The Incomparable Lacey Kendall Talks About Broadcasting, Journalism and Education

Lacey Kendall, a highly experienced professional in the field of broadcast media and communication, has an extensive background in various roles such as Recording Engineer, Broadcast Media Consultant/Host, Broadcast-Media Consultant, Professor, Radio Announcer, Co-Founder of a real property brokerage, Chief Executive Officer of a consulting firm, Syndicated Radio Program Host, and Founder of a non-profit organization. With a Master's degree in Communication Studies and a strong foundation in radio broadcasting, Lacey excels in advising, managing, hosting, and teaching various aspects of the media industry.

Lacey was the driving force behind CSU San Bernardino's Coyote Radio. She served as an executive producer for the highly successful radio program “My Awesome Empire” for six years before moving to the Palm Desert CSUSB Campus, where, in 2019, she was asked to create a new radio station for the campus. She helped create Paws Radio, a fixture in the Coachella Valley community. 

Transcript

Erin Brinker: 0:00

Erin, welcome everyone to the making hope happen radio show. I'm Erin Brinker, as we discussed in our last episode with Dr Dravon James, we have the power to change the way we think and experience the world no matter what is happening around us. We talked about gratitude, and I'm starting a new tradition on this show of expressing my gratitude at the top of each episode. Today, I'm grateful first for you, the listener, for the time we spend together. You mean the world to me. I'm grateful for family, community, and most of all, for a loving, engaged, omniscient, omnipresent Creator of the universe who has made us in His image and knew us before we were born. An easy life is not promised, but joy can be found even in dark places. Please know that you are both loved and worthy of that love, and I'm grateful for that. I can't think of anyone in the Inland Empire who has made a bigger impact in broadcasting than my guest today. Her warm and welcoming voice and personality have accompanied us in our daily lives on stations with formats as diverse as the community itself, and she has dedicated her life to training area college and university students to be ethical, entertaining and skilled broadcasting professionals. You're going to love this conversation with the great Lacey Kendall. One of the joys that I I have had in my broadcasting career is to talk to people who have made an impact, a significant impact, to the field in which they work. And today is one of those days I'm joined by Lacey Kendall. She is a legend in broadcasting and community support in the Inland Empire. She can be found on where she started. She founded rather Coyote Radio at CSUSB, and that's the San Bernardino campus in the 1990s paws radio at the Palm Desert campus, hosted award winning shows, including my awesome Empire education inside and others. She's been heard on kcaa, kvcr and kcal, FM and emceed, more events than I'm sure anyone can count, or it would take a while, at least, and more, more, most importantly, I think she's trained 1000s of young people in this and on this crazy business. First of all, Lacey Kendall, welcome to the show.

Lacey Kendall: 2:20

Thank you so much Erin for having me. This is a great pleasure.

