Jake Shapiro

Jake Shapiro of PRX (Public Radio Exchange) responds to Barrett Golding’s article about independent distribution on the PRX Blog.

Jake said:
“With tens of thousands of programs churning through PRX it is a constant puzzle to get the best stuff up and out. We use a mix of smart humans (PRX editors, curators, commenters) and smart machines (search, metadata, collaborative filtering and recommendations) to do it. We recognized early on that PRX would need to exercise editorial discretion to be valuable and relevant to stations and audiences, and fulfill our mission of surfacing new and compelling voices for public radio.”

Check out the full response here.

LINER NOTES redefines Memorial Day programming with an extraordinary hour entitled War and Place -

* Tom Brokaw, shares memories of his moving visits to Normandy and Pearl Harbor – how they changed his life, and enabled him to understand the great sacrifices of ordinary people, from hometowns like his.
* Writer Maxine Hong Kingston helps Veterans put their memories on paper with “healing and writing workshops.”
* Distinguished novelist Robert Stone, (“Dog Soliders”) discusses the cultural legacy of Vietnam.
* Former Marine Wayne Karlin author of “War Movies: Journeys to Vietnam”, shares stories about soldier/authors on both sides of that conflict and discusses how the picture of war in the movies has evolved over the years.
* Writer Dana Sachs, (“A House on Dream Street”) portrays the new Vietnam – a tourist mecca with fine food and beaches. She counsels us on where to travel and explains why Americans are surprisingly welcome.
* Photographer Steve McCurry tells of his famous photo “Afghan Girl,” and what he finds when he travels to war zones.
* Psychoanalyst Emmanuel Kalftal takes a tape recorder with him as he travels to the place his parents met, Dachau, where he finds a living memorial, not a museum.
* Michael Arad, architect of the prize-wining design for the 9/11 memorial at the former World Trade Center, helps us think about the power of place in mourning.
* Phillip Gourevitch, editor of the Paris Review, who wrote “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Familes”, reflects on those who suffered through the ethnic conflicts in Africa.
* Reporter Deborah George takes us to post war Sierra Leone to meet a young woman who will become her daughter.
* Finally, we travel to a small town in Cornwall, England where a young evacuee from the London blitz, now 80, found a peaceful home for life.