Dear Dr. Berry,

I don't know if you remember the letters I wrote to you when you assumed the Chair of the Governing Board of the Pacifica Foundation, an organization with which I had been so long associated as volunteer programmer, department head, then Program Director of KPFK (Feb.1981-August 1982).  I was concerned then about the increasingly commercial direction of the organization (a problem intertwined with the question of governance). At that time I appealed to you as a fellow scholar and public intellectual
and you were reassuring about your determination to bring more honesty and openness to Pacifica.

I am writing to you today because I am disturbed about the job posting pertaining to the open position of National Program Director. According to the Pacifica website, the applicants are to have extensive experience in management as such, including the ability to conduct and read audience surveys. There is no highlighting or emphasis given to actual experience in evaluating the intellectual content and artistic quality and originality (in an educational sense) of the programming broadcast by Pacifica.  Nor is there any emphasis given to vision of the kind necessary to fulfill the tremendous demands of the Pacifica Mission Statement, let alone the
mature emotional qualities necessary to oversee and maintain a cooperative working environment inhabited by a highly contentious group of programmers and listener-sponsors with varied political agendas and social experience.

For years now, those of us who have built the organization have been watching, helplessly and with diminishing morale, the transformation of an invaluable cultural resource (unlike any other) into just another institution controlled by the same values and goals as profit-driven establishment media. How can Pacifica justify its educational non-profit status if marketing strategies trump independent radio production--controversial, bold, challenging, and unfundable by other means than diffuse listener support? What shall Pacifica say to the autodidacts who look to it as the only educational institution that cares about their needs, and, at its best, can provide a range of debate, cultural production, and cutting-edge research in humanistic and scientific thought superior or equal to that of the very best universities?

The present job description for National Program Director bodes ill for Pacifica. I am not opposed to management skills as a necessary prerequisite for leadership in a non-profit organization as my letter must already have indicated, but management in programming should not be about luring or seducing a target audience with the methods perfected by commercial media; rather management skills should arise from familiarity with the particular work processes that make a Pacifica radio program potentially vibrant and meaningful to everyone in a democratic society. Managers must first of all have been successful producers themselves; they must also understand the technical and social environment that facilitates good work and motivates loyalty and commitment. It is a question of objectives and outlook. If Pacifica at its best has been a unique organization (as I believe to be the case), then leadership should be chosen from those with Pacifica experience encompassing those critical, artistic, and emotional skills I have
outlined above.

Please tell me where you stand on this question.

Yours most sincerely,
Clare Spark, Ph.D.
Director, The Yankee Doodle Society