Erin Brinker: 2:24

So So tell us. How did you get your start in broadcasting? Well, I'll

Lacey Kendall: 2:30

tell you, I when I was a kid, when I was going into the fifth or sixth grade, we moved here from Long Beach out to inland, the inland area. And when we did, my dad started a new job before we had found a house, so we lived at the Holiday Inn, right there, next to the 10 freeway for about three months, while my mom and dad, you know, found time in the evenings and on the weekends to go look for a home for us. And there wasn't a lot to do during those three months. I'm an only child, so I spent a lot of time sitting in front of the window that was KFX, m and k duo, which was which was their home was in the Holiday Inn, and they had a big window there, and you could sit outside on the grass and look in and watch the announcers talk and and in the manner of KFX Sam, there was a one of those old kind of PA speakers mounted under the eve of the building, and you could hear what he was saying. So that was the first time I became interested in anything media, other than watching TV. And I just thought that was really interesting. And one day, I had been out there for days and days and days, and the gentleman, his name was Johnny K he was the program director and the afternoon radio announcer, and he looked through the window and he said something to me, and I said, I can't hear you. I don't know what you're saying. And he eventually invited me to come in and take a tour. And of course, I said, Wait, hang on. I gotta go ask my mom. So, so I ran to the room, and I came back, and I said, Yeah, and he gave me a tour. And I just very distinctly remember saying to him, how come girls don't do this? Because this was like, I don't know. It was like the 70s, early 70s, something like that, earlier, mid 70s. And he said, Well, if you ever were interested in this, I would say head forward, because girls will be in here doing this very soon. I'm sure of it. And. I said, Oh, okay. Anyway, he was very nice to me. And then few years later, I was looking at going to college at San Bernardino Valley College to get my general ed requirements out of the way. And my mom and dad pushed me to explore some different things. And I was really in high school. I was really into electronics. I like to build radios and all kinds of goofy things, soldering things together. And anyway, one of my counselors suggested that, oh, and I also wrote for the school newspaper in high school. So I joined the school newspaper at San Bernardino Valley College. And I went from really, really liking it to really, really not, oh yeah, and I, and I, I think it was the environment. I think there was, there was a lot of hard suggestions in those days to change a hard news story into a more feature story that was kind to administrators and and I had moved up to the editorial board, and I said, well, they, they taught us that you, you really shouldn't do that, that that's yellow journalism. And they said, that's true. It's the kind of journalism we're doing right now. You, You guys are not doing any story on San Bernardino Community College District Board meetings. Okay? So I said, Okay. And, and then I walked furiously to my counselor, and he said, Well, let's try some other stuff too, because you're just experimenting right now, right? And I said, Yeah. And he he said, How about some radio and TV courses and, or first, he said radio. And I went radio, and my exact words were, oh, my god, that is so lame. And, and he said, I said I would take some TV classes, though. And he said, Well, you gotta take radio classes first girl, you work your way up. So I did. And you know, to finish that out, I I ended up doing a year's worth of classes, and by the time it became I was able to take TV classes and TV production classes, I thought that TV was, was not interesting at all, because every any program or anything you do is only as strong as the very weakest person in on the team. So, and I've never thought about that, but you're right, yeah, if the audio guy misses something and somebody's mic is off for a few minutes, or the camera guide isn't right on this, on the on the shot, or the cues are late, or anything like that. It doesn't matter how good you ran your department. So I did. I didn't like working on projects like that, and normally I I gravitated towards anything where there was more people, the better. Being an only child, I just wanted to do everything around a bunch of people, but didn't like that. And I liked that radio every, every time I went in there and went on the air on kvcr, it was as good as I could, or did make it, or as bad as I didn't. And so it was all on me, and I had the power to make it better or better, and and I liked that. I liked that very much. And then I got hired there to work at kvcr, and I worked with your first job, my first job, God, Erin, you had to ask. So it was working at kvcr, which was a magical and very important moment to me. And I love everybody there, very, very much. But the show that I got hired to do was they said, you can, you can say what you want, do jokes, you can interview people. You can kind of make it your show. But it is called bluegrass alive, and you will be playing bluegrass music and calling yourself cousin, Lacey. Cousin

Erin Brinker: 9:07

Lacey. Okay, I full disclosure, I love bluegrass music. Oh, I do too. Now it is filled with musicians who could just play that heck out of their instruments, yeah,

Lacey Kendall: 9:17

without plugging them in exactly. Yeah. I do too, and I've been to lots of bluegrass festivals and everything. But, you know, the older I get, the more that comes back to me. My friends love to in, in moments I don't know, in goofy moments. They they like to call me cousin Lacey.

Erin Brinker: 9:36

I love that. I love that you're like, No, I was not on Hee Haw, yeah. Was not on Hiva,

Lacey Kendall: 9:41

yeah. They don't really care about the bluegrass. They kind of like that cousin. Lacey sounds sort of Hickey, you know. So anyway, I did that, and then soon I got a job at loving and gentle kql, h and then, oh my goodness, um, I worked at kme. Then, and then eventually at kg Gi. And I worked at KD Uo, which was Elevate, very elevator music. But I think, believe we called it easy listening, easy listening, or adult contemporary, yeah, yeah. And I had, I had wanted to work at kcal. I listened to kcal as a kid, and I interviewed for my high school newspaper a guy named Randy childs who was from Rialto like I was, and he he was very nice and very handsome, and I did a big story about him. And I thought, man, once I started doing radio, I thought, and it'd be great to work with Randy childs works. And anyway, I I kept applying and doing tryouts at kcal, and I kept getting turned down, and they'd say, come back in four or five months, when you put some more into it. And then finally they hired me, and I said, my friends all said I hadn't, I hadn't done any rock and roll before, so you guys would never want me. But why did you? And he said, exactly for the opposite of what your friend said, I liked it that you had worked at an easy listening station. You played bluegrass, you played country, you played jazz on K, U, O, R, and, and he just named all these, these formats I'd done, and he says, what that says to me is, you've had lots of bosses, and you're trainable. Oh, indeed,

Erin Brinker: 11:35

Yeah, indeed. It also says that you love music,

Lacey Kendall: 11:38

yeah. And I, and I did, I a lot of those stations I started and I went, well, the music's really weird, mom, but you know, the station's fun to be at. And then, you know, I got better and better with it and I and what I've learned through my whole life is, when you expose yourself to a different kind of music, you end up saying to somebody, after a week or two, you say, I hate all of it except one artist. And oh my gosh, this artist is so different and so good. And then a few weeks later, it's, I hate all the artists except this one, this one and this one. And it just continues to grow until you say the only one I don't like in country music is, you know. And so I can say that in in jazz, in country and bluegrass, in rock, in heavy metal, oh, and Christian, Christian Broadcasting. And for a long while, I worked in positive country, which is Christian country, and I enjoyed that quite a bit. And so, yeah, so expose yourself to anything, and you find out what you like, and your your love for it grows, and the depth of what you like tends to expand. You

Erin Brinker: 12:56

know, I'm thinking about jazz because of of all the genres that you talked about, it's the one I understand the least, and often they're the best trained musicians, because you have to know all the rules before you can break all the rules. And did you find your did it take a while for you to warm up to jazz? Or did you like it right away?

