System/Policy
NPR, members look ahead to reinvention of station websites
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As it prepares to sunset Core Publisher, NPR is exploring new ways to integrate digital content from stations and its own platforms.
Current (https://current.org/tag/npr-digital-services/)
As it prepares to sunset Core Publisher, NPR is exploring new ways to integrate digital content from stations and its own platforms.
The network is aiming for greater audience engagement across NPR and station digital platforms by bringing together Boston and Washington teams.
NPR Digital Services will move from Boston to D.C. this fall.
Online listenership for news and talk is growing three times faster than for music.
NPR will increase member station dues next year and is beginning a process to refine its formula for 2018 and beyond.
The system developed for digital content distribution hopes to increase adoption among stations.
After launching with one station in 2011, the social media–driven project now has 36 participating stations.
With contract negotiations looming this fall, leaders at NPR member stations are getting increasingly vocal about what they see as shortcomings of the products offered by NPR Digital Services. In 2011, NPR leaders convinced the majority of stations large and small to sign a three-year agreement for the newly formed unit to provide a fixed slate of tools and services for online streaming, website design and donation management. With the contract term ending Sept. 30, station leaders are raising questions and concerns about the offerings and whether to renew the contract as-is. A recent informal survey of heads of 30 stations gathered mixed reviews of the package of technology tools and services designed to help stations distribute and publish news reports and other online content.
NPR Digital Services has added four stations to its Local Stories Project, in which participants submit stories to be included on NPR’s Facebook page and geotargeted to Facebook users in their markets. The project launched a little over a year ago with KPLU in Tacoma, Wash., and has since expanded to include 18 stations. Stations submit online stories that are shared via NPR’s Facebook page but appear only in the News Feeds of users in each station’s market. In April the project drove 114,000 visits to station sites, according to NPR. The four new participants are WXPN in Philadelphia, KUER in Salt Lake City, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho and KALW in San Francisco.
A growing number of public radio stations can now be found on mobile devices, their signature icons wedged between Angry Birds and Google Maps.