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Newport Still Making News, Now as KPFA Radio Manager

By DAVID SCHARFENBERG
Friday May 09, 2003

The new general manager for KPFA, 94.1 FM, has no experience in journalism. But former Berkeley mayor Gus Newport said his new post suits him just fine. 

“To me, it’s just a continuation of my legacy,” said Newport, 68, who will officially take the reins of Berkeley’s radical public radio station in June. 

The former mayor, who played a key role in Berkeley’s first-in-the-nation push to divest from the apartheid state of South Africa in 1979, said he views the 54-year-old KPFA as a powerful weapon in a lifelong struggle for social justice. 

In an interview this week, Newport reeled off a series of causes, from universal health care to the protection of civil liberties, that he hopes to push on KPFA’s airwaves. 

“I see KPFA as a fine jewel and a natural tool,” he said. 

Newport served as mayor from 1979 to 1986 before heading to Boston to lead a major redevelopment project called the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative. Since then, he has held various teaching posts around the country and, most recently, served as a senior associate at the Oakland-based Urban Strategies Council, focusing on leadership development and strategic planning. 

Moderate City Councilmember Betty Olds, who often clashed with Newport when he was mayor, said she was surprised to hear that he was moving from politics to the press. Berkeley, she said, will have to wait and see whether he makes an effective transition. 

“We’ll find out,” she said. 

But Olds said that Newport, even in times of conflict, was always a “gentleman” during his days as mayor. His people skills will be put to the test at KPFA, which has 35 paid staff, 125 volunteers and a cadre of thousands of devoted listeners — all devoted to their own competing visions for the station. 

“There’s only one KPFA and there are dozens of passionate people with their own political agendas,” said Larry Bensky, host of the station’s “Sunday Salon” program. “That’s always the challenge at KPFA.” 

Van Jones, executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in San Francisco and a longtime KPFA observer, said Newport is up to the task. 

“If anybody can pull together the fractious staff and diverse listenership, it would definitely be Gus Newport,” said Jones. “He has the political skill to bring about compromises where that’s appropriate.” 

Newport will also have to deal with the fallout from a brutal, two-and-a-half-year battle between KPFA and its parent organization, the Pacifica Radio Foundation, over programming and local control.  

The fight, which included a 23-day lockout of KPFA staff in July 1999, ended with a legal settlement in December 2001 that left local control intact and forced changes at Pacifica, which runs five radio stations across the country and provides programming to dozens more.  

Since then, under interim general manager Jim Bennett, KPFA has stabilized to some degree. Relations with a reconstituted Pacifica have improved, on-air fundraising has reached record heights and the station has won kudos from the left for its coverage of the war in Iraq.  

Most staff members say KPFA can only maintain its community radio feel if it keeps its current hodgepodge of arts, music, health and political programming on the air. 

“There’s a need for a sense of where our programming is going,” said Lisa Rothman, executive producer of the “Morning Show,” a drive-time, current affairs program. 

They add that KPFA’s strident political tone limits the station’s audience, which tops out at 180,000 to 200,000 at peak times, according to the latest figures, now several years old. By contrast, San Francisco-based KQED, the Bay Area’s leading public radio station, had 746,000 listeners at peak times this winter. 

“I think the biggest challenge Gus will have is creating some analytical public affairs programming rather than just reflecting the political views of the staff,” said former general manager Pat Scott, who clashed with KPFA traditionalists during the Pacifica crisis. 

But a shift to more balanced political reporting seems unlikely. KPFA has a devoted following that views the station as a progressive oasis in a desert of corporate media and rejected calls for change during the Pacifica crisis. 

Newport, for his part, said he doesn’t have any preconceived notions about where he wants to take the station’s programming. Instead, the new general manager will talk with staff and listeners, he said, and focus on filling the long-vacant program director’s slot at the station. 

Newport’s more immediate task, staff members say, will be cultivating foundations and wealthy donors who backed away during the Pacifica crisis. 

“I think it’s collapsed completely — it’s a disaster,” said Bensky, discussing the station’s “off-air” fund-raising operation. “I think people are ready and willing to come back, but they have to be approached.” 

Bennett, who was also among the 20 people who applied for the full-time job, acknowledged that Newport, well-connected from his days as mayor, will bring a new cache to the fund-raising effort. 

“Gus brings a lot to KPFA that we probably didn’t have before as a general manager in terms of his connections and his ability to be a public face,” said Bennett, who will help Newport with the transition and then shift to a job with Pacifica, which is moving its national offices from Washington, D.C., to Berkeley in June.  

Most at KPFA agree that Newport will excel at fundraising but say the former mayor, who has no experience in journalism, will have a lot to learn about other facets of his job. 

“He has not been involved in programming issues at all,” said Pacifica board member Peter Bramson. “So there’s a learning curve.” 

Newport acknowledges that he has much to learn, but said KPFA may be better served without a journalist in the general manager’s chair. 

“I will remind people, as we learned in the old days in running hospitals, that doctors are not necessarily the best managers,” he said. 

Whether he stumbles or succeeds, Berkeley will be watching him closely. 

“KPFA is the oldest public radio station in the country — it’s where public radio got invented,” said Susan da Silva, chair of KPFA’s local advisory board. “It’s a very important institution and very beloved in this area.”