By Sasha Park · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Richard Horgan on FishbowlLA, January 2012
In late January 2012 the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR) announced the ten producers it was placing at host stations across the country for Localore — its demonstration project aimed at fostering 21st-century public-radio reporting. Three of the host stations were in California, including KCRW in Santa Monica and KQED in San Francisco.
Then
AIR’s Localore project was structured as a pairing exercise: matching independent radio producers with public-radio stations for sustained residencies that would produce both content and institutional learning. The goal was explicitly to push public-radio stations toward formats and storytelling approaches they wouldn’t develop on their own — community-engagement projects, hybrid digital-and-audio productions, and explicitly local long-form reporting.
KCRW’s Localore producer was tasked with developing a project that would extend the station’s news-and-cultural-programming footprint. KQED’s pairing was focused on Bay Area community storytelling. The other seven stations spanned U.S. public-radio markets from KLAW in Florida to others across the country.
The original FishbowlLA framing — Richard Horgan’s pickup — captured the LA-media-community side of the announcement: KCRW was one of three California stations, the project was being run by AIR as a multi-year demonstration, and the broader question was whether the model would produce sustainable formats that other public-radio stations could adopt.
Now
The Localore project ran for multiple cycles after the 2012 launch and produced substantial documentation of what the residency-and-collaboration model could produce. AIR has continued operating Localore-style residency programs across subsequent years, with funding from CPB and various foundation sources. The specific 2012 cohort produced multiple recognized projects across the participating stations.
KCRW has continued as one of the LA region’s central public-radio institutions across the decade and a half since. The station’s expansion into podcast production, digital-first storytelling, and continued event programming has built on the kind of format experimentation the Localore residency was meant to encourage. The broader public-radio shift from terrestrial-only broadcasting to podcast-and-streaming distribution has continued, with KCRW’s adapted strategy substantially shaped by the work that began in the early 2010s.
The independent-radio-producer category that AIR was working to develop has substantially grown. Podcast networks (NPR, WBEZ’s This American Life, Slate, Pushkin, Wondery), independent producers via platforms like Substack and Patreon, and the broader audio-creator-economy have expanded the scope of what an independent radio producer can sustainably make. The 2012 Localore launch reads now as one of the early-decade documented moments when the public-radio system was deliberately working to extend its institutional reach into the broader creator ecosystem that has since matured.
Original report archived on the Wayback Machine.