There are a lot of free resources, ranging from widgets to audio and video reports for the web, and for use on-air, graphics, special purpose RSS feeds, etc.

It’s all good stuff, but one big thing seems to be missing: a true sense of collaboration.

Together, public media’s reporting on the economy is exceptional. There’s The Newshour, NPR News and its Planet Money brand, The World, and Marketplace… and that doesn’t even get into the fine reporting from other specialty shows and a range of local stations. In the collaboration, I have a number of widgets available for my station web site, each of which displays reports from the provider, with logo lovingly attached.

If I want to add stories from Marketplace, The World, The Newshour, and NPR, I must install separate RSS feeds and widgets – one for each service. The result: a widget-infested, RSS-ey goo.

Apparently, the collaboration here is limited to the page on which all of this stuff is hosted.

Now, this collaboration implies that public media collectively has excellent economic reporting. If this is true, has it occurred to anyone to create a widget that:

• aggregates it into a single feed or widget so that it’s more usable for our audience
• makes it possible for us to have all the valuable content in one place so our web pages look more well organized
• mimics the same seamless experience our listeners have on-air, where programs from many providers live together in a way that makes sense to listeners and to us.

Actually, I think it has occurred to some and has been rejected because everyone wants only their logo on a widget. Perhaps I’m being presumptuous, but I think I’m not far off the mark. If it is true, the most charitable response is that this is short-sighted and gives up an important opportunity to offer our audience the depth and quality of what our national organizations are producing daily, in aggregate.

Click on the pic for a bigger version.

Well, I don’t feel like complaining; I feel like Piping. I built my own widget for WFPL in Yahoo Pipes. It’s an extremely simple pipe, importing specific RSS feeds from NPR News, The World, The Newshour, Marketplace, The Takeaway and the PRX blog EconomyBeat. I’ve also added PRX’s economy feed of select content from local stations around the country to throw a bit of a wild card into the mix.

The Pipes feed exports as a straight RSS, and as a javascript widget, among other options. I’m using the RSS feed on the right sidebar of The Mediavore. I’m using a javascript widget on WFPL’s Economy page. The widget isn’t perfect: I’m still thinking about that “Public Media on the Economy” title; and I now have a Yahoo Pipes logo on my web page, but it’s thankfully small, leaving the focus where it should be – on the content.

I’ve been watching the feed for the past week and I like the results a lot, although I’m open to suggestions and tweaks. If you want to use this aggregated feed for your site, go ahead. If you want to create your own feed, Pipes is very easy to use and is configurable in all kinds of ways.

But without getting strident, let me stress again that the point of this Economy project is collaboration. We can do better than we’re doing.

1. The new self-sorting security lines at airports.
Louisville and about 50 other airports currently have them, allowing passengers to choose Expert, Casual or Family security lanes. Security has always been a relatively painless process at SDF, but getting through the Expert line in about 90 seconds this morning made me almost giddy.

2. Art:21
If I was a billionaire and someone showed me an episode of PBS’s “Art in the 21st Century,” I would immediately give PBS a billion dollars. We’ve been watching old episodes from Netflix and I’m continually amazed by how important this series is now, and will be in the future, after great artists like Richard Serra and Sally Mann, and controversial artists like Matthew Barney are no longer with us. The series itself has a core, a vision, an aesthetic that doesn’t get in the way of the artist’s work; it’s a joy to watch, and I’m so glad the old episodes are available. It also has the longest funding credits of any public television series in history. Which is why if I was a billionaire, I’d give a billion dollars to PBS… plus another billion for Art:21.

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.

Well, Hulu works pretty well. The streaming quality is excellent (I have 20 MBps at home, but I’ve tried it on slower connections with good results); the library is eclectic and deep – current series, classic TV. Commercials interruptions are so minor as to be trivial – generally one 15-30 second ad per break.

One of the main reasons why I cancelled cable TV last month was Hulu’s library of TV. Now, there are more reasons for you to say goodbye to cable, too: The Daily Show and the Colbert Report are joining the Hulu roster; so are NOVA, Scientific American Frontiers, Carrier and Wired Science from PBS. (I haven’t bid goodbye to my local public TV – I watch its over-the-air digital streams.)

Here’s how I cut the coax.

While I’m at it, PBS would get an A+ if it worked even harder with station producers to get a chunk of the how-to shows, Washington Week, as well as some of the lesser known but excellent public affairs content up on Hulu. Or if the iTunesU content from PBS and select PBS stations was expanded to included many other stations and shows. Documentaries are a minefield of rights issues, but I can’t believe that Gwen Ifill, Lidia Bastianich and Fons and Porter (I’m a fan of all four) have contracts that make online offerings cost-prohibitive. Rick Steves: will offering even just the oldest episodes damage viewing or DVD sales? I bet not.

I don’t want to over-simplify a complicated issue – local stations grapple with everything from server space and streaming costs (if they decide against free options) to workflow. But, let’s face it: most of the public TV experiments with online video are surprisingly timid, given the voracious appetite for it. It’s kind of like deciding to cautiously get into FM radio in 1986.

Good moves, PBS (and KQED, WGBH, etc) on iTunesU and Hulu. I hope others will follow your lead, and quick.

If you’re going to end American Experience or Nova at 50 minutes, and follow it with 6 minutes of boring image spots, promos for other shows, and over-long spots about how much we trust you, before playing the system cue and consigning us to another 3.25 minutes of promos and image spots, why don’t you just give it up and show commercials? Then, at least, you’d make some money instead of simply wasting time.