The Sound of Young America host Jesse Thorn commanded a stellar panel at the recent IMA Public Media Conference in Atlanta:

Merlin Mann of 43Folders, Homestar Runner creators Mike and Matt Chapman (aka The Bros. Chaps), and Jeff Olsen, creative director of adultswim.com.

The Sound of Young America

The panelists talked about how to do something on the Internet that people will actually care about, to paraphrase Thorn. Merlin Mann fans might recognize that this was a kind of John the Baptist for a panel that Merlin and John Gruber led at SXSW.

Keith Hopper developed the concept for this session. (I may have contributed the session title “Blow up your Brand” for which I apologize profusely.)

Tod Maffin has the basic details here for CBC and for Radio-Canada.

Notable:

• * 80 job cuts in the newsroom. The actual number of layoffs will be lower after voluntary retirements.
• * Radio One’s The Current, the flagship morning show, will be cut 10%.
• * Radio One regional noon shows cut from 2 hours to one.
• * On Radios One and 2, Outfront, The Point, Inside Track cut, among others. (Some US public radio stations air episodes of Outfront.)
• * Regional “Living” programs canceled on TV
• * Investigative programs Marketplace and Fifth Estate see budget cuts
• * The Border, Being Erica, Little Mosque on the Prairie will have fewer episodes (The Border is getting some airings in the US. Is Mosque? Not sure.)
• * Regional radio cuts aren’t evenly spread. Production centers where the cost per listener is highest get deepest cuts: Sudbury, ON for instance.
• * There was talk of finding synergies between Radios 2 and 3: some sharing of programs? Perhaps the return of the old Saturday run of Radio 3 on Radio 2? The weekend edition of The Signal is cut.
• On the Premiere Chaine, the French regional noon shows will go away, replaced by a national show.
• * Windsor ON’s morning show on the Premiere Chaine will be canceled, replaced by the Toronto morning show.

There is some good news today: Maffin reports Ottawa will continue its expected funding of CBC this year, including the annual supplement of $60 million for programming. The cuts would be worse without this.

Will there be a stink about CBC not getting any bailout money, now that commercial networks Global and CTV have gone crying to the government for money? We’ll see. CBC got hammered for supposedly making the ask, but that was before Global and CTV started begging.

And, after you sell $125 million in assets to make up this year’s deficit, what do you do about next year’s deficit, if there is one? Uh oh.

How to get there: 400 jobs at CBC, more than 330 at Radio-Canada (the French side) and 70 admin positions. Most of the cuts look to come at the network level, with the regions bearing less of the burden (70 job cuts). CBC/Radio-Canada will also sell more real estate and other assets. CBC will announce a voluntary retirement program and leave open positions unfilled, which will reduce the actual number of layoffs; they’ll be announced in May.

Canadians who know, correct me if I’m wrong, but this looks different from the massive cuts of the late 1980′s, which went deep into the regions. After that bloodletting and additional cuts in the 90′s, CBC had slowly rebuilt some of the regional newsgathering/production capability, using supplemental funding from Parliament and other money from cost savings and real estate sales.

It looks as though much of this capacity will stay in place, pending deeper cuts: the supper hour TV newscasts will continue, for instance, and no stations will close. Also relatively unaffected: the CBC Radio One schedule and the regional noon radio talkshows; and the local morning shows, many of which are at or near the top of the ratings.

Again, correct my errors here, but this looks like an effort to cut in such a way that the rebuilding process will be easier once the economy improves. You don’t have to reopen stations you’ve closed down, for instance. It also looks like the way to proceed if one wants to maintain (in some way) the recent increases in local/regional service.

So… what about Radio 3? And, if Radio One emerges somewhat unscathed, does that mean Radio 2 gets a low and tight haircut? Also, the French cuts might be proportional, but Radio-Canada produces more of its own content. Will cuts here be more damaging to the leading position of Radio-Canada in Francophone Canada? Oh, and whither Newsworld? Radio 2′s auxiliary online streams?

All of this will get more clear tomorrow.

Organizational must haves: Chief Innovation Officer, Chief Information Architect, Chief Social Officer and Chief Search Engine Optimizer.

It’s important to set online targets. Innovation doesn’t happen on its own. MPR doesn’t set its pageview targets by comparing itself to others in public media: it compares itself to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which still has much higher monthly traffic.

Their innovation plan: “enough with web pages.” Because the next horizon is mobile, organizations should stop building new static web pages, and instead structure and break out content for microformatting. The structure helps create meaningful search results for users and causes your content to rise higher in search.

This thinking extends to site design. Reszler says about 40% of all traffic to the site comes from search engines, so your next redesign must begin with the article page and NOT with “home” because that will be the landing page for close to half of your users. What navigation and links do you have on the article to encourage 1) deeper exploration and 2) a click to the home page?

Reszler recommends the following internal process: Invite, Innovate and Instruct. Brainstorm with staff: what do we have to do in next 3 months to meet audience needs? Empower staff to act on the good ideas.

Interesting aside: MPR mobile site traffic is <1% of all traffic. It’s a growing component of online service and has shown huge growth in the past year, but not yet at MPR.

Thanks to the following twitter people: @candacejeanne, @jsheppa, @mcranevt, @aschweig, @stacybond, @beyondbroadcast, @juliaschrenkler, @matthewtift

John Palfrey
co-director, Berkman Center
author, Born Digital

It’s time to get in front of this mob and call it a parade

There are 1 billion people with access to the Internet. There’s an access gap but there’s also a participation gap.

It’s not just kids who use these tools in sophisticated ways – there are digital settlers who were born in an earlier era, who understand where the Internet is going.

Digital Natives – children born after 1980, who have an environment where they have access to the network.

• * the extent to which identity is created online as well as offline: the two are converged. There is no difference
• * multi-tasking and switch-tasking, and the impact on attention as a result
• * young people presume that the content they’re interacting with is digital. The idea is to share the content
• * young people are very good at working in teams. But the standard education environment is built around competition. Interestingly enough, once students get into the world of work, they’re expected to collaborate

- there’s an international dimension to this community (Global Voices Online is an example)

Myths That Are True

Young people do, in fact, share too much personal information in networked environments, and they don’t understand the consequences of sharing it with unintended audiences.

Young people do take content without paying for it, and share it with others. They know it’s illegal – they’re sticking it to the man. They’re confused abut their rights when it comes to using and remixing content.

Digital natives dip into news they’re interested in, or content that’s been recommended to them by their friends. They don’t go to libraries to research information – they go to Wikipedia and other sources for information, and a small percentage do additional research to verify what they research.

We’ll see people continue to turn to peers to help them discover important things, as a tool to manage information overload.

Young people can be the creators of information, as well as consumers, and we need to provide them with opportunities to do so.

Takeaways
It’s clear that the audience includes young people, and they don’t consider themselves to be just the audience. We’re all creators and audience, and everything is global, even if it crosses local, regional or national lines.

The power in public, private and other collaborations is enormous. There’s so much going on in the public sector that can connect to public media.

Bigger bets are called for at this time. This is, in fact, how people are interacting wth media. So we need to put more wood behind the arrows. This is much more mainstream than we’ve admitted so far

IMA General Session
Joaquin Alvarado
Founding Director of the Institute for Next Generation Internet at San Francisco State University

Technology doesn’t create communities; communities create technologies to stay connected.

National Public Lightpath
There is a solution to the problems of expanding broadband to more Americans
Universities are connected to next-generation networks – Regional Optical Networks
- so many of our stations are on university campuses, connected or potentially connected to these networks

People are searching for information from YouTube – it’s now the second largest search engine on the Internet.

We need to use the word “networked” rather than “digital.” We’ve had digital for 50 years, but are we ready for the network?

Is everything your doing right now ready to be modularized? Your job is not to figure out how people will use it but to make it possible for people to use it.

Stations: Start talking about 10GBps – and start talking about it right now. You want uncompressed video and a superfast network to collaborate with other stations and producers
Schools must have this kind of connectivity – we don’t have the network effect with schools

National Public Lightpath would connect public media, schools, universities
Stations should work with NPL to write an NTIA grant that connects the station, the local schools, adds vital non-profits, and then work with the city or with private contractors to build the network.

We need to get into the networked environment because others are moving very quickly in this space

It’s clear that audience includes young people, and they don’t consider themselves to be just the audience.

The power in public, private and other collaborations is enormous. There’s so much going on in the public sector that can connect to public media.

Bigger bets are called for at this time. This is, in fact, how people are interacting wth media.

