System/Policy
CPB backs new journalism desk for Alaska’s stations
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The two-year grant funds four new reporter positions and three shared editors.
Programs/Content
Alaska Public Media grant will enhance coverage of rural health
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The broadcaster received $500,000 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Programs/Content
Alaska station’s forums ‘break down walls’ between community members
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The winner of Current’s Local That Works contest, Alaska Public Media’s “Community in Unity” events tackled topics including racism, immigration and incarceration.
System/Policy
Alaska pubcasters pitch in to help Koahnic, station hit hardest by quake damage
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Koahnic’s KNBA may not be able to return to its studios and offices for months.
Programs/Content
Series of conversations between prisoners and community members wins Current’s Local That Works contest
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Alaska Public Media’s “Community in Unity” initiative aims to “get people who wouldn’t normally interact in the same room.”
System/Policy
Letter from the executive director: Announcing ‘Local that Works’ finalists
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Our panel of judges selected four projects that they believe deserve wider attention and adoption within public media.
NPR staffer puts a fork in Alaska station’s flatware fiasco
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The help from headquarters “was totally unexpected and very funny,” an Alaska Public Media reporter said.
System/Policy
Three Alaska stations to collaborate on energy news
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This is the fourth journalism collaboration CPB has backed in the last two months.
System/Policy
Alaska pubcasters prepare for cuts to state funding
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A pending 23.5 percent reduction in subsidies has Alaska stations rethinking their priorities.
Quick Takes
Friday roundup: StartUp podcast raises $1M; Alaska DJ killed
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Plus: Doctors meet Alex the Muppet, and a Florida college sells two stations.
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.
Programs/Content
Alaska Public Media’s new web-first series is part of its ‘video renaissance’
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Alaska Public Media has introduced a new weekly web-first series in what promises to be its “larger video renaissance.”
Indie Alaska, a weekly YouTube series profiling unique Alaskans, is co-produced with PBS Digital Studios and partially funded with a $10,000 Digital Entrepreneurs Grant from PBS. The show launched May 6 with an episode about a ski train polka band. Producers will deliver 52 episodes in total, with new ones debuting each Monday. Patrick Yack, chief content officer at Alaska Public Media, said the dual licensee plans to eventually repackage the episodes in a magazine-like format for TV broadcast and may adapt some for radio as well. The network broadcast promo spots for the series in addition to promoting it through social media.