Commentaries Archives

Programs/Content

Satullo: You’ll make mistakes, so be sure to learn from them

By Chris Satullo | June 25, 2012

Do you have the courage to fail? I asked that leading question during a keynote address to public media journalists who attended “Taking News Digital,” a June 7–9 workshop exploring the lessons we’ve learned at WHYY since launching NewsWorks.org in November 2010. We have two years of experience launching and running NewsWorks as a digital, multimedia news operation with its own distinct brand. It blends reporting by WHYY’s news staff with the work of freelancers, content partners and users. CPB provided two grants totaling nearly $1.2 million to support the NewsWorks project.

Programs/Content

The challenge for public radio: Letting go of our expected future

By Bruce Theriault | February 17, 2009

The fact that the public radio audience is 82 percent white is a problem when the public we aspire to serve is becoming rapidly more diverse. It is absolutely imperative that we find ways to bring in new voices, and that we resist the urge to apply old filters to new ideas. …

Programs/Content

You are now entering the campaign Logic Zone

By | January 3, 2009

With radio and TV clogged with shouting heads, with blogs and e-mail threads dominated by partisan invective, is there room in the media for the reasoned views of ordinary citizens? These models of high-minded political debate and conversation underlie a variety of public-media websites that have sprung up for the 2008 election cycle.

People

Hosts walk high wires, producers hold the nets

By | February 4, 2008

Successful producers help talent compensate. They make a deal with their talent: “I’ll help you maneuver the everyday travails of living life, and you will go out there every night and try to give the performance of your life.”

System/Policy

Talk through ‘gray areas,’ giving staff a moral compass

By Patti Dodgen | February 24, 2003

A manager in ethical hot water can be compared to a frog in a soup pot, says Carter McNamara. If you put a frog in a pot of hot water, it will immediately jump out, McNamara writes in The Complete Guide to Ethics Management: An Ethics Toolkit for Managers. But if you put a frog in a pot of cool water and very gradually increase the heat of the burner, you can boil the frog before it knows what’s up. The point here is that most ethical problems are created not by management mischief but by poor decisions made by managers under stress. For public broadcasters struggling to manage rapid change, stress is constant.