KPFK stories all over the place

The situation at KPFK -- where sweeping on-air changes take full effect tomorrow -- makes the cover of today's Los Angeles Business Journal and is the subject of Michael Hiltzik's "Golden State" column in the L.A. Times business section. In the Biz Journal, Darrell Satzman interviews the station's program director, Armando Gudi�o, and reports that fundraising is at an all-time high. Hiltzik also talks with Gudi�o and delves more into the politics-driven foment at the antiwar and pro-left station (90.7 FM) and its parent network, Pacifica Radio. Hiltzik decides KPFK is an important leftist political voice:

The question whether Pacifica has marginalized itself out of the national spectrum of debate is important because America may never have needed a strong voice from the left as much as it does now.

Today's airwaves are anchored on the right by outfits with huge cable audiences such as News Corp.'s Fox News Channel, which seems to spend half its time on the Laci Peterson case and the rest promoting demented reactionaries like Ann Coulter. What passes for the left is represented by NPR, a "liberal" network chiefly in the sense that it cherishes "balance," which generally means a spectrum of opinion that stretches from conservative Southern Democrats on one end all the way over to centrist New England Republicans on the other. That's a pretty scrawny slice of American apple pie.

Update 1:13 pm: Catching up with the print edition of last week's CityBeat, I see that Kevin Uhrich wrote a piece on the squabbles at KPFK. He was kind enough to mention L.A. Observed's coverage.