Hal Plotkin
ReelChanges.com/reelchanges.org

crowd-funded documentaries
Maryland Public Television and ReelChanges
http://mpt.org/reelchanges

We need new funding mechanisms for high quality, public media projects. Maryland Public Television has launched it today. MPT has developed spots that air before local productions that encourage viewers to see trailers of new shows in production and to support them to make them possible.

Mark Fuerst: We accept that users will have more control over our content. But we continually say you can only support us in very particular ways.

http://spot.us/ is a similar site that hires reporters to report stories once they’ve been funded by listeners.

Maintaining the Firewall and Making Money
Mike Reszler
Tim Roesler
Bryan Moffitt
Tim Olson

Roesler: this [maintaining the firewall] has been less of an issue than we’ve made it out to be. I’ve become very optimistic about public media.

MPR Finance Channel

stock quotes info – very basic, but has generated about $30,000

The Current – enhanced playlist

ecommerce is built into the application
$1,500 monthly package
Reszler: this is also all about search – the search for an artist

“The Current do Groove Mix” – connected to Blue Cross “do” campaign to get people to exercise more. iTunes playlist of local musicians created for users to buy and download

Tim Olson
KQED’s #1 ad sale is the listen live application. it’s sold by week in flat fee chunks.
there is no value-add inventory on the site. There are packages but nothing is “thrown in”

The content verticals on the site conform to the content priorities of KQED – arts, food, science

KQED is doing some interesting work with sponsors to showcase their message – special sponsor messages, and special advertising sections

LENS on Atlanta
Public Broadcasting Atlanta
Milton Clipper, Wayne Sharp and PBA team

the challenge
- how do we evolve as our audience is involving?
- how do we promote discourse and interconnectedness in out increasingly sprawling metro?
- how do we re-connect with our original democratic process?
- how do we use PBA to reconnect the city?

PBA engaged IBM to create a web site and a concept video to demonstrate the potential of LENS

The Lens on Atlanta (in alpha) site focuses on community discussion, groups based on subject and location, blogs, wikis
Fuzebox built the web site platform
LENS will be packaged as an open source package for other stations to use

LENS is working to engage the community to guide the conversation and act as bloggers – reaching out to existing bloggers, using tools and techniques to manage the tone of the conversation. profanity filter, etc., prominent messaging about the rules of engagement, plus user moderation.

Implementing a content strategy that, at least at first, avoids controversial content. PBA won’t introduce this content, but others may do so, and the site will use tools where necessary

PBA will use its brand to establish an independent platform, partner with diverse organizations who will join in the discussion on the site and provide content and answers, host physical gatherings

Sustainability:
- The question is not how do we justify a new business venture, but how can we justify business as usual when everything around us is changing?
Full business plan in place, looking to different funders and donors

Robert Williams
National Public Media
Introducing Public Media Interactive (PMI)

now, NPM is governed and financed by NPR, WGBH and PBS

PMI is announcing an outsourced operations facility on its web site, announced today

page views per month are commonly used as the main metric for underwriting sales.

Ad servers:
- Google Ad Manager: free. a hosted ad management solution
- Atlas, small cost: operated by Microsoft
- DART for Publishers: hosted solution, owned and operated by DoubleClick, now Google.

PMI Network
New network of unsold banner inventory on station/network web sites
sold in conjunction with NPR and PBS display proposals
65/35 revenue split with stations (stations get 65%)
12 founding stations in network
currently >5 million+ impressions/month
$125,000 booked YTD in first 60 days
small up front effort and no work involved after setup
all creative approved to NPR/PBS standards

NPM provides an Atlas tag to stations, which prioritizes local ads and promotions, then fills in with served ads

Outsourced Operations announcement
pilot program launching this month with 10 stations
Goal: to help stations get selling locally without the hassle of managing an ad server or operations team.

Costs
$500 setup
$85/mo up to two display units in each of three web zones

PMI Ops
small to medium stations
stations with little or no local online sales activities or are looking to ramp up
40,000 – 500,000 monthly pageviews

Bryan Moffett, Director Digital Sponsorship Ops
bmoffett@nationalpublicmedia.com

The new study Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics is released today

What is Public Media 2.0?
Mission: providing content/context for publics to form around shared issues, using new tools and new platforms
Doc Searls – the customer is the new platform
a People-Centric public media

Where is the market failing now?
- investigative reporting
- local news
- public culture, arts
- civic engagement

Two ways to thrive:
- create/curate public media content
- forming partnerships with other organizations

Hybrid projects are beginning to flourish
- professional/amateur
- non-profit/for-profit
- multiplatform

New partners can include policy organizations, cultural organizations, commercial media

What’s needed at the national level
- support for content
- coordination of participatory platforms (should we always depend on YouTube etc)

New roles for stations
- local hubs for public participation
- conveners and collaborators
- aggregators of quality content
- nodes in the national network

The core function of public media 2.0 is to generate publics around issues

Applications
twitter
Ushahidi
Big Art Mob
WhiteHouse.gov
cctvcambridge.org
theworkinggroup.org – built around and extending the PBS “Not in our Town” series on hate crimes

An interesting conversation about partnerships that work and that don’t.

KQED: Tim Olson: blogger network – Bay Area Bites, Quest, Arts – successful model of paid bloggers
Milton Clipper, Public Broadcasting Atlanta – public media should be threaded throughout all aspects of the community
Rob Paterson: Social capital is one of the most important factors in a community; if we can show that we are making an impact in improving/healing the community’s social capital, we’ll have a tangible way of making a difference.
Bruce Theriault: we need to make sure that we can justify continued federal investment, as others claim the mantle of public media
Jake Shapiro: There are organizations that want to work with public media but are growing impatient while public media works out its own issues.

An Overview of Online Activity
Lee Rainie’s slides are available here.

2000
46% of adults use internet
5% broadband at home
50% own cell phone
0% connect to internet on wifi
<10% use cloud
slow stationary connections built around computer

2008
74% adults use internet
58% broadband at home
82% own cell phone
62% connect wirelessly
59% cellphone data
42% pc data card
>53% use cloud
fast, mobile connections, outside servers and storage

IDC says there is 10 fold growth in digital info created, captured, and replicated worldwide from 2006 to 2011

The internet has now surpassed newspapers as the source for national and international news

Forrester: to advertisers, the value of people online is one-tenth the value of people who read magazines and newspapers

News Consumer Typology
traditionalists 46%
integrators 24%
net newsers 14%
disengaged 16% (this cohort is growing faster among the young)

young people rely on their social networks more to keep them informed

The venues of intersecting with information and people multiply and the availability of information expands to all hours of the day and all places we are. – Nielsen Co

People’s vigilance for information changes in two directions:
attention is truncated (continuous partial attention)
attention gets elongated (the age of expert amateurs- Terry Fisher)

The vibrance and immersive qualities of media environments makes them more compelling places to hang out and interact
Metaverse Roadmap Project
virtual worlds
mirror worlds (virtual representations of things that exist in real life- Google Earth)
augmented reality (additional rich data around the virtual representations)
life-logging (Gordon Bell, justin.tv)

The relevance of information improves — search and customization get better as we create the “daily me”

The voice of information democratizes and the visibility of new creators is enhanced. Identity and privacy change.
This is a new 5th Estate, and so far, it’s more Left than Right. Statistically, there are more Republicans online than Democrats, many because of the socioeconomic profile.

Voting on and ventilating about information proliferates as tagging, rating, and commenting occurs.

Social networks become more vivid and meaningful. “Networked Individualism” – Barry Wellman

64% of online teens have created their own profile on a social network site; 35% of adults have done so. Fastest growing cohort on Facebook is women 55+

20% of online adults say they remix content they find online into their own creations

Homo Connectus
Different species with a different sense of…
1) expectation about access to information
2) place and distance
3) presence with others (conversations never end)
4) social networking possibilities
5) capacity to build community
6) possibilities of play
7) time use
personal efficacy

The two-step flow of information has been transformed to at least a four step flow

Challenges of attention
- leverage your traditional platforms
- offer alerts, updates, feeds
- be available in relevant places
- find pathways through users’ social networks
Challenges of acquisition
- be findable in a long-tail world
- pursue new distribution methods
- offer link love for selfish reasons
- participate in the conversation about your work
Challenges of assessment
- honor the ethics of your kind of storytelling
- be transparent, link-friendly, and archive everything
- aggregate the best related work
- when you make mistakes, seek forgiveness
Challenges of assistance
- offer opportunities for feedback
- opportunities for remixing
- opportunities for community building
- be open to the wisdom of crowds

But these are difficult times and NPR has acted prudently to protect its financial position, going forward. The NPR roster of programs has sprawled in the past five years, and some recent investments haven’t paid off in terms of station carriage and listening. This doesn’t mean that the programs were bad, or that the staff lacked talent. But any wise steward of resources will, as quickly and painlessly as possible, end or retool the experiments that don’t work. And in an economic downturn, it makes double sense to focus on the core services.

