• Matter, the for-profit startup accelerator backed by Public Radio Exchange, KQED and the Knight Foundation, announced its third class of teams May 15. The six participants will spend five months working side-by-side in Matter’s San Francisco offices, developing their ideas with $50,000 in funding provided to each. Matter has scheduled two Demo Days for their projects: Sept. 11 in San Francisco and Sept. 14 in New York. The participants include:
- Crateplayer, “a media curation platform for collecting and organizing audio and video content from multiple sources into simple, shareable, playable collections.”
- Known, “an open publishing and collaboration platform that allows anyone to share their stories using many types of media.”
- LocalData, “a cloud-based mapping platform that helps cities and communities make data-driven decisions by capturing and visualizing street-level information in real time.”
- Louder, “a crowdfunded advertising platform that allows users to donate small amounts to amplify news and information that is important to them.”
- Musey, an app that “connects fans with the online and offline spaces of artists and makers via mobile.”
- Stringr, “a platform that helps media organizations request, find, license, and acquire multimedia content from freelancers and the crowd.”
O’Brien
• Miles O’Brien, science correspondent at the PBS NewsHour, is the recipient of the network’s 10th annual “Be More” Award, PBS announced May 15 at its Annual Meeting in San Francisco. O’Brien is also a producer and director for WGBH’s Nova, a correspondent for Frontline and an aviation analyst for CNN. On a recent NewsHour reporting trip, O’Brien suffered an accident that required doctors to amputate his left arm.
“Miles has also shown great personal courage and commitment to delivering the news to viewers, no matter the cost to himself, facing down the most challenging situations with a positive attitude,” PBS President Paula Kerger said in the release announcing the award.
• NPR ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos has been pretty quiet lately, having only posted two official reports on his blog so far this year. Schumacher-Matos tells media blogger Jim Romenesko that his absence can be chalked up to vacation, assistant turnover and “internal and diplomatic matters.” He also notes that his contract ends Aug. 1 and he will be looking for a new job. But he does have “a complicated piece” about to post.
• The National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum opened its doors to the public May 15 in New York, with President Obama delivering an opening address. Storycorps paired with the museum as a content partner in 2005 to launch the September 11 Initiative to record at least one story for every life lost in the Sept. 11, 2001, and Feb. 26, 1993, attacks on the World Trade Center. Those recordings are part of the museum’s Oral Histories collection.
We're proud to be partners w/ the @Sept11Memorial who opened their doors today! In honor, "John and Joe" http://t.co/YB1klyYqlZ #911Museum
— StoryCorps (@StoryCorps) May 15, 2014