NPR has hired Todd Mundt as editorial director for NPR Digital Services
In his new position, Mundt will help stations develop digital content strategies and oversee news training offered to them. He now serves as v.p. and chief content officer at Louisville Public Media in Kentucky, p.d. of the licensee’s news/talk station and its local host for Morning Edition.
Before joining Louisville’s three-station complex, he was director of content and media at Iowa Public Radio, chief content officer for Michigan Public Media in Ann Arbor and host of an NPR-distributed talk program, The Todd Mundt Show. Mundt is chair of the Public Radio Program Directors Association and has served on the Public Media Platform advisory council.
Bob Kempf, g.m. of the Boston-based NPR unit, said the hiring completes the Digital Services management team, which also includes Stephanie Miller, director of station relations; Steve Mulder, director of user experience and analytics; Doug Gaff, director of technology; and Keith Hopper, director of product development.
American Public Media has promoted Mike Reszler to v.p. for digital media and laid off prominent digital advocate Joaquin Alvarado.
Reszler, who was managing director of digital strategies, will be responsible for APM’s Public Insight Network (PIN) and all APM digital programming and product development.
The promotion came as APM laid off Alvarado, senior v.p for digital innovation since January 2010, along with four members of the software-development team he supervised.
Reszler joined MPR in November 2007 as managing editor for online news. He is an alumnus of Knight Ridder and Media-NewsGroup, where he worked as a reporter, managing editor and senior editor.
Pulitzer-winning editorial cartoonist Tony Auth will draw for NewsWorks, WHYY’s local news website.
Auth will be “digital artist in residence” for NewsWorks and WHYY starting in April, said Chris Satullo, WHYY’s v.p. for news and civic engagement and a former Inquirer exec. Auth’s national political cartoons will not be published on NewsWorks but will remain in syndication. Auth’s residency will be funded in part through a grant from the Thomas Skelton Harrison Foundation.
Will Glasscock, a government relations director for APTS, is leaving after nearly five years with pubTV’s lobby to serve in the Peace Corps.
Glasscock tells Current that he and his wife, Amy, will serve for two years, teaching English in East Java, Indonesia. “We are really excited about this new adventure and the opportunity to serve our country,” he said, although leaving APTS is “bittersweet,” as his coworkers have also become close friends. The couple will complete their Peace Corps training in mid-June. Before joining APTS, Glasscock was an aide to Kentucky Democratic Reps. Ben Chandler and Ken Lucas.
The Public Radio Satellite System has created a Future System Advisory Council to help plan the next national interconnection system.
Members of the committee are Cephas Bowles, president of Newark Public Radio in New Jersey; Glenn Gleixner, chair of Eastern Region Public Media; John Hess, president of Western States Public Radio; Karen Holp, g.m. of KGOU in Oklahoma City, Okla.; Maxie Jackson, president of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters; Christina Kuzmych, president of Public Radio in Mid-America; Jim Paluzzi, g.m. of KJZZ/KBAQ in Phoenix; Ellen Rocco, station manager of North Country Public Radio in Canton, N.Y.; Steve Schram, director of Michigan Public Media in Ann Arbor; and Andrew Todd, executive director of Aspen Public Radio in Colorado. PRSS, a co-op managed by NPR Distribution, includes more than 400 station downlinks and more than 200 program producers and distributors.
Programming/content
Mitchell Hartman is serving as lead reporter on a new Wealth and Poverty Desk for American Public Media’s Marketplace. “We’ll report on the forces and policies that led to the wealth gap,” wrote desk Senior Editor Celeste Wesson, Feb. 27 on Marketplace’s website. “We’ll look at what the consequences are, good or bad, for our families and communities. We’ll be asking you what economic choices our country should make.” Hartman’s previous beat was entrepreneurship. He has had two stints at Marketplace: 1994 to 2001 and 2008 to the present.
In Louisville, WFPL News has hired Erin Keane as its arts and humanities reporter. Keane now provides weekly music news on WFPL’s sister station, WFPK-FM. She previously worked for the local Courier-Journal providing arts and culture reports. She is the author of two collections of poetry and has taught a course on pop music in American literature at Bellarmine University in Louisville.
Marisa Waddell, the new director of programming and new media at KCBX-FM in San Luis Obispo, Calif., will coordinate programming on six broadcast frequencies and lead the station’s work in digital media.
