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Public MediaShift
Localore Winners Gear Up to Transform Public Media
The following post is from Jessica Clark, who is the media strategist for the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR), which produced the Localore competition. From Fargo to Austin, and Boston to the Bay Area, 10 public stations across the country are now poised to ramp up their innovation capacity. They'll be incubating projects led by winners of the Localore...
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Public MediaShift
Public Radio Stations Make Space for Innovation at PRPC
What does innovation feel like? According to newly minted MacArthur genius Jad Abumrad, it's a bit like being chased by a tiger: visceral and gut-churning. Abumrad, the co-host of WNYC's ground-breaking show Radiolab, advised the audience at last week's Public Radio Programming Conference (PRPC) to seek out this life-or-death sensation. Innovation isn't always obvious, he explained in his keynote address,...
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Public MediaShift
FCC Report on Media Offers Strong Diagnosis, Weak Prescriptions
A consensus has begun to emerge around the Federal Communications Commission report, "The Information Needs of Communities," released Thursday: The diagnosis is sound, but the remedies are lacking. The 465-page report (see full report, embedded below) is the result of 600-plus interviews, hearings and reams of research conducted over 18 months. It represents the most ambitious attempt yet to come...
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Public MediaShift
Defunding Public Media Would Stifle Digital Innovation
Political analysts are dismissing last Thursday's House vote forbidding public radio stations to spend federal dollars on content (HR 1076) as little more than red meat for the Republican base. But even if not a single dollar ends up being stripped from public broadcasting appropriations, the current battle threatens to strangle innovation in a sector that was just gaining new...
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Social Media
Oversharing, Overstimulated and Setting Boundaries at SXSW
AUSTIN, TX -- By Day 3 of the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, I find that the future's so bright, it kind of gives me a migraine. Inside the Austin Convention Center, where most of the conference was staged, pillars are baroquely barnacled with multiple generations of posters, flyers, and business cards -- many of which sport cryptic QR...
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Public MediaShift
IMA + SXSW = Major Discussion on Future of Public Media
Public media makers found a whole new crew to hang with at this year's Integrated Media Association (IMA) Conference on March 10 and 11. Fueling excitement was a new collaboration: The IMA preceded and then flowed into the interactive track of the SXSW festival on the 12th. Attendees at a Knight Foundation-supported array of SXSWi panels on news innovation and...
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Public MediaShift
Brazilian Public Media Faces Tough Digital Transition
Belém, BRAZIL -- At the mouth of the Amazon river, vendors at the Ver-o-Peso market display the region's fruits, fish and crafts on splintered tables and rusting carts. They hail prospective buyers who pass by their closely packed stalls. Just a block over, behind the security gate of the Estação das Docas, a collection of renovated waterfront warehouses, eco-tourists stroll...
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Public MediaShift
How Should Public Media Respond to Efforts to Defund It?
"Here is what I still don't get," wrote NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen in response to my November 18 article, "how can public media develop a strategy or simply a coherent response to the culture war in which it is entangled if it cannot admit to itself or reason publicly with the fact that only one side in the culture war wants to destroy it... and the other one doesn't? What is public media's culture war strategy? Not to have one?"
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Public MediaShift
Special Series: Public Media 2.0
The Public Media 2.0 series on MediaShift is sponsored by American University's Center for Social Media (CSM) through a grant from the Ford Foundation. Learn more about CSM's research on emerging public media trends and standards at futureofpublicmedia.net. About this Series How are public media makers and outlets evolving in the digital, participatory age? Stories in this week's special...
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Public MediaShift
5 Emerging Trends That Give Hope for Public Media 2.0
Public media is facing the same pressures as commercial media when it comes to digital: How can they transition to a new age of social media, collaboration and audience interaction? From today until Thanksgiving, MediaShift will have a special in-depth report on Public Media 2.0, with analysis, case studies, a 5Across video roundtable and coverage of this weekend's national PubCamp in Washington, DC.
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Public MediaShift
A Guide to Rising Public Media Networks in the U.S.
While it's taken public broadcasters awhile to catch up to the possibilities and dynamics of social and mobile media platforms, over the past year on MediaShift we have been documenting a flurry of innovation that reveals new possibilities for how the sector might share content, do business, and engage publics. Here's a guide to several types of rising public media...
