Public Radio Exchange

Join us for #PRXSTEMchat on Friday, March 29 at 2PM ET

Lily posted on Monday, March 25th, 2013 | Blog, PRX, STEM Story Project | 2 Comments

In case you haven’t heard yet, PRX is holding an open call for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) stories. We’re calling it the STEM Story Project.

Join us on Friday, March 29, 2013 at 2PM Eastern for #PRXSTEMchat on Twitter! We’ll be brainstorming topics for the STEM Story Project as well as answering any questions you may have about project details. This is a great opportunity for you to speak directly to us about the project and vice versa! Whether you’re a scientist, science enthusiast, producer, or listener, we invite you to sit in.

How to participate on Friday, March 29, 2013 at 2PM ET:

1. Log into Twitter
2. Use Tweetchat to follow the #PRXSTEMchat hashtag
3. Converse with us in real-time!

Lily Bui (@dangerbui) will be hosting the event.

Got a science topic close to your heart? Submit it ahead of time below in the comment section — and we may bring it up Friday!

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PRX will also hold a separate STEM Story Project webinar on Friday, April 5 at 2PM ET to answer more questions — register here.

PRX in the (Sound)Cloud

John posted on Friday, March 22nd, 2013 | Blog, PRX | No Comments

One of PRX’s strategic goals is to massively increase listening to public radio works of all kinds, no matter the platform or channel. (We do pretty well!)

So, we’re taking one of our most successful recent specials — Generation Putin — and making it available or free streaming, embedding and sharing through SoundCloud.

Generation Putin is an hour-long show, that you can listen to in segments, about the Millennial generation in the former Soviet Union: you’ll find radicals, feminists, 20-and-30-somethings full of ennui and vodka, greedheads, unrepentant fascists and even rowdy punkers…in Kazakhstan, of all places.

Brooke Gladstone from On the Media is the host and two brave women from the Seattle Globalist – Sarah Stuteville and Jessica Partnow – did all the reporting on the scene. The generous people at the Open Society Foundations make it possible and PRX pulled the project together. 

So far, 35 individual stations including WNYC, WGBH, KUOW (Seattle), KUT (Austin), and Minnesota Public Radio have aired it.

Now you can listen on SoundCloud and..present it yourself on your blog, site, Facebook post or Twitter feed with your own context and comments.

Announcing the PRX STEM Story Project

John posted on Wednesday, March 20th, 2013 | Blog, PRX, STEM Story Project | 8 Comments

PRX is excited to announce a new competition for audio production funding. In partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, PRX presents the STEM Story Project, focused on STEM topics: Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. We have a pool of $40,000 to distribute among multiple projects.

PRX recently completed an open call for stories as part of the PRX Global Story Project. This time around, our goals with the STEM Story Project are to:

• Unleash highly creative, STEM-based original stories and productions
• Educate and excite listeners about STEM topics and issues
• Tell stories and explain STEM issues in new ways

We want these productions to be heard and shared widely. So, proposals need to appeal both to stations and directly to listeners. You’ll find a lot more details about the PRX STEM Story Project here: application and guidelines.

So, get your ideas together, you critical thinkers, you! The DEADLINE for applications is April 22, 2013 at 11:59PM ET.

Thank you!

John Barth
Genevieve Sponsler
Lily Bui
The PRX STEM Story Project Team

P.S. If you applied to our Global Story Project, please read the guidelines for STEM carefully — we’ve changed some things.

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Join us on Friday, March 29, 2013 at 2PM ET for #PRXSTEMchat on Twitter! We’ll be discussing science topics and answering your questions about the STEM Story Project. Whether you’re a scientist, science enthusiast or producer, we invite you to weigh in!

Lily Bui (@dangerbui) will be hosting the tweetchat. Keep an eye out for more information on blog.prx.org and @prx.

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PRX will also hold one STEM project webinar on Friday, April 5 at 2PM ET to answer questions — register here.

If you can’t make or wait for the webinar, email your questions to stem@prx.org. But read the application and guidelines first!

