Peter Laufer
Encyclopedia
Peter Laufer is an independent journalist, broadcaster and documentary filmmaker working in traditional and new media
. He is the James Wallace Chair in Journalism at the University of Oregon
School of Journalism and Communication
.
, Laufer also reported, wrote, and produced several documentaries and special event broadcasts for the network that dealt with social issues, including the first nationwide live radio discussion of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Healing the Wounds was an analysis of ongoing problems afflicting Vietnam War
veterans. Hunger in America documented malnutrition
in our contemporary society. A Loss for Words exposed the magnitude and impact of illiteracy in America. Cocaine Hunger was the first network broadcast to literally trace the drug from the jungles of Bolivia to the streets of America, and alerted the nation to the avalanching crises caused by the consumption of crack cocaine. Nightmare Abroad was a pioneering study of Americans incarcerated overseas.
Laufer’s first major exposure to immigration issues dates to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 when he reported from Afghan refugee camps for NBC Radio. Almost 10 years later, as the Iron Curtain
began to rise at the Berlin Wall
, which he reported for CBS Radio
, Laufer went on to cover immigration from Western Europe
, and from Mexico
to the United States. In 2002, Laufer’s documentary film, “Exodus to Berlin,” and the ensuing book of the same title, told the story of Germany’s attempt to rebuild its Jewish population by providing sanctuary and financial support to Soviet-era Russian Jews who came over the border from Russia
and Ukraine
to Germany
.
Laufer’s books include The Question of Consent: Innocence and Complicity in the Glen Ridge Rape Case
. It is the study of the rape of a mentally challenged schoolgirl by a gang of her classmates, and the effect of the case of the health of the local community. He’s written works on the fall of Communism in Europe (titled Iron Curtain Rising), a severe criticism of contemporary talk radio, Inside Talk Radio: America’s Voice Or Just Hot Air, and a book version of the documentary about Americans in prisons overseas, also titled Nightmare Abroad.
Another of his books, Made in Mexico, published by the National Geographic Society
and illustrated by his sister Susan L. Roth, deals, in a juvenile environment, with cross border issues between California
and Mexico
. Laufer has written Exodus to Berlin, a book version of his study of the resurgence of the Jewish population in Germany and the concurrent rise of right-wing violence, and Wetback Nation: The Case for Opening the Mexican-American Border. With Markos Kounalakis
he’s written Hope Is a Tattered Flag, based on conversations from Washington Monthly on the Radio, the nationally-syndicated radio show they co-anchor. Another of their Washington Monthly projects is Calexico a series of radio documentaries celebrating the California-Mexico borderlands, and supported by a grant from the California Council for the Humanities. The research for that project developed into Laufer’s book Borderlines.
His experiences with Mission Rejected resulted in a natural history trilogy: The Dangerous World of Butterflies, Forbidden Creatures, and No Animals Were Harmed During the Writing of this Book.
Peter Laufer was the charter anchor of the radio program National Geographic World Talk, a nationally-syndicated show he created. He hosts The Peter Laufer Show Sundays which originated on the Pacifica radio station KPFA
, moved to the San Francisco Clear Channel station Green 960, and on to Sonoma County’s KOWS. It now airs on Eugene’s KPNW
.
in Oakland (known at the time as Radio Free Oakland). From there he crossed the Bay to San Francisco and joined KSFO as a news writer at its zenith, self-proclaimed "The World’s Greatest Radio Station".
In 1970 he took a cable car down Powell Street from KSFO to the studios of the famous and infamous KSAN (Jive 95). As a news reporter and talk show host at KSAN, he and other members of the KSAN “Gnus team” (as the news team called itself) won the DuPont/Armstrong Award for their unique coverage.
From KSAN Laufer moved his talk radio act to KGO
and its sister ABC-owned radio station in Los Angeles, KABC
. Returning to the newsroom, he became part of NBC’s News and Information experiment, an early test of a nationwide 24-hour radio news service. Based at the NBC-owned KNAI in San Francisco, he covered northern California for NBC News in the mid seventies.
His wanderings next took him to stints at KPTL
in Carson City, KOLO
in Reno
, and WFAA in Dallas before he returned to San Francisco and NBC to work as the “News Flash” at KNBR
and a general assignment reporter at KYUU
. Next Laufer took over as news director at KXRX
in San Jose
where he also hosted a talk show.
Those KYUU reporting duties included foreign correspondence covering the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the U.S.-Soviet proxy wars in Central America. From KYUU he transferred to NBC News and was assigned to its Washington bureau where he worked for much of the 1980s as general assignment reporter and worldwide documentarian, winning the broadcast journalism awards detailed below.
