BARSAMIAN, David

PERSONAL: Male.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—Alternative Radio, P.O. Box 551, Boulder, CO 80306. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Radio producer, journalist, lecturer, and author. Former program director for a bilingual community radio station, Alamosa, CO; Alternative Radio, Boulder, CO, founder, producer, and director, 1978—.

AWARDS, HONORS: Top Ten Media Heroes citation, Institute for Alternative Journalism; Upton Sinclair Award, American Civil Liberties Union, 2003.

WRITINGS:

Stenographers to Power: Media and Propaganda, Common Courage Press (Monroe, ME), 1992.

(With Noam Chomsky) Chronicles of Dissent: Interviews with David Barsamian, Common Courage Press (Monroe, ME), 1992.

(With Noam Chomsky) The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many, Odonian Press (Berkeley, CA), 1993.

(With Edward W. Said) The Pen and the Sword: Conversations with David Barsamian, Common Courage Press (Monroe, ME), 1994.

(With Noam Chomsky) Keeping the Rabble in Line: Interviews with David Barsamian, Common Courage Press (Monroe, ME), 1994.

(With Noam Chomsky) Secrets, Lies, and Democracy, Odonian Press (Tucson, AZ), 1994.

(With Noam Chomsky) Class Warfare: Interviews with David Barsamian, Common Courage Press (Monroe, ME), 1996.

(With Noam Chomsky) The Common Good, compiled and edited by Arthur Naiman, Odonian Press (Monroe, ME), 1998.

(With Howard Zinn) The Future of History: Interviews with David Barsamian, Common Courage Press (Monroe, ME), 1999.

Eqbal Ahmad, Confronting Empire: Interviews with David Barsamian, foreword by Edward W. Said, South End Press (Cambridge, MA), 2000.

(With Noam Chomsky) Propaganda and the Public Mind: Conversations with Noam Chomsky, South End Press (Cambridge, MA), 2001.

The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting, South End Press (Cambridge, MA), 2001.

Culture and Resistance: Conversations with Edward W. Said, South End Press (Cambridge, MA), 2003.

Louder than Bombs: Interviews from the Progressive Magazine, South End Press (Cambridge, MA), 2004.

The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Conversations with Arundhati Roy, South End Press (Cambridge, MA), 2004.

Speaking of Empire: Conversations with Tariq Ali, New Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor of articles and interviews to periodicals, including Nation, Progressive, Monthly Review, International Socialist Review, and Z magazine.

SIDELIGHTS: During the course of his career, alternative-media journalist David Barsamian has interviewed many famous figures on the political left, including linguist Noam Chomsky, social theorist Edward W. Said, and feminist novelist and screenwriter Arundhati Roy. Many of these interviews are now available in print collections.

Critics have often praised Barsamian's collections of interviews as good introductions to the works of these thinkers. "Those who are intimidated by [Chomsky's] densely argued, exhaustively footnoted essays and books" will appreciate Barsamian's efforts at making Chomsky explain himself more simply in Chronicles of Dissent, explained a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Similarly, another Publishers Weekly contributor, reviewing a collection of interviews with Said titled The Pen and the Sword, described the work as "an accessible, engaging introduction to Said's thoughts." However, the collections of interviews are about more than simply explaining the thinkers' theories; "what sets this work apart from other reluctant messiahs who simply intellectualize suffering," a Publishers Weekly critic commented in a review of Keeping the Rabble in Line, "is that Barsamian and Chomsky discuss avenues for activism."

Barsamian had no formal background in journalism when he entered broadcasting by producing, hosting, and distributing his own world music show. He encourages others to take a similar "enormous leap of faith" and start their own programs and publications. "If you're thinking about obstacles, you'll come up with a million of them," he told Alternative Press Review interviewer Jason McQuinn, "and the people you're working with will come up with another two million. So, it's more about solutions. . . . To do something proactive is very empowering to you as well as to others."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Humanist, November-December, 1993, Brian Siano, review of Chronicles of Dissent: Interviews with David Barsamian, p. 45.

International Affairs, July, 2002, Bill Hayton, review of Propaganda and the Public Mind: Conversations with Noam Chomsky, p. 626.

Journal of Palestinian Studies, winter, 2001, Eric Hooglund, review of Eqbal Ahmad: Confronting Empire, p. 123.

Library Journal, April 15, 2004, Katherine E. Merrill, review of The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Conversations with Arundhati Roy, p. 106.

Middle East, December, 2003, Fred Rhodes, review of Culture and Resistance: Conversations with Edward W. Said, p. 64.

New Statesman & Society, November 27, 1992, Phil Edwards, review of Chronicles of Dissent, p. 43.

Political Studies, September, 2002, Tony Evans, review of Propaganda and the Public Mind, p. 893.

Publishers Weekly, December 14, 1992, review of Chronicles of Dissent, p. 52; August 29, 1994, review of The Pen and the Sword: Conversations with David Barsamian, p. 71; November 28, 1994, review of Keeping the Rabble in Line: Interviews with David Barsamian, p. 56.

Television Quarterly, spring, 2002, Ron Simon, review of The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting, p. 86.

ONLINE

Alternative Press Review Online,http://www.altpr.org/ (December 9, 2000), Jason McQuinn, "David Barsamian on Radio: Interviewing the Interviewer."

Alternative Radio Web site,http://www.alternativeradio.org/ (October 21, 2004), "David Barsamian."

Subsol Web site,http://subsol.c3.hu/ (October 21, 2004), "David Barsamian (US)."

Washington Free Press Online,http://www.washingtonfreepress.org/ (October 21, 2004), Colin Wright, "David Barsamian: Politics and the Media" (interview).

Z Online,http://www.zmag.org/ (October 21, 2004), "David Barsamian's ZNet Home Page."*