Producer News, More Stylishly

Genevieve posted on Monday, March 11th, 2013 | Blog, Sync: Producer Newsletter | No Comments

Short and neat, plus mobile-friendly: PRX’s new format for our producer newsletter, Sync, is here. The every-other-month publication keeps you in the loop on the latest PRX news, producer opportunities, and projects.

This month: our Zeitfunk Award winners, completed pieces that were pitched to us for our Global Story Project, and many opportunities to learn radio-making from the pros. Take a look: PRX Sync: March 2013.

Sign up on the right here to get Sync in your email. We’ll be announcing another open call for story pitches soon, this time for STEM-related audio.

Public Radio Player, Redone and Relaunched!

Rekha posted on Monday, February 11th, 2013 | Blog | 10 Comments

We understand that ‘downloading app update alerts’ might not be on your daily to-do list. But trust us, you want this one.

Welcome to the new and improved Public Radio Player app for iPhone developed by PRX.

• New look and interface design
• Better audio performance
• Easy search
• Station news and tweets
• Donate to stations you love most
• Listen to program episodes without an internet connection
• See what’s playing now on Public Radio Remix, our 24/7 stream of stories

Learn more over at our apps site. | Get the app.

Don’t see a public radio station or program in the Player that you want? Let us know.

Zeitfunk 2012…coming soon!

Audrey posted on Thursday, February 7th, 2013 | Blog, PRX | No Comments

Who was 2012′s Most Licensed Producer?

What station aired the most work from PRX?

Find out soon!

To curb your Zeitfunk craving, check out last year’s Virtual Awards Ceremony and get geared up for the winners of 2012!

Nevermore

Lily posted on Friday, January 18th, 2013 | Blog | No Comments

This is a weekly blogpost series by our intern Lily Bui. She writes about radio, technology, and more.

January 19^th marks 204 years since Edgar Allan Poe’s birth. However, it’s seldom the beginning of his life that proves most interesting but rather the tail end of it. There are several theories about Edgar Allan Poe’s death, all of them just as mysterious and elusive as he was. The last known sighting of Poe was in Baltimore, Maryland, on October 3, 1879. He was found dressed in someone else’s clothes and seemed disoriented (possibly drugged or under the influence of something).

The most intriguing theory is the one that proposes Poe was “cooped” on a local election day of that year. When a person is “cooped,” they’re kidnapped, drugged, or bribed to be dressed up as different people, then taken to the polls to vote multiple times–swaying the vote toward a candidate, depending on who’s behind the cooping.

“The Truth” podcast does a great job at reimagining this bizarre situation in an eerie radio drama, which was also part of a PRX special from election season called The Devil You Know. (Other theories about his death are enumerated here via Wikipedia.)

Though historians would likely disagree, I think it’s better that the exact cause of Poe’s death remains unknown. Edgar Allan Poe: poet, author, native Bostonian, science fiction pioneer. Man of the macabre until the very end–’til he was nevermore.

Tales From the Crypt(ographers)

Lily posted on Friday, January 4th, 2013 | Blog | No Comments

This is weekly blogpost series by our intern Lily Bui. She writes about radio, technology, and more.

Your alphabet soup is talking to you. (All right, maybe not.)

Sometimes our minds play tricks on us and reveal patterns that may or may not be intentional. Human beings are verifiably adept at pattern recognition. We tend to pick up trends in letters, numbers, sounds, and colors. Some of us are more keen on picking up these patterns than others. The truly masterful venture into cryptography.

This week, I bring you a two-part episode from How Stuff Works: Stuff You Missed in History Class: Part 1: Axis Cryptography and Part 2: Allied Cryptography. Sarah Dowdey and guest co-host Jonathan Strickland talk about World War II cryptography and the technology that makes it possible to both encode and decode messages. Listen to learn about the Enigma Machine, which confounded scientists, cryptologists, and military personnel alike before Alan Turing came along. These two episodes also chronicle the Code Talkers, who manipulated the Native American languages Comanche and Choctaw to create a code language that troops could use to communicate confidential information during the World Wars.

