The KHSU Community Advisory Board held its monthly open meeting Wednesday evening in Humboldt State University’s Gist Hall to address community concerns over the handling of issues regarding staffing and station procedures — specifically, the sudden firing of longtime program and operations director Katie Whiteside by KHSU General Manager Peter Fretwell.
Fretwell, who was brought from outside the area to helm KHSU in April of 2017, is “a 37-year radio executive … an experienced leader focused on community-driven programming and service, team-building and organizational culture,” according to a brief bio on the station’s website. The 140 or so community members who attended the meeting, made up mostly of KHSU volunteers, staff, sustaining members and underwriters, expressed displeasure with the firing of Whiteside, who has worked at the station for more than two decades.
The main goal of the meeting was to allow community members to air concerns and the board was unable to offer information on Whiteside’s firing specifically. Most speakers used their two minutes before the board to praise Whiteside, express disbelief at her sudden termination and implore Fretwell to hire her back. To a person, members had nothing but admiration for Whiteside, who they saw as “the backbone of KHSU” and even “the K in KHSU.” Most were dismayed at the lack of transparency in the process. A former advisory board member pointed out that even the board wasn’t advised of the firing – but it should have been.
Several speakers also made the case that KHSU is different than other NPR stations in that its programming and funding are community driven. In the words of one member, “…it may seem as if this is a bunch of angry people and it will go away. It will not go away … this is what community looks like.” Another member pointed out that hiring people from out of the area and passing over those who have devoted their lives to KHSU doesn’t make sense and that the station would be better served functioning as a worker collective.
The firing has also hurt the station financially. According to underwriting coordinator Jeff DeMark, KHSU has lost $16,000 in support in the two weeks since Whiteside’s termination as people have begun to rescind their memberships in protest. “All of them said they were sorry – they did not want to leave but they left because they were upset, and I thought, if this was a commercial radio station, I don’t think one advertiser would say, ‘I’m sorry for not paying next month.’ They do it because they’re so committed.”
Two of the people suspending their donations had been members for more than 20 years; each having contributed $50,000. Several people at the meeting who announced that they had rescinded their sustaining memberships said that they would reinstate them, and even double their donations, if Whiteside is re-hired and challenged others to do the same.
According to a financial snapshot on KHSU’s website, it has an annual operating budget of approximately $1.1 million. HSU, the station’s single largest funder, contributes about 20 percent of KHSU’s cash revenue, in addition to providing “facilities and other significant administrative in-kind support for station operations.” Another 16 percent of the station’s revenue comes from public sources, including grants through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Contributions from listeners, businesses and local organizations, meanwhile, account for the remaining 64 percent of the station’s operation budget.
Whiteside is not the only person to be asked to leave recently — both Kim Shank, the 33-year host of Redwood Earlines, and Paul Woodland, host of the story-telling Whippy Dip Radio Show, both Sunday night staples, were abruptly dropped. (Some of Redwood Earlines past shows can be accessed on the KHSU website, courtesy of David Reed and Katie Whiteside, before her firing.)
Although Fretwell attended the meeting alongside the CAB members, he did not answer any questions posed to him. In a recent interview in the Lost Coast Outpost a few days before the meeting, Fretwell said that while he understood why the community would be upset at the firing, he was unable to offer an explanation for legal and ethical reasons.
As well as being an NPR affiliate and carrying shows such as “Fresh Air” and “All Things Considered,” the station hosts a myriad of local programming, ranging from several daily music shows to programming about local Native communities, food, artists, issues on the HSU campus, environmental action groups and more.
Unlike many other public radio stations, KHSU relies largely on its members to sustain it, not only financially but with its large volunteer base, something Fretwell even notes in his interview on Access Humboldt, in which he talks about his admiration for KHSU’s devotion to the community and being a “voice for the voiceless.”
Near the end of the meeting, office manager Lorna Bryant expressed concern that more firings would follow: “I don’t know if I’m the next at-will employee … to be asked to leave,” she said. Bryant is also one of the hosts of the “KHSU Magazine,” a weekday show highlighting news, people and general goings-on around the North Coast, as well as “Thursday Night Talk,” where she’s recently brought people together to talk about social equity, racism and other issues facing our community and the nation at large.
The board plans to share the input from the meeting with HSU President Lisa Rossbacher in hopes that board members can get more information and see what can be done. They invited the public to continue the discussion and to attend more meetings, which are held on the last Wednesday of each month at 6:30 p.m. in the Student and Business Services Building, room 405, on the HSU campus. A video of the meeting can be found on KHSU’s Facebook page.
Editor’s note: In the interest of full disclosure, the North Coast Journal and KHSU have recently partnered to have Journal staff contribute to the “KHSU Magazine” show.
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This article appears in A Caregiver’s Final Act.
