Current (https://current.org/author/mike-janssen/page/24/)
Digital Editor
Phone: (202) 885-6419
Mike has held the role of digital editor since 2014. Before becoming editor, he covered public radio and digital initiatives in public media for Current. Mike has also written for a variety of publications as a freelancer, was a Public Media Corps fellow, and has hosted talk and music shows on community radio stations in the Washington, D.C., area. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with his family, playing banjo, cooking, and making coffee and cocktails.
Dec. 31, 2012, marked the last day that Lisa Mullins, longtime host of PRI’s The World, held that position. On Jan. 1, reporter and substitute host Marco Werman took over hosting full time, a promotion that PRI announced Dec. 7.
As part of its annual “The Lives They Lived” issue, a collection of obituaries for people who passed away during the previous year, the New York Times Magazine drew on an interview with author and illustrator Maurice Sendak that aired on NPR’s Fresh Air in September 2011. In a video on the Times’s website, illustrations by Christoph Niemann accompany a touching clip from the interview, in which Sendak talked with Terry Gross about his athiesm, death, and getting older. “There’s something I’m finding out as I’m aging: I am in love with the world,” Sendak said. He also told Gross that of all the interviewers he knew, only she brought out such reflections in him. Sendak died May 8, 2012.
Did NPR’s tweeter extraordinaire Andy Carvin go overboard during the media frenzy surrounding the Dec. 14 shooting in Newtown, Conn.? Michael Wolff made that argument in a column for the Guardian newspaper, accusing Carvin of becoming “a fevered spreader of misinformation.”
Carvin, who gained widespread recognition for his tweeting during the Arab Spring, sent out more than 300 tweets following minute-by-minute developments in the Newtown shooting. The tweets included “a rather broad range of bollocks,” Wolff wrote, citing in particular a retweet about a purple van that was later abandoned as a lead, and a few other instances. “While the guise is to retweet in order to verify, the effect is to propagate,” wrote Wolff, whose objections went beyond inaccuracy to what he sees as Carvin’s “self-righteousness” and “self-dramatizing.”
In response to a question from Current, Carvin reviewed his tweets and replied as follows:
If I had to do it all again, I would still tweet all of them.
Public media outlets were cited for six 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Awards, announced today by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. NPR received three awards, with one given to reporters Deborah Amos and Kelly McEvers for their coverage of Syria. “NPR’s series of daily news reports about the conflict in Syria was wide ranging, balanced and in depth,” the announcement said. “Veteran foreign correspondent Deb Amos provided critical context and explanation in her reporting that helped listeners understand the complex sectarian and regional factors at play. Her reporting from inside Syria at the scene of a massacre and the capitol Damascus documented spikes in violence.”
“Correspondent Kelly McEvers brought a focus on individual stories that made the conflict real in human terms,” the citation said.
Transom.org has awarded small radio production grants from its Donor Fund. The online watering hole and how-to site for radio producers provided grants of $1,000 each to six producers who will debut work on the site next year with help from Transom editors:
The Core, a series of podcasts launched by a group of teenagers working with Open Orchard Productions;
William Dahlberg, who will produce a story about an unsolved murder in his hometown of Newbury, Vt.;
Erin Davis, who will create a multimedia project about “adventure playgrounds”;
Andrew Forsthoefel, who will produce an hourlong documentary about his cross-country trip that began in October 2011;
Mary Helen Miller, who will complete a radio documentary about a mixed-race group of Tennesseans; and
Lauren Ober, who is working on a story about “a quest to find meaning in life after your life has been saved at the cost of someone else’s,” according to Transom. The Donor Fund is a pool of money created in 2011 from individual contributions of Transom readers. Grants of $500 to $1,000 were awarded to five producers last year, and their programs have been featured on Transom throughout 2012, according to Jay Allison, independent producer and Transom founder. This year’s grant recipients were selected from a pool of 40 applicants. This article was first published in Current, Dec.
KUT in Austin, Texas, will launch its all-music station, KUTX 98.9 FM, Jan. 2 and adopt an all-news format on 90.7 FM, its flagship signal. The broadcaster’s purchase of the second frequency was approved in August by the University of Texas System Board of Regents. The new station will pick up music programming now airing on KUT and add new shows, including Jazz with Jay Trachtenberg, featuring jazz classics and new releases; What’s Next with Jeff McCord spinning mixes of new music from both emerging and established artists; and a three-hour freeform music mix on Sunday mornings hosted by Jody Denberg. It will also feature performances from KUT’s new studios.
NPR has added two journalists to its six-person race, ethnicity and culture unit backed by CPB and preparing for launch in the spring. The network hired Gene Demby, a Huffington Post editor and founder of the blog PostBourgie, as blogger and correspondent; and Shereen Marisol Meraji, a Marketplace reporter and former NPR producer, as a reporter. Demby started PostBourgie in 2007 and continues to contribute to the group blog, which covers race, class, gender, politics and other subjects. In 2009 the blog won a Black Weblog Award for best news/politics website. Demby also worked for the New York Times for six years as a writer and news assistant. In 2011 he joined the Huffington Post, where he managed the Black Voices channel through its launch; he also reported for the channel and served as its senior politics editor for much of this year.
In a new video, hosts at New York’s WNYC and others bring to life “Saint Dude.” The song is one of the compositions from Song Reader, a new collection of sheet music released by the musician Beck. Rather than release his own recording of the tunes, Beck suggests that you play the songs on your own. WNYC’s band includes On the Media host Brooke Gladstone on vocals, Soundcheck host John Schaefer on guitar, and Studio 360 host Kurt Andersen playing a glockenspiel with a Sharpie.