Stopping off for a brief tour as news director of public radio station KQED
in San Francisco, Laufer took a mid-career study fellowship in Berlin
just prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, and he covered the fall of the Soviet bloc for KCBS
in San Francisco and the CBS radio stations nationwide, before switching to ABC Radio
for further coverage of the post-revolutionary elections in Eastern Europe
.
He returned to CBS to cover the run-up to the Gulf War
and then moved back to Washington to take over as News and Program Director of the capital’s news and talk radio station WRC
. That experience led to his assuming the role of founding Programmdirektor of NEWSTALK 93.6 in Berlin, Germany’s first American style, but German language, talk radio station. While in Berlin in the mid 1990s he served as Germany bureau chief for the public radio business program Marketplace.
In Europe he worked as consultant to Talk Radio 1395 in Amsterdam
, training the staff for the launch of this first American style and Dutch language
talk radio station. He consulted management and coached air staff at TalkRadio/talkSPORT in London
, working with manager/owner Kelvin MacKenzie
, the former editor of Rupert Murdoch
’s flagship British tabloid, the Sun. He consulted Bill Sinrich at TWI for their launch of the London television talk show Under the Moon, created for Channel Four, and he fielded a comparative study of German and American commercial television broadcasting for DuMont Funk und Fernsehen
in Cologne
.
Back in America, Laufer, with Managing Editor Terry Phillips
, created the Omnipoint Business Minute, a daily business show sponsored by Omnipoint Communications as a branding vehicle for the launch of the mobile phone network that became T-Mobile
. He reported on America with a weekly broadcast post card for Radio New Zealand
. He established the Business Shrink daily business talk show with Peter Morris, which broadcast on Sirius Satellite Radio
, the content of which became the Business Shrink book series published by Adams Media. With Mother Jones
publisher Jay Harris
he founded Mother Jones Radio, which broadcast nationwide on Air America affiliates. Along with Washington Monthly publisher Markos Kounalakis he created and anchors Washington Monthly on the Radio, syndicated nationally and heard on its flagship outlet, XM Satellite Radio
. He created National Geographic World Talk and the National Geographic Minute.
Laufer hosts The Peter Laufer Show which originated on the Pacifica radio station KPFA, moved to the San Francisco Clear Channel station Green 960, and on to Sonoma County’s KOWS before its current home at KPNW in Eugene, Oregon.
and acting as editor-in-chief in the early 1970s of the resurgent Gold Hill News, bringing the classic Nevada
newspaper back to the Comstock after a 92-year hiatus, a lapse he apologized for in a “note to readers” on the paper’s front page that was flashed across the country on the wires of Associated Press
.
He’s written on the post-Communist scene in Prague
and about the fate of Soviet-bloc spies for the San Francisco Examiner’s Sunday magazine Image, and his feature articles fill the pages of a stack of periodicals including Europe magazine, Mother Jones
, Hungry Mind Review, Washington Journalism Review, Kansas City Star, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
, San Francisco Chronicle
, and Prague-based Pozor magazine.
Laufer’s op-ed pieces run the gamut from calling for the opening of the Mexican-American border to sounding post-9/11 wake-up calls regarding the domestic attacks on Americans’ civil rights. These essays have been published in papers including the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and his hometown Marin Independent Journal
.
With its publisher Markos Kounalakis, Laufer wrote a regular feature for Washington Monthly magazine, based on their conversations with political and cultural leaders on their radio program, “Washington Monthly on the Radio” (on hiatus). For Penthouse magazine, Laufer’s work included travel to Peru to interview Lori Berenson, training for survival in conflict zones with former British Marines, and investigating the predatory scam of selling bogus university degrees.
. He is reporter and cinematographer of the under-production independent documentary Sea to Shining Sea, a portrait of immediate post-9/11 Middle America. His documentary Garbage, a biography of household trash, was broadcast on the San Francisco public television station KQED.
in Washington, DC, and his Ph.D. in Cultural studies
from Leeds Metropolitan University
Faculty of Arts and Society in England. His post-graduate work includes media studies while a Robert Bosch Fellow stationed at the Freie Universität in Berlin, German language study at the Carl Duisberg Centren in Cologne, French culture and politics study at the Ecole nationale d’administration in Paris, and Spanish language study at the Academia Sonora lengua y cultura española in Macharviaya, Spain.
Laufer served on the faculty of Sonoma State University
in California in the early 1990s, and he’s taught journalists from Egypt, Cambodia, and Indonesia in the International Journalism and Media Management Training Program at Western Kentucky University
. Under the auspices of San Francisco-based Media Alliance
, he was instructor and coordinator of the Dateline: Prague seminar and workshop in foreign correspondence held in cooperation with the newspaper Prognosis in Prague and its twin program Dateline: Berlin held in cooperation with the Freie Universität in Berlin.
