issues to the listening public.

I make documentaries all over the world. The cameras and editing machines I use in Central America, Africa, and Asia, I can use in Los Angeles. We need local news video. If KPFK members volunteer, I can put cameras in their hands.

As a member of the Local Station Board, I can train volunteers in audio and video editing. On projects in other nations, I trained assistant to operate cinema-quality video cameras on the first days of tours.

Yet all radio operations and new project ideas require funding. The realities of funding and the expense of technology challenge KPFK.

We must accept new technology and incorporate all possible media channels. Radio gains the mass drive-time audience, yet social media can parallel KPFK to equal and surpass corporate media. This will require more members, more volunteers, more workers, and more money.

Other media operations show models. We must learn from the success of others.

I want to strengthen KPFK. As do the other candidates of The Committee to Strengthen KPFK. See them at CandidateSlate.org.

Answers to Candidate Questionnaire
1.	What experience, connections, skills or traits would you bring to the local station board to advance the station's mission?
	MEDIA SKILLS: Adobe: Premier & Audition & PhotoShop & Illustrator & InDesign & AfterEffects & DreamWeaver / international video & audio data management / poster design & trade show brochures & business cards. PRESENT WORK * International video assignments and projects. Clients include tourist bureaus of Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Malaysia, Azerbaijan. Charity media in Kenya. See VideoAdventures.Info. Nominated for awards as director and videographer. Google: Maasaicameramen * Writing, publishing, and promotion via internet and print-on-demand in English, Spanish, Arabic PAST MEDIA WORK * Video productions and commercials in United States. * Academic and tourism promotion in Syria as Media/SEO Specialist, see arabicindamascus.us. Operations suspended due to war. (Incomplete http://www.arabicindamascus.us remains in operation with hope of end of conflict.) * Instructor of Presentations in Advanced American English -- Personal, Sales, Academic -– for Syrian professionals speaking to English-only international audiences. Assembled website and delivered material via text and audio for students. Website lost to war. * National University instructor of American Literature, World Literature, Essay, Creative Writing, Technical Writing, Business Communications, and Information Research and Report Writing. Classes uploaded to university instructional websites. * Los Angeles Mission College instructor of Literature and Essay. Assembled website to offer distance learning for students. Discontinued. * Writer of 22 published novels, novels translated to five languages, one novel achieved New York Times Paperback Bestseller List for series, other novels scored other bestseller lists; sold cinema stories; poetry; wrote video projects. * Writer/reviewer appearing in U.S. and foreign periodicals, including N.Y. Times. * Writer/designer of United States patents, technical manuals, Spanish language copyrights. * Certificate, Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA * B.A., M.A., American Literature * Multiple for-profit enterprises in foreign cultures and foreign languages.
2.	What do you appreciate and value in the station's current operations?
	KPFK serves as my continuing education in world affairs. Writers, activists, American foreign policy experts, distant wars, developments in new technologies -- all come to me via KPFK. I want to expand the media spectrum of KPFK beyond the radio to websites and print.
3.	What would you like to see improved or changed in the station's current operations?
	New administrations and policies at Pacifica and KPFK present opportunities for growth. I want to accelerate those changes.
4.	Describe what you anticipate would be your top three priorities or areas of focus if you were elected to the local station board.
	Money. Membership. Outreach.
5.	Sustainability is an important part of any nonprofit operation. What are your thoughts on how the board can help to improve the station's financial footing?
	Digital media outreach, increased membership, income.
6.	Is there anything else you would like prospective voters to know?
	As a writer, photographer, and now maker of video documentaries, I have traveled and worked in many wars. Central America, Asia, Syria, Los Angeles. In the United States, at this moment, we suffer under the unrelenting assault of corporations extracting all possible wealth from working people. Working people cannot gain from their labor. Students struggle under the debt of education. Entrepreneurs and innovators cannot enter the corporate-dominated economy. Ignorance, corporate lies, vast corporate wealth, and the political manipulation of our democracy threaten the future of our nation. We are in a civil war and the enemy is winning. Pacifica and KPFK offer defense and progress. Working people cannot gain from their labor. Students struggle under the debt of education. Entrepreneurs and innovators cannot enter the corporate-dominated economy. We are losing our lives to low-pay work, children are denied time with their parents, parents cannot participate in the guidance and education of their children, we are losing our health to a toxic environment, youth suffer chronic illness, the old die young -- all for the profit of corporations owning our economic and political environment. Assaults come from all sides at all times. The alternative media of Pacifica and KPFK can offer guidance in the chaos of our modern society. As KPFK advances into alternative media, I want to offer training to activists in media. Volunteers will learn through action to change their future and the future of their nation. KPFK can become an engine of information and opportunity. I offer this.