We may not think of code as something we encounter in our everyday lives, but the exact opposite is true. By simply having a conversation with someone, we encode information in a language (that our conversation partner also knows) which is then transmitted to the other person, then decoded by their brains into a meaningful message. When we send e-mails, the messages we send are encrypted (scrambled) before they are sent, then decrypted (unscrambled) when they are received for secure delivery. Our digital lives are brimming with examples of cryptography–from QR codes to PIN numbers to passwords. It’s practically everywhere. Now, if you start apophenically deciphering messages in your alphabet soup, I’ll have to absolve myself from the blame.

Still curious about code? Mathematician and cryptanalyst Alan Turing’s (would-be) 100th birthday is this year. If you have some extra time, check out this RadioLab piece about his life and play with the Google Doodle version of the Enigma Machine.

Public Media Platform announces funding, hires executive director

Rekha posted on Monday, December 17th, 2012 | Blog, Press Releases, PRX in the News | No Comments

PRX is proud to be a founding partner of the Public Media Platform (PMP), a new set of tools to help distribute public radio and television’s digital content: audio, video, text, and photos.

We’ve spent the past two years in close partnership with APM, NPR, PBS, and PRI to develop a prototype, business plan, and systems inventory. Today, we are pleased to announce a major grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that will make the PMP a reality.

The Public Media Platform’s vision is directly connected to PRX’s own mission and role. We believe that the public radio and television content should be distributed more easily and efficiently in the digital space. When people find our content, they love it. Most of the top podcasts come from public media. Imagine being able to search across content providers on various topics, or include relevant public media content on your own website or blog.

PRX’s role in the PMP is threefold: we will help advise the development of the core platform that NPR is creating based on its own API; we will integrate PRX.org to create a seamless pathway for PRX producers and stations to opt-in to publish their content into the PMP; and we will help showcase the remarkable content collections made by possible by the PMP through mobile apps that we continue to build for stations and producers and PRX itself.

Here below is a shared press release by the PMP partners, and Current has posted an article about the announcement as well.

PUBLIC MEDIA’S NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS BREAK DOWN BARRIERS TO SHARE DIGITAL CONTENT

A New Public Media Platform Promises to Bring More Public Radio and Television Content to More People

Washington, DC; Dec. 17, 2012 – Public media’s leading national organizations will launch a ground-breaking collaboration to build a shared technology resource this coming year. The Public Media Platform (PMP) will allow public media producers and stations to gather their digital content in one place, and cost-effectively distribute it across digital platforms to achieve a critical mass of compelling non-commercial content.

Listeners, viewers, and website and mobile users will find it easier to find and interact with the news, entertainment, and cultural and educational content produced by the public media community once the PMP is in operation. Currently 37 million people listen to a mix of news, music and cultural programming every week on public radio stations. Public television educates, entertains, and informs nearly 123 million viewers every month. Millions more listen, view and learn from a multitude of public media websites, apps and mobile platforms.

Producers – from national networks like PBS, NPR, APM, PRI and PRX to public television and radio stations to independent producers – will have the opportunity to store and share text, digital video, audio and photos via the PMP. A new non-profit organization with officers drawn from the five founding organizations will oversee this new resource. The officers are David Kansas of APM/MPR, President; Kinsey Wilson of NPR, and Jason Seiken of PBS, Vice Presidents; Cory Zanin of PRI, Secretary; and Jake Shapiro of PRX, Treasurer. Four at-large members will be named soon.

Kristin Calhoun, currently Director of Station Products and Innovation at PBS, has been named Executive Director of the PMP, and she will begin work on January 7. She will oversee the creation of the PMP and manage its contracts, budget and finances, as well as station relations and marketing. Work on the technology infrastructure and creation of business rules will begin immediately.

Funding for the PMP comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). In 2010, CPB funded a pilot and planning process, and based on the success of that work, they will fund the creation the PMP and help underwrite its operating costs through May 2017. “The Public Media Platform will significantly enhance the way public media producers and stations use technology to innovate, collaborate and develop compelling programs for national and local audiences across all public media platforms – on air, online and in the community,” said Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of CPB.

