Nice Above Fold - Page 371
BBC crafts module to take advantage of NPR clock changes
Responding to an opening created by changes to the clock for NPR’s Morning Edition, the BBC is rolling out a 90-second news module for insertion into a bottom-of-the-hour segment designated for local news coverage. The BBC’s Topline will curate top international news stories selected to compliment Morning Edition’s coverage. Stations that subscribe to the BBC World Service through American Public Media can pick it up at no additional cost, but the window for airing it is limited to the newly created 8:31:30 a.m. (Eastern time) break in Morning Edition. Stations are also prohibited from editing it. In a Q&A about the offering, the BBC said its editors will monitor Morning Edition to ensure that the stories featured on Topline don’t overlap with those covered by NPR.Avoid these cardinal sins in applying for public media jobs
I’ve hired a lot of folks over the past 35 years in broadcasting, and thankfully most have been good hires, some excellent, and some even extraordinary. I count in that latter group Robert Krulwich, Robert Siegel, Noah Adams, Scott Simon, David Brancaccio, David Brown, and many others. But I have also encountered job applicants who left me with a bad taste in my mouth — not because of who they were, but rather because of what they did during the application process. For the benefit of future applicants, I thought I’d detail some of what I consider the “cardinal sins” of applying for a job.Indiana pubTV finance manager pleads guilty to stealing station funds
The former finance manager of WFWA-TV in Fort Wayne, Ind., has pleaded guilty to embezzling money from the PBS member station. In a plea bargain, Gail Waymire confessed to one count of routing nearly $9,000 of the station’s funds to her personal bank account and waived a jury trial. A federal grand jury in South Bend, Ind., indicted her last month on 20 charges in connection with stealing more than $130,000 from the station’s coffers over three years. The FBI requested that no one at the station speak publicly on the matter while Waymire’s case is pending. Station Board Chair Randall Steiner also declined to comment to Current Tuesday.
Wednesday roundup: Ashbrook takes leave; BBC offers new morning module
Plus: Texas Tribune looks to the next five years, and the FCC fines a Massachusetts college.Three Localore projects receive additional funding
The Association of Independents in Radio announced that three projects from the first round of its Localore initiative will receive additional funding for expanding their work.PBS weighs balance between free, premium access for launch of Plus
PBS is preparing for a pilot run of Membership Video on Demand, a premium service for station contributors, under the new name PBS Plus. The service will be structured to preserve a window of free access to program streams on PBS.org and to protect stations’ member data, according to Tom Davidson, PBS senior director of digital strategies, during a session at the NETA Professional Development Conference, Oct. 20–22 in Dallas. PBS Plus will go into soft launch in the spring for existing members at seven test stations. Under the full kickoff scheduled for late summer 2015, stations nationwide can begin marketing it to new members.
Joyce MacDonald joins CPB as first v.p. of journalism
CPB has hired former NPR executive Joyce MacDonald for the new position of vice president of journalism, it announced Tuesday. MacDonald will work with Bruce Theriault, s.v.p., journalism and radio, on local and regional journalism strategy, planning and major initiatives. Since January, MacDonald has led National Public Media, a subsidiary of NPR, PBS and WGBH, as interim president. NPM is responsible for corporate sponsorship sales. After joining NPR in 1999, her positions included chief of staff, v.p. of member partnership and director of station relations. MacDonald led several major projects, such as the Local News Initiative, which strengthened stations’ capacity to report in-depth news.Frank Mankiewicz, former NPR president, dies at 90
Frank Mankiewicz, a former NPR president credited with taking the fledgling network to new levels of professionalism while also overseeing its decline into near-bankruptcy, died of natural causes Oct. 23 at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C. He was 90. Mankiewicz led NPR from 1977-83 after a career in politics, during which he served as Robert Kennedy’s press secretary. It was Mankiewicz’s task to announce the assassination of the then-presidential candidate. According to the Public Radio Archives at the University of Maryland, Mankiewicz also worked as a journalist, wrote four books and a syndicated column and delivered commentaries for television.Faith in the Big House documents role of evangelical ministry in prisons
The Louisiana Public Broadcasting documentary focuses on five prisoners as their lives are changed by religious conversion.Current’s annual survey of productions in the works for public TV
More than 100 films are underway, soon to take viewers from sea to sky and everywhere in between.Jazz Ambassadors revisits time when Cold War diplomacy got hip
It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing — and a handy role in a Cold War propaganda campaign. In the late ’50s, U.S. government officials eager to make a case for America’s superiority to Communist regimes found a new vehicle to deliver the message to a global audience. They staged a series of global tours of top jazz musicians to showcase the popular and inclusive art form, promoting the democratic values enshrined in the music while also offsetting the backlash brewing among African Americans fed up with discrimination. Those tours wound down in the ’70s, but a new film next year will revisit their legacy.Director Stanley Nelson leads history trilogy with documentary on Black Panthers
The film will be the first in a three-part series about pivotal moments in African-American history.Car Talk co-host Tom Magliozzi dies at 77
Tom Magliozzi, half of Click and Clack on NPR’s Car Talk, the Tappet Brothers, died Monday of complications from Alzheimer’s disease. He was 77. Magliozzi and his brother Ray hosted Car Talk for 37 years before it ended production in 2012. The show continues airing in reruns. Doug Berman, the show’s producer, said in a blog post that Tom Magliozzi and his brother “changed public broadcasting forever.” “Before Car Talk, NPR was formal, polite, cautious . . . even stiff,” Berman wrote. “By being entirely themselves, without pretense, Tom and Ray single-handedly changed that, and showed that real people are far more interesting than canned radio announcers.PRPD names Jody Evans president
Evans will step into the position Jan. 1.Friends of Adler remember colleague who was ‘so very, very Margot’
Friends and colleagues of Margot Adler gathered in New York and Washington, D.C., last week to pay tribute to the late NPR correspondent.
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