Day to Day and News and Notes will end early next year. More than 60 people will leave NPR, including a few of the most well-known voices of NPR programs over the decades, a couple of whom I’ve heard, in one capacity or another, since I began listening to public radio at the age of 13.

Local stations around the country have also cut positions and there will be many more such announcements over the coming year. Each job loss represents a talented human being who is being turned loose into a falling economy. This is all quite painful, but let’s hope that the pain we experience now is a downpayment on the future growth and success of NPR and public media.

Public media listeners and viewers have more content available to them than ever before. Hundreds of stations streaming 24/7, and a wealth of talk, newsmagazine and music shows that far exceeds the capacity of local station schedules, and time available to listen.

The Mediavore is designed to weed through the content each day and highlight/aggregate the really great stuff that listeners and viewers shouldn’t miss. It’s launching with a heavy tilt toward news/talk, but we expect to balance it over the next few months with more music and cultural content. We’re also looking to beef up our exploration of content produced by local stations, and we will add much more video content. Our current output is 20-25 posts a week – I expect this to double over the next few months.

Keeping in mind how much work is ahead, we’re still happy to be where we are at launch, and we hope fans of public radio and television will find it useful.

The Mediavore is a service of Louisville Public Media.

MEDIA ADVISORY

November 10, 2008

For immediate release                                                                                                                                     Contact: Lorena Duarte

Twin Cities Public Television Mourns the Loss of
Former Vice President and General Manager Cindy Browne

ST. PAUL—Twin Cities Public Television (tpt) is mourning the loss of Cindy Browne, former tpt Vice President and Station Manager.

Ms. Browne’s tenure at tpt was only one part of a very successful career in public media, one in which she championed the leadership of women, inclusion and community engagement.

Ms. Browne earned her bachelor’s degree in history and an MBA in finance, both from the University of Minnesota.

She began her career at tpt in April of 1973 as receptionist, part-time camera operator, and air control operator. She worked her way up to the position of Vice President and General Manager, a position she held until January 1998, when she was recruited by new Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) President Robert Coonrod.

At CPB she served as both Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer.  She led events intended to educate and motivate the leaders of public television (PTV) stations around the country about the coming digital transition and instigated a series of process improvement efforts in grant-making and publishing to upgrade many of CPB’s internal processes. She also significantly upgraded CPB’s strategic planning and budgeting processes.

In 2000, Ms. Browne took the position of President at Leader Evolution LLC, a consulting practice focused on supporting public broadcasters and other nonprofits. Her clients included Houston PBS and Houston Public Radio, Minnesota Public Radio, Public Radio Capital, Michigan Public Media, Wisconsin Public Television, as well as tpt.

In her capacity, she presented at numerous national public broadcasting conferences including one in 2003 for Partnership Continuum Incorporated. The speech, reprinted by Current Magazine, was titled “Women’s Leadership to the Future of Public Television.”  In it, Ms. Browne was quoted as saying, “Women leaders have an important strategic role to play in the future success of PTV.  The beauty of this situation is that we, and only we, have the power to turn this situation around.”

In August of 2005, Ms. Browne was appointed Executive Director at Iowa Public Radio (IPR).  At the time, IPR was a new structure created to consolidate the public radio stations at Iowa State University, the University of Northern Iowa and the University of Iowa into a statewide network.

She was forced to step down on June 30, 2008 due to the progression of her illness.  At that time, Art Neu of Carroll, chair of the IPR board of directors said, “We are grateful to Cindy Browne for her efforts. In a relatively short time, she brought these stations together to create a unified organization … It’s been a period of tremendous change and tremendous success.”

Ms. Browne will be remembered by her colleagues at tpt as a gracious, powerful and committed leader.  Executive Vice President Bill Hanley says, “Cindy saw leadership not as the top of the mountain, but as one point in a circle.  She accepted both victories and defeats with equal grace and humility.”  And President and CEO Jim Pagliarini says, “The public broadcasting family has lost a beloved friend and an important leader.  Cindy had a quiet passion and commitment for both the cause and the people of public television and radio. One that, all who knew her will remember and cherish.”

Memorial Service to be held 4-8 p.m., Friday, November 14, at Holcomb Henry Boom Funeral Home, 515 Hwy 96, Shoreview. In lieu of flowers, memorials preferred to Twin Cities Public Television, 172 East 4th St., St. Paul, MN 55101 or Iowa Public Radio, 1200 Grand Ave., Des Moines, IA 50309

ABOUT tpt
The mission of Twin Cities Public Television is to “harness the power of television and other media for the public good.” A not for profit educational, civic, and cultural resource, tpt presents original television productions for national and state broadcast. Productions include the Emmy Award winning Benjamin Franklin? the Emmy winning The Forgetting: A Portrait of Alzheimer’s? the Emmy winning Suze Orman: The Laws of Money, The Lessons of Life? the DragonflyTV science series for kids? the popular public affairs program Almanac, and the innovative Minnesota Channel, which magnifies the impact of Minnesota’s finest public service organizations using the power of television. One of the most watched PBS affiliates in the nation, tpt is based in St. Paul and operates seven digital stations in addition to analog channels tpt 2 and tpt 17.

Whatever it is, we’re experimenting with it at WFPL.org. This is the first of two posts about it.

The experiment is a first stab at trying to address three problems: first, public radio web sites are really quite static. Yes, most of us publish all our news there, and WFPL reporters are churning out a lot of stuff every day. Yes, we switch out the boxes and pretty pictures and we update the text.

But compare any public radio web site to a blog like Talking Points Memo. Ignore the point of view, and look at the site. Two thirds of the page is the basic grouping of content call-outs, ads, RSS feeds, etc. It’s the near-static stuff that’s common on most public radio web sites. But what’s the heart of the site? The blog that’s squeezed in the left hand side. New stuff appears there all day, sometimes way into the night. Sure the content is compelling to partisans, but the pace of content itself drives audience. Technorati’s regular State of the Blogosphere reports make that clear: generally, the more fresh content, the bigger the audience.

Second problem: there’s a lot of stuff squirreled away on our internal pages, some of it good, some of it really good. There should be a better way to call out that great stuff on the one page most everyone arrives on (and leaves) than an auto-generated list. Sometimes it’s worth putting the graphic designer to work on a tile box. But often, it’s a piece of content that’s interesting or important right now, not yesterday, not tomorrow.

Third problem: Our radio stations succeed because they have a distinct voice, personality, point of view (I’m not talking politics). Our web sites are like a stainless steel room. All the “furniture” from the radio station is there, but it’s been scrubbed clean of any scuff marks, photos, curtains – all the personality and voice that is the connective tissue of public radio.

Now, users of public radio web sites connect with them for different reasons than they listen to the radio. Their “handling” of the web and radio are different. The architecture of the web is different than the architecture of radio, and we build each differently. But do they have to be that different?

Blogs help because, by their very nature, blogs are more personal (even when authored by many), off-the-cuff, they have a distinct voice. So our ancillary blogs help us create a kind of stationality on the web.

But why does that sense of life and personality exist in a separate place from the main web site? Why couldn’t we find a way to combine them? Community tools do this very nicely, but we think we can approach it from the content side, too. Naturally, I’m not talking about turning our journalism into blogging. But our journalism co-exists with our stationality on the radio; at WFPL, we think it can co-exist on the web.

We’re experimenting with the WFPL Content Concierge as a toe in the water to begin addressing these problems. On Monday, I’ll write about what we’re trying.

Sullivan writes that blogging is jazz to established journalism’s classical music. One doesn’t replace the other, but each requires a different way of performing, a different way of listening and interacting. Each complement and enhance appreciation of the other.

In fact, for all the intense gloom surrounding the news-paper and magazine business, this is actually a golden era for journalism. The blogosphere has added a whole new idiom to the act of writing and has introduced an entirely new generation to nonfiction. It has enabled writers to write out loud in ways never seen or understood before. And yet it has exposed a hunger and need for traditional writing that, in the age of television’s dominance, had seemed on the wane.