Lacey Kendall: 13:15

I've always kind of liked some of it, but like you, I didn't understand it very much, but when I started this jazz station out in the Coachella Valley, pause radio, the thing was, we did our research, much like at coyote radio. We were trying to figure out a format for coyote radio. Initially, when I started helping CSUSB and and somebody said to me, or I read, they said, a college station, if it is a if it is a rock station, and you have a commercial rock station in town, it's always going to be the crappy version of, in our case, kcal, if it's country, it's going to be the crappy version of K frog. If it's, you know, whatever it is, it's going to be like that. So the stations that have done best across the US, that are on college campuses, are those that found a very unique pathway that nobody else could do back in

Erin Brinker: 14:20

the day they they, there was a lot of alternative music coming out of college radio station. So as grunge was getting started, or, you know that other movements with this kind of more obscure artist, more local artists, because they have more flexibility. They don't, they don't, they don't, they're not beholden to a corporate brand. Mm, hmm.

Lacey Kendall: 14:41

So that when, when I was there at coyote radio, I said, Okay, these are the topics that I came up with after few weeks of thinking about it. We could be classical, which no student will ever go for, because nobody plays it out here. We could be jazz, but I don't know. How well that would fly in the Inland Empire. I said we could be reggae that's extremely popular with college kids, and there is, of course, no reggae station in town. Or we could be all local bands, and that seemed to have more magnetic effect than any of the other ones I suggested. And so we tried to explore that a bit. And as we started collecting more music from local artists, it worked out really. Worked out really well, because we were hearing it and we were going, oh my god, the music here is so good. These bands are, are really, really good. And the thing that was neat about that was, you've, you probably have noticed that over the years, when I was a kid and you were a kid, Erin radio stations used to have the local band spotlight on Friday or Saturday night or something, you know, yes, anyway, they've that has completely disappeared, as you may have noticed, and and when it, when the station does do it, they're doing, I don't know what they're doing, but they've got something pre arranged, because it is been found to be very in these days, very litigious. Like the drummer will say, Hey, you guys make money off of playing music, and you played my music and I did not give my permission, Oh, for that song to be played in the local and so stations started getting sued by, are

Erin Brinker: 16:40

you serious, Goofy? And these are bands that nobody had heard of. It's, it's, I mean, how are you going to get hurt if you're never heard

Lacey Kendall: 16:48

exactly, but I don't know. The people get in their 20s, and sometimes they have a dad that's, that's an attorney and and they've done that, and so stations are just like, yeah, we're not going to deal with all the personalities in some local band and do that, but we could pull that off on a college campus because we're not in we don't make money at any college radio station. We don't make money off of playing anybody's music. We make what, what income our university campus makes by tuition, and we are, first and foremost, a learning laboratory of broadcasting. And so because of that, the any anybody trying to sue really doesn't land the same way. You can't sue and say that, you know, whatever College Station made money off of you because,

