The Women’s Institute for Freedom of the PressFrieda Werden Receives Media Award
Frieda Werden, a radio producer with a long involvement with women and media activism, is one of the recipients of WIFP’s 2022 Women and Media Award. She will be in Washington, DC, at WIFP’s 50th Anniversary celebration October 23rd where all the Award recipients will be announced. If you do not already know Frieda, you will enjoy reading about this impressive woman.
Frieda Lindfield Werden is Series Producer of the long-running radio series WINGS: Women’s International News Gathering Service. The series is produced in collaboration with women radio producers from around the world, and distributed to community radio stations in multiple countries.
Prior to co-founding WINGS, Frieda had a background in radio production with Longhorn Radio Network and National Public Radio. She also worked in print media and as Associate Curator of the Texas Women’s History Project (1979-81), under curator Ruthe Winegarten; and she collaborated on some of Ruthe’s books, notably Black Texas Women: 150 Years of Trial and Triumph (University of Texas Press.) A slogan she later wrote for WINGS was “Today’s News is Tomorrow’s History – Keep Women’s Actions on the Record!”
Frieda has a lifelong passion for hearing and telling women’s stories from women’s points of view. As a 5-year-old on her first day of Sunday School she spoke out against the story of Adam and Eve. Her first radio series for LRN was 13 episodes about feminist activism released under the mundane title “Women Today.” Also in the 1970s, at the Austin Women’s Center, she joined founding editor Carol Stalcup in creating a tabloid publication called Texan Woman. Among other things, it made fun of the editorial process of Texas Monthly Magazine (where Frieda was then employed).
In 1981, Frieda moved to New York and was hired by NPR docudrama producer Jo Ellyn Rackleff — first as associate producer of an NEH-funded radio series about Willa Cather, and then as Series Producer for 13 docudramas on Latin American fiction writers, also funded by NEH. Frieda moved to Washington DC to manage that project. She herself produced the two programs about women writers in that series – one on Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska, and one on Brazilian Clarice Lispector.
As the Reagan administration got underway, the National Endowment for the Humanities came under the control of extreme right-winger Lynne Cheney, making federal funds inaccessible for anything Frieda wanted to do. She applied for funding to produce a drama by 10th century German canoness Hrotswitha, but even that was considered too feminist.
Meanwhile, Frieda got hired at Current public broadcasting newspaper as editor for radio and emerging technologies. It was there that she discovered Dr. Donna Allen’s Media Report to Women. Donna’s concept of media in which the women covered speak for themselves made a strong impression on Frieda, and contributed to the founding of WINGS.
In 1985, Frieda was offered the job of managing Western Public Radio – a training and production facility in San Francisco. Part of the incentive to move there from Washington DC was the opportunity to produce a project of her choice. On arrival in the Bay Area she connected up with community radio producer Katherine Davenport, who was volunteering for the Women’s Department of community radio KPFA in Berkeley. Katherine had formerly co-produced a program at the New York City Pacifica community radio station WBAI, with Judie Pasternak. Frieda and Judie convened a Women’s Caucus meeting at a conference of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters in DC. Katherine and Judie’s show was titled “51%: The Women’s News” (not to be confused with a later women’s radio show out of Albany titled 51%). They made phone calls to women around the world to get their news stories, and had once asked Frieda to cover a story in DC. That sparked Frieda’s interest in the news genre.
Katherine and Frieda moved in together and started working on creating an international women’s news project. The pilot for WINGS, produced by Katherine Davenport, Augusta del Zotto, and Frieda, was funded with a director’s discretionary grant made by Sandra Rattley, from NPR’s Satellite Program Development Fund. The pilot debuted on the Public Radio Satellite in May of 1986. The idea was to do ongoing follow-up of the international connections women had made during the UN Decade for Women (1975-85). Frieda had attended the first UN Women’s Conference in Mexico City in 1975, but had not had a chance to go to the others, in Denmark and Nairobi.