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Public MediaShift
Pop and Politics Blog Becomes Converged Radio Project
These days it's not so unusual for a public radio program to boast a companion blog. But few shows begin online and move to broadcast.Pop and Politics is the exception. Farai Chideya -- a high-profile public affairs reporter, novelist, and the former host of NPR's late and lamented African-American current events program "News & Notes" -- began the Pop and...
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Public MediaShift
5 Needs and 5 Tools for Measuring Media Impact
This spring, National Public Radio launched Go Figure, a new blog authored by members of its Audience Insight and Research Group. In an April 1 post, blogger Vince Lampone wrote, "Nearly all listeners have been moved to take action by NPR at some point in their lives. For instance, two in three have done further research into a topic, most have visited a website, and nearly 25% have become involved with a local or national political issue as a result of listening."
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Public MediaShift
Live-Blogging the FCC Workshop: New Platforms, Strategies for Public Media
This live-blog post is a continuation of the first post covering the FCC's Future of Media Workshop on public media. Panel Discussion III: New Platforms, Approaches and Structures Maxie Jackson III, President and CEO, National Federation of Community Broadcasters Says when he thinks of the future, he wants to stress "independence and impact," in the transition from public broadcasting to...
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Public MediaShift
Live-Blogging FCC Workshop: Public Media in the Digital Era
How should public and noncommercial media evolve in the digital age? Hopefully we'll find out shortly, as I report live from today's FCC's Future of Media Workshop. A who's who of execs, funders and researchers are lined up to speak, and given that this isn't the FCC's usual beat, everyone's curious to see how the day will turn out. You...
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Public MediaShift
Better Coordination Needed to Map Local Media Ecologies
Back in 2008, I co-organized a conference called Beyond Broadcast. That year's theme was "mapping public media," and was designed to both call out the rising importance of maps as a platform for sharing digital media, and to "map" the fragmented universe of public service media projects. The maps I found at the time underscored the siloed nature of news...
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Public MediaShift
Is There a Master Metric for Evaluating Public Media?
Over the past few months, we've been presenting MediaShift readers with a picture of a more dynamic, engaged, public media future. But how are Public Media 2.0 projects measuring their success in informing and engaging publics? Is it even possible to create a master metric? What are the differences and similarities in evaluating different kinds of projects?
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Public MediaShift
Public Broadcasters Hustle to Fill Infrastructure Gap
In a recent presentation at WOSU in Columbus, Ohio, John Proffitt, who blogs about public media, painted a gloomy picture. In slide after slide, the stats mounted. New gadgets, new social media habits, new channels for distribution and consumption all added up to one conclusion: public TV stations are rapidly losing both value and relevance. In addition to that, urgent...
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PoliticalShift
Best of Twitter: FTC Workshop Discusses Future of Journalism
For two days this week, some of journalism's most high profile executives and experts descended upon Washington, DC, for "How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?" a workshop hosted by the FTC. One exchange of note came between Rupert Murdoch and Arianna Huffington, who spoke separately but did a good job of representing two divergent points of view. Murdoch kicked...
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Public MediaShift
FTC Should Consider Policy Reform to Support Public Media 2.0
It's been a busy season for prognosticators who examine the intersection of public policy and media. Today will be particularly hectic for them, as journalists, bloggers, public broadcasters and policy wonks pack into a session at the Federal Trade Commission to ponder, yet again, "How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?" (Submit your own thoughts via Twitter here). Two weeks...
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Public MediaShift
PubCamp Examines New Models, Philosophy for Public Media
"Public Broadcasting has a future and its all about YOU," tweeted Jonathan Coffman at the close of this weekend's bustling Public Media Camp. Coffman, the product manager for PBS Engage, was a key organizer of the event, along with Andy Carvin, a senior strategist at NPR's Social Media Desk, and Joe and Peter Corbett, two brothers who run iStrategy...
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Public MediaShift
Eight Public Media 2.0 Projects That Are Doing it Right
It's official: "Public Media 2.0" has graduated from theory into practice. "We believe that a successful broadband policy and implementation requires Public Media 2.0," said Ernest Wilson, the new chair of the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, at Friday's unveiling of the Knight Commission's new report, Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age. Echoing the report's...
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