Programs/Content

NPR, WLRN team up to expand reporting on Latin America

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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.

Development

A digital revolution for public radio fundraising

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Marketing consultant John Sutton has been forecasting what public radio will look like in 2018, and his predictions, published on his blog RadioSutton since February, have been provocative. Sutton is among the pubradio analysts who believe that federal funding “will be sharply reduced or gone in five years.” He also believes that digital listening will fragment the audience enough that eventually NPR will have to raise money directly from listeners or the current public radio economic model will collapse. Below, he lays out a proposal for overhauling public radio fundraising and how it makes both dollars and sense. Imagine a future in which listeners donate 26 percent more money to public radio at half the cost. Imagine that NPR has nearly $60 million more to invest annually in world-class journalism and development of new programs.

Is this imaginative exercise making you uncomfortable?

Development

PRPD offers new round of trainings

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The Public Radio Program Directors Association will expand its training programs for stations this year and continue its Sense of Place studies of local audiences, with funding from NPR and the Millstream Fund. PRPD will offer three workshops based on the Morning Edition Grad School classes that it has offered in recent years. “New MEGS” will extend training to all newsmagazines, including All Things Considered and Weekend Edition, and is designed for hosts, news directors and program directors. The first workshop will be offered May 18 in Charlotte, N.C.

“JMEGS” (MEGS for Journalists) applies MEGS principles to journalism, focusing on selecting stories, interviewing, writing, planning newscasts and promoting news reports. JMEGS was piloted in 2009 but has not yet been implemented.

Programs/Content

NPR drops Talk of the Nation, replaces with WBUR’s Here & Now

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This item has been updated and reposted with additional information. After more than two decades on the air, NPR’s Talk of the Nation will come to an end in June to make way for the newsmag Here & Now, which will be revamped under a new partnership between NPR and Boston’s WBUR-FM. Talk of the Nation will air its last episode June 28, ending a 21-year-long run. The call-in talk show has helped launch big names in public media, including original host John Hockenberry, This American Life’s Ira Glass and PBS NewsHour’s Ray Suarez. NPR Chief Content Officer Kinsey Wilson said the network decided to end Talk of the Nation because a newsmagazine might pull a bigger audience in midday.

Tech

NPR to pilot alerts for people with hearing disabilities

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NPR will test a system for delivering emergency alerts to individuals who are deaf or hard-of-hearing in Gulf Coast states under a contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The project marks the first attempt to deliver real-time emergency messages such as weather alerts via radio-broadcast text to those with hearing disabilities. Through the Public Radio Satellite System, NPR will relay emergency alert messages received from FEMA via the Radio Broadcast Data System to public radio stations in the Gulf region. The stations will broadcast the alerts to receivers that are able to display text messages. Volunteers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing will be alerted to the warnings by flashing indicators on their radios or by a bed-shaking device that can be triggered by radios.

Quick Takes

NPR’s Generation Listen launch a hit at SXSW

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NPR launched its new Generation Listen initiative in Austin, Texas, with a blowout bash March 11. The party, held in the midst of the South by Southwest Interactive conference, was part of the new ongoing effort to encourage listeners under the age of 30 to tune into public radio. Brian Stelter of the New York Times has a write-up of the event, which had Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me! host Peter Sagal, TED Radio Hour host Guy Raz and author Neil Gaiman in attendance.

Programs/Content

The name needs revamping, but podcasts are here to stay

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If you’re a public radio station without a plan for how to take advantage of the remarkably flexible and creative platform of podcasting — a platform that leverages your existing skills better than anything else in new media — you need to think again.

People

Dana Davis Rehm to leave NPR due to restructuring

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Dana Davis Rehm, NPR’s senior v.p. of marketing, communications and external relations, will leave the network May 6 due to a reorganization of her division under new Chief Marketing Officer Emma Carrasco. The restructuring is intended to “put more emphasis on marketing than on communications,” said NPR President Gary Knell in a Feb. 14 email to station leaders. “Though I have only known Dana for a little more than one year, I can’t think of anyone who has demonstrated a deeper commitment to NPR and public radio, or who better reflects our values,” Knell wrote. “As our longest serving head of Marketing & Communications, she has established effective communications strategies and practices and a built a staff that has given me confidence that we could deal with anything that might come our way.”

Rehm joined NPR in 2001 after serving as head of Wisconsin Public Radio.

Programs/Content

NPR will move production of Weekend ATC to L.A.

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NPR announced today that this summer it will move production of Weekend All Things Considered to NPR West, its production center based in Culver City, Calif. “Moving the show west will broaden and deepen our coverage and allow us to bring strong geographic diversity to our programming,” said Margaret Low Smith, senior v.p. of news, in a press release. “In addition, this plan gives us a new level of business and editorial continuity. By having a full team stationed at NPR West, we will be able to respond quickly if weather or a major news event incapacitates NPR headquarters.”

NPR said the move will give the show access to the Los Angeles area’s pool of program guests in the fields of science, technology, entertainment and international trade. The city’s ethnic diversity will also present a “whole new range of stories,” the release said.

Programs/Content

NPR targets younger listeners with four-city “radiotypes” campaign

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NPR has launched a three-month multimedia marketing campaign that aims to increase audience for stations in four markets around the country. The campaign runs the gamut of media, including billboards, social media and print, TV and digital ads. Participating stations are KERA in Dallas; WFYI in Indianapolis; KPBS in San Diego; and WMFE in Orlando, Fla. NPR chose the stations based on their opportunity to grow audience and their eagerness to work with the network, according to Emma Carrasco, chief marketing officer for NPR. They were also selected for geographic diversity.

Programs/Content

Jesse Thorn’s Bullseye moving to NPR

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More than six weeks after first announcing his arts-and-culture radio program’s exit from longtime distributor PRI, Jesse Thorn revealed the details of Bullseye’s new partnership on his Tumblr account Feb. 7. Beginning in April, the program will be distributed through NPR, with no break in carriage after the program’s relationship with PRI ends in late March.

Quick Takes

NPR’s Scott Simon to record pilot for mysterious new variety show

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Scott Simon, host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, is holding a free taping of a pilot episode for an experimental radio variety show, Scott Simon’s Wonderful Town. The taping will take place Feb. 26 at the bar Bell House in Brooklyn, N.Y., where NPR’s pub trivia program Ask Me Another is recorded, and will feature comedian Jim Gaffigan, musician Julian Velard and other guests. Tickets are already sold out. NPR spokesperson Emerson Brown told Current the taping is “an experiment,” and that while Simon and the network’s programming staff are likely to tape one more event based on feedback from the Feb.