Sullivan says that the platform defines the style and interaction.

Reading at a monitor, at a desk, or on an iPhone provokes a querulous, impatient, distracted attitude, a demand for instant, usable information, that is simply not conducive to opening a novel or a favorite magazine on the couch. Reading on paper evokes a more relaxed and meditative response. The message dictates the medium. And each medium has its place—as long as one is not mistaken for the other.

This drags us to a bigger question, one that goes beyond the rather petty distraction of bloggers vs journalism:

Why are we publishing our public radio journalism on a computer screen in almost the exact same way as we publish it to an electrical signal transmitted through the air?

Television requires a different kind of journalism than does radio. So what is the appropriate, legitimate and journalistically sound way for public radio and TV to translate its reporting to the web?

By copying and pasting reporter’s scripts to the site? Probably not. This is a big challenge. What are we dreaming up? What experiments are we conducting? Are we being too prissy and unimaginative about the platform?

I’ll call this my Mark Fuerst post. This graph shows pageviews for our Election 2008 page over the last 30 days, ending yesterday. As with most stations, unfortunately, our Election 2008 page has not had much traction, despite lots of on-air promotion (at least once per hour). Mark pointed this out at IMA’s Public Media Conference in February.

What happened last Friday (the first spike) and this Wednesday (the point farthest right) to cause the spikes? Well, certainly the debates, but our big change was shifting from heavy generic promotion of the election site to heavy specific promotion of what we had to offer.

Generic Promotion: the latest election news, issues in-depth, an interactive map to explore races around the country.

Specific Promotion: watch the video of last night’s debate, fact-check the candidate’s statements, read NPR’s political blogs.

Notice, also, the halo effect on Monday and Tuesday – we had increasing pageviews both days after our typical weekend dropoff. These numbers still aren’t great when you consider that our election coverage is so front-and-center on-air, and it’s something listeners reference quite often.

This isn’t rocket science, of course. We avoid generic promos because they’re never as effective as the specific promos. But this is a nice visual illustration of the just how effective they can be, and a reminder that we have to be as diligent about web promotion as we are about every other kind of promotion we do. It means more time crafting and updating promo copy, but ultimately, it means more people find what we’ve worked so hard to create for them.

When I saw news about it yesterday morning, my first thought was Wow, now I can easily listen to NOAA Weather Radio from Little Rock AR. Perhaps not a great reason to spend $5.99 for it. What makes it worth considering is Wunderground’s partnership with RadioTime to offer easy, searchable access to many tens of thousands of Internet radio streams, utilizing RadioTime’s database to display station logos, as well as what’s currently on the air. The app also grabs your GPS location, and serves up a listing of nearby radio stations that stream

I don’t know exactly what the new Public Radio Tuner app from APM will offer (beyond the basic info we’ve heard), but the ability to get a listing of nearby station streams via GPS, and “what’s on” info are two nifty elements that could add some great new functionality to the APM app. RadioTime’s database isn’t always correct, but a closer partnership between station and developer (certainly the case with the APM product) could give stations more control over updating this data. I’m willing to bet APM is planning to include features like this in updated versions.

This whole mobile thing is exciting – it greatly expands our listening options when we’re out and about with our devices (iPhone and others) and when you combine it with the aux jack in your car, it’s an even bigger deal: now it’s not just your iPod’s library playing through the car stereo, now it’s KCRW while you’re driving to work in Louisville KY, WNYC while you’re driving in Chicago because WNYC has The Takeaway, or Chicago Public Radio while you’re walking to work in mid-town Manhattan because they don’t carry The Takeaway.

This is simply the next step in a transformation that’s really nothing new. The Internet doesn’t make the act of broadcasting to listeners obsolete; it probably won’t make the use of AM and FM transmission obsolete for a long time; but it does mean that I’m no longer a prisoner to what one, two or even three public radio stations are offering on the legacy radio in my area. If my local station’s Morning Edition sounds like crap, and I already know what the weather will be today, why wouldn’t I listen to Maureen on KPBS’s Morning Edition on my commute? I have more than a hundred different Morning Editions streaming to me at any given moment in the morning.

Izzi Smith was saying this way back in 2004 and 2005, holding up his Treo at conferences. Remember?

Here’s a sample from our in-studio “Live Lunch” program on WFPK Radio Louisville. The setup is simple – a couple of cameras, with audio piped in from the control room mix. (And, yes, by the way, we’re using two Flip cameras for this.) My personal preference isn’t for a lot of these “slow fade” transitions, but we’re having a good time trying some of this stuff out, and trying to provide a more meaningful experience for the vast majority of our audience not in the studio for the live performance.

We can’t offer long-form video of these concerts without incurring additional rights expenses, but several artists have granted permission for video streaming of one or more of their songs.

Over at Classical 90.5, we’ve tried to take advantage of occasional guest interviews, offering listeners the chance to be viewers.

We’re lucky to have a team of smart people at Louisville Public Media, who understand why this stuff is important, and are willing to learn how to do it.

Marcella Hazan and Faith Willinger are leading lights of Italian cooking, but I think declaring that Mario Batali, Joe Bastianich and his mother Lidia, have wielded enormous influence over America’s understanding and appreciation of Italian food in the past twenty years, is at least defensible.

As business partners, Mario and Joe have opened good restaurants like the two Mozza’s in Los Angeles and Esca, excellent restaurants like Babbo, and controversial restaurants like Del Posto. Thousands have enjoyed Mario’s restaurants, but millions have watched him on Food Network. The “Molto Mario” series began awkwardly, as most Food Network series did back then, but it matured into one of the most enjoyable programs on the channel… Mario holding forth, explaining, evangelizing, cajoling his in-studio friends and celebrities (and his at-home audience) to use fresh ingredients, shop in-season, and enjoy the simple beauty of Italian food.

Mario and Emeril made Food Network – they were on the set almost from day one; perhaps they knew that eventually Food would tire of them. Now, most of Food’s shows feature emaciated, bird-boned presenters who must summon all their energy to open the bag of mesclun mix for their “semi-homemade” creations. Batali still has a place on the network – “Iron Chef America” – and his level of invention and execution make it possible to endure the ridiculous spectacle.

If you’ve ever watched “Molto Mario” you can see instantly that Batali is made for public TV. He combines education, entertainment, good humor and pure joie de vivre in roughly the same measure as Julia Child did in the days of “The French Chef.” (I’ve just refreshed my memory of Julia with 36 episodes from the WGBH DVD’s.) “Molto” wasn’t about food porn, it was about the passion of this big guy who loves to cook with friends hanging around, and wants to share what he knows. Like Julia, Mario’s show was less about flawless performance, than the joy of cooking, come what may.

Batali did another series for Food Network around 2003, called “Ciao America.” I think it’s disappeared now, nearly forgotten, but it shouldn’t be. Mario invited viewers to discover and appreciate the varieties of Italian food in America, with reverence and passion, without gimmickry. The first episode was about pizza and, to this day, I think it’s one of the finest public TV food programs never produced for public TV – not a mere food show, but a documentary. The only thing that approaches it is select episodes of Alton Brown’s “Feasting on Asphalt” series.

Mario has a new second home now, on public TV, and I hope he likes it enough to stay for awhile. Like most of you, I’ve seen only the first episode of “Spain… On the Road Again.” But so far, I’m charmed by it. Batali and Mark Bittman have goofed off on public TV many times before, on Bittman’s own series. Gwyneth Paltrow obviously cares about food, loves Spain, speaks the language; she aint deadweight. And neither is Claudia Bassols, who serves as the honest-to-God link to Spain, as well as lighting up the screen.

That’s a lot of star power for public TV. (There’s a risk that it might actually draw viewers.) Sometimes, it feels a bit too much, like those 70′s movies that featured busloads of Hollywood stars. But the producers have sensibly paired them off for separate adventures, allowing them to reunite at the end of the show. I think there are times where I want to see Bittman and Batali carrying on by themselves because the show would have more focus, but food/travel shows always walk a thin line when it comes to maintaining a focus. This series holds up well, with the first episode serving a nice mix of sights and sounds, along with visits to food producers and two bona fide cooking segments.

The production values preserve the aesthetic of public TV, but still manage to set a higher standard than that to which we’ve been accustomed. Public television has rightly resisted the food porn trend, but, in my opinion, it’s neglected the potential of more lifestyle-oriented shows to create a loyal cadre of viewers. Ina Garten plays gracious host on “Barefoot Contessa” but she makes good food, too, and shows how to do it. The educational mission is still there, with jacked-up entertainment value. Same with the new Batali series.

