Welcome to Broadcaster At-Large: Challenging the Assumptions We Live By. After over a little more than 3 months in existence, I can see that the current version of the blog is not sustainable given that it is understaffed and unpaid. Although what has been already posted will remain as is, some changes are going to be made, effective immediately:

• The blog will emphasize audio, rather than trying to do a bit of everything. It will focus on the weekly podcast: Broadcaster At-Large, plus the weekly commentaries Kellia now producing for an Ohio-based webcast called Ya Think? We will also add some audio produced by others from time to time.
• We will no longer update news items that you can easily get from other sources. We will maintain links to media sources I recommend. PAY ATTENTION to these.
• We will now add to the book lists only books that We have read or that were written by authors Kellia has interviewed. Combing Amazon.com by topic and making the links is too time-consuming.
• Video and photo items will be integrated into a post about the subject; we will no longer be using playlists. We just don't have time to comb sites like You Tube for video links. Again, you can easily get such items by going to You Tube or similar sites yourself.
• We will occasionally contribute written pieces and we will post writings by certain other people, but mostly, the focus now is on what Kellia is working on, which is largely audio, rather than passing on what others are doing, unless, in our opinion, these authors are under-publicized.

Our editorial point of view is thoroughly, unabashedly leftist here, e.g. anti-war, pro-gay equality, anti-racist, pro-single payer, universal health care (H.R. 676), anti-Fed, pro-choice etc. Socialism is not a four-letter word. Some of the links we offer are not leftist, nevertheless, we think that it's important that you should have access to the information they offer. But just because we link to something, of whatever political persuasion, doesn't mean we endorse it.

You won't see much about foreign policy or war reporting here simply because we are more interested in domestic matters. Enough people cover the bullets and bombs already, and do a better job of it than we would. However, foreign affairs will be mentioned when they provide context e.g. why do we have so much money for war while we are trying to be oh-so-careful about how much the alleged "health care reform" (really health INSURANCE "deform") will cost? And we have a weaponry section that will cover the news behind the battle statistics.

Are you a content producer who basically agrees with our editorial stance? If you are, you are invited to send your work here for publication. No pay, unfortunately, but you are granting us just a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to publish in perpetuity, and you keep all the rest of your rights. We publish here under a Creative Commons By-NC-SA license, meaning that we publish with full attribution to the author-non-commercial-and share alike, meaning others are supposed to use the work on our site on the same basis as we put it up. If you want a different arrangement, please specify that at the time you make your submission and we will put the appropriate copyright notice on your piece. For more information on different types of licenses, go to Creative Commons

Everyone, regardless of their point of view, is welcome to make comments. The basic guideline is a quote from sports talk show host Jim Rome: "Have a take. Don't suck." We really don't appreciate the people who just call names. If you don't agree with what is said, make an argument for your side. That can make for a lively debate that may draw people to this place. But if you just call names or say we will go to hell, your comments will be deleted. And for the folks who want to praise what we present, please say something more than "I agree". Share an idea or a story, or an eyewitness account or anything else that will state why you agree; a simple "I agree" just takes up bandwidth. If you want to make that kind of statement, please use an email line on the page.

You can also help this "digital newspaper" flourish by telling your friends about us, linking us to your site--let us know that you've done that and we'll return the favor--and donating money, if you are one of the fortunate ones who still has a decent job in this bad economy. To be honest with you, we hate asking for money, especially since Kellia is slowly working on a book about abolishing money. But while we are in a money economy, the two people who have worked to put BAL together need more of it! And donating is a way that people of means can show some appreciation for the effort it takes to do this. The other ways of making money for this work are more obnoxious than donating: 1) pasting banner ads all over the site, and 2) making BAL a membership site. Information and opinion on public affairs shouldn't be the preserve of "members" who pay for access to information that everyone should have. Exclusivity is the enemy of democracy. Information for all is its close friend. But while information wants to be free, information workers have bills to pay. So if you like what you see here and have the means, why not share a little? If enough of you gave us the price of a fancy latte or three music downloads a week, we could live decently, spend more time working the site, and feel that what we do has value to others. To those of you who just can't afford it: We Understand! Just tell your friends about us, make comments on the site, and if you like us, tell us so! Nothing is worse than than doing all this work and getting no feedback. It feels like a waste of life energy.

SOME NAVIGATION TIPS: We have striven to present a site that is organized as much as possible by topic, like the different sections of a newspaper, rather than by date, as is the case with most blogs. The limitations of the software do not allow for multiple labels--you might be more familiar with the term "categories")-- and as of this writing we are not sure if we are going to cross-reference or cross-post). The tabs at the top of the page will take you to the topics we present.

Titles that begin with the word ARCHIVE are just that. Older pieces that we think are still worthwhile. We may not be very accurate on when they were first published; Some dates have gotten lost as pieces have been moved from computer to computer. But the archive pieces have appeared somewhere else first.

For audio, you can click on the arrow next to the title, the link itself or the gray arrow on the bottom left hand side of the page to bring up a player. You can download pieces by the usual right-clicking method on your mouse. Pieces labeled "Podcast" are part of the Broadcaster At-Large podcast series that has been running for 9 weeks as of the end of October. These pieces are uniformly 29 minutes long. Archive pieces are labeled as such and are of varying lengths. Some archive pieces will eventually be incorporated into the BAL podcast series. When that happens, the label will change. You can subscribe to Broadcaster At-Large podcasts via Radio4all.net or iTunes. Of course, you can stream or download all our audio here.

Note there are a lot of third party widgets here and sometimes they get strange, video and news feeds especially. You might just have to wait from time to time and that will fix it. But please report anything you think is a broken link. Use the full-screen key on the videos.

Just about anything else you click, such as blogroll items and banners, will open a new window on your computer, so you can easily find your way back to BAL when you are finished.

We have a fan page called Broadcaster At-Large on Facebook and we tweet as bcasteratlarge. Tokkar, who is our site designer and one of our writers, also tweets as Tokkar. Join us there, too!