PULLMAN, Wash. — Washington State University’s Northwest Public Radio and the University of Idaho School of Journalism and Mass Media have teamed up to improve production facilities in the Moscow news bureau of NWPR, housed at the UI’s Radio-TV Center.
“This work assures that residents of
The UI station became part of Northwest Public Radio in 1984. Since then, “the reportage from the UI bureau has been essential to our ability to serve our listeners in the Palouse and in northern
The improvements include a desktop computer for writing and editing news, new software, a mini-disc player, a stereo amplifier and speakers, accompanied by extensive rewiring. The $4,000 project’s cost was shared by the UI and NWPR.
Glenn Mosley, a UI faculty member since 1996, reports and produces about 10 stories each month that are broadcast on KRFA-FM, 91.7, and other regional public radio stations.
KRFA, which serves the Palouse from a transmitter near
After the Idaho Legislature cut most of the funding for the UI radio station in 1984, Don Coombs, then director of the UI School of Communication, approached WSU’s broadcasting general manager, Haarsager, about a partnership. What is now Northwest Public Radio was then named Fine Arts Radio, and the KRFA call letters represented “Radio Fine Arts.”
In the past 20 years, KRFA’s audience has increased 10-fold. In 1994 and 1995, repeater stations were added at
WSU’s broadcasting operation began in 1908 as a Morse code station for the benefit of engineering students. That association continued for about three decades but gradually became more important to students learning the art, rather than the science, of communication.
Edward R. Murrow first used a microphone at WSU’s AM station in the late 1920s, and the broadcasting operation has had a decades-long association with what is now the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication.
The 1984 KRFA agreement extended that association to the UI. Its
