Radio LORA: Work for Free, Work for Freedom

I visited Radio LORA on May 5th, 2026. Radio LORA is located at Schwanthalerstraße in Munich. After entering the building, I found a cozy atmosphere. It had a quite different atmosphere from what I expected of a radio station. There were two small rooms with computers, a recording studio, mixing room, and even a small kitchen. I found maps on the wall showing the level of press freedom around the world, as well as an event poster. When imagining a radio station, I usually thought of a big studio, a lot of radio instruments, and strictly focused workers. Compared to what people commonly imagine a radio station to be, my first impression of LORA was that it was more open, comfortable, and progressive.

History of Radio LORA

In a room, a LORA staff member, Karin Bergs introduced LORA and its history and features. Firstly, there are three types of the media broadcasting in Germany – public broadcasting, private media, and community radio. Radio LORA, which is short for Local Radio, is a private and non-profit organization. That means all the workers there are working as volunteers.

It was established in 1986, inspired by a radio station in Zürich. In 1993, it finally received a FM frequency and started on air for 2 hours per day. However, in 2004, there was a frequency renewal and LORA got the frequency 92.4 FM which was publicly advertised. In 2012, LORA received permission to broadcast digitally via DAB+. In addition, in 2017, there was another frequency renewal so LORA got 2 more hours, but due to complicated scheduling rules, they cannot broadcast digitally during certain time slots. In 2024, LORA received support from Munich Social Department. Since it’s not for broadcasting and many coordinators were not yet fully familiar with LORA, they posted a job advertisement in 2026 and there were 35 candidates for working in LORA!

Giving a Voice to Minorities

The most impressive part of LORA for me was this point. Karin Bergs said that they give a voice to minorities who have no voice in other media. There are various roles of media, but I strongly believe that one of the most important roles is lighting minorities. Since I have worked as a student reporter when I was in my home university, I understand how difficult it is to deal with issues or topics related to minorities. For minorities, media is an effective and powerful way to speak out about their stories. Based on my experience, I have had concerns about reporting on minority issues.

Whenever I published news stories related to minorities, for example such as stories about the labor union at my university, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ communities, there were often negative comments criticizing and mocking them. Actually my colleague published a story about LGBTQ+ issues found a public post on university community openly criticizing both his article and LGBTQ+ people. As a reporter for the university broadcasting station, we discussed whether we should delete that news or not, because even though we never intended our reporting to harm LGBTQ+ people, our news could harm them. But we decided not to delete it because if we do not cover minority issues and give minorities a voice, we can’t say that we are doing our best to cover all the issues and stories in society. To ensure that they are recognized as equal members of society, it’s surely essential to deal with minorities. In that context, I was impressed by LORA’s passion and responsibility as a media organization.

Even though LORA faces some challenges, such as funding and staffing, I believe they continue doing its best as a media organization. From the wall of LORA decorated with symbols representing media freedom, I’m sure they will contribute to the development of the media landscape!