Erin Brinker: 17:54

because you didn't, they did not selling advertising or not

Lacey Kendall: 17:58

selling advertising. So, so that doesn't work. And then what we did was, as the station got really popular, then we we had the the two attorneys for Cal State, San Bernardino, draw up a contract that that makes it very clear. It says we do not make money off any artists music on this station. We are, however, happy to share your music with our 1000s of listeners and to talk about your band and your music and your performances, and we will never use this music for anything other than entertainment and student learning on our station, and you, by signing this, are giving us permission to play it for exclusively, exclusively the reason that we just gave, Oh, that's fantastic. And they, they Yes, and they excitedly sign it and say, When am I going to be on? When are we going to be on? We're telling my mom, gotta tell our moms and and all of the cute girls, so you know, or cute boys, whatever. So anyway, it's worked very well for coyote radio. And then when I got to you, started asking me about jazz. And then when I got to pause radio, I did some research, and they had a jazz station in Coachella Valley, and it was extremely popular. It was always one of the top three stations for a long time, and the owners sold the station, and those the the company that purchased that station purchased it exclusively for the purpose of creating the Coachella Valley's first FM news and talk station, oh, and so there was no jazz station. So there there was, there's one station there that plays standards, which is like Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra and stuff like that, but not really the. You know, the real jazz and so I wanted to be I wanted to do something that I knew that was already an audience for and and there weren't a lot of students involved in the program before we were on the air. So I kind of got to have my say, and I just made sure the the dean who had hired me at the Palm Desert campus to do this that she liked the idea, and she did, and she was very encouraging. And so I said, then we're going to then we're going to be jazz. So we just spent months loading music until we had, oh my like 2000 songs in there. And I will tell you something really, really neat that happened. So I went to the I went to the public library in it was Indian Wells or someplace off 111 and I went in there one day and I said, Hey, by chance I saw the sign when I was driving by, and it said, you have music. By chance. Do you guys have any jazz? And she goes, Oh, boy, do we come on over here. And so she walks me over, and there were rows and rows. Oh, that's great. And I said, Oh my gosh, this is huge. Where'd you get this? And she said there was a jazz station in this town, and it was always one of the most popular three stations. And it got bought and they turned it into a news station, and somebody there offered it at called and said, you wouldn't be interested in our entire archives, would you? And I said, Oh, my God, that is so great. I am going to be here a lot. And so they let you check out 25 CDs at a time. And I was researching and reading, and I had two friends who had had done an extreme amount of work in jazz, and they were guiding me, and we had lists, and I'd go there and get 25 and I'd be back three days later, after we uploaded all of it, I'd get 25 more. And did that for, yeah, two years, and now we load music every Thursday, but it's New Jazz, Jazz that just came on out on the market, like Samara joy and we three and some of these really great young artists that are that are coming out and and doing some really groovy jazz.

Erin Brinker: 22:32

So are you getting the kind of traction and audience that the former jazz station had? Do people know you're there? I

Lacey Kendall: 22:39

think, based on our data, I think we don't have the money to promote ourselves, but we do have a giant electronic built bulletin board one, and every once in a while, we get some extra grant money that allows for printing, and we'll print some little flyers, and we'll drop them at music stores and at events or businesses where those that that like jazz might shop, and we'll do that, but I estimate the audience there. Don't tell my students, because they think it's a half million people, but I'd estimate it to be about two to 4000 recurrent listeners that are mostly from the Coachella Valley, and that is, sounds like a small number. Would sound like a small number to my students, but for a college radio station that doesn't have an an FM tower with a very long signal and a stream as well, for one that doesn't have all that it's, it's extraordinarily good. That is, that is good. That is very good if you, if you say, give us a call and tell us what you're thinking someone's going to call so it feels very real to them and and they treat it very, very seriously. So I like that

Erin Brinker: 24:09

is the program growing the radio and television program, you know, at Palm Desert campus,

Lacey Kendall: 24:16

yeah. So it started out as a as a radio station, and then we had a pandemic, and that kind of stalled my work, but I've worked to the whole place is soundproof. It is a radio station, and now it's a multimedia learning lab. And students go there and they can learn digital audio production and multi track mixing. We teach them Adobe Audition, which marries well into Adobe Premiere, so they can learn about creating video. We have handheld devices that can be used for extremely high quality recording of anything in the field, and we've had. Everybody from nurses students to history students, go out and introduce people in the field and do interviews, much like you and I are doing, but doing it face to face, coming back and learning how to edit it, to create an audio project instead of a some kind of report for their coursework and and that's served them very well. We have a remote broadcast field device that works off of battery power and cellular or Wi Fi or plain old telephone system, and we've done remote broadcasts, and a couple years ago, I said, I want to offer something that will enhance learning for all students here at this campus. And so I got a grant, and I purchased a whole lot of virtual reality, virtual augmented reality equipment, and started learning that. And what we've done is we've since been invited by the X real lab, which is a a very innovative laboratory that is at the San Bernardino campus, where students are creating immersive reality experiences and tours, and they're creating games and writing code and doing some really, really extraordinary work over there. So I said, they said, we'd like, we like the work you're doing. We'd like our programs to marry. And I said, Yeah, I would. I would like that too. So now we're also known as the x real multi media lab of PDC, but I like to call it now the multimedia library. And the reason is, we're doing something different. We don't have computer science students there, but we have all kinds of students from a variety of disciplines, and so my staff and I, I have a student staff, and we have done quite a bit of research over the past five months, and We've sought out any kind of immersive experiences in everything from from places all over the world to war zones. There's a Time Warner or someone like that, they created a a it is recreation, but it is a quite realistic and scary feeling experience of what it's like to be on the front lines of World War Two, and you're in a bunker and people are dying around you, and it looks, it looks very real, and we have offered video that was captured by one of the students at the San Bernardino campus, the only immersive reality, 360 video where You can put yourself in Gaza before and after the, you know, the war there

Erin Brinker: 28:25

so is this would be this be used by students who want to be tell a journalist or, you know, like, Yes, oh my gosh, yeah, wow.

