When I was an adolescent, Canandaigua, my small hometown in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, got its first radio station, WCGR. You can hear it to this day, at 1550 on the AM dial. Back then, beaming out a signal of 250 mighty watts, WCGR (announcers said it stood for "Watch…

MEMPHIS, TENN. -- Asked his opinion of western civilization, Mahatma Gandhi famously replied he thought it would be a good idea. You could say the same of media reform. A good idea, far more easily said than done. But hang on. There's a growing populist movement out there, working to achieve the…

ROME, ITALY -- A slightly unreal moment this afternoon. Here in the land of Dante, as the taxi from the airport sped by the ruins of the Roman Forum and glimpses of the Coliseum up the side streets, the car radio began playing the seventies hit "Disco Inferno." As Dorothy Parker would have said,…