Tracking: August 18, 2020

Follow-up to PRX. Quick update on last week’s story on a departing PRX staffer, Palace Shaw, drawing attention to systemic racism at the organization: two other employees, Eric Dhan and Se’era Spragley Ricks, have written an open letter pushing back against CEO Kerri Hoffman’s internal memo on the matter that was publicly circulated over Medium last week.

It reads:

The letter from our CEO does not reflect the views of all staff members at PRX. It is not easy to openly disagree with the head of our company, and we write this message with no intention to “burn the house down.” We are dedicated to the values and mission at PRX; we believe in openness, trust, and empathy, and we strive to increase the diversity of voices in public media. We are committed stakeholders who care deeply about the wellbeing of our organization, and we want to do our part to hold our leadership accountable and ensure that PRX can live up to the values that drew us to work here in the first place.

The letter, which also listed named support from ten other PRX employees and affiliated individuals, also laid out a series of specific next steps that they believe should be taken to ensure necessary changes to the organizations. Those steps include: a direct apology to Shaw, the determination and distribution of back-pay to employees who have left the organization in part due to structural pay disparities, and increased transparency mechanism in the recruitment and hiring process for the new Director of Diversity and Inclusion, among others.

You can find the full letter, which was published on a Google Doc, here.

This newsletter isn’t meant to replace my work writing reviews for the publication. Instead, the hope is for 1.5x Speed to serve as a supplementary space for me to talk about new and on-going show releases in a way I don’t naturally get to with Hot Pod and in a manner that’s more consistent than my show-specific pieces for Vulture. There will be some flow of information between Hot Pod and 1.5x Speed, and if all goes well, you’ll see that connective tissue expressed somewhat organically.

All of which is to say: keep sending me information about your upcoming projects. We hope that 1.5x Speed will be a better way to get more shows in front of more people who would like to hear them.

You can subscribe to 1.5x Speed through this link. The first edition will drop on August 26.

Not to be tool about it, but called it. From my June 2019 column, “Audiobooks are not exempt“:

if I were a betting man, I’d sprinkle some action on the notion that there will come a time, not too far into the future, when Spotify might begin looking into the possibility of securing audiobook distribution rights here in the United States. After all, the audiobook category falls directly into Spotify’s underlying interests in becoming a ubiquitous, all-consuming audio platform, which would involve expanding into other on-demand audio markets — audiobooks included.

Do I get a cookie for this, or something?

This newsletter isn’t meant to replace my work writing reviews for the publication. Instead, the hope is for 1.5x Speed to serve as a supplementary space for me to talk about new and on-going show releases in a way I don’t naturally get to with Hot Pod and in a manner that’s more consistent than my show-specific pieces for Vulture. There will be some flow of information between Hot Pod and 1.5x Speed, and if all goes well, you’ll see that connective tissue expressed somewhat organically.

All of which is to say: keep sending me information about your upcoming projects. We hope that 1.5x Speed will be a better way to get more shows in front of more people who would like to hear them.

You can subscribe to 1.5x Speed through this link. The first edition will drop on August 26.

This newsletter isn’t meant to replace my work writing reviews for the publication. Instead, the hope is for 1.5x Speed to serve as a supplementary space for me to talk about new and on-going show releases in a way I don’t naturally get to with Hot Pod and in a manner that’s more consistent than my show-specific pieces for Vulture. There will be some flow of information between Hot Pod and 1.5x Speed, and if all goes well, you’ll see that connective tissue expressed somewhat organically.

All of which is to say: keep sending me information about your upcoming projects. We hope that 1.5x Speed will be a better way to get more shows in front of more people who would like to hear them.

You can subscribe to 1.5x Speed through this link. The first edition will drop on August 26.

Not to be tool about it, but called it. From my June 2019 column, “Audiobooks are not exempt“:

if I were a betting man, I’d sprinkle some action on the notion that there will come a time, not too far into the future, when Spotify might begin looking into the possibility of securing audiobook distribution rights here in the United States. After all, the audiobook category falls directly into Spotify’s underlying interests in becoming a ubiquitous, all-consuming audio platform, which would involve expanding into other on-demand audio markets — audiobooks included.

Do I get a cookie for this, or something?

Not to be tool about it, but called it. From my June 2019 column, “Audiobooks are not exempt“:

if I were a betting man, I’d sprinkle some action on the notion that there will come a time, not too far into the future, when Spotify might begin looking into the possibility of securing audiobook distribution rights here in the United States. After all, the audiobook category falls directly into Spotify’s underlying interests in becoming a ubiquitous, all-consuming audio platform, which would involve expanding into other on-demand audio markets — audiobooks included.

Do I get a cookie for this, or something?