System/Policy

Pacifica’s executive director ignores board’s firing

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Pacifica Executive Director Summer Reese reported to work today at the radio network’s headquarters in Berkeley, Calif., ignoring her dismissal Thursday by Pacifica’s board of directors. Board members went into executive session during a meeting last week and voted to dismiss Reese effective Friday. Reese was appointed permanent executive director of the network last November after holding the job on an interim basis. Margy Wilkinson, who was elected chair of Pacifica’s board in February, declined to discuss why the board voted to dismiss Reese. “The board took an action that it thought was both necessary and appropriate,” she said by phone Monday.

Programs/Content

Panelists testify to inspiring global power of documentary films

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This article has been updated and reposted with additional information. Women and Girls Lead Global, a public media–based international outreach program, is helping drive positive change in five countries, participants said last week during panel discussions in Washington, D.C.

The public-private initiative grew out of the national Women and Girls Lead, a 2011 documentary-based campaign created by the Independent Television Service and backed by CPB. Partnering with ITVS in the international effort, which launched last summer, are USAID (the United States Agency for International Development), the Ford Foundation and the humanitarian organization CARE. The March 13 event, “Media as Multiplier: Using Documentary Film to Boost Global Development,” provided a forum for the international development community to discuss the value of using media as a development tool, Kimberley Sevcik, ITVS director of international engagement, told Current. Speakers at the Meridian International Center included New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof, whose book Half the Sky inspired a four-hour PBS film; Rajiv Shah, who leads USAID; David Ray, head of policy and advocacy for CARE; Judy Tam, e.v.p. of ITVS; and ITVS country engagement coordinators from Bangladesh, Peru, India and Kenya.

Quick Takes

Monday roundup: CPB Board gets nominee; public TV funding rebounds

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• President Obama has nominated Dr. Judith Davenport to serve as a CPB Board director, the White House announced Friday. Davenport, a retired dentist, co-founded Pittsburgh, Pa.–based Sheridan Broadcasting Corp. with her husband Ronald in 1973. She also serves on several other boards, including the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and the Andy Warhol Museum. The nomination goes to the Senate for confirmation.

Programs/Content

Forthcoming NPR mobile app could advance public radio’s quest for digital audience

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Public radio executives who have long bemoaned the field’s collective inability to pursue innovation have a new opportunity to alter that dynamic as they evaluate a new digital-service strategy crafted and advanced by NPR. The plan, centered on mobile digital service, was described in detail by NPR content chief Kinsey Wilson during last month’s Public Media Summit in Washington, D.C. In an hourlong session, he described the overarching strategy and briefly discussed an audio application developed to advance it. The mobile app, introduced by Wilson as the “Infinite Player,” expands on a desktop-based app that NPR released under the same name in 2011. The mobile version is slated for full release this spring. This strategy and the app that supports it will be major topics of discussion during regional station consultations that NPR began convening this week.

System/Policy

Report: Pacifica board dismisses executive director after five months on the job

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The board of directors of the Pacifica Foundation terminated Executive Director Summer Reese Thursday, according to an email sent early Friday by outgoing board treasurer Tracy Rosenberg. (UPDATE: Board Secretary Cerene Roberts has confirmed Reese’s dismissal. “We thank Summer Reese for her service to date and will not continue her employment effective March 14, 2014,” the board said in a terse statement, offering no explanation.)

Reese’s termination comes five months after the Pacifica board gave her the job, which she had held on an interim basis since August 2012. Reese became interim executive director after the board dismissed previous ED Arlene Engelhardt. Dismissing Reese burdens Pacifica “with a new $315,000 obligation to buy out a 3-year employment contract signed just a little while ago,” according to Rosenberg, who added:
Given the financial pressures on the organization (exacerbated by 3 of the 5 stations recently missing fund drive goals, all but KPFK and WBAI), it seems likely the board’s action will result in the forced sale of one or more real estate assets,

This latest return to the days of constant lawsuits draining the foundation due to reckless behavior by boards will not be welcome news to many.