For Internews Networks
and as a charter fellow of the Knight International Press Fellowship, he was dispatched to make an assessment of the Minsk Mass Media Center in Belarus. He conducted a field analysis of post-Fox media in Mexico for Internews, a project funded by the Packard Foundation.
His guest lecturing datelines include Linfield College
, San Francisco State University
, Stanford University
, the University of Nevada
at Reno, the University of Oregon
at Eugene, California State University at San Luis Obispo, American University in Washington, the Freie Universität in Berlin, and Misr University in Cairo on subjects from The Myth of Objectivity to The Big Story Syndrome to Facts versus Truth to The Dangers of Post-Wall Germany. As a guest expert he presented on the myth of objectivity and the importance of storytelling to a UNESCO
freedom of expression conference at its Paris headquarters.
A frequent speaker, Laufer’s topics and venues include the Democracy Radio Forum in Washington, DC where he spoke on Why Right-wing Rhetoric and Ranting Dominate American Talk Radio, SENAC in São Paulo to discuss Media and the Third Sector, the RIAS Berlin Kommmission/Radio Television News Directors Association meeting in Berlin to detail Founding a Talk Radio Station in Berlin, and the World Affairs Councils in Portland and San Francisco to address the question: Are the Germans Still Dangerous?
Laufer has written the talk radio chapter Talk Nation: Turn Down Your Radio in the radio text Radio Cultures (edited by Boston College Communication Department professor Michael Keith) and the talk radio chapter Hier spricht Berlin: Newstalk 93.6 in the radio text Vox Populi: Hörerinnen und Hörer Haben das Wort, published by the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung in Bonn.
Peter Laufer participates in symposia such as the Sonoma State University Internet conference where he addressed Talk Radio as a False Community, the Radio-Television News Directors 48th Annual International Conference in Miami where his theme was On the Beach, by Force or Choice. He spoke to the National Association of International Educators about The Media as International Affairs Educator and considered Talk Radio Democracy for the Peace and Justice Center of Marin County in California. At a University of California Graduate School of Journalism conference his criticized The Media’s Coverage of the 1989 Earthquake.
New media
New media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. For example, new media holds out a possibility of on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community...
. He is the James Wallace Chair in Journalism at the University of Oregon
University of Oregon
-Colleges and schools:The University of Oregon is organized into eight schools and colleges—six professional schools and colleges, an Arts and Sciences College and an Honors College.- School of Architecture and Allied Arts :...
School of Journalism and Communication
University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication
The University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication is a public post-secondary school in the U.S. state of Oregon. Founded in 1912, the SOJC is currently located in Allen Hall at the University of Oregon's Eugene campus. The school is one of 112 journalism schools in the U.S....
.
Career
While a globe-trotting correspondent for NBC NewsNBC News
NBC News is the news division of American television network NBC. It first started broadcasting in February 21, 1940. NBC Nightly News has aired from Studio 3B, located on floors 3 of the NBC Studios is the headquarters of the GE Building forms the centerpiece of 30th Rockefeller Center it is...
, Laufer also reported, wrote, and produced several documentaries and special event broadcasts for the network that dealt with social issues, including the first nationwide live radio discussion of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Healing the Wounds was an analysis of ongoing problems afflicting Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
veterans. Hunger in America documented malnutrition
Malnutrition
Malnutrition is the condition that results from taking an unbalanced diet in which certain nutrients are lacking, in excess , or in the wrong proportions....
in our contemporary society. A Loss for Words exposed the magnitude and impact of illiteracy in America. Cocaine Hunger was the first network broadcast to literally trace the drug from the jungles of Bolivia to the streets of America, and alerted the nation to the avalanching crises caused by the consumption of crack cocaine. Nightmare Abroad was a pioneering study of Americans incarcerated overseas.
Laufer’s first major exposure to immigration issues dates to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 when he reported from Afghan refugee camps for NBC Radio. Almost 10 years later, as the Iron Curtain
Iron Curtain
The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...
began to rise at the Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...
, which he reported for CBS Radio
CBS Radio
CBS Radio, Inc., formerly known as Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, is one of the largest owners and operators of radio stations in the United States, third behind main rival Clear Channel Communications and Cumulus Media. CBS Radio owns around 130 radio stations across the country...
, Laufer went on to cover immigration from Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
, and from Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
to the United States. In 2002, Laufer’s documentary film, “Exodus to Berlin,” and the ensuing book of the same title, told the story of Germany’s attempt to rebuild its Jewish population by providing sanctuary and financial support to Soviet-era Russian Jews who came over the border from Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
and Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
Laufer’s books include The Question of Consent: Innocence and Complicity in the Glen Ridge Rape Case
Glen Ridge rape
The Glen Ridge rape was an incident in Glen Ridge, New Jersey in 1989 in which a mentally handicapped girl was raped with a broomstick and a bat, by members of the Glen Ridge High School football team...
