Mandate

GroundWire is a 29-minute news radio program featuring headlines, reports and features from the community radio sector in Canada. The program aims to be a strong, reliable, high-quality newscast, engaging the audience with geographically and culturally diverse features that address issues of interest to specific communities as well as to a national audience.

GroundWire balances grassroots coverage of local stories with progressive perspectives on national and international issues. Voices of people living in Canada, or Canadians living and working abroad, are a priority. GroundWire works to encourage self-representation from diverse communities in Canada, Quebec, and in indigenous nations, and features music from underrepresented Canadian artists.

GroundWire is produced by members of the Community News Network and aired on campus and community radio stations across Canada, and is also distributed online through the NCRA and other independent media sites.

GroundWire aims to connect diverse communities that take part in community radio programming all over Canada by featuring stories that are local, regional and national in scope and that share an ethic of human rights activism, equity, labour rights, democractic communication and information exchange, and progressive political and social policy.

Production Committee

GroundWire is produced and directed by a production committee composed of staff and volunteers from participating NCRA stations. The committee makes all efforts to include members from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds to ensure that GroundWire programming speaks well to many different communities and not just the core listenership of community radio stations.

The production committee is mandated to make practical decisions about the content and direction of each episode of GroundWire. This includes reviewing submissions, choosing a limited number of features for each episode, choosing two Canadian artists to feature during musical bridges, communicating with potential and actual contributors, and writing an editorial statement for each episode.

The production committee may have a monthly facilitator who will communicate directly with contributors about the decisions of the editorial committee, write runsheets and scripts, assemble the show and upload the show to distribution networks in a timely manner.

The production committee communicates with contributors via the groundwire@ncra.ca email address. this email is accessible by any member of the production committee, however, the monthly facilitator is responsible for communicating editorial decisions to contributors.