I have some news

Not long before Thanksgiving in 2003, I boarded a plane to Orlando from Washington, DC to interview for a reporting job at Central Florida’s NPR station, WMFE. 

A late autumn chill had already enveloped the nation’s capital where I was working in my first journalism job, but Central Florida was at the height of its perfect season, when humidity drops, temperatures are in the high 70s, and everyone joyfully emerges from the long, hot summer. My day-long interview included lunch with the news director on a terrace downtown overlooking Lake Eola on a gloriously sunny afternoon. Orlando was pulling out all the stops for me. 

A few days later, I was back in DC when I got the call offering me the position. I was excited — it was the chance I’d been waiting for to get into public radio — but I was also worried. What would become of my nascent journalism career so far away from the northeast corridor, where all the action seemed to be?

I still remember calling my mom to tell her the news. “I just don’t want to get stuck down there,” I said. 

Today, nearly 18 years later, I’m writing this post from my house about a mile from that same lake where we had lunch, and words truly cannot express how honored I am to share the news that I have accepted an offer to become WMFE’s Interim President & General Manager. 

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Don’t ignore pubmedia core values in podcast debate

Public media has become obsessed with podcasts in recent months. Many think they may be the silver bullet that will finally bring coveted millenials into the public media fold. Many more feel threatened by the success of podcasts in the commercial world and fear public media is missing the boat.

I’ll be honest. This conversation is making me nervous. Not because podcasts are bad or because I’m scared of new things, but because the debate and many of the resulting actions seem to be minimizing three core public media values:

Unbiased news, localism, and public service over profit.

In Hiring, Public Radio Still Favors its Tribe

Judith’s website

I didn’t follow the usual path to a career in public media. My degree is in International Studies, not journalism; my college internship was with the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, not NPR; my post-graduation fellowship was with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, not the Kroc program. Whenever I tell fellow public radio professionals about my unusual background, I often get a subtle eyebrow raise … and a slight feeling of shame.

The fact is, our industry, like many, has a tendency to favor its own tribe. This is less true than it once was, especially with the advent of digital platforms, but the bias is still there. So when my friend, mentor, and soon-to-be PRNDI Leo C. Lee award honoree Tanya Ott started a Facebook thread today that kicked off a lively conversation about this, it really struck a chord. Or maybe a nerve.

An Unusual Path

My first journalism internship and my first journalism jobs were at Feature Story News (FSN), a broadcast news agency with clients all over the world – radio and TV, public and commercial – most with much larger audiences than your average local public radio station in the US. When I started applying for jobs at those US public radio stations, however, my first observation (and frustration) was how clubby that world was. One interviewer said he needed to talk to a reference who was his “colleague,” meaning someone in public radio. One person referred to me as “very green,” despite my six years of broadcast journalism experience.

When someone finally took a chance and hired me as a reporter at a local public radio station (I think the job had been open a long time and they were desperate!), my second observation was how valuable my non-traditional background was:

• My studies and my early work in international relations gave me knowledge of and perspective on the world beyond my field and my broadcast area.
• My work for different types of broadcasters exposed me to a universe of writing and reporting styles, almost all of which are valid.
• My experience at FSN taught me to work quickly and to write strong leads and tight copy – skills I’ve been surprised to find lacking in many public radio newsrooms. I was shocked when my first pubradio assignment was a 45-second spot … and that’s all I was expected to do all day!

Bias Hard to Overcome

Years later, however, I became a public radio news director, and suddenly, I was the one doing the hiring. Despite my own non-traditional background, I found myself struggling to fight that same urge that drove me so crazy as a job applicant – the urge to favor people who are already “in the club.”

Right or wrong, here are some assumptions we make on the other side of the hiring desk:

• People in the club speak our language.
  They know what “The Clock” is. They know a “feature” usually means any long-form story, even if it’s a hard news story (which isn’t the case in much of the journalism world, and it still drives me a little bit bonkers).
• People in the club understand the public radio sensibility.
  They know our focus is on long-form storytelling, and they know something about how to produce those types of stories. They know we’re probably not going to listen to the police scanner or chase breaking news unless it’s really big … and they’re ok with that.
• People outside the club will need a lot of training.
  There, perhaps, is the rub. And unlike the previous two assumptions, it’s almost always true. Even the best journalist who comes from outside public media will need to be brought up to speed (the same would be true if I went to work for a newspaper or a commercial radio station!). That’s one thing for large organizations with the staffs and budgets to accommodate those training needs, but the reality of most public media organizations is that all training and mentoring falls to the people in positions like the ones I held (news director, managing editor, etc.). They feel stretched as it is, and often, they simply don’t feel they’d have enough time to properly mentor a new employee from outside public media.

Needed: Recruitment & Training Resources … and an Open Mind

I could make some suggestions here, but for regular readers of this blog, they would sound pretty redundant. They all involve resources (i.e., money and staff) – particularly, more resources for recruitment and hiring (another task that generally falls entirely to the top news person) and for staff training, mentoring, and development.

The bottom line is, you do take a risk when you hire someone from The Outside. Sometimes it pays off in spades (one of the best hosts I’ve ever heard anywhere started his public radio career at my station in Orlando, and he came straight from commercial radio — he wasn’t my hire, but I sure wish I could take credit for him).  On the other hand, sometimes you take that risk, and it bites you right in the butt.

The best advice I can give to pubmedia news managers is to keep an open mind … but always hold out for the right person. Hiring is one of the most important things you will ever do.

Game-Changing NPR Announcement Means Time’s Up for Stations to Invest in Local Content

judithsmelser.com

Big news today from NPR – the network will start providing digital streams of Morning Edition and All Things Considered on iTunes Radio. Local affiliate stations fought for years to keep NPR from directly distributing its flagship news programs digitally, but it was fairly inevitable that those days were numbered. The local station’s position as the only source for the network’s most-listened-to programs has come to an end.

The NPR announcement says several affiliate stations plan to offer their own iTunes channels soon, but presumably only the largest, richest stations will be able to do that.  The rest will have to work even harder to give their audiences a reason to come to them instead of going directly to NPR.

The Answer: Unique Local Content

Stations no longer have the option to ride NPR’s coattails as nothing more than pass-throughs for national programming.  They must invest in unique, compelling content that’s specifically relevant to their communities.

For stations that have not made that investment, today’s news will be a wakeup call.  I just hope it doesn’t come too late.

The good news, however, is that many of our local stations have been investing – for example, I know of many public media newsrooms across the country that have been adding staff.  That’s a hugely positive development.  Those stations now must make sure they’re providing enough training and editorial and production support to ensure their new staffers are not just creating any old content but top-notch, high quality programming.

We all saw this day coming from a million miles away.  Now it’s here.  For anyone who believes in the merits of locally-produced content, today’s announcement is great news.    Affiliate stations, this is your time to shine!

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Thanks to David Pitman for this comment on Facebook, which could shed more light on how this could play out:

Someone in the Morning Edition hosts group copied and pasted an explanation that clears things up a bit. Here’s the condensed version: “Member Stations that carry Morning Edition and All Things Considered will have an opportunity to submit to Apple links to their own live streams for inclusion in iTunes Radio… NPR estimates that it will take individual stations anywhere from a few days to a few months to convert their streams. … Apple has committed to work with NPR to provide greater visibility for station streams and auto-localization capabilities after launch.” 

No doubt this story will continue to evolve as more details emerge …