Recommended Reading

[Scott Fybush]

>It appears the thread moved to a general discussion of just talk radio;
>the point is that I wanted to make the "Host" article available to all
>and for people to discuss it.  It wouldn't be fair to
>the Atlantic to keep just this website a portal to theatlantic.com
>forever, so in about 24 hours, I'll disable the log-in 'bostonradio'
>and return it to the the password I had been using .  It took about a
>half-hour to read the body of the article in the print version
>(in the smallest room of my house) not including the
>side-bars, which in part are very informative and even amusing.
>A section deals with fraudulent-appearing medications and
>the manner in which "free offers" can morph into luring
>in captive customers.  So take a few minutes to look it over.

As an Atlantic subscriber, I read the David Foster Wallace article the 
night my April issue arrived.

I suppose it might have been more interesting for people who've never spent 
significant time inside a radio station. For those of us who have, most of 
Wallace's "revelations" (radio stations are dirty and messy, etc.) were 
less than revealing. And Wallace's cutesy use of footnotes-upon-footnotes 
gets tired quickly - at least for me.

For me, it also felt a little dated - having visited the *new* KFI studios 
last October on a Los Angeles trip, reading about the station's old 
Koreatown digs, vacated almost a year ago, felt somewhat archaeological.

That said, I'd certainly recommend the article as a good, if somewhat 
self-absorbed, eye-opener for anyone who hasn't spent much time within the 
world of talk radio.

s