Waddell produced, reported and hosted for the station for 17 years, until 2006. She returns with a master’s degree in mass communication and journalism from California State University Fresno and varied experience in film, TV, digital content and educational media.
The Center for Public Interest Journalism at Temple University’s School of Communications and Theater has named Neil Budde as founding c.e.o. of its new Philadelphia Public Interest Information Network (PPIIN), a collaborative to help increase the amount and quality of news and information in the region. Budde (pronounced “buddy”) worked most recently as executive v.p. at ePals, an educational social network for school-age children, and president of DailyMe, a personalized-news startup. He was editor-in-chief of Yahoo! News and founding editor and publisher of the Wall Street Journal Online.
Two journalists whose reporting has aired on pubradio are among seven selected as recipients of the 2012 Knight Luce Fellowship for Reporting on Global Religion from the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Peter Manseau, a contributor to All Things Considered, will report on the variety of spiritual traditions flourishing in China, and Caitlan Carroll, whose work has been heard on American Public Media’s Marketplace and Public Radio International, will explore attempts to revive sacred music in Georgia that was muted during Soviet rule. For nine months, the fellows will report stories for delivery on multiple platforms.
Management/governance
Catherine Malkemes, a former WHYY executive, is the new c.e.o. of the Women’s Humane Society in Bensalem, Pa., where she will oversee the society’s animal shelter, veterinary clinic, educational programs and fundraising activities. Malkemes served as executive director of member relations at WHYY from 2007 to 2011, then worked as director of membership development for the Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia.
The Association of Public Television Stations has three new Board of Trustees members, and four incumbents have been re-elected. New are Dr. Roger Gose, board chair of Central Wyoming Community College in Riverton — licensee of Wyoming PBS — and a practicing physician who has pitched many pledge drives and moderated health-related programs; Allan Pizzato, executive director of Alabama Public Television; and Landri Taylor, a trustee of Rocky Mountain PBS and president of the Urban League of Metropolitan Denver. Re-elected are: Rod Bates, g.m., Nebraska Educational Telecommunications in Lincoln; Ellis Bromberg, g.m., Milwaukee Public Television; Hilma Prather, board member of Kentucky Educational Television in Lexington; and Jeffrey Stone, lay trustee, HoustonPBS.
On the PBS Board, Allan R. Landon, ex-chair of the Bank of Hawaii, was elected to fill a general-director vacancy Feb. 3. Landon is a partner in Community BanCapital, a community investment fund in Portland, Ore.; a director of MidFirst Bank in Oklahoma City; and an adjunct instructor at the universities of Utah and Hawaii. He also is a member of of the Smithsonian Institution’s national board. Landon succeeds John S. Domaschko, a former PBS vice chair whose term expired.
The board of Native American Public Telecommunications Inc. has two new members: Chad Burris (Chickasaw) and Mark Van Norman (Cheyenne River Sioux). Burris is a film producer and founder of Indion Group Entertainment, and Van Norman is an attorney specializing in American Indian law and former executive director of the National Indian Gaming Association. Longtime NAPT Board member and treasurer Sydney Beane (Flandreau Santee Sioux) has resigned to resume production of a documentary in his hometown of Plymouth, Minn. The new treasurer is Randal Hansen, assistant g.m., administration and finance, of Nebraska’s NET network.
Development
Pledge impresario T.J. Lubinsky’s TJL Productions in Pittsburgh has hired two new staffers starting this month. Mike Ragogna, premium products managing director, who has worked with EMI Music, Universal Music Enterprises and BMG; and Izabella Sobiej, pledge premium inventory and ordering product manager, who has worked in marketing communications in Poland and England.
Luci Baines Johnson, a daughter of President Lyndon Johnson, and her husband, Ian Turpin, have presented a $50,000 gift to the KLRU Endowment in honor of the Austin, Texas, station’s 50th anniversary. The money will seed the new Sandy and Dudley Youman Fund, honoring two longtime station supporters. Sandy Youman retired from KLRU in 2005 after a 20-year career at the station, where she was instrumental in building membership, increasing major donors and creating the Producers Circle. She and Dudley, a physician, have continued to back KLRU and other nonprofits in Austin through volunteer activities. “As I told Luci,” Sandy Youman said, “this is a real ‘grace-gift,’ defined as thoroughly unexpected, unnecessary at a level of such magnitude, but certainly really appreciated!” The money will go toward supporting KLRU programming and events.