By some insane circumstance, I happen to find myself as a guest on the Marc Maron Show tonight (you can hear it on the Air America affiliate in LA, AM-1150, or stream it live
here from 10pm-midnight PST). Mainly I'd like you all to know about it, for I am nothing if not an attention whore. But in addition, I need a little open-source, people-powered media training.
First of all, I'm on deadline today, and I'm not going to have my usual hours and hours of time to check the newswires and blogs to see what the big issues are today. Second of all, it's been quite a while since I've done radio. The show is extremely laid-back, and I'm not debating some wingnut or anything, and yet I find myself a tad nervous, mainly because I'd like to keep this going as a regular thing, which is a possibility if I do well.
I think I'm going on to do something called "the news crunch," and it's very unclear whether I'm providing news analysis, a bunch of one-liners, or coming up with my own stories to discuss. I'm going to go ahead and say this is the big difference between liberal media and conservative media: there's literally been no preparation, no fax from the DNC with the daily message, nothing from the show producers as well. Just "yeah, come on in, we'll talk about stuff."
Not good enough for me. I certainly could do that, I'm not a robot, but I think that anything going out over the airwaves should have at least a little thought behind it.
So here are some of my questions:
1- What are the big stories this week? Do I highlight upcoming races (like the Busby race, which is of particular interest to SoCal listeners)? Neil Volz' testimony in the Safavian trial? The SCOTUS decision on whistleblowers? This b.s. move to "talk to Iran"? Yearly Kos? I know what's important to me, but let's open this up and think about what's important in general.
2- This'll definitely be a laid-back thing, and I'm a little unsure as to how to approach it. Do I go with getting the information out? Or do I trade some snarky barbs to get the info out through humor? Digby did a great post on the power of ridicule, and I agree that especially in the talk-radio world, there's nothing more important than being entertaining. At the same time, I want to make sure the message gets out. Thoughts?
Please to be leaving a little $.02 in the comments. Thanks.