If Batali decides he wants to stick with us for awhile longer, we could do far worse than re-creating his “Molto Mario” vehicle, or sending him off another quest to discover American traditions. He has a lot to offer our viewers, and that can only be good for us.

Interestingly, NPR makes special note of NPR staff who are part of the community, an attempt to foster communication between staff and listeners.

NPR’s entry into social media is low key, but it looks to be a nice implementation and there’s room to grow prudently.

Ramsey delivered Saturday’s keynote at the PRPD Conference last Saturday – the audio is now available. Ramsey is the President of Mercury Media Research, and he delivered a compelling call to stations to create new content, experiment, and focus on serving the audience. It was one of the highlights of the conference, and if you missed Ramsey’s talk, it’s well worth a listen. In fact, I think it was one of the best moments of the conference.

PRPD will be posting audio from all the sessions in the coming days, with general sessions and keynotes available to everyone. (disclosure: I’m on the PRPD board)

UPDATE: Thanks to Dan Misener for the link to the mp3 download. It’s the third link I’ve posted – let’s hope it sticks!

Wilson is the Executive Editor of USA Today. Before that, he was the editor of USAToday.com, and he played a key role in USA Today’s much-talked-about web site relaunch last year.

He replaces Maria Thomas, who left to join Etsy earlier this year, ultimately becoming COO.

• * Transcript of Newshour interview with Kinsey Wilson (2005)

It’s a good deal, and users seem to think so, too. In an email to participants last week, Product Manager Demain Perry said that Mobile pageviews grew 20% from July to August, reaching 1 million pageviews for the month. NPR’s latest deal is with AT&T and it puts them front and center on the internet homepage of several of the company’s phones.

Stations – it takes a little work to get the pieces in place for NPR Mobile, but the payoff is another avenue of service to listeners.

I feel a little awkward because APM announced this last Thursday and I’m blogging about it a week later. But I was busy at the programming conference. That’s why this is a blog and not the news, right?

The app has a lot going for it: it will feature audio streams from any public radio station that submits its stream (today is the deadline to be included in the first release, with weekly updates to deliver new streams), and stations get the nice extra of having their logo displayed.

You can get a sneak preview by checking out the MPR Tuner (shown here), released a few days ago. It features Minnesota Public Radio’s three streams; simple and effective. (Search for it on iTunes)

NPR Mobile’s service offers lots functionality to participating stations and end-users – access to updated newscasts, text stories, a link to donate – but it doesn’t include access to station live audio streams.

Streaming audio (and video) is becoming more important than ever in the mobile space, thanks to the explosion in mobile internet use, driven largely by the iPhone but also by other phones and PDA’s. And for the iPhone, apps and services like Public Radio Tuner and NPR Mobile are vital because they enable the iPhone to access streaming content.

If you’re a listener, check to see if your station is partnering with NPR Mobile and watch for the new Public Radio Tuner on the iTunes Store. If you’re a public radio station, you should be partnering with NPR Mobile and with APM.

CPB and the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR) have announced the Public Radio Makers Quest 2.0 to disburse up to $400,000 in grants (each ranging from $20k-$40k) to producers who are “reshaping programming to fit new media.”

Ingrid Lakey, former PD at WETA in Washington and Executive Producer of Justice Talking, is the talent manager for the project.

This is exciting news and is another example of a growing commitment at CPB to “throwing open the doors” as Theriault said in his address this morning.

Promotions
Michigan Radio, Ann Arbor
runner-ups: Oregon Public Broadcasting and WUNC, Chapel Hill

Classical Programming
Classical Minnesota Public Radio (for the third year in a row)
runner-up: WSHU, Fairfield CT

Jazz Programming
KXJZ, Sacramento
runner-up: WNYC, New York

Triple A Programming
KUT, Austin

News/Information Programming
KNAU, Flagstaff AZ
runner-up: North Country Public Radio

On-Air Fundraising
KCRW, Santa Monica AND WGLT, Bloomington/Normal IL
runner-up: WSHU, Fairfield CT

PRPD had a record number of entrants this year, and you’ll be able to hear all the entries on the PRPD web site in the coming days. (I also published this to the PRPD blog)

Our best practices are no longer enough. The one thing that will take us into the new era is to throw open the doors. The real reinvention of public radio will be accomplished as new people with new ideas change what public media is and can be.

Opening to diverse communities: our audience is 82% white and they look like most of us. Not becoming more diverse damages our service to our communities.

Chicago Public Radio’s Vocalo is all about inviting new people in to share their content. WBEZ wants to become necessary to their community. WNYC and PRI’s The Takeaway sounds different because it’s trying to attract a new audience. PRI is using a new metric to measure success – the share of college-degreed listeners, particularly among blacks and hispanics.

In Los Angeles we’re trying to create a new 24/7 English service for Latinos. We have tremendous opportunity to serve this audience. It’s a huge challenge but if we’re successful we can serve new audiences.

WILL’s Youth Media Project is reorienting the station toward the community.

Public radio needs to throw open the doors to young people. Youth Radio is an amazing multimedia center in Berkeley, CA. This isn’t new media to them – it’s just media.

Technology has caught up with our aspirations to serve many audiences with content when they want it.

The broadcast-only world is gone, and we’re now in the world of converged media.

CPB is funding a new project with AIR. AIR will find a dozen producers to create small projects that show us the potential of converged media.

What happens if we don’t open the doors: we will no longer find the support we need and we will be replaced by others who understand the potential of converged media.

We must risk change. We cannot satisfy ourselves with past successes. We must throw open the doors.

At Louisville Public Media, we’ve seen an increase in the number of emails (and tweets) asking about this – no surprise, given the popularity of the new iPhone. Last week, we picked a specific app and recommended it on our station sites. I created a brief tutorial for those who need it.

• Louisville’s NPR News Station
• 91.9 Radio Louisville
• Classical 90.5

We investigated acquiring the capacity to offer a separate iPhone stream, but after consulting with WFMU, we decided the enterprise-level solution was beyond our budget – the ROI (number of people we could serve with the stream) isn’t enough right now to justify the investment.

So, we’re recommending Nullriver’s Tuner Internet Radio, which sells for $5.99 on the App Store. I chose the app because of my personal experience with it, and the large number of positive reviews from users.

Stations: are you seeing a pickup in listener questions about iPhone streams? What are you doing about it?

Some early responses:

Robin Lubbock, WBUR (twitter): “Yes, some interest in that.”

Ann VerWiebe, WKSU/Folk Alley (comments): “We’ve been recommending Nullriver as well, for both WKSU and Folk Alley. We actually developed our own Folk Alley app – but we’re still in the Apple developer approval queue. I don’t know that people have been begging for it, but especially for Folk Alley (which is only available as streaming media), it would be nice to have.”

Josh Andrews, Chicago Public Radio (comments): “WBEZ is on the verge of recommending the Nullriver option as well. We are waiting for an estimate on building out our own tuner app through the iPhone sdk, but I expect we’ll find that cost prohibitive. (Does Ann have a $ figure she’s willing to share?) I also tried to contact Nullriver about getting pubradio stations listed in their directory. No reply.”  

Thanks!

Broadcasters face an expected 9% loss in revenue next year, and after February 17th, 2009, every confused consumer will represent lost viewing, lower ratings, and potentially lower ad revenue. Broadcasters could fill some of this gap with revenue from new interactive services that take advantage of the opportunities afforded by digital transmission, but Mermigas writes that this isn’t happening. Many stations and group owners have no clear strategy for how to use the spectrum or how to make money from it.

What strategies are public TV stations pursuing? Public TV’s older demographic is most likely to be confused by the switch, and more likely to be cut off from viewing when analog goes dark. Beyond that difficult problem is how public broadcasters plan to achieve the revenues necessary to support 2-5 channels. And Mermigas’ post implies a bigger question: what new services can you develop that will utilize the capabilities of digital broadcasting to further your mission, while building a stronger financial future for public TV?

Uh, so how will these streams be different from the 40+ streams offered by CBC through Galaxie, available on cable and satellite systems? I suspect they will be quite similar, except for the range of genres offered on each CBC-branded Internet stream. And I bet we won’t hear the guy with the deep, buttery smooth voice saying, “Galaxie, Canada’s Continuous Music Network.” Tod Maffin says these will be music-only streams, with no announcers.