Initial outreach included sending letters (this was the era before email) to a list of women radio producers who had attended a meeting of radio women at the 3rd World Conference on Women in Nairobi. Genevieve Vaughan, who convened that meeting, would become a funder and supporter of WINGS (among other feminist media projects).
It soon became obvious in many ways that public radio considered a program “only about women” too radical. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which had taken over from the Satellite Program Development Fund, explicitly stated “this is an idea whose time has passed.”
Fortunately, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters offered Frieda a grant to attend the 2nd-ever conference of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (French acronym AMARC), which took place in Vancouver, Canada – just up the road from San Francisco. Katherine and Frieda both attended and made connections with stations and producers that would endure over the decades. After a few more years of trying to market WINGS to public radio stations, WINGS concentrated entirely on supplying programs to community radio stations around the world.
Especially while located in California, WINGS eventually received grants from several foundations. After the earthquake of 1989, Frieda, Katherine, and WINGS re-located to Kansas City. In 1991, Genevieve Vaughan sent Frieda and another woman to the Philippines to attend the Who Calls the Shots? Women in Media and Advertising conference. There, Frieda met for the first time her idol Dr. Donna Allen, who was presenting about the use of Space Bridges (later known as satellite feeds – an early precursor of today’s Zoom events).
The trip to the Philippines was related to Frieda’s consultative role in the founding of a women’s shortwave program known as FIRE (Feminist International Radio Endeavour) – based in Costa Rica, where there was a shortwave station called Radio for Peace International. FIRE was eventually thrown off of that station, and the station was then thrown off of the UN property where it had been located; but FIRE continued for many years, doing many live interviews with women at international conferences, and streaming and archiving audio online, both in English and Spanish. Maria Suarez, whom we hired to head the FIRE project, recently gave a talk about it online [link to come – her talk will be this coming Saturday].
In 1992, Katherine Davenport died of leukemia, in Kansas City. A few months later, Genevieve Vaughan invited Frieda to move back to Austin, Texas, and take up a job with the Foundation for a Compassionate Society. Part of the job included continuing to produce WINGS, as well as participating in the design and execution of a panoply of remarkable national and international feminist events – which yielded excellent content for radio.
A few years after that the Foundation closed, and in 2002 Frieda and her partner Suzette Cullen relocated to Canada. Frieda worked for 12 years as Spoken World Coordinator at the campus radio station of Simon Fraser University, then retired to an island – where she still produces and distributes WINGS today, with the help of contributing producers from around the world.
After the Foundation closed, Frieda continued to follow Genevieve’s events and projects. One of the most recent is a series of Zoom salons that can be found on the website maternalgifteconomymovement.org – some of the presentations in that series have found their way into WINGS programs, as well.
Over the years, the distribution process for WINGS has become simpler and less costly – from mailing cassettes (later CDs) to the stations, WINGS has gone to digital distribution online, largely through the community radio networks of the US, Canada, and Australia. WINGS is also in the process of putting our entire archive of programs online on the website archive.org.
Along with her work with WINGS Frieda has been involved in two international media organization. She eventually became the Women’s Representative from North America, and then Vice President from North America on the AMARC Board. Donna Allen’s pal Mal Johnson persuaded Frieda to come with her to a meeting of the International Association of Women in Radio and Television in India. Later, Frieda would become a radio juror, then a Board member, and finally President of IAWRT. In 2022, she served on the board of the US chapter, and as a member of the international elections committee. Through both the Women’s Network of AMARC and IAWRT, Frieda has been able to connect with United Nations women’s activities, and of course has met new producers for WINGS.
Despite having held various offices, Frieda considers herself more of a listener than a leader. Listening to women and putting together radio shows of their ideas and voices and stories and theories is her primary passion. It has been more than 36 years since the first edition of WINGS went up on the satellite. She hopes to be able to continue the weekly show for a few more years at least, and to be sure that women’s actions get – and stay – on the record.
To be added to the WINGS mailing list, and to find locations for their archives, email wings@wings.org.
