Radio free D.C.: news, traffic, weather, whiny bureaucrats.

• Author: Montopoli, Brian
• Position: 10 Miles Square

Every Monday morning for the past 18 months, Mike Causey and Marlis Majerus have sat down in a small studio on the third floor of a nondescript office building in Northwest Washington to broadcast a live show on Federal News Radio. Causey and Majerus's show, "Your Turn," is, in theory at least, a call-in program. But five minutes before show time on this early October morning, it's clear that Causey and Majerus haven't had much practice working the phone lines. There is no sound coming through the pair's headphones, making it impossible for them to hear callers. Despite her feverish efforts, Majerus hasn't been able to figure out how to adjust the knobs and dials in front of her to fix the problem. Eventually, a studio technician comes to her aid before the show" begins. Says Causey: "We don't get many calls."

But that doesn't mean no one's listening. Federal News Radio (available online at federalnewsradio.com) is a three-and a-half-year old venture grandly billed as "the world's first Internet only all-news radio station and Web site covering world and national news with a particular focus on the Federal Government" Federal News Radio's sister station WTOP rebroadcasts some of FNR's segments. But the vast majority of FNR's approximately 50,000-70,000 listening each day through computers are federal workers whose bosses are often tuning into the same show down the hall. As a result, most feds resist the temptation to call in: Sounding off on the air may be good therapy, after all, hut it's probably not the best career move.

So instead, they work out their anger via email. Causey receives more than 50 messages in his inbox each day, most of them in response to whatever topic he's addressed in his daily column, which he discusses on air. Lately, most of the emails he's received have ranged from quiet worry to panic over the White House's plans to outsource many federal jobs--a move which would cost many of FNR's listeners their livelihoods. Over the past three years, the administration has instituted a system that identifies specific federal positions which are candidates for privatization and notifies their holders. "[Government workers] call it the yellow pages rule," says Causey. "If they can find your job in the yellow pages, then your ass is outta here" Roughly 450,000 federal jobs have now been identified as targets for competition from private companies, according to Paul Light, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a...