These streams probably won’t please the many listeners who are livid about the changes at Radio 2 – a couple dozen have left thoughtful comments on my blog, and thousands more have contacted the CBC, apparently. But they offer an additional range of options for Internet listeners, especially if you’re looking to meet your personal Canadian content quota.

For my part, I was sorry to see Eric Friesen and Shelley Solmes depart the Radio 2 schedule; they were the two hosts I listened to most frequently. Tom Allen is still hosting mornings, though, and mezzo-soprano Julie Nesrallah is the new voice of the classical midday block.

Starting Tuesday, I’m going to be listening for a few things – how Radio 2 introduces different musical styles and genres in and among the dayparts, how Nesrallah is as a host, whether the CBC’s often relentless host-coaching saps her of all personality, and whether Radio 2 can create a definitive “sound” for a service that embraces so many styles. CBC’s French network, Espace Musique, has been reasonably successful at this, and its mix is even more eclectic.

We’ll know more on Tuesday… and beyond, as they say.

The reorganization is similar to ones undertaken by a number of stations in recent years, merging the management of radio, television and web, looking for a more logical org chart that recognizes convergence. Proffitt notes that APTI isn’t creating a Content manager position, as a number of stations have done; APTI is following the other most common strategy: separating content from production.

He adds that the number of managers is reduced from 8 to 4. That has to be a good thing. Congratulations to APTI on their change and good luck on the work ahead.

That’s my opinion and you’re certainly entitled to yours. Take a look: The design is finely balanced – lots of white space, smart use of Helvetica, boxes with dark borders that add heft to the page without making it overbearing.

Content is mainly grouped by genres, and audio content lives next to video. Too many joint-licensees haven’t taken advantage of this kind of integration. Frontline is news, just like Marketplace is.

KQED has created a video playlist function that looks great; audio plays from an embeddable flash player.

I think what I like most about the design is that they’ve found a way to display and curate a lot of content in a way that doesn’t crowd you out. The old KQED site was great for its time, but a weakness may have been the jam-packed appearance.

This new look is smooth, and behind the pretty face is thoughtful organization.

That’s what I think. What do you think of it? (You san see what KQED’s audience is saying here.) What other site re-launches have you seen that are noteworthy? Leave a comment, if you like.

UPDATE: I neglected to include the link to comments about KQED’s new web site. It’s now there.

Steve Jobs has asked me to write a posting every other day or so to let everyone know what’s happening with MobileMe, and I’m working directly with the MobileMe group to ensure that we keep you really up to date.

Unidentified Person then dumps some unwelcome information on the (small) number of MobileMe users who have had trouble accessing their email for the past two weeks: it might be another week; and we may have lost 10% of your mail forever.

This bad news affects only 1% of the MobileMe “audience,” we’re told. But bad news should come from a real person. It’s best if it comes from the person who ordered the change, or is the chief person responsible for fixing the problem. Maybe NPR shouldn’t let the New York Times be the first to report a program cancellation, if it can be avoided, and you should never let someone else deliver your bad news to your audience.

The end of BPP is a real learning opportunity for all of us, not just NPR.

Has everything changed? Probably not. Social media in public radio didn’t begin 2005 – it started almost a century ago with WHA and WSUI, when people first started gathering to share the headphones around the crystal set. Even without the Internet, every show built a social network. These were social networks without a “brain” perhaps – thousands or millions of small networks of two or three fans of a show, and none of the nodes had a way to discover others and see the big picture. Every program cancellation disrupted the lives of individual listeners and ended the social networks they built around favorite shows.

What has changed is the scale and vitality of these social networks, now that the Internet has collapsed time and space and provided the “brain.” The social networks around our shows are bigger than ever, connected better than ever, and our interaction with those networks has to scale up.

What does this mean when we cancel a show? Let’s face it: over time, we will cancel many, and perhaps the majority, of shows that we create.

It might mean that those of us in executive positions will need to speak more personally and directly than before. Our program directors will need to more readily attach their names to decisions, and CEO’s may have to type out a blog post, too. We might need to consider helping an online community transition to a new home – something Rob Paterson did so graciously this week, when he helped set up a new homebase for BPP on Ning. (That’s the other piece of this, of course: the network no longer has to go away; it might continue to exist independently of the program that gave birth to it.)

Are there other ways in which we’ll need to engage with our audience more authentically when we make changes? What have you done at your station? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

It’s exceptionally good, written with the tone you’d expect from someone who is a visionary, and yet approves of ending what some saw as a visionary experiment.

We’ve/I’ve learned — or relearned — a lot in the process.  Sustaining a new program of this financial magnitude requires attracting users from each of the platforms we can access.  In this case, radio carriage was inadequate and web/podcasting usage was hampered — here’s the relearning part — by having an appointment program in a medium that doesn’t excel in that kind of usage.  Web radio is growing very rapidly (much faster than FM did, for example), but it’s almost all to music and, increasingly, to attention-tracking music.

Perhaps the future of news on the web is in the same user-programmed direction.  I’d like to see good minds like those of the BPP staff think about how we can do good journalism delivered via the web using techniques beyond just throwing up another portal-type web site and expecting people to come to it.  Our new open API release is a great tool for that.

The realities of how people use the web, how web audiences grow through search, and technologies for tracking attention and tailoring content delivery to match how people spend their attention all need to be considered.  Portals still have a place, just as their close cousins radio transmitters do, but we can no longer put all our eggs in that basket.

The cost of this experiment was considerable, on the scale of a traditional radio program, and that created great pressure to achieve the traditional results – primarily, significant station carriage to justify the expense. That’s not precisely the result of “an old way of thinking.” It might be that it’s the result of executing on a scale that ensured that BPP’s web/social media success couldn’t sustain it.

As Haarsager notes, he and others at NPR have learned a lot from this experiment, and there are still plenty of questions to answer about how a news program might derive its life from the web.

NPR has also learned that, while a major expenditure of cash couldn’t make this program successful on the radio, the expenditure of almost nothing garnered a social network of thousands of fans – a big success (how much did NPR spend on Facebook and twitter? basically nothing).

How might they approach such an experiment again? Perhaps with a budget and expectations more carefully tailored to ensure success on the web. That’s one way to do it, and there are others.

This subject has all kinds of layers… from a large successful network built on risks, that some think won’t take risks anymore, to a board that mainly represents traditional radio stations (where the money and audience is right now), to the Innovator’s Dilemma, to demographics, to NPR’s great success with podcasting, etc. Simple it ain’t.

Frankly, there’s more here than any of us can easily synthesize. That’s where a lot of voices is a good thing. Here’s Haarsager; here’s Paterson; here’s Proffitt… and this is just scratching the surface. If you’re interested in the subject, read as many perspectives as you can.

Simple rules never get at the complexity of this stuff, but I’ve come up with a simple rule anyway, and you can take it or leave it as you see fit:

Those of us inside public media, as well as those of us who listen to it, need to encourage and expect NPR to innovate and embrace the future, even when it scares a few among us. We also need to expect that NPR will invest as carefully and thoughtfully as it can in these ventures, and create the conditions that will lead to success.

If you’re afflicted with the disease which has no name – the periodic, intense craving for documentary films – then you’ll love SnagFilms. I just discovered this site and after spending some time checking it out, I’m impressed.

SnagFilms currently features about 250 films, from the relatively unknown (to me) to major releases like SuperSize Me. The docs are streamed to you, with minimal advertising at the open; you have the standard full-screen viewing option. The site has a widget you can snag (get it?) to showcase favorite docs on your blog or web site, and here’s an interesting twist: apparently, the filmmakers have chosen specific charities and causes they care about, and the site gives you the option to support those charities on each film’s page.

SnagFilms has some big AOL names behind it, including Ted Leonsis (who has financed a couple of documentaries himself) and Steve Case. From the press materials:

In sessions convened by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Paley Center for New Media, the SnagFilms team listened to foundations that fund films, filmmakers and others. A common theme stated by all of the participants was that the bottlenecks in traditional distribution were threatening the economics of the medium and diminishing its impact. Alberto Ibargüen, Knight’s President and CEO, other foundation leaders, and Paley Center President and CEO Pat Mitchell will provide input to SnagFilms to make it an effective platform for the greatest possible number of filmmakers, and increase its community and charitable connections. Knight Foundation is also providing a multi-year grant to assist these activities.

So far, it looks pretty good. The small amount of advertising I’ve encountered isn’t intrusive, the stream looks great on my computer and my TV, and browsing through the list, I found all kinds of docs that piqued my interest.

It’s quality content, and it’s another example of how the term “public media” is expanding to include new entrants.

