Current (https://current.org/author/karen-everhart/page/7/)
Managing Editor
Phone: (202) 885-6414
Karen Everhart is managing editor of Current, supervising a team of staff reporters and editors, freelance contributors, designers and student interns. She joined Current back when Barney and Carmen Sandiego were the big stars of PBS Kids and stayed on to cover every major beat — public TV, CPB and public radio — over two decades as a reporter and senior editor. In 2007, Karen began focusing on public radio’s digital initiatives and how local broadcasters were adapting to the demands of multiplatform media distribution. After hours, she’s into bicycling, cooking for family and friends and live music events.
In a southwestern Ohio college town, the public radio news station with seven full-time employees will become an unstaffed repeater for Cincinnati Public Radio under an agreement announced Jan. 22 [2009].
“Being in Baghdad is a narrow escape every day,” says Loren Jenkins, NPR foreign editor, reflecting on the dangers surrounding the network’s team of reporters and Iraqi employees who have covered the Iraq War and occupation for five years.
NPR’s next president made one giant leap in the news business two years ago when she moved from long-form documentary production into digital media for the New York Times Co., but it wasn’t the first or the last of Vivian Schiller’s career.In the early 1980s, Schiller was living in the Soviet Union, working as a translator and guide for professional groups touring the country, when she was hired as a “fixer” for the Turner Broadcasting System. The job required her to do everything from translating during negotiations for TV productions to making dinner reservations, and it gave her an entrée into television. “I fell in love with media,” she said. Schiller rose from entry level to executive v.p. of CNN Productions, an award-winning documentary unit. Her predecessor in the job was Pat Mitchell, who left CNN in 2000 to become PBS president.
To make time for talks with concerned stations, NPR has put on hold a proposed trial of online giving on NPR.org.
The compromise package of fines and consumer protections imposed by the FCC in exchange for approving the merger of the Sirius and XM satellite radio companies July 25 did not include key provisions sought by public radio advocates. Pubcasters lobbied members of Congress and commissioners to triple from 8 to 25 percent the spectrum capacity that the merged company would have to set aside for public interest and minority programming. They also asked the commission to require the inclusion of HD Radio receiving chips in satellite radio receivers, allowing subscribers to receive free digital signals from terrestrial stations. Neither provision was in the final agreement approved in a 3-2 party-line vote on Friday. Democratic Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, who backed the provisions, ended up voting against the merger.
Three finalists in the Public Radio Talent Quest won CPB research-and-development grants totaling $800,000 to refine and develop pilots they conceived and hosted. Two of the winners, Al Letson and Glynn Washington, rose to the top from a field of more than 1,400 contestants in the Public Radio Exchange’s Web 2.0-style competition by demonstrating their “hostiness” to online voters and a panel of judges. The third winner, community activist and MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” recipient Majora Carter, was recruited by a group of seasoned production execs who call their scouting project Launch Production Inc.
“We were so impressed by the creativity and talent of all of the finalists, we couldn’t pick just one,” said CPB President Patricia Harrison in a video announcing the funding decision. CPB launched the competition in February 2007, bankrolling both PRX and Launch for their contrasting talent hunts. Each search team chose three finalists last fall who delivered pilots to CPB earlier this year.
It was purely by chance that a team of veteran NPR journalists was working in Chengdu, the capital of China’s Sichuan province, on May 12 [2008] when the destructive force of a 7.9 magnitude earthquake, its epicenter just 50 miles away, killed some 70,000 people and left millions homeless. “You never want to feel you’re lucky to be somewhere when a huge disaster strikes,” said Andrea Hsu, the All Things Considered producer who managed advance logistics for ATC’s first weeklong broadcast from a foreign country. Hsu was one of four NPR journalists in Chengdu when the earthquake struck, turning the tiny news operation she had set up in a Sheraton hotel into the only Western broadcast news source for coverage of the disaster. After a scouting trip in February, ATC chose Chengdu as its home base for a week of special broadcasts, May 19-23, intending to introduce listeners to a region of China rarely covered in Western media. The city was more ethnically diverse than most and boasted an interesting cultural history, and local officials seemed open-minded about granting access to NPR’s journalists, Hsu recalled. Plus, the local food was really good.
Wasatch Public Media, a new nonprofit established just 10 weeks ago to buy KCPW-FM in Salt Lake City and keep it a public radio news station, now has the signed contract.
There was no single reason why the NPR Board ended Ken Stern’s 18-month run as chief executive officer — or at least none that any participant in the decision would describe publicly after Stern’s abrupt exit March 6 [2008]. Judging from what board members, station execs and other observers are willing to say, it came down to a lack of confidence in Stern’s ability to lead the organization in directions that public radio’s various stakeholders — especially NPR stations — could embrace. “I can’t comment on the nature of that decision,” said Dennis Haarsager, a longtime station leader now serving as interim c.e.o., “except to say that it was more forward-looking as opposed to backward. No malfeasance should be imputed from this.”
Indeed, Stern’s fans and critics alike say he contributed significantly to strengthening NPR’s financial standing and positioning it as a news organization capable of global coverage. Stern did not respond to Current’s interview request through NPR’s spokesperson.
A small-town Utah public-radio outfit that expanded into Salt Lake City thanks to its founders’ deal-making acumen — and stirred controversy over their compensation — is now pulling back, planning to sell both the Salt Lake station and its costly AM booster.
