The best thing about Media Minutes, Free Press’ weekly radio program, is that it brings the message of media reform to a whole new audience: radio listeners.

Since Free Press took over production of Media Minutes in 2007, the show has been a valuable outreach and education tool for Free Press. Listeners can be running errands, doing the laundry or making dinner and still learn about white spaces, the dangers of targeted online advertising, or the latest FCC hearing on media ownership. Putting the news of media policy and media makers in an audio format opens up more options to engage people in conversations about the importance of an open Internet and a diverse and independent media.

The show — the longest-running radio program dedicated to media and democracy — currently has more than 20 affiliates across the country. Its podcast has thousands of subscribers, and Media Minutes can be found every Thursday night on iTunes and the Free Press Web site.

The next best thing about Media Minutes, according to producer Stevie Converse, is interviewing the bright and resourceful people who are working every day to put the American public in “public interest obligations.”

“We don’t focus so much on the well-known luminaries of media reform. Our job is to highlight those who are in the trenches, organizing, educating and producing media for their communities and beyond,” Converse says.

The show profiles people like Dave Hughes, the “Cursor Cowboy,” who for 23 years provided Internet service to Colorado Springs and hooked up rural areas to the wireless Web all over the world. It has featured Native Public Media’s Loris Ann Taylor, who is creating a vibrant media network for all Native American nations, and Silvia Rivera of Radio Arte, Chicago’s Latino-owned, bilingual public radio station that teaches radio skills to young people.

Converse and co-producer Candace Clement took over the program in August 2007 with little knowledge of radio production but a conviction that the show — which began in 2004 as a project of John Anderson, a graduate student at the University of Illinois — had great potential. Converse and Clement created a radio studio in Free Press’ Florence office, complete with a sound booth. The pair record a new Media Minutes show every week.

The producers’ efforts to inform the public of important media issues have been recognized by Pacifica Radio, the oldest listener-sponsored radio network in the country. Converse and Clement have just completed a second half-hour program for the Sprouts: Radio from the Grassroots series titled “First Amendment Trampled at the RNC.”

Converse and Clement have some exciting plans for the future, including a new logo and a Web page before the end of the year.

If you have a community radio station in your area, check if it airs Media Minutes. If it doesn’t, ask for it. There are so many important and interesting stories to report, and the public really needs to hear them.

For more details, and to listen to the show, visit www.freepress.net/mediaminutes.