NPR Steps into the News Vacuum in New Orleans

NPR, The University of New Orleans and WWNO are teaming up to help fill the news void left by the downsizing of The Times Picayune. The partnership is launching NewOrleansReporter.org. NPR “has decided to make New Orleans its ‘beta’ market to develop a robust online platform for its affiliates nationally.” The project will rely on the public radio funding model with support coming from individual donations, corporate support, foundations and major donors.


There's more information from Poynter.org. The story originally ran in the Wall Street Journal.

NPR, University of New Orleans announce new nonprofit news organization, NewOrleansReporter.org | Poynter.

You can get more information about making a donation at NewOrleansReporter.org.

Changes at OPB

Music Programming is making way for entertainment and information programming at Oregon Public Radio.

Six shows (mostly music programming) are moving over to their on-line service to make room for series like Moth Radio, Radio Lab and Moyers and Company. Oregon Public Radio expects there will be complaints. John Bell, director of member communications says all programs have a fan base but, trends in OPB's audience indicate a demand for more news and information programs. There's a wealth of new programming at this time. The changes offer OPB the chance to freshen their sound and try out the new content.

There's a lot more on the changes, plus comments at The Oregonian.

A positive way to look at the comments is, at least listeners care.

Public Radio Should Tackle the Issues

Sometimes, when politicians get beyond their rehearsed remarks, they reveal themselves.

A Connecticut Congressional candidate Mark Greenberg revealed his bias in a careless remark about Islam on WNPR's Where We Live. He said in an interview on WNPR's Where we live that he found Islam to be objectionable. He questioned whether Islam was a religion of peace like Christianity and and Judaism. He said, "We have to be able to be real about the fact that some folks in that religion are out to kill us." Then Greenberg dug himself in deeper by calling Islam a cult. Greenberg later backed off his comments which were condemned by his Republican opponents. 


In his comments Greenberg revealed his feelings and his bias. The public needs to know where the candidates are coming from. In this case, public radio played an important role in that process. At times, people in development roles and senior management winced when we took on our role as journalist. They were concerned being button holed and with the bottom line. Serious journalism doesn't always make for smooth sailing. 


There are more reactions to Greenberg's comments in The Hartford Courant, The Waterbury Republican, The Torrington Register and The Huffington Post. Given the reaction and coverage given to the interview, could this story be considered impactful?


You can hear the entire interview on WNPR's Website.

YouTube & News

A New Kind of News Emerges on YouTube

The Project for Excellence in Journalism (Pew Research Center) Says fully a third of all searches on You Tube are for news. The implication for news organizations is that they need to have their content on You Tube. For radio and print journalism, this offers a challenge.

We started talking about have video content on the web at the public radio station I managed in 2006. Reporters are supplied with digital cameras and encouraged to take stills for web content when covering a story. There were a few forays into video content but issues arose.

• Reporters complained that shooting video would get in the way of their reporting.
• There was not enough storage space for the videos on our servers.
• Financial restraints at our joint licencee made it impossible to buy or rent enough storage space. It was not seen as a priority for radio.
• The union that governed the video production on the TV side grieved individual reporters for shooting and editing video for web only content.

In the end...not much happened. Video on radio was forgotten.

Here it is 2012. You Tube news searches are now one-third of all searches on You Tube.
Working past the issues would have put the station in a much better position to have its content on a platform used by millions of viewers. Nobody was really against the idea. The opportunity has not been missed but, the station could be much further ahead.



YouTube & News: A New Kind of Visual News | Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ)

NPR unpublishes intern’s execution story | Poynter.

NPR has pulled an intern's account of an execution after they learned parts of the story were plagiarized. Poynter's Steve Myers reports that intern Ahmad Shafi's account of an execution in 1998 borrowed from an account by Jason Burke. The story was removed from NPR's Website after the plagiarism was discovered.

Shafi is the second intern for a major news organization to have stories pulled this summer.
Liane Membis, an intern for the Wall Street Journal, had three of her stories pulled for fabricated material. She is no longer with the Journal.

There's a lot more on this at the link below.
NPR unpublishes intern’s execution story after discovering parts were plagiarized | Poynter.

Are major news organizations expecting too much from interns?

Who Owns the News

Who Owns the News Media: The 2012 Database

The Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism released their 2012 database on who owns the news media. The interactive charts give readers a good overview of who is doing what.

The first charts I clicked into dealt with circulation, viewership and listeners. The information gives size of audience by company. NPR comes in fourth among radio networks. The problem there is NPR does not own any radio stations.

Dig in a little deeper and you will find who the owners are.

 For Radio they are: 

• CC Media Holdings Clear Channel -  160,099,000  million listeners - CC Media Holdings Clear Channel owns 829 stations with 2011 revenue of $251 million. 
• CBS - 82,178,500 million listeners - CBS owns 125 stations with revenue reported to be  $135 million.
• Cumulus Media Inc - 46,266,900 million listeners - Cumulus Media Inc owns 514 stations with 2011 revenue of $96.5 million.

Other Statistics

• The top on-line news sites are The Washington Post, Topix and USA Today.
• The top networks based on viewership are Comcast, Walt Disney and CBS.
• The top news channels on cable are MSNBC, Fox News and CNN.

You can find out a lot more here: Who Owns the News Media.