February 16th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
… have them re-train their announcers to drop the annoying pseudo-intellctual tic they all have. They apparently train them to fumble for words in order to create the illusion of thoughfulness on the theory that “um, uh, ” sounds better than simply . Terry Gross is the worst offender.
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The complaint is well-placed. But it has always seemed Terry Gross’s personal annoying habit, not systemic.

For most of the sessions at the WeMedia conference in Miami recently, Craig Newmark tucked himself away so far back in the auditorium he was almost in the lobby. I have a sneaking suspicion that for at least some of…

Public radio wouldn’t be what it is today without public funding.

We complete agree on that, but not in a way that you would like.

I quit listening to NPR (mostly in drive time) because it was all about politics. If you go to NPR right now and click on the Health and Science link, you get the following:

* Stem-Cell Research: Hopes and Realities - about whether states will see a return on their investments in stem cell research, not the underlying science.

* For Ethanol, the Future is Now - politics of ethanol adoption, no science.

* Stem-Cell Research Funding in California - political story about California bond initiative.

See? No actual science, just politics. Same if you click on “People and Places”, you get stories about the House Debate on Iraq and a review of a book about the “emotional lives of young women today” - no interesting people or places, just fluff.

Podcasts have almost comletely replaced radio for me. I listen to podcasts about the field I work in (which would make most people’s ears bleed, you would never, never want to put that on the radio), podcasts about real, actual science and astronomy, podcasts about history and goofy podcasts about pop culture and music. I don’t see how NPR can compete with this. They may be able to expand their offerings and they could nurture some talent, but they can’t match the diveristy of the whole world.

The ability to listen on my schedule to content I select just makes radio dead to me.

I think that you’re points are valid but that you might be asking NPR to take some steps that would separate it from its old “NPRness” as well as the mission of the CPB. Providing podcasts of local meetings and the like isn’t quite effective if only 1 person listens to it. NPR has begun to start considering the cost of increased bandwith and, though 1 listener wouldn’t directly effect their overhead, a bunch of little podcasts getting a single listener wouldn’t be cheap to produce. There are already communities for these kinds of things (prx.org, the public radio exchange). NPR acknowledges them. Nothing more is needed.

As far as Jay Rosen and NewsAssignment are concerned, I think citizen journalism doesn’t have much of a place on NPR. From my experience there are thousands of college kids, recent graduates and, yes, even journalism students, itching to get whatever they produce on the air. There is already a wealth of talent. NPR and the affiliates just have to open up their doors a bit more. They’re already made great strides with the alt.npr series, providing the wonderfully talented Benjamin Walker (The Theory of Everything) a platform for distribution. And also, they’re starting to pick at other podcasting talent as it emerges from the mass of noise and confusion (see Filmspotting.net, which has a Sunday night spot, monthly on WBEZ)

I think what I would most appreciate (and what On The Media does) would be if all NPR programs supplied transcripts… and beyond that, searchable feeds. So often I want to quote something in a blog entry or in a conversation and I can’t find the exact words so I tell it anecdotally, often screwing it up in the process.

Anyway. I much appreciate your spending time with the folks at npr and helping to bring them into the 21st century (and hopefully beyond.) Good luck. You can reach me at the affixed email if you’re so inclined. And again, good luck.

Public radio wouldn’t be what it is today without public funding. Local stations would never have had the seed money to start what they did without public funding. Maybe stations could now operate without the federal funding because now public funding is usually a smalller percentage of the overall revenue, but what business wouldn’t be significantly affected by a revenue reduction of 10-20%.

NPR wouldn’t be what it is today without local stations because it’s the local stations that “own” the network and purchase the product that NPR provides. (Originally NPR content almost totally came from its member stations…and I believe is currrently too much from NPR staff and not enough of member station produced content.) So, you can’t be an owner if you don’t purchase the product.

Local NPR member radio stations see a need for NPR to be in the “new space” and those who have the staff sizes are working to be there themselves, but I hope we avoid seeing NPR run off on “its own” and leaving the stations behind.

Admittedly, there continues to be a balancing act between member stations and NPR that is not perfected yet. You can imagine the tension created when we stations (owners), who provide the audience for the product that NPR produces, see NPR providing content outside the usual channels through the stations.

Back to the “enigma” properties and what makes this arrangement great was the “NPRness” or standard to which local stations can strive towards and the compelling stories that NPR can draw on from around the country through the member stations which gives NPR a reporting base that would not be sustainable by itself.

Likely, there is a key insight to how to “activate” each station’s listner/members. We will still need to strike some balance between maintaining the network standards and keeping the ownership of the local member station as local and connected to its community.

I feel that a name change for NPR would be a very bad thing. They have a very good reputation and strong identity. This is a huge asset for them. Let’s not waste it.

Otherwise, I totally agree with you.

–Mike–

Looking to get it picked up on radio via PRX:

http://www.prx.org/pieces/16703

The vlog is:
Spices of Life

http://spicesoflife.com

It’s a fun project. We have two videos and two radio segments up right now and I just finished editing a third video that will be up in a day or so about Chinese New Year and all the amazing food.

Have fun in DC!

I’m in Washington D.C. and let me say - it’s amazingly cold. COLD I tell you. On my midday trek toward Pennsylvania Avenue, I swore my fingers had become completely frostbitten. Thanks goodness not. Just temporarily dead in relation…

I mean, I’m not some hardcore Ayn Randian or something, but Jesus, every single story started from the assumption that it was the government’s obligation to get you up in the morning and point your wanger for you when you peed. There wasn’t, of course, a single point of view suggesting that maybe New Orleans had been ruined by decades of dependency, or that a life and a death is not given meaning by the issuance of a piece of official paper by some bureaucrat, or whatever. I’ve greatly reduced my NPR listening over the last few years just because of a deep feeling that every report on Iraq is, fundamentally, the exact same report, and this thorough statist bias is another good reason why

I’m glad NPR is moving towards the digital future. I just checked iTunes and NPR has the top 3 podcasts and that just proves how much people love NPR content. PBS should be following in the footsteps of NPR because looking at their podcasting, they’re doing a disservice to their audience by putting few lousy clips as podcasting. Just look at the customer review of “Frontline” at the iTunes store and you’ll know what I mean.

I’d suggest that NPR/PBS etc. dis-associate themselves from the government and become a fully, public subscription, member, owned corporation with each member having a single vote. The current Public/Government ownership means that the public, its non-ad advertisers, and foundations, support most of it while the Government, Democratic or Republican, appoint the Board of Directors. This leads to the problems that we have seen in the past.

I’d prefer that the NPR/PBS system was fully funded outside the Government, after the transition to Digital and the transfer of frequencies to the Public corporation, and thus we, the members would both support it and control it.

My friend just asked me to “define vertical blog” because she doesn’t “know what that is.” In short, a vertical blog is generally niche in its focus, limiting its daily coverage to one industry topic. Fashion, sports, gadgets, gossip, autos,…

Look forward to hearing your blog posts from your day there.