Bud Lowell at the controls

Bud Lowell’s last WXXI radio piece has the same qualities that I’ve always looked forward to hearing from him. The seven minute piece about Hickey Freeman skillfully integrates ambient audio, the voices of people not frequently heard on corporate radio and Bud’s narration. Like so many of Bud’s pieces the story doesn’t just inform. The listener is left feeling richer for the experience. Bud could have framed the story around Chuck Schumer but instead he went for the people involved in the politics.

Bud’s pieces always seem to be free from ideological agendas. It’s like he goes in with his journalistic skepticism, and extracts the reality of the situation. Bill Moyers has said that too often corporate journalism uses a false balance to give the veneer of “objectivity” and in the process totally fails to nail the truth. Bud’s pieces never left me with that icky false objectivity feeling. The pieces seemed balanced in that they pursued the truth. Even with a human interest piece like this Hickey Freeman story.

I guess I’m suppose to conclude by saying good luck to Bud in his new adventure. But Bud just recovered from cancer and he added so much value to WXXI that the management decision to scale down the newsroom and offer Bud a severence package just leaves me totally pissed off.  Why didn’t Norm Silverstein just pay himself $230,000 instead of $280,000 and keep Bud on the payroll with health insurance?

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