How could Martha Bayne’s story “The Other Alternatives” in your “Chicago 101” issue’s alternative-media section miss mentioning This Is Hell, Chicago’s best and most popular alternative news source on the radio? I had never even heard of Fire on the Prairie until I saw it mentioned in Bayne’s summary of alternative media. But why not mention Fire on the Prairie? After all, it is on once a month for 30 minutes, while This Is Hell is only on for four hours every Saturday morning! Last week alone, host Chuck Mertz had one of the members of the Committee of Organizations With Intervenor Status at the Arar Inquiry in Ottawa, a British whistle-blower who leaked that the Bush administration was bugging UN Security Council members in the run-up to the war in Iraq, the only journalist to report from within the Iraqi resistance, a writer from London’s Guardian on the Sudan, and a Nobel Prize-winning economist!
