Current (https://current.org/tag/wnyc/page/7/)
Alec Baldwin, the actor and diehard public radio fan, will be ending his own popular podcast and pubradio program after two seasons due to a lack of funding, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
WLRN in Miami won large-market radio Murrows for feature reporting and use of sound. Chicago’s WBEZ also won for news documentary and hard-news reporting. The award for investigative reporting went to KQED and the Center for Investigative Reporting, both based in San Francisco, for “Broken Shield: Exposing Abuses at California Developmental Centers.”
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.
The competition for midday timeslots on public radio stations is heating up, as Public Radio International and producers of its news programs unveiled plans to experiment with new approaches for combining national and local content to give stations more control over what their local listeners hear during the middle of each weekday.
The National Endowment of the Arts announced $4.68 million in funding to 76 media-arts projects April 23, including new grantees such as the Online Video Engagement Experience (OVEE) developed with CPB funding, a new initiative from the Association of Independents in Radio called Spectrum America and Sonic Trace, a multimedia production at KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., that was created through AIR’s recently concluded Localore project. For a second year, the NEA will continue to support projects that use digital technologies to go beyond traditional broadcasting platforms. In its announcement, the endowment highlighted a $100,000 grant to OVEE, a digital platform that allows web users to interact while watching PBS and local station content. The Independent Television Service developed the technology with support from CPB. AIR also received $100,000 for Spectrum America, a project that will pair media artists with public stations as they experiment with “new approaches to storytelling.”
Sonic Trace, a co-production at KCRW initiated through AIR’s 2012–2013 Localore initiative, received a direct NEA grant of $75,000 to continue exploring the experience of Latino immigrants. NEA also backed digital media projects at NPR, providing $100,000 for music programming and multimedia content.
Judges in the 72nd annual Peabody competition selected winners as “the best in electronic media for the year 2012,” including PBS programs presented on Independent Lens, NPR’s coverage of the Syrian conflict and a ProPublica investigation produced with This American Life.
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.
New York’s WNYC has released for the first time recordings of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. interviewed on several occasions in the 1960s by Eleanor Fischer, a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reporter who later worked for NPR. The interviews capture King discussing a wide range of subjects, including his childhood, his adoption of nonviolent resistance tactics, and the Montgomery bus boycott. The recordings were among tapes given to WNYC’s archive in 2008 after Fischer passed away. “We are a rich archive in content but not a huge staff of people and we have received many collections,” wrote Archive Director Andy Lanset in an email to Current.
This item has been updated and reposted with additional information. A former volunteer at Houston’s jazz format NPR affiliate KTSU has been jailed for allegedly stealing credit card information from listener pledge sheets and using the information to buy electronics and gift cards, which he would then sell for cash. Michael Whitfield, whom the Houston Chronicle reports has a history of financial crimes, was charged Jan. 9 with the fraudulent use and possession of identifying information for more than 50 people, a third-degree felony. Investigators say there are more than 20 confirmed cases but there could be as many as 300 potential victims.
Texas Southern University, which owns KTSU, released a statement Jan.
WNYC’s Toms River, N.J.-based transmitter, which had gone dark when Superstorm Sandy devastated the Jersey Shore community Oct. 29, came back on the air Dec. 14, according to WNYC spokesperson Jennifer Houlihan.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced today it will immediately give $250,000 each to New York City’s most prominent public media stations.
When Superstorm Sandy slammed into the most populated region of the United States Oct. 29, claiming at least 90 lives and wreaking havoc on everything in its path, public broadcasting stations along the Eastern Seaboard couldn’t escape the storm’s wrath.
Producers of the program have made public the full list of questions they had originally emailed to their interview subject for the controversial piece.
Some states get a little sexier every four years: Ohio. Florida. North Carolina. Their pivotal role in deciding the presidential election has made them the backbone of a new ad hoc collaboration, the (Mostly) Swing State Public Radio Network. Spearheaded by New York’s WNYC, the network brings together public radio stations in political battleground states to reflect the concerns and viewpoints of their much-scrutinized voters.
