Public Media Futures forum acknowledges the challenge of online content management

On September 20, 2012 the USC Annenberg's Center on Communication Leadership & Policy, in partnership with the American University School of Communication and Current.org presented the fourth installment of Public Media Futures forum at Bloomberg's offices in San Francisco, CA. The fourth installment of Public Media Future's highlighted news content innovation and social media collaborate facilitation within the public broadcasting sector. Watch the forum below:……

Ford Foundation grant signals shift away from public broadcasting

The Ford Foundation, which for decades funded much of public broadcasting, last week shifted its media grantmaking to a different medium – newspapers. The Los Angeles Times announced the $1 million grant, which according to the Times will pay for reporters to cover "Vietnamese, Korean and other immigrant communities, the California prison system, the border region and Brazil." The Times story noted that the new Brazil-based reporter will be the newspaper's first full-time correspondent in Latin America in "several years." Until now, the Ford Foundation has been more closely associated with public radio and television. Ford used to give National……

VIDEO – Public Media Futures Los Angeles Forum

Public Media Futures Los Angeles Forum USC Annenberg’s Center on Communication Leadership & Policy, in partnership with American University’s School of Communication presented a forum on the future of public media in an era of shrinking government support. The conversation focused on innovations in programming and new models for sustainable funding. Participants included top executives and programmers, including Bill Davis, president and CEO, KPCC/Southern California Public Radio; Al Jerome, president and CEO, KCET; Ed Miskevich, station manager, KOCE/PBS SoCal; Suzanne Marmion, news and editorial strategy director, KPBS-TV/FM. CCLP senior fellow Adam Clayton Powell III led the conversation together with Mark……

NPR CEO urges ‘four diversities’ to broaden audience, service

WASHINGTON – Gary Knell, NPR's new President and CEO, said yesterday that public radio must embrace "four diversities" to broaden its audience and public service. Knell, who became CEO of NPR two months ago, said he planned to make NPR more diverse by ethnicity, age, geography, and "thought."……

NPR’s new president promises to ‘depoliticize’ the network, focus on revenue

WASHINGTON – Gary Knell, named yesterday as the new president of National Public Radio, does not take office for another two months, but he is wasting no time outlining his priorities. Knell, the longtime CEO of the organization that produces "Sesame Street," told the Associated Press he plans to "depoliticize" NPR, a quote that will be repeated widely here and among NPR's critics. Knell added that he does not believe NPR News is biased, but there is no doubt he will need to explain his use of the "d" word in meetings inside and outside NPR headquarters…….

Public TV funding cuts fall unevenly across the U.S.; Fundraising criticized

WASHINGTON — Public broadcasting stations face a widely disparate landscape of funding cuts, according to participants at the CCLP Washington, D.C. forum in July. One significant variable is geography and politics – and the state where the station is located: Tom Thomas, who has studied public broadcasting funding for decades, noted that there are five states that devote $70 million to public TV and radio – more than $10 million per state, far more than the other 45 states. So if one of those five states were to cut funding significantly, or zero it out entirely, it would have a……

Leading Journalism Association Spotlights CCLP Research on Funding the News

CCLP’s groundbreaking report, Public Policy and Funding the News, continues to garner media hits and attention of experts in journalism. On March 28th, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication cited the CCLP study in their call for Congress to maintain federal funding of public broadcasting. As research also points out, commercial media enterprises have —- for most of this country’s history —- received federal assistance in the form of discounted postal subsidies and tax breaks, for instance. Yet, Americans trust public media more for relevant, complete news. A recent Roper Poll listed PBS as the nation’s most-­trusted institution…….

How America Doubled Its Brainpower

This is your basic "bait and switch" column. I am going to begin by talking about the fanciful story that strong and talented women, beginning with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and National Security staffer Samantha Power, have taken over the government and pushed the president of the United States, NATO, the United Nations and the Arab League into trying to overthrow the Libyan gorilla Gadhafi. That titan of tubby masculinity, Rush Limbaugh, has said this is because the president, his generals and all male advisers are "the new castrati … sissies!" Therefore, the women of……

NPR chief Vivian Schiller: Don’t take the work of news gatherers for granted

At this time of tremendous upheaval in American news media, its leaders should not focus on transformation at the expense of fortifying and expanding concrete, on-the-ground reporting. That was the message offered Thursday by NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller as she delivered the James L. Loper Lecture in Public Service Broadcasting at USC Annenberg. "For well over a decade, at gatherings like this, news people have obsessed about transformational technologies, vanishing business models and new paradigms of mass communication," Schiller told an audience of students, faculty members and leaders of influential Los Angeles-area media who gathered at USC Town……