Crowdfunding

Radiotopia’s Kickstarter funds will support internships, health care and more podcasts

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Public Radio Exchange’s podcast network Radiotopia has raised $620,000 from 21,808 donors on Kickstarter, setting a record among publishing, radio and podcasting projects that have used the crowdfunding platform. “We were dazzled by the response,” said PRX CEO Jake Shapiro. “It shows how dedicated the listeners are to the shows. And it means we’re going to be shipping out a lot of T-shirts.” After reaching its initial goal, the campaign achieved stretch goals as well.

Programs/Content

Radio Diaries turns to Kickstarter to boost podcast, productions

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The production company Radio Diaries, whose stories often appear on This American Life and NPR’s newsmagazines, is aiming to raise $40,000 in a Kickstarter campaign to fund new pieces and an expansion of its podcast. The campaign began May 28 and runs until June 27. As of noon June 3, the campaign has raised $19,280. Radio Diaries has turned to Kickstarter to diversify its fundraising methods, said Executive Producer Joe Richman. “We, like a lot of other small independent production companies are scrappy, and we’ve made it work with whatever money comes through the door and always will,” he said.

Quick Takes

Kickstarter hacked; users advised to change passwords

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Hackers breached the crowdfunding website Kickstarter Feb. 12 and made off with user data including passwords and email addresses, the company announced Saturday. The hackers did not obtain credit card data, according to Kickstarter CEO Yancey Strickler, who advised site users to change their account passwords and those of any other site accounts with the same password. “We’re incredibly sorry that this happened,” Strickler wrote in the post. “We set a very high bar for how we serve our community, and this incident is frustrating and upsetting.”

Programs/Content

On The Longest Shortest Time, Hillary Frank finds solace in stories of other parents

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Pubradio producer Hillary Frank channeled her experiences during a difficult pregnancy into parenting podcast The Longest Shortest Time, which recently completed a successful Kickstarter campaign and landed a series of high-profile sponsors. Frank is a contributor to This American Life, Marketplace and other programs, and has written three novels for young adults. She began producing and self-distributing her podcast in 2010 while caring for her infant daughter, whose “sunny-side up” reversal in the womb rendered her mother unable to walk for months after giving birth. “I just felt like I couldn’t be the mom that I wanted to be,” she said of her convalescence and recovery. “What I really wanted was to connect with other moms.”

Frank wanted to counter what she described as the “black and white” philosophy of most parenting books.

Programs/Content

Latitude News meets Kickstarter goal to fund new weekly podcast

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Latitude News, an online news outlet exploring world events and their reverberating effects in local U.S. communities and vice versa,  surpassed the fundraising goal of its Kickstarter campaign to launch a new podcast. As of Feb. 14, 307 backers had pledged $46,200 towards a goal of $44,250. The newsroom currently produces an eponymous monthly 15-minute podcast distributed by Public Radio Exchange; it now will expand its output by introducing “The Local Global Mashup Show,” a weekly 30-minute podcast. Latitude News will use its Kickstarter contributions to fund the first three months of the program and hire a business development staffer to develop a paid subscription model for the podcast.  Latitude News, which is headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., also plans to explore offering “The Local Global Mashup Show” for public radio broadcast, founder and editor Maria Balinska told Current.

Quick Takes

Kickstarter users have given more than $42M to documentaries

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Crowdfunding website Kickstarter announced Thursday that independent film projects on its site had passed the $100 million mark in pledges since its 2009 launch, with $42.6 million of that total pledged to documentaries — the largest share of any film genre. Many Kickstarter-funded documentaries find their way to larger success, whether through film festivals, theatrical distribution or airings on networks like PBS. This year, three Kickstarter-assisted documentary features shortlisted for a Best Documentary Oscar nomination will also air on PBS in 2013: The Waiting Room, Detropia and Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry.

Development

Kickstarter crowd backs Seabrook’s Decode DC

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Former NPR correspondent Andrea Seabrook, who covered Congress until departing in July to launch an independent podcast called Decode DC, crossed the finish line on her Kickstarter fundraising campaign Oct. 17, hitting her goal of $75,000 and ultimately topping out at over $100,000. Seabrook launched the campaign Sept. 25 and met her fundraising target with two days to spare. Seabrook conceded during an Oct.

Quick Takes

Kickstarter-backed comic book will illustrate pubradio series on consciousness

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The Peabody-winning pubradio program To the Best of Our Knowledge has successfully completed a $15,000 Kickstarter campaign to produce a comic book that will accompany an upcoming six-hour series. The series, Meet Your Mind: The Science of Consciousness, will air in November and December. Guests include famed brain researcher Oliver Sacks and Nobel laureates Eric Kandel and Daniel Kahneman. The comic book is intended to help illustrate Meet Your Mind. Jim Ottaviani, a writer who specializes in graphic novels about scientists, will pen the comic, and Natalie Nourigat will illustrate it.