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Project Core: A vision for scale and growth

Over the past three years, CentralCast has been hard at work implementing critical upgrades that lay the foundation for a more resilient and advanced future. And now, the culmination of these efforts is taking shape in our most ambitious initiative yet: Project Core.

Quick Takes

Wednesday roundup: NPR ads respond to voices; Knight backs development efforts

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• NPR introduced voice recognition–enabled ads this week on its smartphone app in an attempt to connect its nearly one million mobile listeners with sponsors, Adweek reports. The 15-second audio spots ask listeners to say “Download now” or “Hear more” after hearing an ad that sparks their interest. • The Knight Foundation has awarded a joint grant to the nonprofit newsrooms Voice of San Diego and MinnPost to help them develop plans to grow membership. The two-year, $1.2 million grant will be divided evenly between the news operations, who will collaborate on using membership data more effectively. Nieman runs down how the sites will use the grant.

Programs/Content

Detroit Public Television outsources programming to Public Television Programming Service

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Starting Tuesday, Detroit Public Television is outsourcing programming functions to the Tampa, Fla.–based Public Television Programming Service as part of a corporate restructuring announced last week. Detroit Public Television CEO Rich Homberg announced the changes in a memo to employees March 28. The decision to outsource programming brought with it elimination of the positions of Dan Gaitens, longtime director of programming, and Joann Havel, assistant director of programming, effective Friday. In addition to the programming change, Homberg announced the creation of a new communications department. The department will be headed by a newly hired manager scheduled to start April 21.

People

Chicago Public Media hires former Washington Post GM Goli Sheikholeslami as CEO

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Chicago Public Media announced Tuesday that Goli Sheikholeslami will become the organization’s CEO May 5, ending an eight-month national search to replace Torey Malatia. Sheikholeslami is the former vice president and g.m. of the Washington Post, where she worked from 2002 to 2010, overseeing the paper’s digital strategy. She has also worked at Condé Nast and Time Warner and most recently was chief product officer at online health-resource network Everyday Health Inc. She is new to public media. “Goli brings the perfect blend of experience to this role,” said Steve Baird, CPM board chair, in a release announcing her hiring. “Her extensive media background, proven leadership in digital innovation and enthusiasm for the mission of public media will be invaluable as she focuses on growing the audience for existing programs and engaging the next generation of fans across all of Chicago Public Media’s platforms.”

Sheikholeslami will oversee all broadcast and digital content at the network and also lead the search for a new programming and content manager, according to the release.

Quick Takes

Tuesday roundup: Pat Harrison dishes; ACL opens Hall of Fame

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• CPB CEO Pat Harrison sat down with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Monday for an interview about her background in advance of a visit to WQED for the station’s 60th anniversary. Harrison chatted about her beginnings as a freelance writer and as the founder of the National Women’s Economic Alliance and about how her Brooklyn upbringing influenced her leadership abilities. “You would go from one block to the other at that time, and you were in a different country,” she said. “You didn’t want to be fighting on the playground all the time, so you had to find a way to connect with some sort of common denominator, or you wouldn’t survive third grade.” • Writers for Canada.com and The Atlantic have criticized a discussion of the concept of “rape culture” that aired on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

Quick Takes

Monday roundup: Alaska journalists raise concerns; Obama renominates CPB board member

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• A lengthy Columbia Journalism Review feature focuses on a conflict over journalistic ethics at Anchorage-based Alaska Public Media. CFO Bernie Washington has been nominated to serve on the State Assessment Review Board, which helps to determine revenues from oil taxes in the state. APM journalists are concerned about Washington’s appointment compromising the network’s coverage of the review board. “We are aghast, quite frankly, aghast that our management doesn’t understand that this is a solid, more than apparent conflict of interest,” Steve Heimel, host of Talk of Alaska, told CJR.

• President Obama will nominate Elizabeth Sembler for a second term on the CPB board, the White House announced Thursday. Sembler joined the board in 2008 as an appointee of President Bush; her term expires this year. She currently serves as the board’s vice chair.

PBS

PBS 2015 draft budget would raise station dues 2.5 percent

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PBS’s fiscal 2015 draft budget contains a recommendation for a 2.5 percent increase in dues paid by member stations. The PBS Board, meeting Friday morning at headquarters in Arlington, Va., voted to send the proposed budget to member stations for comment. Stations did not see an increase in membership assessments this year due to an anticipated FY13 windfall of $22 million generated in part by higher income from PBS Distribution deals for Masterpiece megahit Downton Abbey. By the end of FY13, PBS officially closed its books with an extra $24.5 million. PBS management is proposing the 2.5 percent dues increase for FY15, which would generate about $4.6 million.

People

SABEW honors biz news, Michiganers land MAB awards, and more recognition for pubcasters

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SOCIETY OF AMERICAN BUSINESS EDITORS AND WRITERS
Pubcasters honored with SABEW Best in Business awards. NPR’s coverage of the “Health Care Website Launch” was named best radio/TV segment or interview, citing reporter Elise Hu and editors Uri Berliner and Neal Carruth. NPR’s Planet Money won in the innovation category for its episode “Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt.” WAMU 88.5 News’s Patrick Madden, Julie Patel and Meymo Lyons won for best radio/TV or investigative report for “Deals for Developers.” “Lots of ground covered, great interviews with lots of players and lots of tough questions asked,” said SABEW. “This is local accountability journalism at its best.”

ProPublica received three awards in the digital arena. ProPublica’s Jesse Eisinger won for digital commentary for “The Trade,” which addressed the banking and financial industries; T. Christian Miller and Jeff Gerth were cited in the digital explanatory division for “Overdose,” a series investigating the dangers of acetaminophen; and A.C. Thompson and Jonathan Jones won for the digital feature “Assisted Living.”

The digital investigative prize went to Chris Hamby of The Center for Public Integrity for “Breathless and Burdened: Dying from Black Lung, Buried by Law and Medicine.” (“Breathless and Burdened” also won the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting presented by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government for CPI’s Hamby, Ronnie Greene, Jim Morris and Chris Zubak-Skees plus Matthew Mosk, Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz of ABC News; it was presented March 5 in Boston.)

The 19th annual BiB awards will be presented March 29 at the SABEW conference in Phoenix.

Quick Takes

Friday roundup: WUGA cuts local programming; channel sharing is “feasible”

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• WUGA-TV in Athens, Ga., is cutting all local programming from its schedule and eliminating six staff members as of June 30, the University of Georgia announced Thursday. The changes come as a result of a study requested by Jere Morehead, president of UGA, the station’s licensee. The study determined that the cost of ramping up local programming and student involvement for the station “was just too great relative to the cost of the operation,” according to the release. WUGA will switch to carrying the PBS World Channel full-time beginning July 1. The move will save the university about $565,000 annually, the release said.