PBS is a content partner; I count 27 PBS episodes there, including a few NOVA episodes and the Medici series from a few years back. I’d love to see even more PBS content appear here. Frontline and Frontline World are probably the two shows on the top of my wishlist. In particular, Frontline’s absence is a big gaping hole that’s inexplicable (well, not inexplicable, but you know what I mean).

PBS has made a few moves like this – each of them smart. I’m watching less over-the-air public TV than ever, despite having four multicast channels on my TV, but I’m watching more PBS than in years, on other platforms that I use a lot – from Netflix (“Napoleon” was this week’s home viewing) to iTunesU and now SnagFilms.

I don’t actively avoid OTA public TV, but my viewing habits have trended away from traditional TV viewing, and some of my viewing interests are less mainstream (docs, speeches) and therefore not served by any single traditional channel. By partnering with other platforms that fit the mission, PBS ensures that, even as I wander off, its content is still placed where I can discover and enjoy it.

• * Unprecedented flexibility for anyone, from a blogger in Pittsburgh to KQED in San Francisco, to generate highly specific content searches of the NPR archive (going back to 1995) and port the results to a webpage or an application.
• * A number of stations also have their archives inside the system, too. So queries can also include (or not) results from those stations.
• * If more stations are allowed to contribute their content metadata to the API, the search query delivers better and more complete results, encompassing more of the output of the entire public radio system.
• * NPR content (and our content, when we join the API) begins appearing all over the web, and yes, this doesn’t diminish the value of our work or our web sites; it INCREASES its value as more people encounter and discover it, and click on the links to read more.

Those points are big but that last point is BIG.

The average public radio listener visits her public radio station web site twice a MONTH.

Yes, we’re all working to add value to our sites and increase visits; we must continue to do this. (We’re busting ass on this at Louisville Public Media’s three stations and we’re seeing some great results – details to be revealed in a few months.) But when that content appears on other platforms, that’s when we’ll have a much bigger audience for what we do.

Back to that average public radio listener: she may visit publicstation.org only twice a month, but she reads a set a 10 favorite blogs twice a day. If even one of those blogs uses the API to “curate” a selection of your stories, or installs a widget like this one, guess how much you’ve increased the potential of listeners discovering your content? And clicking over to your web site to read more?

There’s more to be said about other benefits of this… but this is what makes me very excited about what NPR’s Digital team has done… what NPR management has approved.

A technical fog can descend over stories like this, but it shouldn’t. This is a BIG deal.

What will be the impact of this new reality on public media. I’ve been offering some thoughts, hoping they’ll serve as conversation starters.

Now, more than ever, it’s time to engage the community.

I don’t recommend holding off on that cool community engagement concept until your organization is down to its last dollar. But economic difficulties shouldn’t be a signal to lay low until times get better. These times can provide opportunities for you to harness your resources to address key issues that matter most to your audience. Doing so may convince the people who matter in your community that you’re committed to meeting urgent social needs; that enhances your position as a significant community institution, and reminds them that your continued financial health is a core community concern.

Here are a few examples I’m aware of. If you know of others, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Reaching out to families: Iowa Public Television

Dan Wardell is the face of Iowa Public Television‘s outreach to kids. On TV, you’ll catch him here and there in the kids schedule. But if you see him in real life, you realize just how much of a phenomenon he is. Every year, kids (and parents) swarm around him during his appearances at the Iowa State Fair. His shows and story readings are standing room only. This year, Dan went on tour all over Iowa, and you can check out his blog to see the results.

During this year’s horrific flooding, Dan Wardell’s “Reading Road Trip” traveled to libraries in flood affected areas like Iowa City and Burlington. He drew record crowds – families who needed a brief respite from the ordeal.

Now, you can look at this as a heartwarming episode. (“Maybe we’ll do that again sometime, if we can get a grant”). But I’d be very surprised if IPTV’s leadership let it go at that. In recent years, they’ve been a network on a mission to build a sustainable future; I bet this is a defining moment.

Solving Community Problems: KETC

I’ve given several shout outs to KETC‘s initiative, Facing the Mortgage Crisis. I’m highly impressed with the active role the station is taking to help find solutions to a huge problem. Here, an aspect of the downturn itself is an opportunity for 9 St Louis to show it’s an invaluable community partner.

Facing the Mortgage Crisis isn’t a segment on the weekly magazine show; it’s not a one hour documentary, shot in true-to-life HD. This is a “get in there and get your hands dirty” effort to help the community.

The station is partnering with local agencies like United Way to channel information to people who’ve lost their homes, or who are facing foreclosure. There are live on-air call-ins, and live on-air community discussions. Check out the blog. It’s not promotional, it’s about getting information to people who need it. And this initiative doesn’t end after a day, a week or a month. It’s a long term commitment to St. Louis.

Imagining Energy Independence on PEI: Robert Paterson

This isn’t strictly a public media example, but I offer it because it’s an interesting approach to the macro-crisis, and it might give you some ideas.

Prince Edward Island depends on oil and gas, like we all do. But with an average household income in the province of $35,000, people are really suffering as prices rise. Robert Paterson (who lives on PEI) and others are asking: if cheap oil will never return, if the joyride is really over, can PEI have a future? They think it can, and they’re thinking about how they can create it, from existing but underutilized alternative energy sources to promoting a resurgence of agrarian culture and local food.

(photo by Raceytay)

Paterson starts with the core concept that the answers to our problems are already out there, in the community; the job, then, is to mobilize the community so people will put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Yes, a concept such as this is bigger than any one public radio or TV station could tackle. But not if public media reaches out to community partners, as IPTV has done in working with teachers and libraries; as KETC has done in working with community agencies.

All of this is big stuff, but it’s tied directly to our long-term sustainability. The community will support us if it listens to us and watches us, and if it sees that we’re a trusted partner committed to addressing the needs of the community.

What do you think? Are you undertaking a similar community initiative? If you are or you have, what have you learned from it? Take a moment to leave a comment.

• Part 1: Virtualizing the Workplace
• Part 2: Social Media for Ourselves

10am UPDATE: It’s now live. Here’s Daniel Jacobson’s post.

This is a pretty big deal… a signal of openness from NPR, a willingness to let developers have access to NPR’s content, and the beginning of what could be some really cool stuff.

What is an API? Here’s a definition only a developer could love. Here’s my somewhat mangled definition: API is an Application Programming Interface. It’s a set of tools developers can use to access parts of one web site and integrate it with another site or application. Examples? Those applications you add to your Facebook page, those cool applications that plot everything from crime data to photos on Google Maps.

NPR promises a gallery to showcase widgets when the API launches; the blog includes a link to Reverbiage, which plots NPR stories on a world map. That’s a widget I’d love to display on one of WFPL‘s News pages. There’s also a nice iPhone app from Axiom Stack. Probably the best thing about an API is that developers anywhere with good ideas can build applications that can organize and present NPR’s content in all kinds of interesting ways.

An API was one of the least sexy recommendations of the Digital Distribution Consortium – remember that? The group was hard at work two years ago at this time, trying to find ways to present a more coherent way to present public radio online.

Some of the DDC recommendations were fought over, some ignored. But, hey, NPR is about to give us, and developers everywhere, the opportunity to create new tools that add value to NPR’s (and our own) content.

How will you adapt? I’m posting some thoughts of my own on the impact of this new reality on public media, hoping they’ll serve as conversation starters, if your organization is getting squeezed.

Social media: If it’s good for our audience, it can be good for us, too.

Every time I talk to my boss about going to a conference, his eyes glaze over. It’s hard for him to listen and simultaneously fathom the havoc I’m about to wreak on the budget.

Some of it can’t be helped. Some meetings must be in person – the networking opportunities are to good, the shear effect of a collection of brains in one place too important to neglect. But, are we using all those cool web tools out there to maximum effect? Probably not. They won’t replace the vitality of an in-person event, but they fill a big gap for lots of other kinds of interaction. We should harness those tools.

Wikis

They’re almost old-fashioned compared to all the shiny stuff out there, but they’re super effective for collaborations. We just completed work on a grant proposal, in which we partnered with another public media organization. With the exception of two 15 minute phone calls, the entire 3 weeks of work transpired on a wiki. No flyins, no tedious emailing of documents to each other, with the resulting tangle of comments and textual additions and subtractions. It’s all on the wiki; everybody can read it; everybody can comment on it; everybody can change it. Sometimes old-fashioned is just fine by me.

