Where to start off. I'll start how I got acquainted with KALW in the first place, followed by my…read moreexperience attending one of their events earlier this year, my experience with one of their staff post-event & lastly, my recent experience as of yesterday.
So I'm part of a movement that's growing nationally & statewide. I was at a call late November last year where one of the staff was also in attendance, who also promoted more info about the Youth Empowerment Summit in January of this year. I was interested, so I signed up. Because the invite was sent mid-meeting, the person who sent the invite also said that people interested could reach out to them, so I did because I was interested in getting coverage from KALW about my work.
However, the Zoom call was less than productive, as the person wasn't really providing helpful info, one of the reasons I didn't sign up for one of their radio podcasts interviews. I figure if they're going to be as rude as this person was, then why bother? Because I was still signed up for the event & I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, I still attended the youth summit.
(Youth summit: https://www.kalw.org/show/your-call/2026-01-22/power-the-future-the-kalw-youth-empowerment-summit)
The summit wasn't really all that helpful, because I knew most people from there from my work (one was even presenting who I've known from other previous events) while most of the new people I tried to connect with didn't really seem to want to follow up afterwards. There were a few cool people there though, like one of the Events & Community Engagement Coordinators and one of the senior producers, both of whom I thought were DJs. I even helped the former put away folding chairs used for the event to speak with them for a bit because they wore a really cool scarf, and talked a little to the producer guy also. However, that's the extent of anything useful from the event.
Furthermore, I spoke to one of the staff there, who happened to used to be a journalist with the Guardian(the UK media outlet) & claimed to be interested in my work, and even asked me to exchange contacts with them, for the purpose of connecting right away after the event. I did not mishear that- they spoke in length to me at the event. Weeks went by without an email or call after the event ended, so I tried reaching out to them. This was hard because they didn't have a direct KALW email, and neither did they have a card on them, so I had to search the web to find an email address.
Despite reading my emails, they continued to blatantly ignore me(see email pics). At that time, I was considering writing a review of KALW, but advocacy work has kept me busy, one of the reasons why I wanted to speak to that journalist I mentioned above.
Now, it's June, which happens to be National DJ Month. I'm a hobby DJ, & I got one of their newsletter emails, I'm assuming, because I attended the summit in January. I DJ for some of the causes I support, so I was interested & bothered to read it. It was about a DJ, so I reached out to the DJ I recall from the event who had a cool name, because we've never communicated before. I would give them one last chance to shape up & maybe they'd be helpful during National DJ Month. I was wrong.
Rather than deal with me directly, or refer me to some other staff that could help, that DJ forwarded me to same person who was on the call where I first learned of KALW, which gives me little confidence anything will get done because of their surly attitude when we spoke on Zoom(by the way, they haven't attended those monthly calls since).
If the decisionmakers at KALW are going to be abrasive, unhelpful & pretend they want to help, why deal with anyone at KALW? Again, not all the people at KALW are bad. There are a few good ones. Unfortunately, the not so helpful ones are the ones that pretend they'll help, or promise that they'll help but never follow up with you, while the good ones are the ones with limited power to drive things around the organization.
One of the things I hate the most is hypocrisy, & for an outlet or organization to say you want to help the youth but are just making those who want to help the youth run around in circles is totally inexcusable, no matter what month of the year it is. If this is how most youth-oriented radio organizations are, I can see how we got the results we got with the 2024 election, and we're likely going to see the same thing in 2028.
Anyway, perhaps executive leadership will change their mind about wasting people's time after reading this. Or not. At any rate, if this is how they choose to run KALW, best to steer clear of them. There's probably better choices out there to help the youth. Definitely deserving zero stars, but since Yelp's minimum is one, that goes to the good people at KALW. But don't be fooled at this one-star review- the four lost stars should be placed on the leadership & last I checked, 1 out 5 stars isn't something worth bragging about.
