‘Rural America costs a lot of money’: Trump cuts are decimating a radio station at the edge of the world | Alaska

IN Sand point, Alaska, the radio dial is mainly empty. For a commercial broadcaster, directing a station in this fishermen’s city on the island of Aléoutien of around 600 people is simply not worth the cost of business. But KSDP, the local public radio station for Sand Point, is a community anchor, bringing music auditors, emergency alerts, live comments live from secondary school, state and local news. Without a newspaper that specifically serves the city, the station is the resources of residents for all that is local.

On August 1, for example, KSDP organized an interview with the local fish biologist Matthew Keyes. Austin Roof posed Austin Roof, general manager of the station. Above the blurred microphones, the two stolen statistics back and forth on the exhaust rates of “roses” and “kings” (collateurs for two of the most caught salmon species). The roof served as a replacement for workers who listen to the house or aboard their ships, asking for taking in a significantly low way at the beginning of the summer; Keyes told listeners that even in June among the lowest harvests ever recorded, July had been much better. He then announced the fishing calendar for early August: there would be no authorized fishing for 60 hours in a row, the supervisory authorities of the fish populations, after that, the fishermen could connect daily to the radio for specific opening and fence times. In a region where livelihoods are linked to this turbulent and highly regulated industry, this information has given residents a chance to plan their summer of work.

During the last summer months, KSDP has brought to the listeners not only crucial information on local fishing, but also delivered updates and orders to go to high land following two tsunamis. During all this time, legislators 4,000 kilometers in Washington DC solidified a decision that will fundamentally modify the media available for millions of Americans, in particular in rural areas: on July 17, the Congress voted to cancel all the financing of public dissemination.

In the hours following the Roof fishing interview, The Hammer fell: the public broadcasting company (CPB), by which federal funding is disbursed public radio and television stations, announced that it would close at the end of September.

In the United States, the average public radio station receives less than 13% of its federal government budget. For many coastal stations and large cities, it is an even smaller portion. But in the stations of small cities and rural, where the bases of donors are less robust, this number can climb above 50%. KSDP, which operates a large -scale AM signal, a web flow and four small FM rehearsal signals placed in villages through a section of islands of several hundred, obtains 70% of its operating budget from CPB – Among the highest actions of federal support at any station in the country.

“Rural communities will certainly be hit the hardest,” says Roof. “How do you prepare for the end of the world?” The loss of federal funding is really seismic for us. ”

The chairs of the studio and KSDP broadcasting desk are stacked high with jackets. The shoes overflow with a cardboard box in the small meeting room, and the clothes folded at random fill all the unused tables or space space. Estabout at the town hall of Sand Point, the station doubles a donation center and hosts clothing exchanges several times a year. If you attend a community barbecue in town, a public party back to school or celebration of the holidays, there is a good chance that the radio station has put it. Electric tools are a permanent studio lighting, and there is always a neighbor ready to make free or cheap fixes. Roof personally mounted in the 200 -foot AM tower of the station climbing several times to save money on repairs.

A few years ago, KSDP and the Sand Point area did not have a journalist dedicated to their section of the hazard islands: a distant archipelago extending to the south and west of Alaska Continental, and housing around a dozen communities ranging from 20 to a few thousand residents. For years, the KSDP relied on the coverage of the Kucb radio station in the largest Aleutian city of Unalaska, nearly 400 miles (644 km) in the southwest, as well as national and national programs.

Now, the station has finally its own journalist: Theo Greenly, which divides its time between KSDP and two other radio stations, Kucb and Kuhb, hundreds of kilometers through the Pribilof and Aleutian Islands.

With her colleagues Sofia Stuart-Rasi and Maggie Nelson in Kucb in the largest city of 4,400 people in Unalaska, Greenly is one of the three journalists covering the 1000 miles archipelago, and the only one attributed to cover Sand Point.

Greenly reports regularly bring him to isolated communities for weeks both, as ferries between the cities of his coverage area sometimes only work monthly, and thefts are often delayed or canceled. “There are a lot, many places to get news from Washington or New York,” says Greenly. “But there is no alternative for news in this region.”

