Programs/Content
‘Jacksonville Today’ newsletter aims to broaden audience for WJCT News coverage
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Rollout of the public broadcaster’s digital news brand includes launching a website next year.
Programs/Content
How GBH News transformed its workflow from broadcast-centered to digital-first
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With the launch of the yearlong multimedia project “COVID in the Classroom,” we flew the plane as we built it.
Programs/Content
Los Angeles partners revamp local daily news breaks into ‘SoCal Update’
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Journalists from KPCC and LAist share reporting on top stories of the day in short segments that air on PBS SoCal and KCET.
Local That Works
Voice of San Diego’s guide to public schools gives audiences more of what they want
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“We have never produced a product that people were this excited about and wanted this much,” says Scott Lewis, VOSD’s chief editor.
Programs/Content
Utah’s KUED amps up local production with magazine series
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The creators of “This is Utah” say it’s as unique as the state where it’s produced.
Programs/Content
Rocky Mountain PBS partners with Weather Channel for local news and weather
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The video service adopted by RMPBS provides short segments of hyperlocal content.
Journalism
Tiny news team at Lakeland Public Television fills gap left by commercial TV
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Station managers who worry they can’t afford to do news and public affairs have only to look at Lakeland Public Television in Bemidji, Minn., for inspiration. Since 1998, the station has produced a full half-hour weeknight news program. It currently operates on a yearly budget of just $375,000 to $400,000. Lakeland News is “structured like a commercial newscast, without commercials,” said Bill Sanford, the station’s chief executive and director of engineering. It was conceived after the station secured funding to evaluate how to reinvent itself.
Journalism
Kansas City’s KCPT picks up gauntlet to expand local news coverage
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Three years ago, a delegation from Kansas City Public Television, including the board chair, trekked out to San Diego’s KPBS to evaluate how that station’s extensive radio, television and online news operation might be adapted in Kansas City. A few months later, an influential visitor to Kansas City, PBS NewsHour anchor Jim Lehrer, urged KCPT leaders to act on their nascent ambitions to develop a locally focused news service for the community. Over dinner at the restaurant Lidia’s, Lehrer “kind of threw the gauntlet down,” recalled Kliff Kuehl, KCPT president, challenging executives to step up the station’s commitment to news coverage. But the proposal to transform KCPT into a true local news hub remained mostly an aspiration until a surprise major grant from the Hale Family Foundation arrived in July 2013. Only then was the station able to turn its ambitions into something substantive and seemingly sustainable.
crisis coverage
Preparing public media newsrooms to cover local crises
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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.