Various Media Reports by Lorie Kramer

Reports, research, opinion, mullings, and even humor, over the past 29 years in various forms of media. This page holds a collection of my work in various mediums, audio, video, writings.

My interest in media began when I was about 15 years old. At the time, my sister and I took dance lessons at a small dance studio in Toledo, Ohio. The studio was owned by the sister in law of the American singer Teresa Brewer. If you've never heard of her, she was one of the most prolific and popular female singers of the 1950s, recording around 600 songs. I never got to meet her, but her brother was a great guy.

A local radio personality and producer, Bill Manders, was friends with the owner of the dance studio. The station he worked at was AM radio station WOHO, Toledo, which broadcast on 1470 KHz from the summer of 1954 until September 2016.

At one point, WOHO decided to create a character known as "The Happiness Girl." They had begun a station promotional campaign with the theme "The Station With The Happy Difference." Bill was tasked with coming up with "the voice" for the station promos and jingles for the promotion. He contacted his friend who owned the studio to see if some of the girls taking her classes might be interested in auditioning for the position. She recommended my sister and one other girl. The other girl said no, but my sister said she'd be willing to try it. Bill happened to live 2 blocks from my house, and had a recording studio in his basement where he produced a lot of content for the station and commercial accounts of his own. Since I had nothing better to do, I accompanied my sister to the audition out of curiosity. It was fascinating. After a couple takes of my sister's voice, Bill asked me if I wanted to give it a try. I agreed, and we recorded a few takes.

The next day, Bill contacted my mother and offered me the position of "The Happiness Girl." That began an association with Bill and WOHO that went on for a couple years. I sang their jingles, their promos, and even got to ride in the WOHO "Candy Cane Camero" in the Toledo Christmas parade with Santa Claus at the wheel. What a hoot. The image above is the actual station recording room and equipment where I worked at WOHO. I have loaded that particular reel-to-reel several times, and one of my jobs was erasing the tapes. We used HUGE magnets and would rub them all over the reels to erase the data and reuse them. I even know how to splice. Lost art. Ha! In addition, I also did work with some of Bill's private customers doing commercials and other projects. I was the narrating voice in a presentation played for tours of the computer room of Toledo Trust Bank. Computers took up whole rooms back then, which were temp controlled and were a big deal so they liked to show off their fancy modern technology to their customers. I did a few TV commercials too, which was strange when I would be home and hear one come on the TV in the other room. I can actually still remember all the crazy words to the Zip's make your own ice cream sundae shop's theme I did for their commercials. Lot's of Z's in it. It took a few takes to get it right.

On the days I recorded stuff, when we finished that part, Bill had to produce the results. Remember, this was about 1967 or so, 8 track tapes were very new, and it was a boon to producing content for stations. So, while Bill was doing the production, I had a lot of free time, as he was my ride home and I couldn't leave until he was finished. To use up the time I would go back to the break room where the Associated Press teletype machine was located. The image here is the same model that was at the station. I was fascinated by the almost non-stop output from the machine and read story, after story, after story until it was time to go home. To be honest, I blame my whole approach to media and my future reporting on that machine.

When I read particular stories coming from it that I thought were important I would talk to my parents about them later. It increasingly amazed me that they knew nothing about most of them and I never heard them on "the news" myself. I began questioning why that was. The stories were newsworthy, but the news wasn't getting out. I began wondering how much information was never making it to the people? That's when I began not to trust the media. That is what launched my scepticism and passion for independent media.

So that's where it all started. Since then, I had several great experiences. I taught a workshop at the Allied Media Conference at the University of Texas on how to do radio. I was told doing that got me on a "watch list." I guess telling people not to pop their Ps and keep bumper music less than 30 seconds threatened TPTB. Eventually, I wound up doing a weekly news program on KPFT FM in Houston, a Pacifica listener-sponsored station in association with Houston Indy Media. I was able to interview many great people including Kalle Lasn of Adbusters, Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote, Leuren Moret, an amazing woman, Cindy Lee Sheehan the American anti-war activist, Kinky Friedman, and many others. That experience is what gave me the training to get into the digital age. I then started my own website in 1996, and volunteered as an associate producer of sorts for Jeff Rense for a couple years in the early 2000s. I am proud to call him friend. I was included as a "Thorn in the Side" by Clamor magazine. It also is what allowed me to participate in the all volunteer FM station broadcast from the Astrodome complex during the aftermath of Katrina when 25,000 people evacuated there and it became "Dome City." You can find out all about that time below. I was also privileged to cover the US vs Bundy et al first trial in Portland, OR for a week in 2016. I feel how they treated those 10 defendants was practice for J6. In fact, the discovery in the J6 prosecutions revealed several of the same names involved in the Malhuer Refuge prosecutions.

So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. WE are the media.