Live From 51 Elm St. … Independent Radio!

Starting today, you can not only read and watch the Independent, but listen to it as well, 24 hours a day.

That’s because we’ve launched a radio station called WNHH, ​“New Haven’s Home.”

(The call letters WNHI, WELM, and WCIA, among others we pursued, were already taken.)

We plan to broadcast local news talk and arts and culture programs from a studio we’ve constructed in the Elm Street offices we share with La Voz Hispana, our partner in launching the radio station. Close to two dozen New Haven journalists, community activists and personalities have already begun producing shows.

You can listen to WNHH programs four different ways:

• On the internet, 24 hours a day, through our live stream. Just click on the ​“Listen Now” button at the top of the home page, and then the play arrow that pops up. You can continue browsing the site after you do.

• On the radio, at 103.5 FM, 12 hours a day during the week (4 a.m. through 3:59 p.m.) and at assorted hours during the weekend. We are sharing that dial position with another New Haven not-for-profit, La Liga Pequeña. (More about that later in this story.) The range of our broadcast signal is limited. (That’s why it’s called ​“low-power.”) In our initial tests, it has come in pretty reliably through all of New Haven except shoreline stretches like Morris Cove and City Point. The signal has also been coming in strong throughout Hamden, North Haven, and parts of Woodbridge. That will vary along with weather conditions. (Pictured is a map our engineer provided of likely FM coverage area.)

• By clicking on the audio file of any show you like, any time you like, on the website. Most programs will be converted to audio files and included in articles that subsequently appear in the Independent. You can go to those articles and hear the related programs. Our goal is to integrate our radio programming with our regular news-site reporting. Meanwhile, you can look up pages for your favorite shows under the ​“WNHH” menu in the top left-hand corner of our home page.

• By downloading podcasts of the programs to your phone, computer, iPad, or other technofabulous device and listening to them anywhere, anytime you like. We have established a podcast feed on iTunes; to subscribe, search the iTunes store (or any podcast app) for ​“WNHH Community Radio.” You can’t miss our feed: It’s the one with the blue-and-white logo that says ​“WNHH” with ​“newhavenindependent.org” beneath it. Subscribe to the whole station to get all of our episodes each day, or choose the episode you want. Please consider leaving a review there if you listen that way. It helps us get Apple cred.

Of course, we’ll still be working out the bugs for a while, so please bear with us if you occasionally encounter dead air! (For instance, the live stream was initally working on almost all browsers, but not on IE9 or 10.)

And please, in the tradition of New Haven Independent readers and commenters, let us know what we’re doing wrong and right.

As we enter our second decade as a local not-for-profit news source, we saw the radio project as a fun, interesting way to broaden our mission — to cover more local news and arts stories in more depth, in new ways, with more opportunities for people to contribute. Once we’re up and running a bit, we’ll regularly invite people to call in to shows; we’ll also invite you text or tweet in questions or comments.

Our approach is similar to the one we took 10 years ago in launching the Independent — harnessing new modes of communication to revive a largely abandoned local news function, combining old tricks with new ones.

Before, that meant reviving more shoe-leather, in-person coverage (i.e. ​“showing up with a notebook”) of school, neighborhood, zoning, political, and government news that used to get far more attention from a larger local newspaper presence in town, and adding the links, video, and immediate reader-input and conversation functions blazed by the internet.

Similarly, with WNHH (woven into the Independent), we hope to revive local talk-show and performance radio into the mix —through both old-fashioned broadcast radio (at 103.5 FM) and new-era streaming and download-anytime podcasts … where I believe the future of the medium is rapidly headed.

We’ll be gradually introducing our hosts’ programs over the coming months. During morning drive time, we’ll simulcast Joe Ugly’s show mixing unsigned hip-hop tracks with news commentary (until now an internet-only enterprise based on Chapel Street). I’ll host a daily ​“Dateline New Haven” talk show from 11 a.m. to noon. La Voz Hispana will produce numerous Spanish-language music programs, as well as a weekly ​“K Pasa” English-language Latino affairs program hosted by Publisher Norma Rodriguez-Reyes. Hosts of planned weekly and biweekly shows include the Independent’s Lucy Gellman (who’s also the station manager), Arts Editor Brian Slattery (who’s doubling as a WNHH producer), and reporters Markeshia Ricks, Aliyya Swaby and Allan Appel; New Haven dance maven Alisa Bowens, fitness guru Mubarakah Ibrahim, cop and author/activist Shafiq Abdussabur, local freelance journalist Sharon Benzoni, attorney/child advocate Cyd Oppenheimer (hosting an on-air book club), blog radio vet and Inner-City News Managing Editor Babz Rawls-Ivy, longtime local radio journalist Michelle Turner, One World’s N’Zinga Shani, former U.S. Rep. Sam Gejdenson, Bregamos Community Theater Hour with Rafael Ramos, journalist and social-media master Tom Ficklin, former Court TV associate producer and current British Arts Center Head of Communications Betsy Kim, and the ​“Canoli-Knish” sports-talk duo of Vincent Mauro Jr. and Joel Rudikoff. Branford Eagle Editor Marcia Chambers plans a ​“Legal Eagle” program, while the Valley Independent’s Eugene Driscoll and Ethan Fry are working on a weekly Valley round-up, as well. New Haven Mayor Toni Harp has agreed to take callers’ questions live on-air Mondays at 11 a.m. And look for Democratic State Sen. Gary Winfield to mix it up on Wednesdays with Tea Party Republican State Sen. Joe Markley.

Today’s launch of WNHH culminates an almost two-year project, beginning with exploring the possibility of obtaining an FCC license. The Seedlings Foundation, J‑Lab, and Knight Foundation provided essential financial support. Among many others, Brett Sokol, John Ramsey (our engineer), Garrett Lysiak, and Michael Couzens provided the expertise and encouragement needed to get the station off the ground, along with John Dankosky and our pals at WNPR. (Thank you!)

For now the 103.5 FM radio signal will go silent after 4 p.m. weekdays and during much of the day and early evening on weekends. That time belongs to La Liga; our two organizations came in first place in an Federal Communications Commission competition for remaining low-power FM frequencies, then worked out a time-sharing agreement. La Liga plans to be up on the air starting next spring.

Click here to read an article from the Nieman Journalism Lab at our radio project.

Thanks for accompanying us on this new-media roller coaster. We know the next lap will include unpredictable turns; we look forward to the surprises along the way. In the name of that engine of democracy, we also look forward to local public-interest news and debate.

If you’d like to sponsor a show, please email us .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address); as always, if you’d like to donate to the cause, through PayPal or Press Plus or by check through the mail, click here.