Essential community resource

I regard WMUB as an essential community resource that I hope the
University will always find the means and the will to provide. Most
of my listening is of news programs--Morning Edition, All Things
Considered, Weekend Edition--and this high-quality and balanced
source provides probably 90% of my national and international news.
It truly frightens me to think what my news media options would be in
the absence of WMUB, especially now that WVXU apparently has powered
down and the Richmond repeater disabled. We do listen to other
programs of local WMUB programming and NPR productions, but news is
far and away the most important to us. Apart from WMUB and selected
Public Television programs, news programming on the mass media in
this area, and about all others, is truly a wasteland. WMUB provides
a crucial public service to the perpetuation of civil society and the
maintenance of an informed, thinking, participatory citizenry amid
the local pap news programs and "who-can-shout-the-loudest" polarized
talk programs. I do not think that I overstate the case.

My wife and I are, by the way, long-time members of WMUB, and have
been day sponsors from the inception of that program. We would
gladly double (perhaps more) our annual support of WMUB if that would
help ensure its continued existence and quality programming. I am
also an MU alumnus (M.Ed., 1994). We are not, sadly, in a position
to make a large endowment gift.

I understand that our area communities are NOT entitled to a
wonderful station such as WMUB, and that you must consider the
relationship between the academic mission of the university and the
station. I encourage you to think creatively about how that
relationship may be continued and developed further to advance both
the academic mission and the service mission of MU. I do not know if
current undergraduate students recognize WMUB as a blessing to them,
but it surely is to those of us in the broadcast radius around Oxford.

Thank you for undertaking this task. I wish you well, and I hope for
a long future of continuing educational opportunity and community
service for WMUB.

--Richard Sinex, Richmond