KPFA: An Open Letter on E-mails - Revised Statement

To Whom It May Concern,

To make a long story short (or maybe just shorter), the email list in question was sent to me twice. The first time was in January at with regard to lawsuit # RG10549212 in Alameda County Superior Court. I was actually sent two lists, one with about 5,000 emails, the other with about 1,000. They came without my knowledge, accompanied by a request to send unsolicited communications to these lists via electronic messaging or the Pacifica Foundation would face a petition for $33,000 in attorney's fees.

The request was to send an email to 6,000 email addresses relating to a 5 month old staff election, one in which none of these listeners participated in and one which most of them probably knew or cared nothing about. I really couldn't imagine a stupider way to annoy and mystify our subscribers, but of course, KPFA and Pacifica often fail to operate in their own self-interest.

Mass emailing is most easily done with software resources, and like most not for profits (except KPFA apparently), the one I work for and direct has an account. Unlike KPFA, we send out regular newsletters to a large mailing list that includes about 10,000 subscribers and a press list of about 800. From time to time, my nonprofit helps out those with less resources by sharing the software for a press release or communique for a worthwhile cause. In the past, we've done so for the Committee to Free the Sf8, the anti-smart meter folks in the beginning of their movement, the Free Palestine Movement during the last sail to Gaza, Common Frequency, and the Committee to End FBI Repression. I consider that a part of being a community organization that is allied with and supportive of social justice movements in this country. We share resources and help each other. Pacifica was assisted with an Al Jazeera announcement at the end of last year on a similar
basis. Obviously, these communiques are not Media Alliance-branded - they belong to our friends and allies and we are simply aiding with distribution.

While happy to do so for causes that are compelling and move forward mobilizations for justice and democracy, it was a bit less compelling to provide assistance for the distribution of largely-unwanted material that served no purpose but internal KPFA turf wars. Being a national board member, I felt uneasy with failing to comply with a direct request, so I consulted an attorney privately as to whether or not it was within my duties as a board member to fulfill this request. I was told (twice) that I was under no obligation to do so and therefore declined to fulfill the request. I did not find it to be in the best interests of KPFA or Pacifica and while I could not stop them from complying with the demand to avoid financial stress, there was no need to be the agent of distribution.

So that was the end of that for a while and of course, the lists I had been unwillingly sent were used for nothing at all.

At the beginning of March, I was contacted by some KPFA staff working on the Morning Mix program who thought it would be a good idea to help along the fund drive process by doing some outreach. As a long-time proponent of outreach and having been long gob-smacked at KPFA's utter failure to engage in any meaningful promotion or communication to its listeners and members about the radio, I was pleased as punch that *someone* was showing a little initiative. They had an email template and text prepared, text that covered a week of upcoming shows, links to an archive from a particularly wonderful show Nora Barrows Friedman had hosted and a request for website donations to KPFA. All constructive, positive and in line with healthy promotional efforts. It seemed way too functional to be a KPFA-originated effort. They just needed a distribution engine, asked me for a partner send, and I said sure. Send me your list of recipients. On receipt, the number of emails looked familiar and lo and behold, it was the same list I had already been sent - with a different file name.

Using the standard that KPFA's lists should be used to promote KPFA programming and solicit donations to KPFA, not to circulate internal politics, this request seemed quite in line with the standards applied consistently to any other partner email distribution done in the past. So I was happy to fulfill this request. I just asked them to maintain their own unsubscribe list to lower the admin demand on me and they set up a gmail account for that purpose. I can only assume that they believed KPFA's email personnel either would not or could not assist them to distribute program announcements.

The good news is that the mails had a bumper response rate of 20%+ opens, got about 20 online donations, lots of click throughs to the archives and an extremely low unsubscribe rate - 3% of recipients asked to be removed, 97% did not. If you know anything about email marketing, that's an extremely positive response rate. Way higher than average.

Which is an excellent argument for the case I have long made which is that promotion of programming and regular communication with members is essential for every community media organization, and KPFA's inability and unwillingness to do this basic thing has cost us dearly
in declining audiences (as we have seen from 2007-2010), Pushing internal politics instead of radio is a losing strategy if what we care about is the institution surviving and thriving and I appreciate the Morning Mix staff for being clear on that and having the energy and freshness to take action. I wish more of the station was so enterprising. Maybe in time they will be. Certainly the two weeks of promotions proved that it's a good thing to do.

So a few final thoughts:

The election-related lawsuit is the reason for the "release" of email lists. In addition to being released to Salsalabs, the request when completed, also resulted in the upload of mailing lists to the "Mailchimp" email service. If KPFA is concerned about keeping lists internal to their own servers, then such requests should not be made to support power struggles around elections.

It is really not possible to steal something that is emailed to you by its owner. It is only possible to misuse it against the better interests of those who sent it to you. By choosing not to distribute internal politics and choosing to distribute material that *encouraged* people to listen to the radio station and to donate to it, the unsolicited lists were used to benefit KPFA, not to harm it.

Since I presume the election-related emails will eventually be sent by some other distribution module, (as they were on April 27th) KPFA members are encouraged to ignore the communique.

Finally, I really could care less about Save KPFA and their "censures". In my opinion, they have conclusively demonstrated in their Concerned Listeners guise profound financial irresponsibility towards KPFA and a willingness to damage an institution that I care deeply about if they cannot control it absolutely. In my opinion, they are inimical to everything community radio is supposed to be about.

Long live community media.

Tracy Rosenberg
ED, Media Alliance
Listener Rep, KPFA LSB and Director, Pacifica Foundation