Lacey Kendall: 28:35

And history students come to explore. Some students came in the other day and they said, for our history class, we are studying ancient Latin America. And they said, with they told us, Professor that we could come here and because it feels really boring, this is what he said, because, because it feels really boring, that maybe you could, with the virtual reality, you could find something that would make it feel more where we could it would be more interesting than reading about it in a book. So you're like,

Erin Brinker: 29:06

face to face with a Mayan or an Aztec, yeah.

Lacey Kendall: 29:09

So wow, I went looking, and I found some extraordinary video of chinita and Teotihuacan and where they could project themselves and move around, and it look it's very, very realistic and very high definition. And they could walk around those places and explore them and feel like they were there. And it's easier to write a report on something when you feel like you've already been there. Oh

Erin Brinker: 29:39

my gosh. That's incredible.

Lacey Kendall: 29:41

So our students are doing some really amazing things by coming there and asking us, saying, Hey, I have an assignment coming up. Can you find something about big bin in London, England? And I go, Oh, I know. I can get that one. Yeah, I'll get you, I'll get you a few things. You just make a. Will put down some time and reserve an hour or so here, and we'll have it ready by the time. What

Erin Brinker: 30:08

about make believe places like Hogwarts?

Lacey Kendall: 30:11

Yeah, oh, you know what they have. They have a very, very realistic, immersive experience where you can go in the the enterprise, ooh, Star Trek. And it's, it's very, very real. Oh, that's wild. It seems like it's a like some NASA video, you know? So there is, there's a lot of stuff out there, and creators like the the people like the students and faculty on our San Bernardino campus, those creators who are, who are computer scientists, are recreating things that are not tangible anymore, and because they they know they have the skills to create these kinds of visual experiences. They are creating opportunities for students to feel something that expired 100 years ago or more.

Erin Brinker: 31:12

I gotta think that, you know, with all of the Hollywood types who have summer bungalows or not, summer winter bungalows in Palm Springs and the greater Palm Springs area that that it, it doing what you're doing is it, is it getting attention from people who work in the industry? Because it, it just, you know, whether it's people doing who want to do voiceover work, people who want to work behind the scenes and lots of different things, production, audio, video, etc. Are you getting any of that attention yet?

Unknown: 31:46

No, but my well and maybe yes, the Palm Springs Film Festival reached out to my students and gave them all free admission to attend last year, but they asked if they would help them with some very fun projects and and I thought outstanding. Yeah, I thought that was wonderful. And they put our logo on all of their programs and everything, and it was a magazine that that was given to folks that were attending the Film Fest. And I just thought that was a lovely thing for them to do. Indeed, it must have been through the radio station that they became aware of us, I would think so.

Erin Brinker: 32:22

Let's switch gears and kind of talk about changes in the industry, in in broadcasting. I mean, I'm sure when you were a little girl looking through the window at that first radio, through the first radio, at the first radio station, that you couldn't imagine all of the things that have happened in in the rate, not only in radio, but in all of you know, all the internet, best internet based radio, so all the streaming services, you know, YouTube, and you know all the ways that people communicate with their audience. It's changed a lot, and it's changed relatively quickly, the dramatically in the last, say, 30 years. Kind of talk about what that's been like going through that?

Lacey Kendall: 33:02

Yeah, well, when I got into this, I wasn't old enough to realize that things did change like they do. You know, I kind of thought that that my world was probably not too different from my mom's, my dad's or my grandmother's, but, and now, as I've gotten older, I realized that I realized with greater depth my own world, but how different it is from my own world 20 years ago and so on and and I never would have foreseen that everything would go digital, and things that used to be big and heavy and metal and gigantic towers and all of these would be replaced by little semiconductors and transistors and and so forth that that initially weren't very good, but have gotten to be far better in in many cases, and provide greater clarity for a greater distances. So I like all that. I kind of like that I liked in the old days when things were very analog. I liked that people on the radio were, were creative makers of of radio

Erin Brinker: 34:14

and and true entertainers

Lacey Kendall: 34:17

and true entertainers. There's a man named Stu and he worked at at kcal for many years. And I remember when I was very young, one of my friends at school said that guy is, he's a song Smith, a tune Smith, or something like that. And I said, What's what Smith? What's a Smith? And he says, Smith is somebody that creates. And he said, the way he mixes the music goes from this song to that song. It's, it's, it's something he does it in a way nobody else does. And it, it, it shows that he's. Really different, and it's a skill. And then I got to know him, and I worked there for many years, and I realized, oh, my god, yeah, this guy really does. It's, this is there's a lot of art and technique and things like that. And there is still in, in many ways, there is still that, um, I I, I don't like the how broad media has become, so that everything only has a limited amount of potential listeners or viewers. Televisions experience that and radio has two it's like the old saying, Is it 300 channels and nothing's on? Yeah, exactly. I think that you