The “Swing State Radio Network” launched by New York’s WNYC is returning for the upcoming presidential and vice-presidential debates. WNYC public affairs host Brian Lehrer will anchor pre-debate call-in shows that will air in New York as well as on WUSF in Tampa, Fla.; WMFE in Orlando, Fla.; WDET in Detroit; WFAE in Charlotte, N.C.; WOSU in Columbus, Ohio; WCPN in Cleveland; Wisconsin Public Radio; and New Hampshire Public Radio. The coverage will also feature a live chat with a video feed hosted on WNYC’s political site, ItsAFreeCountry.org. WNYC political reporter Anna Sale will participate in the chats. The impromptu Swing State network began with coverage of the party conventions.
SAN FRANCISCO — Public media continues to earn accolades for its online innovations, as multiple outlets racked up trophies at the Online News Association’s awards ceremony Sept. 22. Hosted by PBS NewsHour correspondent Hari Sreenivasan, the gala banquet sought to honor the year’s best work in online journalism across all media outlets. Award categories reflect the size of the operation: small sites, with fewer than 25 full-time employees; medium, more than 25 but fewer than 100; and large, more than 100. With two trophies each, public broadcasting’s big winners were WNYC in New York and EarthFix, the CPB-backed Local Journalism Center focusing on environment issues in the Pacific Northwest.
NPR is teaming up with New York’s WNYC to make its trivia and quiz show Ask Me Another into a weekly offering, starting in January. The show’s 13-episode pilot season has aired on 150 stations since its launch in May. As a new co-producer, WNYC will contribute to shaping the show’s creative direction. Taping of 25 new episodes will start in November at the Bell House in Brooklyn, where the first season was recorded in front of sold-out audiences. Ask Me Another will also travel to five cities yet to be determined for additional tapings.
WNYC in New York will launch Gabfest Radio, a one-hour program combining edited versions of two popular podcasts led by editors of online magazine Slate, with two weekend broadcasts. The move is a fast turnaround for WNYC, which first announced the program and collaboration with Slate in a Tuesday press release. Slate’s Political Gabfest, which began in 2005, is hosted by website editor David Plotz, chief political correspondent John Dickerson and senior editor and legal correspondent Emily Bazelon. Its Culture Gabfest, which originated in 2008, is hosted by deputy editor Julia Turner, movie critic Dana Stevens and culture critic at large, Stephen Metcalf. Slate and the Slate Group of online properties are owned by the Washington Post Co.
WNYC, the producer of public radio’s Radiolab, has found “no reason to believe” that frequent contributor Jonah Lehrer’s appearances on the show are “compromised.” Lehrer resigned from The New Yorker Sunday after Tablet magazine revealed that he had made up quotes attributed to Bob Dylan in his book Imagine: How Creativity Works. Here’s the full statement from WNYC:
Jonah Lehrer has been a regular contributor to Radiolab as an “explainer,” making technical science more accessible and bringing much needed meaning to new scientific research. He has been a lively and compelling voice and has helped make the history of science come alive for listeners. We are deeply saddened by the news this week about such a talented and valued colleague.
Pubradio won a pair of medals for reportage on youth and families. WYNC’s Radio Rookies won a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism for Coming of Age in 2011, a series of reports covering youth-identity issues such as immigration status, mental-health diagnoses, the foster care system and the process of coming out as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. The award was given in the College Park, Md.–based organization’s new youth-media category. “It’s a rare treat to listen to a first-person narrative that moves you; it’s even rarer to find storytellers who are brave enough to confront their own issues and face other people who may not always tell them what they want to hear,” judges said. Among the Rookies and WNYC producers cited for the medal were Beatrice Aquino, Tim Brown-Martinez, Brianna Fugate, Michael Jacobson, Alicia Martinez, Jimmy Musa, Kaari Pitkin, Sanda Htyte, Marianne McCune, Courtney Stein, Veralyn Williams and Mike Jones.