Programs/Content

Sequestration cuts now figure into APM’s Budget Hero online game

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American Public Media has updated its popular online game Budget Hero to reflect the ongoing battle over sequestration cuts in Congress. This fifth version, backed by funding from CPB, also includes updated cost projections for federal spending in 2014 and new policy options to overhaul immigration policy, expand states’ Medicaid programs and reverse the effects of sequester cutbacks on defense and non-defense spending. The original game came out in 2008. Budget Hero currently gets some 40,000 plays a month, according to Linda Fantin, who heads APM’s Public Insight Network and oversees development of the game. The game has been played more than 1.7 million times, according to Diane Tucker, director of the Wilson Center’s Serious Games Initiative and APM’s partner.

Programs/Content

The Key raises WXPN’s profile as valued music curator

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With The Key, we’re able to better reflect the diversity of the Philadelphia music scene, give local bands a platform to showcase their music in multimedia formats and position XPN even more centrally in the market conversation around local music.

People

Seiken, PBS Digital head, will exit pubcaster for London-based post next month

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Jason Seiken, PBS’s innovative head of digital media who exhorted stations to embrace a more videocentric future, will leave the public broadcaster in October to take over as chief content officer and editor-in-chief at the Telegraph Media Group in London. PBS President Paula Kerger told public television executives in an email today that Seiken has done “a truly extraordinary job” over his nearly seven years at PBS. Under his leadership, PBS launched local-national digital initiatives, including the COVE video site and Bento website toolbox for stations. It also pioneered the Webby Award–winning PBS Digital Studios and pushed PBS.org and PBSKids.org to large increases in traffic. Kerger added that “on a personal level, I know that this move makes the most sense for Jason and his family, as they have been interested in moving back to London for some time.”

Programs/Content

Second American Graduate Day to raise dropout awareness nationwide

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The second American Graduate Day, a live multiplatform “call to action” event focusing attention on high-school graduation rates, hits public TV airwaves Sept. 28. The broadcast from the Tisch WNET Studios at Lincoln Center in New York City will air from noon to 7 p.m. Eastern as part of the CPB-backed initiative American Graduate: Let’s Make It Happen. Major partner organizations Big Brothers Big Sisters, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, City Year, Horizons National and United Way will participate, along with nearly 30 other national partners, 14 local organizations and celebrity guests involved in education and youth-intervention programs.

The program will air as 14 half-hour segments, each of which will accommodate local cutaways for stations to insert locally produced live or pretaped seven-minute segments on organizations that provide support to at-risk students, families and schools in their communities. Viewers and online users at AmericanGraduate.org can connect with their local pubTV stations and community organizations.

Programs/Content

Grant to Frontline will create its first desk, to oversee news collaborations

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Frontline is spending $1.5 million to bolster its ability to manage its news collaborations, which are growing in number as well as importance. Raney Aronson, deputy executive producer, said the investigative showcase will establish a four-person collaboration desk through a three-year, $750,000 grant from the Philadelphia-based Wyncote Foundation. She tapped Frontline’s series budget for matching funds for the desk, which will also concentrate on transmedia efforts. “The way we do journalism has changed,” Aronson told Current. “Frontline is no longer simply a documentary series on a Tuesday night.” More than half of the films and online reports produced by Frontline are done in collaboration with kindred organizations such as the New York Times, NPR, the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica and, more recently, Spanish-language network Univision.

Programs/Content

PBS NewsHour website redesign to integrate upcoming weekend program

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In addition to launching a weekend edition of the PBS NewsHour, New York’s WNET has secured a contract to create an integrated website for the flagship series and its new sibling. The WNET Interactive Engagement Group (IEG), a subsidiary that specializes in developing customized WordPress platforms, will complete the web development project by December, but aims to make some enhancements before the Sept. 7 launch of PBS NewsHour Weekend. That new Saturday and Sunday evening news show will originate from the New York City pubcaster, while the weekday NewsHour maintains its longtime home at WETA in Arlington, Va. The redesign will be the first major back-end overhaul in 10 years for the NewsHour’s website, which is built on a homegrown content management system (CMS), according to Vanessa Dennis, online art director.

Programs/Content

NPR, APM join forces with mobile app Swell

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NPR and American Public Media are partnering with a new mobile app that curates talk radio and podcasts according to listener taste. Swell, which launched June 27, is the latest venture to bring digital radio programs to listeners through digital rather than terrestrial means.

Programs/Content

WBUR microsite explores Mass. drug lab crisis

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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.

Programs/Content

WYSO explores industrial city’s reinvention

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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.

Journalism

NPR’s Code Switch digs into racial discomfort

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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.

Programs/Content

Alaska Public Media’s new web-first series is part of its ‘video renaissance’

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Alaska Public Media has introduced a new weekly web-first series in what promises to be its “larger video renaissance.”

Indie Alaska, a weekly YouTube series profiling unique Alaskans, is co-produced with PBS Digital Studios and partially funded with a $10,000 Digital Entrepreneurs Grant from PBS. The show launched May 6 with an episode about a ski train polka band. Producers will deliver 52 episodes in total, with new ones debuting each Monday. Patrick Yack, chief content officer at Alaska Public Media, said the dual licensee plans to eventually repackage the episodes in a magazine-like format for TV broadcast and may adapt some for radio as well. The network broadcast promo spots for the series in addition to promoting it through social media.