I have volunteered at KHSU for several years. I was at this meeting, and this is an excellent article describing it. I have withdrawn my sustaining membership from KHSU.
Grow up, Humboldt County.
KHSU is desperately in need of an organizational enema starting with showing the door to the legions of people who have been there for far too long and are an albatross around the station’s neck. Good riddance.
For as much as the community hates HSU, it simultaneously believes that it is entitled to control KHSU. The community has been leaning on street drug use and economics for way too long. The best outcome is for the community to completely withdraw all of its financial support of KHSU thus enabling KHSU to completely free itself of the arrogance and ignorance of the community and ignore the fools of think they get to decide on the day-to-day operations of KHSU. Sickening this whole sordid matter. And so long Katie Whiteside. Do us all a favor and leave California.
I am interested to see that Katie is still included on the KHSU staff page – http://khsu.org/people/category/6.
Perhaps ReadingNCJ could reveal their real name in the interests of transparency.
“Near the end of the meeting, office manager Lorna Bryant expressed concern that more firings would follow: I dont know if Im the next at-will employee to be asked to leave, she said”.
No one working on campus is an “at-will” employee, but, as long as administrators can fool HSU’s auxiliary employees into believing they are, the executives can enjoy petty tyrannies at public expense. (An irresistible human weakness).
When there are poor performing employees administrators should be doing their job by extending the required due-process rights to their employees with documented evaluations, reprimands, and appeal rights. History has shown that management through fear and favor is where corruption thrives.
Administrators like Fretwell could care less, it’s the public’s money, not his, that will be used for the state’s attorney’s, the defendant’s attorneys, and the huge settlements from HSU faced with losing these lawsuits filed in local courts when auxiliary employees sue under section 89900(c) of the Ca. Ed, Code guaranteeing rights to all campus employees that are comparable to state employees.
“At-will” is in contradiction of the law. No surprises here; Americans must generally sue for all the rights we have when they are denied.
Maybe it’s time for local media to join their community in sharing some outrage by digging deeper into this systemic scandal that costs taxpayers millions of dollars while inviting corruption, nepotism and favoritism, (ie, incompetence), to thrive in public workplaces.
Fretwell should be fired for not doing his job…after a fair hearing, of course.
Fretwell and Rossbacher. Two peas in a pod. Destructive decisions based on greed, with no thought nor care of repercussions. Will there be any repercussions? No! I bet they can hold their silences and conciliatory tones, respectively, longer than the angry mob can stay angry and organized. There will be a few more forums, a few more meetings, a few more news articles… Then it will fade away; the new status quo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJbG4Y5fA5…
These folks at this meeting just don’t get it. Well, maybe they do and they just enjoy living in a dream world. KHSU is licensed to Humboldt State University. Not to the “community”. It is not a community station. Never was. Never will be as long as the Board has it’s hands on the license. Be mad at Peter, sure. But be madder at the Board. The Board of HSU fired Katie. Not Peter. Doug Dawes had more to do with firing Katie. LIsa Rossbacher did. Alex Enyedi did. Peter is just the messenger. He serves at their leisure and not the other way around. From Parker Van Hecke almost thirty years ago to today, the clarion call of “community” and “radio” is heard but not “community radio”. Because they can’t say it;. False advertising. So they skirt it. It has been preached over and over for years but it’s really just lip service. Much like this meeting here. No teeth. Again, the Board of HSU is in charge, not the community. The “community” may participate in the operation of KSHU but they do not have final authority. The University itself is both the license holder and the biggest donor to the station. Not the community. Wake up! Pool resources and start a REAL community station. Arcata and NoHum deserve it. And sad as it may seem, the only way to really do that is to run this University-licensed station into the ground because surely as the sun comes up in the morning, they will try their best to ruin any attempt at a real independent, community-ran station. The Board of HSU and past presidents have been intimately involved in trying to nix or stifle past attempts at real community radio here in the area, and there have been many over the years.
The license holders of KHSU throughout the decades have used the station to try to curb local dissent and to squash radical voices within the community who otherwise would have had a voice on a true community-ran and owned radio station.
Postscript: I find it amazing that at the 37:00 minute mark there, he’s talking about how he’s witnessed over the years petty people at the station getting other people fired for no good reason. Well, there is at least one CAB board member (Geraldine Goldberg) I see sitting right there in this video who did just that to various people on numerous occasions, myself included, when she held a position of authority at the station. That’s the amazing part, that she’s a CAB Board member to begin with. Incredible. All of these petty paper cutters and their office politic power trips. And again, it’s corporation rules not the communities rules all agreed upon together and for no special interests other than the community-at-large.
All of this wasted energy and wheel-spinning that could be used instead to start and run a true community-owned and operated radio station in Arcata. Such a shame.
KSHU = A perfect tool for the maintaining of the status quo.
Along with Neutered Perky Radio.