Programs/Content

New digital offerings from NPR, PBS promise closer look at how users consume content

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New digital offerings from NPR and PBS aim to give public media additional platforms for building online audiences while gaining insights into how listeners and viewers interact with digital content. These digital initiatives — PBS’s Membership Video on Demand service and NPR’s long-awaited NPR One app — were demonstrated and discussed during the Public Media Development & Marketing Conference in Denver July 9-12. The frequent name-changes for NPR’s mobile app during its development — it has been variously referred to as “Project Carbon,” “Infinite Player” and “MPX” — prompted laughter among PMDMC attendees when recounted by Zach Brand, NPR’s v.p. of digital media. But the roulette wheel has stopped, and the name NPR One is now locked in. The app, which will be released in a soft launch later this month, uses an algorithm and user feedback to create an audio stream fusing NPR content with newscasts and segments provided by stations.

Quick Takes

New York Public Radio, StoryCorps among 2014 Knight Prototype grantees

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A rejiggered phone booth from New York Public Radio, a mobile app produced by StoryCorps and a public-records data tool from the founder of FOIA Machine are among the 16 recipients of grants from this year’s Knight Foundation Prototype Fund. The foundation’s annual contest awards six-month, $35,000 grants to help recipients develop early-stage media ideas. Winners were announced Thursday. “While six months and a $35,000 grant might not always be enough to finish version one of a project, it can go a long way towards validating an assumption, developing a minimum viable product or identifying a need to revise an approach,” Chris Barr, a media innovation associate with Knight, wrote in a release. This year’s pubmedia and nonprofit media prototype grant winners include:

Talk Box, a New York Public Radio project to turn select New York City phone booths into “a direct, two-way line to the New York Public Radio newsroom.”
DIY StoryCorps, a mobile app from StoryCorps that will allow users to record and upload stories on their own, without visiting a StoryCorps booth.

Programs/Content

After criticism, NPR gives freer rein to upcoming ombudsman

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NPR has stepped back from plans to curtail its ombudsman’s duties after receiving criticism from journalists and leaders of its member stations. The blowback began with a blog post by New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen, who pointed out Monday that a job posting for NPR’s next ombudsman specified that the in-house watchdog should refrain from “commentary” and “judgment.” Edward Schumacher-Matos, NPR’s current ombudsman, will end his three-year term in September. Rosen saw the change in language as an effort to defang the ombudsman, which he argued would remove a valuable check on NPR’s reporting. Some station leaders noted Rosen’s post and shared his concerns.

Quick Takes

WNYC receives $1M grant for new health reporting unit

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New York’s WNYC-FM has received a $1 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for a new reporting unit focused on health issues. The unit will cover healthy living and wellness, the policy and economics of health care, and medical science and discovery. WNYC will use the grant to hire reporters, producers, editors and audience-development specialists. Content created by the unit will be featured on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show and the station’s local editions of Morning Edition and All Things Considered. The reporting will also be featured nationally on WNYC and Public Radio International’s The Takeaway and on American Public Media’s Marketplace.

System/Policy

Incentive auction threatens over-the-air public TV service, says CPB report

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Though the FCC’s incentive auction next year might give a short-term financial boost to a handful of public TV stations, it could erode the field’s ability to provide over-the-air signals to all of the nation’s homes, according to a new CPB white paper that outlines policy implications for local decision-makers. “Narrow financial calculations cannot measure the value of serving the educational needs of the nation’s children, providing trusted news, reliably delivering emergency alerts, presenting diverse viewpoints that would not otherwise be heard, and numerous other benefits provided today and in the future by the nation’s public media stations through over-the-air broadcasting,” says the report, “Facing the Spectrum Incentive Auction and Repacking Process,” released Thursday. “Unfortunately, while the spectrum incentive auction and repacking process would address one problem (the need for more spectrum for wireless broadband), it would likely do so at the expense of public media’s ability to meet the mandates of the Public Broadcasting Act — undermining communities’ ability to address the policy dilemmas they face as well as the nation’s need for universal service and local content and diversity of programming in an increasingly consolidated media environment,” the report added. CPB commissioned the white paper in April 2013 to help provide background and a policy framework for local pubcasters as they approach decisions about how and whether to participate in the FCC’s incentive auction, a voluntary proceeding that will be disruptive for broadcasters and TV viewers alike. Though stations can choose whether to participate in the auction, the FCC may move them to another channel during a process called “repacking,” which may require some stations to relinquish channels assigned to TV translators.