About the PMP Partners

American Public Media™, the parent organization for Minnesota Public Radio, Southern California Public Radio and Classical South Florida, is one of the largest producers and distributors of public radio programming in the world, with a portfolio reaching 17 million listeners on more than 800 radio stations nationwide each week.

NPR is public radio’s largest producer and an influential force in American life. In collaboration with more than 880 independent public radio stations nationwide, NPR strives to create a more informed public – one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas and cultures.

PBS, with its nearly 360 member stations, offers all Americans the opportunity to explore new ideas and new worlds through television and online content. Each month, PBS reaches nearly 123 million people through television and more than 21 million people online, inviting them to experience the worlds of science, history, nature and public affairs; to hear diverse viewpoints; and to take front row seats to world-class drama and performances.

PRI helps listeners “hear a different voice™” and to connect with one another and the larger world. It represents public radio’s largest portfolio of independent and station-based productions, produces programming including PRI’s The World®, and delivers this content on-air, on-line and through mobile devices.

PRX is an award-winning public media company, harnessing innovative technology to bring significant stories to millions of people. PRX operates public radio’s largest distribution marketplace, offering thousands of audio stories for broadcast and digital use, including signature programs like The Moth Radio Hour. PRX mobile apps include This American Life, KCRW Music Mine, Radiolab, and Public Radio Player.

Media Contacts:
APM: Mary Sutherland, 651.212.1373, msutherland@americanpublicmedia.org
NPR: Danielle Deabler, 202.360.7492, ddeabler@npr.org
PBS: Jennifer Rankin Byrne, 703.739.5487, jrbyrne@pbs.org
PRI: Julia Yager, 612.330.9231, jyager@pri.org
PRX: Patrick Kowalczyk, 212-627-8098, patrick@pkpr.com

Tags: cpb, pmp, public media platform

Matter launches: new name, new space, new partner, applications open

Jake posted on Sunday, December 2nd, 2012 | Blog, Press Releases, PRX, PRX in the News | 1 Comment

We are super excited to announce the launch of Matter Ventures, the new name for the Public Media Accelerator. Not only does it have a new name, but also a new space in San Francisco, and a new investor and partner in KQED, who is joining PRX and Knight to launch the new company.

The New York Times covers the debut in the Monday December 3 2012 paper:

Partnership Offers Support For Media Entrepreneurs

Can the nascent entrepreneurial ideas bouncing around Silicon Valley help reinvent public media?

Matter Ventures, a start-up accelerator that will provide four months of financial and logistical support for budding media entrepreneurs, will be unveiled Monday by its partners: KQED, a public television and radio station operator; the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; and the Public Radio Exchange, known as PRX.

We are also sending out an official press release on behalf of Matter Ventures and the three founding partners – PRX, Knight, and KQED:

Fusing Public Media Values with Silicon Valley Entrepreneurship, KQED, Knight Foundation, and PRX Launch Matter Ventures, An Accelerator for Media Start-ups

The intensive, four-month acceleration program is designed for media startups with multi-disciplinary teams who have early-stage prototypes, such as participatory platforms, mobile applications, B2B media services, and content production engines. Matter will invest in entrepreneurs who show high potential to create media ventures that make a meaningful, positive impact on society while pursuing a sustainable, scalable, profitable business model. Over the course of two years, the fund will run four class cycles, each consisting of five startups. Applications for the inaugural class, which will begin in late February 2013, will be accepted starting today through January 6th, 2013. An online application and guidelines can be found at www.matter.vc.

Applications are now open for teams interested in joining the first Matter class.   We’ve got a great space on Bryant Street in San Francisco, right in the thick of things in Internet land.

We’ll be posting more information soon about information sessions and other ways to participate.

In the meantime, you can follow Matter. on Twitter, tumblr and Facebook.

And check out the growing coverage of Matter. in GigaOm, VentureBeat, Xconomy and others on the press page.