. It is the study of the rape of a mentally challenged schoolgirl by a gang of her classmates, and the effect of the case of the health of the local community. He’s written works on the fall of Communism in Europe (titled Iron Curtain Rising), a severe criticism of contemporary talk radio, Inside Talk Radio: America’s Voice Or Just Hot Air, and a book version of the documentary about Americans in prisons overseas, also titled Nightmare Abroad.
Another of his books, Made in Mexico, published by the National Geographic Society
National Geographic Society
The National Geographic Society , headquartered in Washington, D.C. in the United States, is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions in the world. Its interests include geography, archaeology and natural science, the promotion of environmental and historical...
and illustrated by his sister Susan L. Roth, deals, in a juvenile environment, with cross border issues between California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
and Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
. Laufer has written Exodus to Berlin, a book version of his study of the resurgence of the Jewish population in Germany and the concurrent rise of right-wing violence, and Wetback Nation: The Case for Opening the Mexican-American Border. With Markos Kounalakis
Markos Kounalakis
Markos Kounalakis is a Greek-American journalist and author. Kounalakis is the president and publisher emeritus of the Washington Monthly, a magazine founded by Charles Peters in 1969. Kounalakis co-anchors the nationally syndicated weekly political program, Washington Monthly on the Radio...
he’s written Hope Is a Tattered Flag, based on conversations from Washington Monthly on the Radio, the nationally-syndicated radio show they co-anchor. Another of their Washington Monthly projects is Calexico a series of radio documentaries celebrating the California-Mexico borderlands, and supported by a grant from the California Council for the Humanities. The research for that project developed into Laufer’s book Borderlines.
His experiences with Mission Rejected resulted in a natural history trilogy: The Dangerous World of Butterflies, Forbidden Creatures, and No Animals Were Harmed During the Writing of this Book.
Peter Laufer was the charter anchor of the radio program National Geographic World Talk, a nationally-syndicated show he created. He hosts The Peter Laufer Show Sundays which originated on the Pacifica radio station KPFA
KPFA
KPFA is a listener-funded progressive talk radio and music radio station located in Berkeley, California, broadcasting to the San Francisco Bay Area. KPFA airs public news, public affairs, talk, and music programming. The station signed on-the-air April 15 1949, as the first Pacifica Station...
, moved to the San Francisco Clear Channel station Green 960, and on to Sonoma County’s KOWS. It now airs on Eugene’s KPNW
KPNW
KPNW is a radio station broadcasting a News Talk Information format. Licensed to Eugene, Oregon, USA, the station serves the Eugene-Springfield area. The station is currently owned by Bicoastal Media Licenses V, LLC and features programming from Premiere Radio Networks, Fox News Radio, Westwood...
.
Broadcast
Peter Laufer took on his first radio job while in high school at one of the early all-talk radio station in America, Metromedia’s KNEWKNEW
KNEW may refer to:* The ICAO code for New Orleans Lakefront Airport, located in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States* KNEW , a radio station on 910 kHz, licensed to Oakland, California, United States, and formerly known as KLX and KEWB * KJRB, a radio station on 790 kHz, licensed to...
in Oakland (known at the time as Radio Free Oakland). From there he crossed the Bay to San Francisco and joined KSFO as a news writer at its zenith, self-proclaimed "The World’s Greatest Radio Station".
In 1970 he took a cable car down Powell Street from KSFO to the studios of the famous and infamous KSAN (Jive 95). As a news reporter and talk show host at KSAN, he and other members of the KSAN “Gnus team” (as the news team called itself) won the DuPont/Armstrong Award for their unique coverage.
From KSAN Laufer moved his talk radio act to KGO
KGO (AM)
KGO is a news/talk-format radio station radio with offices and studios in San Francisco, California. Unlike most other American news/talk stations, KGO originates nearly all of its own programming locally. Since 1978, KGO radio has received Arbitron's number-one ranking in the Bay Area...
and its sister ABC-owned radio station in Los Angeles, KABC
KABC (AM)
KABC is a Los Angeles radio station, and a West Coast flagship station for the Cumulus Media company. A pioneer of the talk radio format, the station went "all-talk" in 1960 and was one of the first stations to do so...
. Returning to the newsroom, he became part of NBC’s News and Information experiment, an early test of a nationwide 24-hour radio news service. Based at the NBC-owned KNAI in San Francisco, he covered northern California for NBC News in the mid seventies.
