Radio helps in Joplin

An ever-increasing number of the public, media professionals and journalism educators seem to think that the new/electronic media are the only media that still matter.

Don’t tell that to the residents of Joplin, Missouri, though, where members of this tornadoes-ravaged community have been getting their local news almost exclusively from Zimmer Radio’s six stations.  It seems that the town’s Internet and mobile connections were destroyed by Sunday’s tornadoes, according to Matt Pearce’s Joplin r

eporting for the Los Angeles Times.   Pearce says, “The stations . . . have transformed their staffs into impromptu public health experts and unofficial public health experts and unofficial public information officers, consolidating multiple broadcasts into a single feed of nonstop disaster coverage under the call letters KZRG.”

So don’t throw away those transistor radios – at least not yet!