Midday

Today on Midday on the Media, we mark WYPR's 20th anniversary in conversation with Your Public Radio Corporation's president, WYPR general manager and NPR board chairman, LaFontaine E. Oliver.

LaFontaine joined WYPR in 2019, bringing his broad experience in both commercial and public radio, and a perspective that is both local and national. In the years before coming to WYPR, he was the general manager of a station in Orlando, Florida, and WEAA, which is celebrating its 45th year as the voice of the community at Morgan State University.

We invite LaFontaine to join us a couple of times a year to discuss important developments at WYPR and across the media landscape. Today, he and Tom spend the hour talking about where WYPR's been the past 20 years, and where it's headed. They'll discuss the station's abiding commitment to the community, the recent acquisition of public radio music station WTMD-FM 89.7, its initiatives in pursuit of greater diversity, equity and inclusion, and Your Public Radio's agenda for the coming years.

And as always, we welcome your comments and questions...

LaFontaine Oliver joins Tom remotely from WYPR's Studio B.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Joining Tom now for today's News Wrap segment is Missy Ryan. She is a foreign affairs reporter with years of experience. She covers diplomacy and national security for the Washington Post.

Ryan was in Ukraine earlier this month, and she has been keeping a close eye on the increasingly tense situation there, where Russia has stationed more than 100,000 troops and amassed tanks and other military equipment along its border with the independent Eastern European state.

Missy Ryan joins us on Zoom from Washington, DC.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

We begin today with Tom's Newsmaker guest, Dr. Sonja Santelises. She is the CEO of the Baltimore City Public Schools. We make it a point to check-in with her periodically for an update on what’s happening in our schools.

Tom talks with Dr. Santelises about how the school system is responding to the ongoing surge in omicron variant infections, protocols for COVID mitigation in the classrooms, and which schools are transitioning back to virtual learning.

And we take your questions and comments.

Dr. Sonja Santelises joins us on Zoom from her office in Baltimore City.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Tom's next guest is Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck, who joins us each week with her reviews of regional stage productions. Today she tells us about a new production of William Shakespeare's 1598 comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, that's live on stage at Baltimore's Spotlighters Theatre.

Much Ado's storyline, propelled by some of the Bard's wittiest wordplay, revolves around two romantic couplings that occur when a group of soldiers comes to town. Michael Blum adapted the play and directs its diverse,18-member cast through a procession of scenes set in an Edwardian steampunk style.

Much Ado About Nothing continues at Spotlighters Theatre until February 6. For times, ticketing and COVID-safe protocols, click here.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

We open this segment with the music of Steve Gunn, one of the artists featured in a recent episode of Essential Tremors, a terrific and very popular podcast from WYPR's Podcast Central that explores the musical influences of composers and performers across a full spectrum of musical genres.

The podcast debuted in 2018, and it's just dropped its 50th episode.

Joining Tom now to talk about the podcast's concept, and how it's worked for the past three-plus years, are Essential Tremors' creators and co-hosts:

Matt Byars is the drummer and sound processor in the DC-based band The Caribbean, and plays as Attorneys General and The Jarvik 6; he is also a middle school English teacher. He was previously a contributor to WYPR’s “The Signal.” Matt was raised in Kentucky and has lived in Baltimore since the mid-1990s.

Lee Gardner has been a professional journalist and music writer for more than 25 years. He’s the former music editor, and editor in chief, of Baltimore City Paper. Lee is currently a senior reporter at The Chronicle of Higher Education in Washington, DC. His writing has appeared in or on The Wire, Newmusicbox, Nylon, National Public Radio, and numerous altweeklies. He was born in Tennessee.

Lee Gardner and Matt Byars join us on Zoom from Baltimore.

Essential Tremors streams on WYPR's Podcast Central and other platforms. It's also broadcast on WYPR on the second Sunday of every month at 7:00 PM on 88.1 FM and at wypr.org.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

The Maryland General Assembly began its 2022 Session a couple of weeks ago. Today on the Midday Newswrap, we begin with an update on the early goings-on in Annapolis, with two of our colleagues from the WYPR News Department: State House reporter Callan Tansill-Suddath and News Director Joel McCord.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Tom's Newsmaker guest today is Jason Mitchell, the Director of the Baltimore City Department of Public Works.

