Nicholas W. Jankowski
24 July 2009
Ole Prehn was a colleague, a collaborator, and a friend. These three forms of relationship blended together at different times over the span of two decades, and the IAMCR provided the grounding for the projects we undertook and for what we shared.
Our first meeting – and at the same time the first official meeting of the Working Group Local Radio and Television – took place at the IAMCR conference held in Prague in 1984. Ole, together with Erik Nordahl Svendsen and James Stappers, chaired that initiative to establish a collective of communications researchers concerned with small scale media. Erik and Ole had been commissioned by the Danish government to monitor a national experiment with local radio and television, and those of us in the Netherlands that had been involved in researching a similar experiment several years earlier were very interested in their work.
I don’t remember who approached whom, but a group of us from the Netherlands were keen to work with the Danish researchers in establishing a forum within the IAMCR concerned with such community-based media. The meeting was well attended and convinced us that the initiative should become a component within the IAMCR structure, initially as a Working Group and, we hoped, later as a formal Section of the association.
We also felt the time ripe to compile an edited volume of local radio and television initiatives around Europe. The four of us relatively quickly reached an agreement of principle to prepare such a volume. Looking back, it seems as if much time elapsed since that agreement and the subsequent publication of The People Voice: Local Radio and Television in Europe in 1992. Part of the problem was undoubtedly our – especially my – limited experience in coordinating a multi-authored volume in an era prior to email and involving scholars from diverse cultures and countries. Part of the problem was also that our initial hope at having the volume included in a series edited by Bob White and Michael Trevor for Sage Publications stranded on reserved reviews of the book proposal, which meant searching anew for a willing publisher. We eventually found a home in the series edited by Manuel Alvarado for the publisher John Libbey.
I remember our collective pleasure at arranging the contract; although Erik had withdrawn as one of the editors, Ole, James, and I were determined to see the project through. By the time of the IAMCR conference in Barcelona in 1988 the contract was arranged and commitments from most authors had been negotiated. Sometime later Ole visited us in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, in order to go through the manuscript in a face-to-face marathon meeting. I remember picking up Ole at the train station in Nijmegen; there he was standing alone on the platform, his distinctive Confucian-style beard and darkly tanned balding head making him very prominent among all other arriving and departing travelers. During that meeting Ole proposed to prepare the final comparative chapter for the book, which both James and I welcomed. The task was formidable, weaving nuggets from the almost two dozen country-based studies of very different substance and quality. Of all the chapters in the book, Ole’s synthesis continues to merit examination for its pan-European analysis.
The book finally was released in 1992 and at the IAMCR conference that year in Sao Paulo, Brazil, we held a small gathering of the handful of contributors who were attending the event, together with Manuel Alvarado and John Libbey, and toasted our collective accomplishment.
During that period, Ole pressed forward in transforming the still Working Group status of the Local Radio & Television initiative, and after the 1992 conference the time seemed suitable to petition for Section status. I don’t recall the dates and strategy in detail, but Ole was instrumental in lobbying for the group and for ensuring successful passage of the vote. It was more than natural that Ole would seek election as the first Section head, which I supported and offered to serve as vice chair.
We must have organized at least two conferences of the new Section together, with Ole taking on the lion’s share of the work involved: soliciting submissions, reviewing abstracts submitted, organizing the accepted papers into thematic sessions, chairing the sessions, and representing the Section at IAMCR Council meetings. Ole had a natural talent for such organizational matters and all ran smoothly and on schedule, largely thanks to him.
This talent merited further challenge, and Ole at some point decided to run for a position within the IAMCR council. This might have been in Glasgow in 1998 or in Leipzig the following year, but Ole stepped down at Section head in order to concentrate on association business at the central organizational level.
I took on the Section head position vacated and Laura Stein agreed to serve as vice chair, and about that time we decided that the Section needed a broader mandate than reflected by the phrase “local radio and television.” It was already evident that many other forms of mediated communication took place within communities of place and those of interest. A new name emerged about the time Ole moved up in the IAMCR organization: the earlier initiative became the Community Communication Section, as it is still called. Ole remained involved in section affairs, chairing sessions and consulting with Laura and myself from time to time.
All was not business, of course, but business provided the venue for laughter and good times. After one full day of IAMCR sessions in Barcelona, for example, Ole invited me to join his entourage in attending an open air concert Santana was giving on the outskirts of the city. At another time he and Per Jauret were in Amsterdam discussing a student exchange program and the two of them took time out for drinks at my apartment.
Still, my main involvement with Ole in subsequent years was in developing a sequel to People’s Voice. We both realized the limitations of the county-by-country approach followed in that volume and of the myriad other forms of mediated communication being engaged at the local level and by communities-of-interest not determined by spatial parameters. Initially Slavko Splichal joined the initiative to edit such a volume and we approached Hampton Press series editor Lee Becker with a proposal. Lee responded positively and we began soliciting contributions. Slavko withdrew because of other commitments, but Ole and I continued on this second collaborative undertaking. By then we each had other obligations; Ole had become increasingly engaged in university administrative duties and positions, and I was focusing on new media and establishing a journal on that topic, New Media & Society.
How it came about exactly is now unclear, but Ole was unable to contribute to the second book project to the same degree as during the earlier collaboration and we discussed whether the arrangement was sufficiently equal to continue as co-editors. Such discussions are not easy, but it is to Ole’s credit that we did collectively examine our respective contributions to the volume and came to a resolution with regard to acknowledgement. We are both mentioned on the title page with slightly different accentuation; more important than that distinction, we shared responsibility for completion of this sequel: Community Media in the Information Age: Perspectives and Prospects, released in 2002 by Hampton Press.
That book was our last collaborative effort and subsequent encounters were mainly limited to moments at IAMCR conferences when our paths might cross. The last such moment was at the Paris conference in 2007, and I remember Ole standing with Robin Mansell on the entryway steps to the UNESCO building which served as the conference venue. Robin and Ole were shaking hands with arriving delegates and I couldn’t help but ask him when my turn came whether the two of them were the welcoming party. “Kind of,” Ole replied, and I felt delighted at the personal touch they had initiated. It was organization with a “human face,” and of all the things I remember about Ole it was such humaneness in his dealings with fellow scholars that I appreciated most in him. In addition, thanks to Ole we have a quality comparative analysis of the early days of local radio and television in Europe; thanks to Ole, there came to be an organizational division in the IAMCR devoted to community media; thanks to Ole, the administration of the IAMCR became more focused and efficient, allowing the rest of us to benefit from such a quality scholarly organization.
We all have much to thank Ole for, and I regret not having said so much to him on the steps of UNESCO when I had the chance. Although that opportunity is long past, let me say it anyway: thanks much, Ole.