Regarding Deanna Isaacs’s Culture Club piece on Victoria Lautman [September 28], Ms. Lautman is without doubt toast. The pattern of the apparent martinet who has controlled WBEZ for the last few years is plain. Victoria Lautman has always presented an involved, dedicated, and passionate view of a diverse segment of art in Chicago. Very few reporters can make visual art work on radio, but she does. In recent months she has done a more than credible job of branching out into other topics and has been quite good as a substitute general interest program host. But Ms. Lautman’s work isn’t the issue–it’s that she demonstrated some level of thought or independence. And more important, broke the seal and talked to a reporter. As Ms. Isaacs points out, Ms. Lautman will be given the freedom to pursue other projects. Ms. Isaacs mentions several, but not all of the others that collectively developed a lot of those projects during Torey Malatia’s reign. The trait they share, in addition to that project itch, was the ability to produce interesting radio. Stuart Rosenberg, Aaron Freeman, Mara Tapp, Neil Tesser . . . it is an honor roll that lengthens every quarter. And Malatia wounds what he can’t kill, for example by moving the live broadcast of Michael Feldman’s Whad’Ya Know? back an hour by tape delay to make way for his “comic” current events quiz bomb. So Chicago listeners (if they try to listen via WBEZ) can’t participate in a unique live event (once considered the hallmark of radio). Instead they get that “quiz” (which is vastly inferior to the other, and genuinely comic, current events show Rewind, a show Malatia tried to kill by moving it to a marginal time while running his dog of a quiz twice a weekend). He is also the only radio executive I’m aware of whose name appears in program credits. The last person I can recall whose name appeared at the end of WBEZ broadcasts was Benjamin C. Willis.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Dave Dillman