A newly formed consortium of Latino public broadcasters is calling for public radio to expand its service to the nation’s growing Hispanic population by creating multiple program services and strengthening Latino-controlled public radio stations.
From 1,452, now there are 10. And they’re hot to talk. The online casting call created by Public Radio Exchange — part of CPB’s Public Radio Talent Quest — last week announced 10 finalists who advance to Round 2 of its nationwide competition to find new pubradio hosts. Each finalist gets $500, a blog and another chance to demonstrate what PRX calls “hostiness.”
The competition at www.publicradioquest.com will intensify at each step in the contest ahead, although it was no breeze to survive the first round with more than 1,400 contestants. Since its start in April, the contest has become something of an obsession for many participants, keeping the site abuzz with interactivity, with some posting comments in haiku and limericks.
Ellen Weiss, an award-winning producer and editor in NPR’s news division over 25 years, will become its leader, the network announced last week. She is the newsroom’s first homegrown journalist after three veeps who established their journalistic credentials elsewher
Weiss, who had been interim news v.p., moves up from her previous job as senior editor of the national desk to succeed Bill Marimow, who became editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Marimow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning print reporter, was credited with strengthening NPR’s investigative reporting during more than 2½ years at NPR, including eight months as top news executive. The announcement to the NPR News staff capped an exceptional week for Weiss, who was offered the promotion April 3 and learned the next day that she would share a Peabody Award. Weiss and two colleagues — correspondent Daniel Zwerdling and producer Anne Hawke — won a Peabody for December’s investigative report on the military’s treatment of soldiers returning from war with emotional wounds (story).
Programming will include educational shows, how-to and lifestyle programs, movies and performance shows, and current-affairs programs.
Neal Shapiro, president of NBC News until 16 months ago, will succeed William Baker as president and c.e.o. of New York’s WNET. Shapiro, 48, a 25-year veteran of network news who ran NBC’s Dateline before heading NBC’s global news operations, will assume one of Baker’s titles next month, serving for a year as president while Baker remains c.e.o. Baker will relinquish the chief exec role next February, becoming president emeritus. The board of Educational Broadcasting Corp., licensee of both WNET and WLIW in Long Island, unanimously approved the transition plan on Jan. 18, ending a year-long executive recruitment process that began as a search to replace Paula Kerger, former c.o.o., who left WNET to become PBS president last March. “As we did the search I realized that, ultimately, this person has to be capable of replacing me,” said Baker.
The Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers, a 30-year-old group that coordinated activism and provided networking and training for independent filmmakers, shuttered its offices and shut down operations in late June. The Manhattan-based association told members in March that it faced a financial crisis, but an emergency fundraising appeal didn’t generate enough contributions to maintain operations. The AIVF Board is looking for another group to take over publication of The Independent, AIVF’s monthly magazine. Although the board considered a scenario of eventually resuming operations, it’s unlikely that the association will revive, said Bart Weiss, organizer of the Dallas Video Festival and board president. “I wish it could, but I don’t see how it could happen,” he said.
After fewer than half of PBS stations made commitments to carry a proposed multicast channel for school-aged children, the network pulled back its plan to launch PBS Kids Go! as a fully packaged DTV multicasting service in October. The network is instead exploring its options to distribute school-age fare via video-on-demand or broadband platforms.
“I don’t want to bring up a service and not have the resources to support it,” said PBS President Paula Kerger, who announced the decision to stations July 6 [2006]. Only one-third of public TV licensees expressed interest in paying for Go! as an a la carte service, while PBS needed buy-in from least half, she said.
During a PBS Showcase meeting distinguished by a sense of optimism that public TV had emerged stronger after last year’s political troubles, public TV executives unveiled their plans to make more PBS content available to viewers on demand, to expand children’s programming and pilot new primetime science series. “The digital revolution cannot be ignored. … It is calling us to reinvent ourselves on a seemingly daily basis,” said new PBS President Paula Kerger, during a May 17 speech that opened the conference in Orlando, Fla. “We need to expand the menu of services we offer for the era of ‘my time’ TV,” said WGBH President Henry Becton later that day.
When Bill Moyers took the podium May 17 [2006] at PBS Showcase in Orlando, Fla., he stepped up to accept PBS’s “Be More” Award, an honor recognizing PBS contributors who inspire viewers. His acceptance speech [full text] exhorted public broadcasting itself to be more. He admitted having “optimism of the will,” which means, contrary to the grim view of his reportorial eye, he expects a positive future and gets up every day to bring it about. Pubcasting’s leadership also gives him hope. He knew Paula Kerger at WNET, before she became PBS president.
The same week former CPB Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson resigned from the CPB Board, public TV stations received a low-key announcement that the Wall Street Journal would soon end production of the conservative news analysis series he aggressively championed. Journal Editorial Report, which Tomlinson saw as an antidote to Bill Moyers’ provocative liberal commentaries on Now, will wrap its final PBS program Dec. 2. The controversy over how it came to PBS — especially as details of the process were revealed last week — demonstrated that when politics enters pubTV editorial decisions, none of the players emerges unscathed. Producers for Dow Jones Television, an affiliate of the Journal, initially didn’t explain why they canned the show, but in an unsigned op-ed Nov.