His wanderings next took him to stints at KPTL
KPTL
KPTL, "Capital 106.3," is a Modern Adult Contemporary radio station serving the Des Moines, Iowa, area. It is located at 106.3 on the FM dial. The station's studios are located at 2141 Grand Avenue in Des Moines along with Clear Channel Communications' other Des Moines stations .-KANY/KJJY: The...
in Carson City, KOLO
Kolo
Koło is a town on the Warta River in central Poland with 23,101 inhabitants . It is situated in the Greater Poland Voivodship , having previously been in Konin Voivodship , and it is the capital of Koło County.-Early history:...
in Reno
Reno
Reno is the fourth most populous city in Nevada, US.Reno may also refer to:-Places:Italy*The Reno River, in Northern ItalyCanada*Reno No...
, and WFAA in Dallas before he returned to San Francisco and NBC to work as the “News Flash” at KNBR
KNBR
KNBR, The Sports Leader, is the on-air branding used by two AM radio stations in the San Francisco, California, area broadcasting a sports radio format, owned by Cumulus Media....
and a general assignment reporter at KYUU
KMVQ-FM
KMVQ-FM is a broadcast radio station in San Francisco, California in the United States. The station, known as "99-7 Now", broadcasts a Top 40 format with a Rhythmic lean....
. Next Laufer took over as news director at KXRX
KXRX
KXRX is the call sign of the radio station 97 Rock based in Walla Walla, Washington. The frequency is 97.1 MHz, and it is a Townsquare Media radio station. The call letters are based on the former KXRX/Seattle -- a major rock radio station active in Seattle from 1987-1994 on 96.5 FM and now known...
in San Jose
San Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
where he also hosted a talk show.
Those KYUU reporting duties included foreign correspondence covering the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the U.S.-Soviet proxy wars in Central America. From KYUU he transferred to NBC News and was assigned to its Washington bureau where he worked for much of the 1980s as general assignment reporter and worldwide documentarian, winning the broadcast journalism awards detailed below.
Stopping off for a brief tour as news director of public radio station KQED
KQED-FM
KQED-FM is an NPR-member radio station owned by Northern California Public Broadcasting in San Francisco, California.KQED-FM was founded by James Day in 1969 as the radio arm of KQED Television. The founding manager was Bernard Mayes who later went on to be Executive Vice-President of KQED TV and...
in San Francisco, Laufer took a mid-career study fellowship in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
just prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, and he covered the fall of the Soviet bloc for KCBS
KCBS (AM)
KCBS is an all-news radio station in San Francisco, California, that is a key West Coast flagship radio station of the CBS Radio Network and Westwood One. Its transmitter is located in Novato, California. KCBS currently has studios on Battery Street, where it shares the location with co-owned KPIX...
in San Francisco and the CBS radio stations nationwide, before switching to ABC Radio
ABC News Radio
ABC News Radio is the radio service of ABC News, a division of the ABC Television Network. Formerly known as ABC Radio News, ABC News Radio feeds, through Cumulus Media Networks, newscasts on the hour to its more than 2,000 affiliates...
for further coverage of the post-revolutionary elections in Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
.
He returned to CBS to cover the run-up to the Gulf War
Gulf War
The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
and then moved back to Washington to take over as News and Program Director of the capital’s news and talk radio station WRC
WWRC
WWRC —branded 1260 WRC—is a news/talk radio station licensed to Washington, D.C. and serving the Washington metro area. It operates with 5,000 watts on an unlimited basis with studios and transmitters both located in the city proper...
. That experience led to his assuming the role of founding Programmdirektor of NEWSTALK 93.6 in Berlin, Germany’s first American style, but German language, talk radio station. While in Berlin in the mid 1990s he served as Germany bureau chief for the public radio business program Marketplace.
In Europe he worked as consultant to Talk Radio 1395 in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
, training the staff for the launch of this first American style and Dutch language
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
talk radio station. He consulted management and coached air staff at TalkRadio/talkSPORT in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, working with manager/owner Kelvin MacKenzie
Kelvin MacKenzie
Kelvin Calder MacKenzie is an English media executive and former newspaper editor. He is best known for being editor of The Sun newspaper between 1981 and 1994, an era in which the paper was established as Britain's best selling newspaper.- Biography :MacKenzie was educated at Alleyn's School...
, the former editor of Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
’s flagship British tabloid, the Sun. He consulted Bill Sinrich at TWI for their launch of the London television talk show Under the Moon, created for Channel Four, and he fielded a comparative study of German and American commercial television broadcasting for DuMont Funk und Fernsehen
DuMont Television Network
The DuMont Television Network, also known as the DuMont Network, DuMont, Du Mont, or Dumont was one of the world's pioneer commercial television networks, rivalling NBC for the distinction of being first overall. It began operation in the United States in 1946. It was owned by DuMont...
in Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
.
Back in America, Laufer, with Managing Editor Terry Phillips
Terry Phillips
Terry Phillips is a journalist, author and media consultant. As a foreign correspondent, he covered events around the world for CBS News, and reported regularly for NPR, MonitoRadio and the NBC/Mutual Broadcasting System....