Greely has covered flowers of dangerous seaweed, efforts to revitalize native language and a cargo cargo carrying lithium batteries that caught fire in a local port. He was on the ground when the main employer of the Aleutian city of King Cove, the peter pan fishing can, closed, leaving many unemployed residents and many unpaid fishermen for the features they had already delivered.

In July, a resident of the city of 400 people St Paul, located approximately 400 miles northwest of Sand Point, informed green that the city lacked food; The only grocery store, owned by the local tribal government, has been waiting for more than a month to receive a large stock ship that she had paid, but was stuck at Anchorage Airport. Ace Air Cargo had not stolen from St Paul during this time, citing weather problems. Shortly after reporting Greenly history, the company obtained its cargo planes in the air, offering more than 10,000 pounds of food and two tonnes of mail in Saint-Paul.

It costs money to report these stories, but there is not much money to be made by sharing them – especially in the distant and not populated hazard islands. Commercial radio stations are extremely rare here; There are simply not enough listeners. The public media, by design, fills the gap in the market. “Rural America costs a lot of money,” says Roof.

Alaska is one of the most subsidized states by the federal government in the United States in terms of public services such as education, internet connection and the media. Nevertheless, Nick Begich, the only member of the Alaska congress, voted with all his republican colleagues except two to take over the federal funds which had been allocated to the dissemination.

Greenly followed the debate on sections closely. “I mean, there is no one covering these kinds of things,” he said, noting that he and his two colleagues from the rags double, essentially double as the only journalists from newspapers in the region, while the newspaper serving the archipelago manages printed versions of public radio pieces alongside stories reported on anchorage or by national press rooms. And he says that it is not only the inhabitants who will suffer if public journalism in Alaska takes a hit, stating that his colleagues were essential to cover the story in 2023 possible Chinese surveillance balls above Alaska.

“When Shell made exploratory drilling in the Arctic, it was their home port. “If you don’t have journalists here, the nation lacks vital information.”

The director general Roof says that KSDP has enough to “keep the lights on for a while”. And although he does not have imminent plans to close, he knows that losing more than two thirds of the station’s operating budget will fundamentally change what they can do. He says they will have to count more and more on volunteers rather than the paid staff if they want to survive. And he cannot imagine how he will be able to continue to accommodate things like major public events. “These are the kinds of things that really make our community a fun place to live,” says Roof. “And so I don’t see it coming back.”

The roof is already providing a major change due to the cuts: it expects to have to close the large -scale AM signal from KSDP but costly by the end of the year. Although the AM audience can decrease nationally, it still plays an essential role here: AM signals reach much further than FM, penetrate in the field and transport extraordinarily far – sometimes hundreds of kilometers – on water, which facilitates to be heard on distant islands or on ships. Roof plans to close the AM signal rather than sell it, because it does not expect anyone who has interested buyers. The tower, it supposes, will be demolished and sold for scrap.

For the moment, the roof plans to continue to exploit the KSDP on a handful of very small Local FM signals located in four villages through the rags, and online via a web flow, because many people in this region have an internet connection for the first time thanks to new fiber optic lines and satellite systems such as Starlink. But not everyone lives in the villages with an FM cover, and the web is not always reliable, says green. The anchor of a ship once torn the fiber cable bringing the internet to the hazard islands.

In the end, says green, the cuts on public radio will have an impact on residents, regardless of the way they connect. “The word” radio “is a kind of improper term,” he says. He tells me that people still ask him if people can’t just get this information online. “Yes”, he said to them, “because we, the radio station, did the work, we investigated and we put it on the internet.” Without the editorial rooms and the stations supported by CPB, he says: “They can’t Get this information. »»

Greenly says he doesn’t know what will happen to his position. His role as a shared journalist for KSDP and two other local stations is funded by a subsidy of CPB. But his livelihood, he says, is the least of his concerns. “I am more saddened for the nation than for myself. I worry about the community. I’m worried about Sand Point, ”he says.

As for him, the intrepid local journalist braving the elements to cover the stories of fishing and hydraulic fracturing? He says, “I mean, I go back to the bartender.”