Erin Brinker: 35:52

have a knitting channel, yes,

Lacey Kendall: 35:55

yeah. I have a joke in my house. It's like when it's commercial after commercial, they'll say, What are you watching? And I said, Oh, I just decided to tune into the car insurance network, you know, or whatever it is, yes,

Erin Brinker: 36:12

the pharmaceuticals network, because every ad is like the you have diabetes, do you? I

Lacey Kendall: 36:19

decided to tune into the diabetes network tonight. Um, so it seems like there's so much but, but everybody's only good at a very niche thing, and then I really like that. I don't really like that. I also am very concerned, as I'm sure you were wondering, I'm very concerned about what it's done to news and media and journalism, yeah, in that respect, and and I certainly don't like that. Erin, I've been working with a group of professors and local journalism practitioners in the Inland Empire and the Community Foundation and CSUSB got a grant to help them pursue other grants that might assist in the creation of some sort of meaningful project that would help journalists in the Inland Empire, reconnect, regrow, rebuild and re serve us, because in our network, in our region, much like Many other communities around the United States radio stations have slowly, one by one, they've decided, Oh, we're not going to have news in the morning. First it was the evening, and then it was oh, we're getting rid of it at noon, and now we're getting rid of it in the morning, so music stations never have even the headlines or anything. And one by one, more and more and more just started getting rid of it, and then hedge funds started buying our newspapers, as they have here in the Inland Empire, yup, and they get rid of journalists, and they triple the ads to try to make as much money by selling, by paying as little as they possibly can, and they work to find that balance. And so we've ended up in a spot where a lot of very small communities have and we have citizens in our community that have no idea about things that are going on in our community. They don't know much. They don't know anything about the politicians in the area, who is what and where he came from, and what his background or her background or expertise is, and and they what we've found, and has been discovered over and over in the last several years, is that when a small community, or even one the size of the Inland Empire, when you lose your localized media, then what happens is, when people are ill informed on things that are going on in the community, pollution rises because it's with no investigative local reporters. There's no one there to say what's going on over here and do a story on it, and just crime and corruption tends to grow because the community isn't upset about it, because the community doesn't know about it. And so anyway, we are in that predicament. We're not like a lot of communities. Is where they have become. What is it news deserts, but we're sort of Dr TC Corrigan calls us a news mirage. We have, oh, my goodness, I believe we have 14 different radio stations in the Inland Empire proper, and then lots of newspapers, but the newspapers all are carrying the same thing because they're owned by the same people. Yes, of all of those radio stations, there's kvcr and kcaa, and that's it. All the others are just playing music or some form of entertainment or new, not news, but entertainment or some sort of music or something. And so that's that's hurting us a lot. We had the city of Bloomington, some of the folks over there made it, negotiated a deal, and a third of Bloomington was on track. Until recently it see CBS television in Los Angeles got wind of it and did a report and started asking questions, how can a third of Bloomington suddenly be given away to warehouses? Yep,

Erin Brinker: 41:27

I actually saw that on a YouTube video. And Tobin, I said, Tobin, come in here. My Tobin being my husband, for those of you all who don't know, come in here, like and I just stumbled across it, and I was absolutely gobsmacked. And Tobin said, Yeah, this is what, you know, there's some, some community members in the area who have been talking about this, but I didn't really understand what was happening. I'm horrified.

Lacey Kendall: 41:50

Yeah, yeah. I am. I am too. And the one good thing is that this group of folks that are working with the Community Foundation and with local we are calling them practitioners, because we're not just going for radio stations and newspapers, but there are some people that are doing alternative media or Emerging Media as their foundation and are doing extremely well, and that would include their folks like Anthony Victoria, who you may hear on kvcr Every now and then, Anthony Victoria is doing some really Wonderful journalism work, and has, I believe Anthony's the one. He has more followers than the Sun and the Riverside press enterprise put together. Oh, wow, but it's a blog, and he's doing very serious, ethical investigative journalism on the the warehouse situation going on all over the Inland Empire and investigating when and where and who and paid. Who got paid what? Companies have created some sort of pact or partnership with leaders in that city, where the city gets a great deal of money, but they lose all this land and so forth.

Erin Brinker: 43:25

And Bloomington is an unincorporated area, and people who bought homes out there, it was because they wanted a little land for their livestock, if they had it, horses and other things, and they wanted neighbors not to be right on top of them. They didn't want the cookie cutter world. And they, you know, there was a strong sense of community in Bloomington and so to to watch this happen is horrifying, with everybody going, what the heck is going on?