Quick Takes

Wednesday roundup: Pubradio at SXSW Music, Frontline Vatican doc goes international

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• The South By Southwest Music festival is underway in Austin, Texas, and public radio is providing an Internet gateway to the show. Beginning at 8:50 p.m. Eastern time, NPR Music will live-stream its showcase at Stubb’s BBQ; the lineup includes St. Vincent, Damon Albarn and Kelis. Meanwhile, Los Angeles’s KCRW will broadcast live from the Spotify House, with editions of its music show Morning Becomes Eclectic beginning tomorrow. KCRW is also sponsoring several artist showcases at the festival and plans to feature some of their live performances on the air.

Programs/Content

PBS mulls strategy to boost kids’ ratings

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With many local pubcasters reporting sharp declines in daytime viewership, PBS programmers are reevaluating scheduling strategies for children’s programs, trying to get a handle on a problem that’s also affecting commercial competitors for kids TV audiences.

Programs/Content

NPR to stock new mobile app by aiding stations on back end

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NPR is preparing member stations to provide local news for the network’s new mobile app, slated for release by summer. NPR content chief Kinsey Wilson discussed and previewed the app Feb. 24 for station execs attending the Public Media Summit in Washington, D.C. It builds on the Infinite Player, an NPR platform released for bigger-screened devices in 2011, moving it to a mobile interface and adding local station content to NPR’s own programming. Summit attendees heard an NPR newscast item about the Winter Olympics segue into a segment from San Francisco’s KQED about a labor dispute. The audio included a plea for donations to KQED.

Quick Takes

Monday roundup: WNYC gets $10 million, POV pairs with NYT, PRPD elects directors

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• WNYC/New York Public Radio is receiving the largest grant ever given to a public radio station, it announced today. The pubcaster will use the $10 million from the Jerome L. Greene Foundation for digital innovation and to support its Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, keeping ticket prices low for events there. Also today, the station introduced a new Discover feature to its WNYC app, allowing listeners to create and download curated playlists with a function that “blends personal preferences with an element of surprise,” it said in the announcement. • POV’s new online documentary collaboration with the New York Times kicked off over the weekend with an in-depth look at a group of developmentally challenged men who survived decades of neglect in a small Iowa town. The Men of Atalissa, produced by the Times, was posted on both websites March 8.

Quick Takes

Thursday roundup: CPB presents education grants, CPI wins Goldsmith, Schiller talks Twitter news

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• CPB has awarded multimedia journalism grants totaling more than $1.18 million to nine public media stations for education coverage aligning with its American Graduate dropout prevention initiative. “These grants will allow stations to report on the state of education locally, while contributing to the national conversation about solving the dropout crisis,” said Bruce Theriault, CPB radio s.v.p., in Wednesday’s announcement. Grants to three stations — WAMU, Washington, D.C.; WNED/WBFO, Buffalo, N.Y., and Wyoming Public Media — provide for reporters who will cover education topics full-time. Cleveland’s WCPN/ideastream will assign two reporters to education as part of a community engagement initiative and a multi-state data mapping project involving the Southern Education Desk Local Journalism Center and stations in Florida and Indiana. Grants were also awarded to: KERA, Dallas, for a reporter assigned to the multiyear project Class of ’17; Radio Bilingüe/KSJV in Fresno, Calif., for a Spanish-language radio series on academic success of Latino students in America and four one-hour programs in English for other pubmedia stations; Oregon Public Broadcasting for The Class of ’25, focusing on one elementary school class learning under new state education goals; WNYC, New York, for the journalism training program Radio Rookies; and WUNC, Chapel Hill, N.C., for its American Graduate–Crossing the Stage project, distributed nationally by PRX. • The nonprofit Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C., won this year’s prestigious Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, announced today by Harvard’s Shortenstein Center.

Tech

Houston Public Media launches new site combining TV and radio offerings

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Houston Public Media unveiled a new website this week as part of its ongoing effort to converge its radio, TV and digital operations. The site launched March 1 alongside a six-month marketing campaign that combines billboard ads and direct mail, aiming  to raise awareness of the pubcaster’s multiple offerings under one brand. The website was developed by outside consultants and provides an online portal to HPM’s television and radio stations, including news/talk 88.7 FM and classical 91.7 FM, all owned  by the University of Houston. The Houston stations were managed separately until a 2011 reorganization that adopted  a converged pubcasting model along the lines of Cleveland’s ideastream and San Diego’s KPBS. With the March 1 site relaunch and promo blitz, HPM consolidated its branding and marketing, offering memberships and selling underwriting for Houston Public Media rather than the three individual stations.