NPR’s API adds station content, blogs

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NPR has added ingest capabilities to its open Application Programming Interface, the technical system for distributing NPR content on the web that first launched in 2008. “Until today, the NPR API has been a one-way fire hose of content, pushing hundreds of thousands of stories from NPR and the twelve NPR Music partner stations out to the world,” blogs NPR’s Daniel Jacobson, director of application development. “Now the API is read-write, allowing authorized external parties to post stories to the NPR API.” For the first phase of API Ingest Project, released on March 24, Oregon Public Broadcasting and the Northwest News Network are posting stories to the API. Three additional pilot stations–San Francisco’s KQED, Boston’s WBUR and Philly’s WXPN–are next in line to begin uploading their stories. “Thereafter, our intent is to stabilize the system, scale it, and reach out to more public media organizations who are interested in participating,” Jacobson writes. Under a prototyping grant announced by CPB yesterday, NPR and other pubcasting networks begin planning an even bigger expansion for the API– as a shared web distribution platform for the entire public broadcasting system.

With the new API release, NPR also added three blogs to the API, one of which debuted to web audiences yesterday. Go Figure!, by NPR’s audience research team, has come out from behind the walls of NPR’s internal Intranet. “[W]e want to connect with and learn from the NPR audience, our public media colleagues at stations and elsewhere, and our research and media colleagues,” blogs Lori Kaplan, director of the research group. “Maybe you’ll learn something and we’ll learn something and have some fun doing it.” The research team plans to post two times a week. “We are not editorial talent, so please have mercy on us as we build our skills!” she writes. Inside NPR.org, the blog for NPR’s web team, and All Tech Considered, the companion blog for the weekly All Things Considered segment, also are now fed through the API.

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