Lacey Kendall: 43:49

Yeah, yeah, right. And right under our noses, right? That's a perfect example of what happens when your radio stations stop having news in the morning or news in the afternoon, and there's less and less stations that are doing that. And then, of course, our local newspapers, the one of the things that at in this week before any presidential election that used to happen in communities like ours and much smaller was the editors who worked on the sports page or on the news page or on the Features page or what have you, these editors would come together, and they'd have a unique moment before a Presidential election, and after spending all year working on the editorial board and covering local politicians and what they're doing and things that they've done for the community and blah, blah blah, they would put out an their what the editorial board. Feels, are there the best options for people to vote on in that community after reporting on it, and it would be a very wonderful source for finding who really is the best candidate for mayor in this town and who does this. And you you'd learn things that they had picked up and so forth. And then they very often tell you what they recommend, after years of being journalists and researching and doing interviews, who are the best candidates for president and vice president and things like that, and that's gone. That's gone. It's just totally gone. And

Erin Brinker: 45:44

I liked it, and know exactly what you're talking about. Even the LA Times editorial board or the Washington Post editorial board, thinking about national politics, would put out, put out their recommendations for for public offices and and they would not be filled with invective. Now it everything. Everything is we've become a coarser culture. And there's been a coarsening in the news media that has really divided people. You can see, I mean this, this presidential election that's going to be happening next week is, is 5050, if, and even, even the Nate Silver, who is probably the best pollster in the country, is saying, yeah, it's, I think it might be. I'm not going to say who it is. I think it might be one, but it could just as easily be the other. It is that close. And so, you know, there's the even the conversations, we're not even agreeing on what's real anymore, and there's so little trust on national for national media that that it is really dwindled down to what local media is left. There are groups that are trying to fix that calm matters up in Sacramento was started by a group of journalists, and I trust them, because I feel like that they're going to tell me the truth, there are individuals that I like who are Matt Taibbi and and Barry Weiss and, you know, I watch, I follow Andy No. And these are not all people that I agree with 100% but I can trust what comes out of their mouths and so that they've that from their perspective, this is what they think is real and true, Ruben Navarette and others. But you know, the reason why I can name them is because they're not common.

Lacey Kendall: 47:25

Yeah, yeah. Well, I will tell you this, and this is the good side to that story. Help is on the way. And these, this group of folks from the media departments at Cal State and at the Palm Desert campus, and members of the community foundation and members of the media out in Coachella Valley, we are creating an inland empire media collaborative. Oh, I love that. And those that have demonstrated that they are ethical journalists and and they're really trying to, first and foremost, serve this community and and serve it good the they're in the collective we're creating a a certificate program, curriculum for a certificate program where already existing journalists can come and find out what they they can learn and get certified for ethical investigative journalism when it is wrong to get information this way or that way, and and methods, and methods and sources and things like that that they can learn and and many more opportunities that we'd like to make this group something that is funded, where it helps fund emerging students out of universities with journalism degrees, and these citizens and and journalists that are already working in our region to get certified. So there's a unanimous understanding of what is ethical and and proper and and how, where and how we need investigations done by our local journalists, and storytelling how we how we do that. And so this collective, what the idea is, is that we will bring everybody together on a regular basis, and there'll be opportunities there for them to collaborate. And it's it's going to encourage collaboration to a great deal. And if I come out with a story, and I run it on my station or in my blog or on my story, what have you i i get to come out with it first, but then I share the information with the coalition. And. By doing that, you're hearing it from all of the news sources and and we're working together to be a bigger force.

Erin Brinker: 50:08

I think that's fabulous. I think that as a nation, we're, you know, and maybe it comes after this election. I don't know. Maybe we have maybe I don't know. Maybe things have to get a little worse before they get better. But I think at some point we're going to want to come in out of the crazy, and I think that what you're doing is a big step forward in that direction. Yeah,

Lacey Kendall: 50:28

I think that'll be I think it's going to be exciting. I mean, I spent the whole summer with going and meeting with different broadcasters, writers and producers of news content from Coachella Valley and the Inland Empire, and we're still not done and and everyone is very excited about doing this. Everyone is very energized by being part of a collective and us together, doing what they thought maybe was something, fixing something that was dying a really rapid death.

Erin Brinker: 51:12

So journalism at one point was very non partisan. You're talking about straight news versus the editorial pages versus commentary, etc. Are you finding that there's, there's a real desire to just report the straight news, or at least identify, if you're somebody is, is is weighing in on a subject to identify? This is my opinion. By calling it editorial or commentary or whatever,

Lacey Kendall: 51:36

am I finding that that people are willing to report the news?

