Programs/Content
Rocky Mountain PBS merger with I-News aims to serve ‘audience of the future’
|
American University’s J-Lab analyzes the nation’s first formal merger of a public broadcasting network with a nonprofit news startup.
Current (https://current.org/tag/journalism/page/6/)
American University’s J-Lab analyzes the nation’s first formal merger of a public broadcasting network with a nonprofit news startup.
The Online News Association, a nonprofit resource and support group for digital journalists, moved its offices into NPR’s new Washington, D.C., headquarters July 1.
Crisis coverage will stress several layers of a public station’s operating systems — from newsroom layout to editorial decision-making; from the flexibility of web-hosting services to interpersonal relationships among key staff members, each of whom will be asked to step up and work under conditions they have never faced.
The ombudsman for America Abroad, a monthly public radio show covering foreign policy and international affairs, has responded to criticism from the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting regarding a recent show about developments in energy technology. In a May 31 blog post, FAIR said that the April episode of America Abroad “sounded like an infomercial” for fracking, the hydraulic fracturing process used in natural gas production. FAIR pointed out that the show was funded by the Qatar Foundation International, a philanthropy funded by the royal family of Qatar. Qatar is a leading exporter of natural gas — in 2011, it was the world’s top exporter, according to the International Gas Union. FAIR also took issue with the appearance on the show of Henry Jacoby, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor involved with a study about the future of natural gas. The MIT Energy Initiative, which produced the report, includes oil and gas companies as members, and the study’s advisory committee included representatives from natural-gas industry groups.
In late May, WBUR published “Bad Chemistry: Annie Dookhan and the Massachusetts Drug Lab Crisis,” an online report on a former state chemist charged with falsifying drug test results for at least 34,000 legal cases.
Finding long-term, sustainable funding remains a top concern of the country’s nonprofit news outlets, according to the results of a new study published Monday by the Pew Research Center.
“After Innocence: Exoneration in America” provides an in-depth look at wrongful imprisonment in the U.S.
Republicans in Wisconsin’s state legislature are looking to bar the state’s public broadcasters and biggest university from contributing to an investigative-journalism center that they collaborate with, a move that would severely hinder the site’s newsgathering and educational capabilities.
The recession in Dayton provides the backdrop for ReInvention Stories, a multimedia Localore project that brought together the Association of Independents in Radio, a local NPR station, and a pair of Academy Award–nominated veteran documentary filmmakers.
When Southern country singer Brad Paisley shared his awkward view of race relations in his controversial song “Accidental Racist” last month, the team at NPR’s Code Switch couldn’t have asked for better timing. The unit devoted to multimedia reporting and opinionating on matters of race, culture and ethnicity had just debuted on NPR’s website and social media under the Code Switch banner April 7. Two days later, Paisley’s cringe-inducing tune, which also featured LL Cool J delivering the lines “If you won’t judge my do-rag / I won’t judge your red flag,” whipped up a frenzy of dumbfounded disgust on Facebook and Twitter. “It’s kind of a softball over the plate,” wrote Code Switch blogger Gene Demby in a blogged conversation with Matt Thompson, manager of the Code Switch team. Indeed, Paisley’s song pushed many listeners into the territory that Code Switch calls home — a zone where people of different races and ethnicities try to understand each other and stumble into sometimes uncomfortable conversations along the way.
NPR provided training and support to 17 participating stations, but has dropped plans to expand StateImpact to all 50 states.
Oklahoma has a small but tight-knit pubcasting community, so covering the massive May 20 tornado and its aftermath required everyone on the team to cover for each other.
For more than a decade, pubcasters have debated whether local stations can harness the power of the Internet. There has been no shortage of naysayers in this ongoing exchange, and, for a time, that side of the discussion seemed to be winning, for good reason.
The Center for Investigative Reporting will fold its three different brands under one roof beginning May 29. The CIR moniker will now incorporate the Bay Citizen, which covers local stories in northern California, as well as California Watch, which covers the entire state.
In an extended interview with Current, Frontline creator David Fanning recalls how he came to work at Boston’s WGBH more than three decades ago, and how the show is positioning itself for the future.
The University of Kentucky has sued a reporter at its public radio station, WUKY in Lexington, in an attempt to guard information she had requested about surgical practices at its pediatric hospital. By filing the complaint, UK is challenging the state’s attorney general, who in March endorsed reporter Brenna Angel’s request for documents. UK declined the AG’s request as well, citing state and federal privacy laws. The dispute began in December 2012, when Angel made an Open Records Request to the university regarding the cardiothoracic surgery program at Kentucky Children’s Hospital in Lexington. The program has been suspended pending an internal review, according to local media reports.
NPR and Miami’s WLRN are collaborating to boost coverage of Latin America, with NPR’s Lourdes Garcia-Navarro assigned to a new foreign desk in São Paulo. In addition to Garcia-Navarro, the team of journalists includes Tim Padgett, a longtime reporter on Latin America and the Caribbean who previously wrote for Time and Newsweek and recently joined WLRN. Padgett’s primary task will be to coordinate coverage from Miami. Four reporters on the staff of the Miami Herald and its sister Spanish-language publication, El Nuevo Herald, will also contribute. WLRN and the Herald have collaborated on news coverage for a decade.
Edgar B. Herwick III, a features reporter for WGBH, was enjoying his field assignment on that cool, sunny Monday, interviewing runners as they triumphantly crossed the finish line of the April 15 Boston Marathon.
A crowdfunding campaign launched April 15 by Public Radio International seeks $25,000 for a “Global Stories Fund” that will support 11 international stories to be presented on PRI’s The World and other news programs.
Tonight’s special edition of Greater Boston from WGBH, focused on the shocking bomb blasts at Monday’s Boston Marathon, will be distributed nationally on the World Channel, the public TV multicast service produced by WGBH and distributed by American Public Television. WGBH spokesman Michael Raia told Current the 30-minute show will extend to an hour and begin airing at 9 p.m. Eastern time on World. In Boston, the show will be broadcast on WGBH’s primary TV station at 7 p.m., its regular timeslot. Planned guests include terrorism expert Jim Walsh, a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program; Jarrett Barrios of the Red Cross, who took part in the race; and Haider Javed Warraich, a resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston who wrote an op-ed in today’s New York Times about his experience growing up amid explosions in Pakistan. WGBH staffers producing segments for the Greater Boston special include host and executive editor Emily Rooney, who lives three blocks from the explosion site and will provide a first-hand perspective on the still-unfolding story; Jared Bowen, who is covering the law enforcement investigation; and Adam Reilly, reporting from Logan Airport with reactions from runners.