, created the Omnipoint Business Minute, a daily business show sponsored by Omnipoint Communications as a branding vehicle for the launch of the mobile phone network that became T-Mobile
T-Mobile
T-Mobile International AG is a German-based holding company for Deutsche Telekom AG's various mobile communications subsidiaries outside Germany. Based in Bonn, Germany, its subsidiaries operate GSM and UMTS-based cellular networks in Europe, the United States, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands...
. He reported on America with a weekly broadcast post card for Radio New Zealand
Radio New Zealand
Radio New Zealand is a New Zealand public service radio broadcaster and Crown entity formed by the Radio New Zealand Act 1995. It operates news, current affairs and arts network Radio New Zealand National and classical music and jazz network Radio New Zealand Concert with full government funding...
. He established the Business Shrink daily business talk show with Peter Morris, which broadcast on Sirius Satellite Radio
Sirius Satellite Radio
Sirius Satellite Radio is a satellite radio service operating in North America, owned by Sirius XM Radio.Headquartered in New York City, with smaller studios in Los Angeles and Memphis, Sirius was officially launched on July 1, 2002 and currently provides 69 streams of music and 65 streams of...
, the content of which became the Business Shrink book series published by Adams Media. With Mother Jones
Mother Jones (magazine)
Mother Jones is an American independent news organization, featuring investigative and breaking news reporting on politics, the environment, human rights, and culture. Mother Jones has been nominated for 23 National Magazine Awards and has won six times, including for General Excellence in 2001,...
publisher Jay Harris
Jay Harris (sportscaster)
Jay Harris is an American journalist who has worked for ESPN since February 2003. When he first joined ESPN, he worked primarily on ESPNEWS, but in August 2006, he was named the weekday co-host of the 6pm ET SportsCenter along with Brian Kenny...
he founded Mother Jones Radio, which broadcast nationwide on Air America affiliates. Along with Washington Monthly publisher Markos Kounalakis he created and anchors Washington Monthly on the Radio, syndicated nationally and heard on its flagship outlet, XM Satellite Radio
XM Satellite Radio
XM Satellite Radio is one of two satellite radio services in the United States and Canada, operated by Sirius XM Radio. It provides pay-for-service radio, analogous to cable television. Its service includes 73 different music channels, 39 news, sports, talk and entertainment channels, 21 regional...
. He created National Geographic World Talk and the National Geographic Minute.
Laufer hosts The Peter Laufer Show which originated on the Pacifica radio station KPFA, moved to the San Francisco Clear Channel station Green 960, and on to Sonoma County’s KOWS before its current home at KPNW in Eugene, Oregon.
Periodicals
Since founding the Sausalito Sun while in grammar school, Peter Laufer has been immersed in print journalism. His other newspaper duties included working as the media critic in the early 1990s for SF WeeklySF Weekly
SF Weekly is a free alternative weekly newspaper in San Francisco, California. The newspaper, distributed throughout the San Francisco Bay Area every Wednesday, is published by Village Voice Media, a 16-paper alt weekly newspaper chain that also includes the New York City Village Voice and the Los...
and acting as editor-in-chief in the early 1970s of the resurgent Gold Hill News, bringing the classic Nevada
Nevada
Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...
newspaper back to the Comstock after a 92-year hiatus, a lapse he apologized for in a “note to readers” on the paper’s front page that was flashed across the country on the wires of Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
.
He’s written on the post-Communist scene in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
and about the fate of Soviet-bloc spies for the San Francisco Examiner’s Sunday magazine Image, and his feature articles fill the pages of a stack of periodicals including Europe magazine, Mother Jones
Mother Jones (magazine)
Mother Jones is an American independent news organization, featuring investigative and breaking news reporting on politics, the environment, human rights, and culture. Mother Jones has been nominated for 23 National Magazine Awards and has won six times, including for General Excellence in 2001,...
, Hungry Mind Review, Washington Journalism Review, Kansas City Star, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram is a major U.S. daily newspaper serving Fort Worth and the western half of the North Texas area known as the Metroplex. Its area of domination is checked by its main rival, The Dallas Morning News, which is published from the eastern half of the Metroplex. It is owned...
, San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
, and Prague-based Pozor magazine.
Laufer’s op-ed pieces run the gamut from calling for the opening of the Mexican-American border to sounding post-9/11 wake-up calls regarding the domestic attacks on Americans’ civil rights. These essays have been published in papers including the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and his hometown Marin Independent Journal
Marin Independent Journal
The Marin Independent Journal is the main newspaper of Marin County, California. The paper is owned by California Newspapers Partnership which is in turn mostly owned by MediaNews Group.-History:...
.
