In the summer of 2000, Allison submitted his proposal to the Schumann Foundation Center for Media and Democracy, an organization headed by journalist Bill Moyers. The foundation bought into the idea, granting "a couple of hundred thousand dollars" starting in early 2001.

To build his vision, Allison turned to Joshua Barlow, a Washington Web designer who entered the online world in earnest in the late '90s through a stint at NPR.org. His work on the online component of NPR's "Lost and Found Sound" radio series earned him a Webby Award in 2000.

Barlow not only became Transom.org's Web architect, but also functioned as an occasional columnist, a sometime content editor and photographer. The project's staff eventually grew to six, managing by consensus in an off-the-cuff fashion that only an intimate group can muster.

Our goal is to enable "citizen storytelling," Barlow said. "Giving people the opportunity to document using the Internet, [thereby] democratizing the media and helping to return radio to a time where you could find surprises and not hear radio that is templated or that subscribes to specific guidelines."

New Voices Make the Circle Grow

Transom.org, the site's "About" page notes, takes its name from the "small hinged window above a door" through which "unsolicited manuscripts were submitted 'over the transom.'"

Using this principle, Transom encourages work that "breaks from the established style and habits" of contemporary public radio, according to Barlow.

A bare-bones Transom.org launched in the last days of February 2001. Its features include a "Tools" section where would-be producers can search "how-tos" on basic sound recording and editing techniques, creation of streaming MP3s, obtaining affordable gear and other needs. There is a "Talk" board where users can exchange ideas, comment on audio pieces featured on the site and obtain guidance from the user community on issues like storyline development. The "Guest" section offers up interviews with established professionals -- such as Emmy Award-winning experimental documentarian Alan Berliner, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Studs Terkel and journalist Brooke Gladstone. An interview with Ira Glass of public radio's "This American Life" will be posted this week.

The big surprises are in Transom's "Show" area, where completed pieces can be heard and sometimes seen. Some are polished and intriguing, like Phyllis Fletcher's "Sweet Phil From Sugar Hill," which has also been heard on public radio. An ex-computer programmer starting her professional life anew as a radio-producer apprentice, Fletcher's 29-minute saga pieces together the life of a father she hardly knew. She travels the country collecting anecdotes and recollections from some of Sweet Phil's 14 children and 13 wives, then intertwines them with excerpts from the letters he sent her from prison.

In the must see and hear category is Jason Rayles's flash-audio work "The Fair," taped "using the cheapest digital video camera" he could find. Its three segments -- "Intro," "Day" and "Night" -- chronicle the fair in Brockton, Mass., with recorded sounds, still images and video footage strung together with voice-over narration. The piece relates the hidden pressures of competing in a prettiest-baby contest, the popularity (or not) of assorted carnival diversions and a demolition derby. Here the most dramatic moment is a pig race -- four small, very round porcines scurrying around a track chasing an Oreo cookie.

Then there is Julia DeBruicker's "For the Blood is Life," profiling an Appalachian family's small-scale goat meat operation. The nine-minute piece explores one family member's sideline as a minister and his views on man's "God-given dominance over animals," marrying both themes with a look at Appalachia's "resurrection" from its former identity as just a place for timber harvesting and coal mining. The audio piece even documents the butchering of a goat -- a crunchy sound as the knife separates skin from flesh.

"We don't train journalists, it's more [about] storytellers," Barlow said. "The mission is to create those moments when you're totally absorbed by something new, something strange you never thought of before."