Erin Brinker: 51:40

Yes, alright, without, without their without giving their opinion, because that's that you would think, well, of course, but it's not an of course anymore. It used to be, but it's not anymore. Well,

Lacey Kendall: 51:51

I would say this Erin, and what we're hearing from these folks is they're saying of of the the heritage media so like radio stations and so forth, what they're saying and newspapers is we, we never decided we didn't want to do it. We simply didn't have the money to do it, or we needed to cut corners, and it was a way to do that, or, or it seemed like listeners weren't really listening for that. There's a a very, very, very, one of the top stations in this market with millions of listeners, and what the program director of that station told me was he held up his phone, and he says they don't care to hear it on our station anymore. We have a newsroom right here, and as you know, we don't use it, and it's still got all of the computers in here, and it's a broadcast booth they can go to. They could say, now here's so and so, so and so with the news. But he held up his phone, he showed it to him, and he says, they'd rather get it from here, interesting. And I said, but getting it from there is hurting them. It is because they don't know they don't know that there's a difference between reading something on Facebook and hearing a journalist say it on a terrestrial radio station, where they are regulated for truth and accuracy by the FCC and the fines for deliberately breaking such can be 25 to$250,000 Ouch. And if you don't believe that deliberately spewing something that is is false or misleading, can that there's penalties for that on commercial radio stations and television stations, look at Alex Jones.

Erin Brinker: 54:07

Oh, it's true. He a billion dollar fine. Yeah, he million dollars. He

Lacey Kendall: 54:11

was everywhere, and every am station was carrying him. I used to run the board at a local station here that you worked at too, Erin, and yes, and we carried that show. And then he started saying the stuff about Sandy Hook and that those, they were all actors, and it was found to be not true, and they told him to stop, and he didn't. And they find him. And then they said, stop again, and he didn't, and they find him, and it was either two or three times they find him, and it just was like, he's made so much money that he can just keep paying fines. Yeah,

Erin Brinker: 54:50

for him, it was a cost of doing business. So they had to make it hurt, and they

Lacey Kendall: 54:54

did. So they had to make it hurt. So they made it hurt somebody else, and they said, then we will begin finding. Radio stations who are deliberately Erin Him, knowing that he is he's saying things that break FCC rules and regulations. And so they started finding these, the stations that were his carriers of the program. And when that happened, they started going, wink, wink, wink, wink, and just disappearing, of course, after another. And in a in a media literacy that I taught out in Coachella Valley one year, I said he's down to only 100 stations. And then I taught that class about five months later, and I looked it up to see how many stations he was at, and in just that amount of time he it was one, oh, it was one station, and it was in Alaska. Holy cow,

Erin Brinker: 55:49

yeah. So six, six people in a polar bear, six

Unknown: 55:53

people in a polar bear, and that's all there was. And now there's not, not even that. But when you start finding the radio stations and saying he may not understand the gravity of this, even after we find him, but you have to defend your license on a regular basis, and if you ignore this after knowing the rules, as we know you do, then you will be fined both the broadcaster And whoever was running the board at the time.

Erin Brinker: 56:24

So unfortunately, we're completely out of time. I could talk to talk to you for a four hour show me too. So how do people find and follow you and learn more about the programs that you're working on?

Lacey Kendall: 56:36

Wow, well, you could contact me at CSUSB and or you could just, yeah, you could write to me at CSUSB, and there I'm Lacy, just L, A, C, E, y@csusb.edu, and I wish I had my address here. I'm also Lacey at Inland Empire. Go to the growing inland achievement website and look up education insight. That's my radio program. You'll find every show we've ever done, including one with Erin and their email addresses there to get a hold of me as well, and I think phone numbers too well. Lacey

Erin Brinker: 57:24

Kendall, thank you so much for the work that you do, the work that you've always done. I swear I could listen to you read the phone book. You have such an appealing, warm, welcoming voice. Thank you for joining me today.

Lacey Kendall: 57:36

Thank you, Erin, such a pleasure to to be invited to be on the Making Hope happened, foundation podcast, I appreciate you.

Erin Brinker: 57:46

That is all we have time for today, and I just have one more thought. The election is behind us, and whether you're happy with the outcomes of local or national races, I hope your takeaway is that each of us needs to demand better from our media. We need to equip and protect ourselves from lies and manipulations, even from people with whom we agree. We need to become savvy consumers of media. We have to have control over our own minds. And you know what? You have control over your own mind. Do not give that power to anyone else. Ask yourself hard questions about what you believe and why, find out what others are saying about a given subject, to learn their perspective and take the time to learn what is true. It has to be intentional. And I will tell you that it's incredibly liberating to disconnect yourself from what others say you should think so that you can think for yourself. Once you do that, engage with the media and hold them accountable. Accountable rather, because truth matters. You've been listening to the making hope happen radio show. I'm Erin Brinker. If you have an idea for a show topic, please email me at show@makinghope.org That's show@makinghope.org. Have a great week, everyone. You