Webconferencing

OK, please don’t let your last experience with webconferencing turn you into a sworn enemy of the technology. Yes, I was on that call, too. The one where the moderator got disconnected for 5 minutes; the web presentation locked up; the Skype call sounded like it was coming from South Ossetia; the PD from Greater Tri-Cities Public Radio put the call on hold and treated everyone to 4 minutes of “Afternoon Classicale.”

There are significant technical hurdles to overcome and the organizer of a web conference spends almost as much time thinking about the technical pieces as the presentation. But it’s like riding a bicycle – eventually, you stop falling off and it becomes pleasurable. I’ve taken part in some IMA, PRPD and other webconferences that have come off with few or no technical glitches. These won’t be a replacement for the annual conference, but organizations like PRPD are making an effort to leverage webconferences more frequently to transmit knowledge around the system and encourage idea sharing. This is a great idea, no matter the state of the economy. For every two people who get to go to a conference, there are probably 10 others who could benefit but have to stay home. (disclosure: I’m on the PRPD board)

Skype/Video Conferencing

There’s probably no easier software to use if you want to use internet phone or (God help us) video chat. Skype’s newest iterations include a much tighter integration of video, and while you can add some other gizmos and make it a big group, multiple location roundtable, Skype is all you need if you want to check in with a reporter at a distant bureau, or other telecommuting staffers. It takes some getting used to. I’ll never forget taking part in a video chat at a station where I worked; the staff at the satellite outpost turned the cam away from them because they didn’t want to be seen. On my side, all of us addressed an empty chair.

Chat, with or without video

UPDATE: Josh Andrews had some good thoughts in the comments, so let me break off a piece of the chat idea from Skype. Skype functions well as a chat application, but I think most of us use one or more of the Big Four: Yahoo Messenger, Windows/MSN Messenger, AIM or GoogleTalk.

These chat services are excellent even if you’re all working in the same building. As Josh notes, email is not well suited for quick questions, etc. If you’re too busy to track down the individual in person, and sometimes we are, chat can get the job done. To make it work, everyone should decide on a single platform, or everyone can download an application that handles multiple platforms (Adium is one of several) and open all accounts at once. Put everyone’s preferred chat screenname on the internal contact list.

DIY Social Networks

I’ve mentioned these before, but they deserve another mention. I got invited to join the Mortgage Crisis project that 9 St. Louis is undertaking. It’s built on the Ning platform, and it’s a joy to use. From profiles to forums, to mini-social network clusters, everyone working on the project, whether in St Louis, Charlottetown PEI, or Louisville or DC, can follow the development of the project from minute to minute, debate and discuss ideas, share clippings, even view and critique edits of video segments.

This is the same platform that WAMU uses to engage its listeners. KETC has put it to use internally to make their collaboration more efficient and meaningful.

Are you using tools like these to bridge the gap? As costs of travel rise, are you thinking more seriously about these tools? Do they work for you? Or not? If you have anything to add, please share in the comments.

• Part 1: Virtualizing the Workplace
• Part 3: Engaging the Community

I’ve come to know Jody in my time on the PRPD board. What I appreciate most about her is that she’s always focused on goals and the strategies to get there.

Jody is one of the best program directors in the system, and she’ll be an appreciated and integral part of the leadership team in Austin. (Can you imagine Jody Evans and Hawk Mendenhall in one workplace? Boggles the mind.)

So, congratulations to Stewart Vanderwilt and Hawk Mendenhall: you’re building a great team.

So, how will you adapt? This week, I’m posting thoughts on a couple of the many ways this new economic reality might have an impact on public media.

Your star reporter says, “Look, it’s cost prohibitive for me to drive to the station every day. Why do I have to commute to this building every day when I can do my job with a microphone and a laptop?”

We’re going to be squeezed hard in the next couple years. Our infrastructure costs will rise significantly, and it’s likely our membership revenue will remain flat or drop somewhat.

Making big cuts in the services we provide would kill the goose that lays the golden egg. But we are going to have to cut somewhere.

Costs that have been considered mandatory are going to come into sharp focus: how much are we paying for office space, cubicles, heating and cooling… all based on an assumption that everybody needs to be in the building for 8 hours a day, sitting at an expensive desk, using expensive electricity?

If you can’t give your star reporter, or any of your employees, a raise next year or the year after, what are you prepared to do to keep them? Are you willing to consider letting your reporters work from home one or two days a week? They’re still going to drive to cover the news on the station dime, of course, but a 20% or a 40% reduction in commuting costs could be the equivalent of a nice salary increase with $5 a gallon gas. And after you spend a little (very little) cash to equip them to work virtually, your infrastructure expenditures at HQ may fall.

Other staff in various departments may also be able to work from home for a day or two a week. Internet access and other tools could keep them connected to the home office.

What about employees who do have to report to headquarters every day: your on-air staff, among others? They may have some justification in asking for a raise to cover their higher commuting costs.

Can you virtualize the entire radio or TV station? Of course not. But must everyone be gathered in the same physical space from 9am-5pm each day? No.

In most sectors employing knowledge workers, including public media, concepts like flex-time, and performance standards based on accomplishment are going to become more important than occupying a cubicle for 40 hours a week. Other public media organizations that understand and act on this before you do will have something new and compelling to attract your employees.

What do you think? Would you implement workplace changes like these in order to control costs, or reduce employee commuting costs? Would they have a positive impact, or not? What ideas is your organization considering to control rising infrastructure costs? A “green” initiative, perhaps? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

• Part 2: Social Media for Ourselves
• Part 3: Engaging the Community

What we do know is this: even if oil and gas prices don’t go higher than they are right now, we’ve just barely started to feel the ripple effects of current prices in our other costs of doing business.

This means the smartest organizations are approaching the next year conservatively: at American Public Media, Jon McTaggart has told staff: “we are assuming that the current weakness in the economy will be significant and sustained.”

Regardless of which economic forecast or guru you believe, it’s fair to conclude that, things aren’t going to be like they used to be for awhile.

So, how will you adapt? This week, I’m posting thoughts on a couple of the many ways this new economic reality might have an impact on public media.

They’re starting points for a discussion we should be having, not definitive statements on the topic at hand.  I hope you’ll read them, but more important, I hope you’ll comment and add your intelligence to this discussion.

• Thursday Part 1: Virtualizing the Workplace
  
• Friday Part 2: Social Media for Ourselves
• Monday Part 3: Engaging the Community
  

Great to see this kind of information sharing!

Inside NPR.org is one of the collected blogs in my public media “master feed,” which aggregates many public media blogs (I’m always looking to add to it.) The rss feed is here.

I attended BB in 06 and 07 but couldn’t make it because of schedule conflicts this year. If you found yourself in a similar situation, then check out the very complete report here.

I’ve just started digging into this, but it looks like some of the deepest discussions came in the afternoon during the Mapping the Money panel, which included Ernest Wilson, Walter Annenberg Chair in Communication and dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California… and board member of the CPB. He chided public media for not keeping up with the pace of change. “If you don’t get this right pretty soon, the quality of democracy will decline and stagnate, and it will be our fault.” Strong stuff, leading to robust discussion.

I’ve always thought this conference was particularly provocative and invigorating; the other “public media” conferences belong exclusively to the wealthiest branch of public media, the radio and television stations that serve a well-educated and largely passive audience (in the case of television, a mostly diapered audience).

I’m happily a part of that elite public media segment and I like those other conferences (I’m a PRPD board member and we put on a pretty good conference ourselves), but as someone who is supposed to be making decisions about the future of public media, it doesn’t hurt to be reminded that public media is much bigger than Public Radio and Public Television; that there are smart ways that we can all work together, if we’re willing to experiment thoughtfully; and that we bear the special burden of preserving democracy in a country where it’s under attack on many fronts.

Rob Paterson mentioned his plan to use Ning for a project in the comments, and now he’s posted in great detail on how he and KETC, and a larger community of public media folks (myself included) are using Ning to track an important initiative that KETC is undertaking to address the sub-prime mortgage crisis. This project is one to watch.

So, you have everyone at KETC, you have Rob, you have other partners, and you have a small group of public media “advisors” around the country – how do you keep everyone on the same page? Rob’s screenshots shows the power of Ning’s platform – you can see how they’re making use of internal blogs, asking questions and fomenting discussion in the forums, embedding clips of content as it’s created.

This is exciting stuff. You can do it with Basecamp and other tools, but Ning adds a social wrapper the project management that’s going on here.

I’m not a paid Ning spokesperson, nor do I wish to be, but I’m enthusiastic about the potential uses for this tool.