With its publisher Markos Kounalakis, Laufer wrote a regular feature for Washington Monthly magazine, based on their conversations with political and cultural leaders on their radio program, “Washington Monthly on the Radio” (on hiatus). For Penthouse magazine, Laufer’s work included travel to Peru to interview Lori Berenson, training for survival in conflict zones with former British Marines, and investigating the predatory scam of selling bogus university degrees.
Film
Peter Laufer worked as reporter, writer, and producer of the documentary film, Exodus to Berlin with Jeff Kamen, which won the David Wolper best documentary prize at the Wine Country film festival in California. The project was supported by grants from the RIAS Berlin Commission and the Robert Bosch FoundationRobert Bosch
Robert Bosch was a German industrialist, engineer and inventor, founder of Robert Bosch GmbH.-Biography:...
. He is reporter and cinematographer of the under-production independent documentary Sea to Shining Sea, a portrait of immediate post-9/11 Middle America. His documentary Garbage, a biography of household trash, was broadcast on the San Francisco public television station KQED.
Academic
Peter Laufer did his undergraduate work in English at the University of California in Berkeley, he earned his Masters in Communications: Journalism and Public Affairs from the American University School of CommunicationAmerican University School of Communication
The School of Communication at American University is highly regarded for its faculty, facilities, and high professional standards by the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications...
in Washington, DC, and his Ph.D. in Cultural studies
Cultural studies
Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...
from Leeds Metropolitan University
Leeds Metropolitan University
Leeds Metropolitan University is a British University with three campuses. Two are situated in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England while the third is situated in Bhopal, India...
Faculty of Arts and Society in England. His post-graduate work includes media studies while a Robert Bosch Fellow stationed at the Freie Universität in Berlin, German language study at the Carl Duisberg Centren in Cologne, French culture and politics study at the Ecole nationale d’administration in Paris, and Spanish language study at the Academia Sonora lengua y cultura española in Macharviaya, Spain.
Laufer served on the faculty of Sonoma State University
Sonoma State University
Sonoma State University is a public, coeducational business and liberal arts college affiliated with the California State University system. The main campus is located in Rohnert Park, California, United States and lies approximately south of Santa Rosa and north of San Francisco...
in California in the early 1990s, and he’s taught journalists from Egypt, Cambodia, and Indonesia in the International Journalism and Media Management Training Program at Western Kentucky University
Western Kentucky University
Western Kentucky University is a public university in Bowling Green, Kentucky, USA. It was formally founded by the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1906, though its roots reach back a quarter-century earlier....
. Under the auspices of San Francisco-based Media Alliance
Media Alliance
Media Alliance is a 34 year-old American media resource and advocacy center for media workers, non-profit organizations, and social justice activists. Its mission is excellence, ethics, diversity, and accountability in all aspects of the media in the interests of peace, justice, and social...
, he was instructor and coordinator of the Dateline: Prague seminar and workshop in foreign correspondence held in cooperation with the newspaper Prognosis in Prague and its twin program Dateline: Berlin held in cooperation with the Freie Universität in Berlin.
For Internews Networks
Internews
Internews Network is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to empower local media worldwide to give people the news and information they need, the ability to connect, and the means to make their voices heard...
and as a charter fellow of the Knight International Press Fellowship, he was dispatched to make an assessment of the Minsk Mass Media Center in Belarus. He conducted a field analysis of post-Fox media in Mexico for Internews, a project funded by the Packard Foundation.
His guest lecturing datelines include Linfield College
Linfield College
Linfield College is an American private institution of higher learning located in McMinnville, Oregon, United States. As a four-year, undergraduate, liberal arts and sciences college with a campus in Portland, Oregon, it also has an adult degree program located in eight communities throughout the...
, San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...
, Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, the University of Nevada
University of Nevada, Reno
The University of Nevada, Reno , is a teaching and research university established in 1874 and located in Reno, Nevada, USA...
at Reno, the University of Oregon
University of Oregon
-Colleges and schools:The University of Oregon is organized into eight schools and colleges—six professional schools and colleges, an Arts and Sciences College and an Honors College.- School of Architecture and Allied Arts :...
at Eugene, California State University at San Luis Obispo, American University in Washington, the Freie Universität in Berlin, and Misr University in Cairo on subjects from The Myth of Objectivity to The Big Story Syndrome to Facts versus Truth to The Dangers of Post-Wall Germany. As a guest expert he presented on the myth of objectivity and the importance of storytelling to a UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
freedom of expression conference at its Paris headquarters.
A frequent speaker, Laufer’s topics and venues include the Democracy Radio Forum in Washington, DC where he spoke on Why Right-wing Rhetoric and Ranting Dominate American Talk Radio, SENAC in São Paulo to discuss Media and the Third Sector, the RIAS Berlin Kommmission/Radio Television News Directors Association meeting in Berlin to detail Founding a Talk Radio Station in Berlin, and the World Affairs Councils in Portland and San Francisco to address the question: Are the Germans Still Dangerous?