Mitchell comes to Baltimore from Oakland, Califoirnia, where he served as the assistant city administrator. He became acting director at the Baltimore DPW in May of last year, and he was confirmed by the City Council in July. Before the search for his job got underway, the City Council approved a 30% pay increase for the Director position. His salary of $245,000 makes Mr. Mitchell the fourth highest paid employee in city government, behind Visit Baltimore CEO Al Hutchinson, Police Commissioner Michael Harrison and City Administrator Christopher Shorter.

The DPW faces a number of difficult challenges, chief among them a severe labor shortage, which has led to backlogs and a cutback of many services. Recycling, for example, is now collected every two weeks instead of every week, street sweeping has been severely curtailed, and workers are having a difficult time keeping up with requests to address illegal dumping. The department was also saddened last month when Jake Rogers, an employee in the Solid Waste Bureau, was shot to death at his home, in front of his three young children.

The department is also dealing with on-going problems with the water billing system, and last week, the State Department of the Environment sued the city over problems at wastewater treatment plants. The Department is under a federal Sanitary Sewer Consent Decree as well.

DPW Director Jason Mitchell joins us on Zoom…

Listeners are welcome to join us as well, with their comments and questions.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

As in most states around the country, the moratorium on evictions in Maryland ended last year, and certain kinds of evictions have increased ever since.

On Tuesday (1/25), the Baltimore City Council held a hearing about evictions. Lawmakers in the General Assembly in Annapolis will consider some measures to protect tenants from evictions during this year’s session.

Today on Midday, we explore what’s happening nationally and here in Maryland.

Tom's first guest is Emily Lemmerman. She’s a research specialist at the Princeton University Eviction Lab, a research center that tracks evictions in six states and 31 cities. Researchers there report that since March 2020, when the pandemic took hold, nearly 698,000 people have been evicted in those states and cities. (Baltimore and Maryland are not included in that sample.) Last month, 558 people were evicted from their homes throughout the state.

Emily Lemmerman joins us on Zoom from New York City.

Tom's next guests are tenant advocates.

Matthew Hill is an attorney and the team leader of the Human Right to Housing Project at the Public Justice Center here in Baltimore.

Tisha Guthrie is a renter and an organizer with United Workers and Baltimore Renters United.

They both join us on Zoom from Baltimore.

Then, we get the perspective of landlords. In December of 2019, weeks before the pandemic took hold, there were more than 59,000 “failure to pay rent” court filings. There were 22,589 evictions in Maryland in 2019. By 2021, a year in which an eviction moratorium was in place for eight months, that number dropped to 5,546.

Tom's next guest is Grason Wiggins, the Senior Government Affairs Manager for the Maryland Multi-Housing Association, a trade group representing landlords and property owners across the state.

Grason Wiggins joins us from Annapolis, Maryland.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Now, a conversation about the legal ramifications of COVID 19.

If you contract the virus at work and you are unable to work for a period of time, or worse, you suffer from the effects of Long COVID, or you even die of the disease, can your employer be held liable? This is an argument that took place in Washington at the beginning of the pandemic. Republicans were unsuccessful in their attempt to include corporate liability protection in the CARES Act in 2020. More than 30 states have passed legislation that makes it illegal to sue for damages.

Tom's next guest is Professor Diane Hoffman. She’s the director of the Law and Health Care Program at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law.

Professor Hoffman joins us on Zoom from Baltimore.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Tom's first guest today is the legendary reporter and author Carl Bernstein, who, with his Washington Post colleague, Bob Woodward, broke the story of the Watergate break-in, which led to the resignation of Richard Nixon and the birth of modern investigative journalism.

Bernstein has written two memoirs about that iconic story, and a book about his parents’ encounters with McCarthyism during the 1950s. His latest book is an homage to newspapers, and a poignant reflection on how he came to love the craft of journalism and the art of storytelling.

The book chronicles Bernstein’s start in the newspaper business as a precocious 16-year-old copyboy at the Washington Star, and the subsequent five years in which he met people who left an indelible mark on his approach to reporting, and in which he acquired the nascent skills he would hone in a career that has spanned more than 60 years.

The book is a terrific read, and an important testament to the value of journalism written by people who are deeply connected to the communities they cover.

It’s called Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom.

Carl Bernstein joins us on Zoom from New York…

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.