Pittsblurgh

Have you heard of Marty Griffin? If you haven’t, you should tune in to KDKA radio 1020. Oh and that’s 1020 AM by the way. I know what you’re thinking. “Who in the hell listens to AM radio anymore?” That would be me. It’s all of the entertainment I get driving around town in a 1998 Pontiac with a radio that works half the time and a tape deck (yes, a tape deck) that works less often than that.

Marty is one of the morning DJs on KDKA. He rants daily from 9am-12pm, five days a week. And when I say rants, I mean rants. He’s always worked up about something, whether it’s city of Pittsburgh property taxes, the lack of flood relief in Millvale or tailgating at Steelers games. A lot of the time, I agree with him. Sometimes I don’t. What I can appreciate is that he is passionate and relentless. He doesn’t let up and it forces public officials to acknowledge the accusations he’s hurling around.

Judging from some of his callers, I would guess that the mean age of his listening audience is probably about 60 years old. I wish more people my age and younger would become engaged in political discourse and community activism. When we aren’t happy with something, we tend to complain and wait for someone else to take care of it. Previous generations band together and make themselves heard.

I love new media as much as the next guy or gal and I scour the Internet for my news too. But nothing gets me riled up like Marty. He’s a throwback to the era when journalism was truly the watchdog of government.