What do the holidays sound like in Austin, Texas? Austin’s KUT-FM is answering that question with an “Austin-centric” stream of holiday music, now airing on its new station, KUTX 98.9 FM, and on its website at kut.org. The holiday tunes are airing while KUT prepares the launch of its new all-music format on KUTX Jan. 2, when it will also move KUT to an all-news format. Music shows now on KUT will migrate to the station, which will pick up some additional music programs and air performances from a new studio at KUT as well.
Public radio stations trying to diversify their audiences, staffs and programming have found an increasingly active ally in NPR, whose leaders have been travelling to stations in recent months to help broadcasters walk the difficult walk of achieving diversity.
WDDE-FM signed on in August 2012, becoming the first public radio station based in the state of Delaware. Governor Jack Markell cut the ribbon at a ceremony at WDDE’s Dover headquarters Dec. 3.
The FCC adopted new rules today regarding low-power FM stations, paving the way to accept a wave of applications for new LPFMs in October 2013. Under the rules, the FCC will allow LPFMs on second-adjacent frequencies to full-power FM stations if the low-power applicant provides evidence that the new station will not cause interference. These second-adjacency waivers will allow for more low-power stations in big cities where the FM band is more crowded. Other provisions of the Report and Order adopted today include:
A modified point system that will give an edge to Native applicants and to LPFMs with a staffed main studio and local programming;
Permission of cross-ownership of an LPFM station and up to two translator stations;
And an allowance for tribal nations to operate more than one LPFM. The Prometheus Radio Project, which advocates for low-power radio, estimates that the number of LPFMs in America could double or triple after the next filing window.
Now that the 2012 general election is over, the 170 Million Americans campaign is preparing to rally support for public broadcasting by going into an amped-up “on steroids” phase, an adviser to NPR said during the Public Radio Regional Organizations Super-Regional conference in New Orleans Nov. 14. Gov. Mitt Romney’s pledge to eliminate funding for public broadcasting, which he repeated during the first presidential debate, “created an opportunity for us to remind our fans that we need them,” said Liz Schrayer of Schrayer & Associates Inc., a Washington, D.C.–based firm that advises nonprofits on advocacy efforts. The campaign should seek to mobilize at least 1 percent of public broadcasting’s 170 million viewers and listeners, she said. Schrayer is a former national political director for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
NEW ORLEANS — CPB is considering a proposal to allocate $3 million annually over six years to support collaboration among public radio stations, with the amount to be drawn from Community Service Grant incentive funds. The money would support upwards of 20 collaborations among 80 or so stations, each of which would receive an additional $70,000 to $90,000 annually. That financial boost would help stations develop content, streamline operations, plan technology and infrastructure, and undertake other collaborative activities. The program would start in fiscal year 2015 at the earliest. By encouraging collaboration, CPB hopes to “unleash the potential of the network effect,” said Bruce Theriault, senior v.p. of radio, at the Public Radio Regional Organizations Super-Regional Meeting in New Orleans Nov.
Two commercial radio stations in Chicago have picked up the weekly Smiley & West show after it was dropped from WBEZ, the city’s public radio news outlet. WCPT, a progressive talk station, began airing the show Sunday, Nov. 4 at 3 p.m. and will add it to its three FM stations starting in January. It also picked up The Tavis Smiley Show for its weekend lineup. WVON-AM, which targets an African-American audience, will debut Smiley & West Saturday at 11 a.m.
WBEZ canceled the show hosted by author and broadcast host Tavis Smiley and activist and critic Cornel West last month, citing a drop in audience.
Producer Barrett Golding said had been thinking about ending the public radio show when he learned that NPR was considering dropping its contract to distribute it. “That gave me the reason to stop producing,” Golding wrote in an email. Golding was “kinda sick of the mostly volunteer work,” he said. The weekly hourlong program compiled audio pieces from archives, independent and documentary producers, and elsewhere in public radio, usually around themes. It aired on about 100 stations.
CPB’s American Graduate initiative has set its sights on targeting dropouts, but another project in public media, Ed Zed Omega, is zeroing in on “rise-outs” — students who are excited to learn but feel that high school is failing to meet their needs.
Superstorm Sandy has knocked both transmitters of freeform WFMU in Jersey City, N.J., off the air, but the station is still webcasting from the Pittsburgh home of DJ Doug Schulkind. The station is surrounded by water and has no power, but its studios did not sustain damage. Current is working on coverage of other stations affected by the storm. Was your station or others that you know of affected? Leave a comment or email us at [email protected].
Some states get a little sexier every four years: Ohio. Florida. North Carolina. Their pivotal role in deciding the presidential election has made them the backbone of a new ad hoc collaboration, the (Mostly) Swing State Public Radio Network. Spearheaded by New York’s WNYC, the network brings together public radio stations in political battleground states to reflect the concerns and viewpoints of their much-scrutinized voters.
The America’s Promise Alliance gave its 2012 Journalism Award for Action to NPR for Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families, an October 2011 series reported by Laura Sullivan and produced by Amy Walters. The October 2011 series, the result of a yearlong investigation, revealed how the state of South Dakota was failing to follow laws that specify how Native children should be put in foster care. It prompted a federal investigation and a resolution from the National Congress of American Indians. The Alliance’s annual awards recognize the efforts of journalists working to raise awareness about the needs of young people and those who inspire communities to act on behalf of youth. Recipients are chosen from the winners of the 2012 Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism, which are presented by the Journalism Center on Children & Families.