Laufer has written the talk radio chapter Talk Nation: Turn Down Your Radio in the radio text Radio Cultures (edited by Boston College Communication Department professor Michael Keith) and the talk radio chapter Hier spricht Berlin: Newstalk 93.6 in the radio text Vox Populi: Hörerinnen und Hörer Haben das Wort, published by the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung in Bonn.
Peter Laufer participates in symposia such as the Sonoma State University Internet conference where he addressed Talk Radio as a False Community, the Radio-Television News Directors 48th Annual International Conference in Miami where his theme was On the Beach, by Force or Choice. He spoke to the National Association of International Educators about The Media as International Affairs Educator and considered Talk Radio Democracy for the Peace and Justice Center of Marin County in California. At a University of California Graduate School of Journalism conference his criticized The Media’s Coverage of the 1989 Earthquake.
Fellowships
- Knight International Press Fellowship charter fellow, assigned to Minsk, Belarus, 1994
- Konrad Adenauer Foundation, journalists exchange program to Germany, 1993
- Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, affiliate artist (writer), 1991–93
- The Robert Bosch Foundation Fellowship, research and study in Germany, 1988-89
- International Press Institute, journalist exchange program for study in Japan, 1983
- John J. McCloy Fellowship, American Council on Germany, research in Germany, 1982
Honors and Awards
- The California Council for the Humanities awarded The Calexico Project a radio production grant as part of its California Voices program 2008.
- Mission Rejected was awarded a Koerber Foundation (Hamburg) Transatlantic Idea prize in the foundations “Transitions in Life” competition 2006.
- RIAS Berlin Commission/ Radio Television News Directors Foundation 2000
- Gold Award for the book “Made in Mexico” (National Geographic, 2000), also cited on the Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People 2001 list, compiled by a joint committee of the Children’s Book Council and the National Council for the Social Studies
- RIAS Berlin Commission/ Radio Television News Directors Foundation 1994
- German/American Production Grant for radio documentary: “Border Wars” 1994
- George Polk Award from Long Island University for reporting a documentary on Americans imprisoned overseas “Nightmare Abroad,” which was also cited by the New York State and American Bar Associations 1985
Books
- Forbidden Creatures: Inside the World of Animal Smuggling and Exotic Pets, 2010, Lyons Press, Guilford (CT), ISBN 159921926
- The Dangerous World of Butterflies: The Startling Subculture of Criminals, Collectors, and Conservationists, 2009, Lyons Press, Guilford (CT), ISBN 1599215551
- Calexico (scheduled to be published by the University of Arizona Press, Tucson, in 2011) ISBN 0816529515
- Hope Is a Tattered Flag: Voices of Reason and Change for the Post-Bush Era (co-author with Markos Kounalakis), 2008, PoliPoint Press, Sausalito, ISBN 0979482240
- Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq, 2006, Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction (VT), ISBN 1933392045
- Wetback Nation: The Case for Opening the Mexican Border, 2004, Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, ISBN 1566635926
- Highlights of a Lowlife: The Autobiography of Milan Melvin (compiled and edited by Peter Laufer), 2004, Swan Isle, Bodega Bay (CA), ISBN 1892918013
- Shock and Awe: Responses to War (edited and with an introduction by Peter Laufer), 2003, Creative Arts Book Company, Berkeley, ISBN 088739602X
- Exodus to Berlin: The Return of the Jews to Germany, 2003, Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, ISBN 9781566635295
- Made in Mexico (illustrated by Susan L. Roth), 2000, National Geographic Society, Washington, ISBN 9780792271185
- Wireless Etiquette: A Guide to the Changing World of Instant Communication, 1999, Omnipoint Books, New York, ISBN 1892918005
- Safety and Security for Women Who Travel (co-author with Sheila Swan Laufer), 1999, Travelers Tales, Palo Alto, ISBN 1885211295
- Inside Talk Radio: America’s Voice or Just Hot Air?, 1995, Birch Lane Press, New York, ISBN 9781559722780
- A Question of Consent: Innocence and Complicity in the Glen Ridge Rape Case, 1994, Mercury House, San Francisco, ISBN 1562790595
- When Hollywood Was Fun (collaborator with Gene Lester), 1994, Birch Lane Press, New York, ISBN 1559721979
- Nightmare Abroad: Stories of Americans Imprisoned in Foreign lands, 1993, Mercury House, San Francisco, ISBN 1562790285
- Iron Curtain Rising: A Personal Journey through the Changing Landscape of Eastern Europe, 1991, Mercury House, San Francisco, ISBN 1562790153