Public Radio Exchange

Election Curators

Administrator posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 | Blog

The news is finally official about the CPB-funded Public Media Election Collaboration. PRX is one of the partners and we have two main projects to contribute, one about aggregating campaign audio and the other is helping surface social media and “user-generated” content to collaboration partner websites.

[UPDATE FEB 1, 2008: These positions have now been filled]

Here’s the full press release.

Most importantly for us right now, we’re hiring two contract positions to help lead the curating projects starting immediately, so please spread the word and send us some outstanding individuals. We’ve started to talking to some candidates already but want to make sure we cast a wide net.

Campaign Audio Curator.
Full description and link to online application

The Campaign Audio Curator will work with PRX to find, select, annotate, and promote public radio and other audio material on Campaign ’08 and related issues. Selected works can include produced pieces, interviews, raw audio from campaign appearances, issue-based and local or regional stories that can be edited or excerpted for re-use by stations and other project partners. The initial collection is underway and located here: http://www.prx.org/articles/905

 
Social Media Curator.
Full description and link to online application

The Social Media Curator will work with PRX to find, select, annotate, and promote citizen media and “user-generated content” from blogs, YouTube, podcasts and other sources. Selected content will be showcased on local and national public media websites.

What’s the point?

Public media has a unique opportunity to cover Campaign 2008 and elevate public engagement around critical issues at stake nationally and locally.

The democratization of the tools for creating and distributing media has resulted in an explosion of conversation, connection and content. This in turn creates a critical need for ways to sift, filter and find value amidst irrelevant or even harmful expression.

One important role is to use public media’s presence and journalistic values to showcase and highlight examples of the diverse range of content and conversation already taking place online.

While the CNN/YouTube debates are the highest profile attempt so far to incorporate participatory media into coverage of Campaign 2008, there are few focused efforts to help audiences navigate the growing ocean of “user-generated content” to find relevant, important and revealing voices and perspectives.

This social media curating project is an experiment to explore approaches to this task, in the context of a critical national moment of a presidential election.

For the election audio project, we will help bubble up stories that otherwise might get lost in the shuffle, create an collection for timely use during the campaign season as well as a helpful archive for further evergreen and “long tail” opportunities in the future.

With the proliferation of audio on-air and online there’s a critical role to play in sifting, sorting, curating and promoting the best of what’s available. The PRX campaign collection will be a vital resource for public broadcasting stations, partners and the public.

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