Immigration: The View from Here
Kim Carroll Bosler, Development Director, KBUT Community Radio
• Crested Butte, CO
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Immigration: The View from Here
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CONTACT INFO
Kim Carroll Bosler
and Dave Clayton
KBUT Community Radio
508 Maroon Ave.
P.O. Box 308
Crested Butte, CO 81224
(970) 349-5225
The last Census cites Gunnison County, CO as 96% White, but this rural and remote area has changed. KBUT Community Radio has partnered with the Crested Butte News and Gunnison Country Times to explore the issues, impacts and history of immigration in the Gunnison Valley. Local immigrants as citizen journalists are recording personal diaries, interviews and blogs. Stories will broadcast on KBUT and kbut.org will have an audio archive and additional content including listener/user feedback. KBUT will share MP3 files of the broadcast pieces with Colorado’s 12 other community radio stations.
Check back for future news and updates.
November 2008
Clara Valdes of Oaxaca, Mexico moved to Crested Butte, Colo. in order to provide her children with an American quality education. She did that. Her oldest daughter graduated from high school. Valdes is a hard-working woman; she runs a home-based day care and a thrift store. She’s also a community activist. Valdes pushed the local town council to donate a kitchen in a public building so that immigrants make and sell their native foods. Her next big thing? She’s going to be a citizen reporter for KBUT-FM’s New Voices project, “Immigration: The View From Here.“
“She does more before noon than most people do in an entire day,“ said Kim Carroll Bosler, the project leader. “She’s activist-oriented; for her to have a chance to tell her story and have a voice is a motivator.“
KBUT has partnered with the Gunnison County Multicultural Resource Center to identify potential participants and contributors from the immigrant community. The center hosted the first meeting where about a dozen (mostly Mexican) men and women attended. “The response from the immigrants was very positive and enthusiastic,“ said Bosler. “Four people have signed on to the project.“
“People want a chance to say, ‘We are coming here to work hard and take care of our families. We want the same things you do,‘ “ said Bosler.
KBUT has struggled with the question of how to compensate its citizen journalists who may not be citizens at all. Instead of cutting checks, the station has decided to provide gift cards for local supermarkets and Wal-Mart.
Immigration: The View From Here also represents an historic collaboration between the three main media outlets in Gunnison County: the radio station, the Gunnison Country Times and the Crested Butte News. KBUT has committed six journalists to creating content for the project and each newspaper has offered three. “We’ve had the partnership with the two local newspaper for a year now, but this is the first time content is being pushed by KBUT,“ said Bosler.
KBUT has hired an independent producer to provide training workshops in October and November. Print reporters will learn how to use recording equipment, write for the ear, use sound to tell a story, read copy on air, incorporate sound clips. Immigrant journalists will also learn how to use equipment, interviewing tips and the basics of blogging.
So far, the project has been challenged by staff turnover at both KBUT and one of the newspapers. As a result, the timeline has adjusted to meet the new reality. “We had hoped to use our local immigration stories to frame the national debate about immigration in time for the November 2008 election. We won’t be ready,“ said Bosler. “We’ve realized that for this project, creating content starts with building relationships,“ and that takes time.
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