Insights

“Black Folk Don’t…” and the Power of Irony

jwalter@jwtechno.com (admin) — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 13:33:26 GMT

By Guest Blogger: Nonso Christian Ugbode, Director of Digital Media at National Black Programming Consortium, iMA member organization

In 2011 BlackPublicMedia.org launched the "Black Folk Don't…" web series, a collection of expositional/conversational shorts about activities that black people supposedly did not do: tip, go to therapy, travel, go to the doctor, do winter sports, were just some of the titles in the first season. On June 26th, 2012 we will be launching another volley of shorts in the series - swim, get married, commit suicide, go camping, do atheism, have eating disorders - and it's interesting to see where the conversation has traveled thus far, and what part of it has resonated with a primarily public media audience, and what parts of it have worked to turn certain audiences away. I believe this is instructive as public media brands start to tackle the task of moving beyond traditional broadcast models, and welcoming the voice of communities too often left out of the wider streams of public media content. And beyond "welcoming" them briefly creating a permanent space for them as a matter of routine.

The Innovator’s Dilemma: Why “Sell” Isn’t A Four-Letter Word

jwalter@jwtechno.com (admin) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:30:11 GMT

By Guest Blogger: Tammy Carpowich, Director of Interactive Strategy at KPBS in San Diego and iMA Board Member

One of the biggest challenges we have as innovators isn’t necessarily the innovation itself. In a lot of ways, that’s the easy part. The hard part is selling our new -- and often complex -- plans. The hurdles are endless: Some people are afraid of change. Some don’t want to part with money or resources. Some just don’t “get it.”

At the conference last month, Mike Reszler and Kristin Calhoun taught a group of public media innovators this important but undervalued skill. They laid it out in four simple steps that should give you a stellar pitch in less than a minute. Their session was targeted to pitching your digital strategy, but it can be used in so many ways from convincing a reluctant colleague to energizing a sales team.

Since the session last month, I’ve use the process at least four times (probably more). Here’s how you too can find funding and influence colleagues in under a minute. I’ll use one of my recent pitches as an example. Read more >>

By Guest Blogger: Tammy Carpowich, Director of Interactive Strategy at KPBS in San Diego and iMA Board Member

1. Identify a problem (15 seconds):

Describe a problem your consumer has. “It’s a problem for people on the street,” says Reszler. This isn’t the time for a sob story about your money woes, how you should be reaching new audiences, or whatever is plaguing your institution. This is about your customers.

Example: We know that KPBS corporate supporters love KPBS, and we already have a model for support. But in these economic times, the “halo effect” isn’t enough; proving a return on investment is essential.

2. Explain the product (15 seconds).

How are you proposing to solve this problem? Are you suggesting software? A new person on staff? A new way of doing things? Do this in 36 words or fewer.

Example: To do this, KPBS plans to launch Marketplace, a new way for local businesses to see the direct results of their support of KPBS, all while providing San Diegans special deals, discounts and coupons.

3. Lay out how your product solves the problem (15 seconds).

What does your product do to fill the gap? How is it different – and more important – better than other options?

Example: The service provides:

Mobile coupons, discounts and business listings
Clean and simple design, search engine optimized for best results
Web analytics reports to reinforce ROI
Customer/audience tools for rating, event-sharing and coupon-tracking for local businesses sales.

4. Show tangible return on investment (15 seconds).

There’s no shame in asking for money. After all, we need money to fund our mission. In your pitch, tell your target exactly what they will get in return for their investment. Most important, remember that this isn’t about you. Will your idea save your colleague time? Help them meet their revenue goals? Serve the community in a way that is consistent with your funder’s strategic objectives? Be explicit and concise.

Example: A $40,000 investment would provide one year of hosting/licensing of the software and a part-time sales coordinator to manage the client relationships. At the end of that year, we expect the project to be self-funding, with net revenue before the end of year three.

Still not convinced? Watch the University of Dayton’s 2011 Elevator Pitch Winner for inspiration.

Share your thoughts >>

5 Lessons for Public Media from SXSW

ahirschdc@gmail.com (Amanda) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 02:58:46 GMT

By Amanda Hirsch

As I catch my breath after a week in Austin, I wanted to share five key takeaways from SXSW for my public media brethren. These lessons are distilled from festival speakers and sessions, conversations with other public media professionals who attended "Southby," and my observations of the festival experience itself. Here we go:

1. Talk Less, Listen More

We don’t like going to dinner with someone who just talks about himself, observed panelist Liz Strauss at a session about measuring social media ROI. Similarly, we’re turned off by companies that just talk about themselves online. Translation: if all you do in your Twitter feed or on your Facebook page is hawk your own shows/content/services… it’s time for a course correction.

Social media is supposed to be social. Approach these spaces as two-way channels, not broadcast platforms. This is how you build the authentic relationships that will ultimately fuel deep support for your organization.   

2. Discover What Your Users Really Want (So You Can Give it To Them)

The best journalists are great listeners, as NPR’s Matt Thompson observed at the iMA conference -- and so are the best interactive strategists, says KPBS's Leng Caloh. Inspired by Jared Spool's session on usability at SXSW, Caloh observed, "Being a good interactive strategist is like being a good journalist: it's about asking the right questions. What is the user trying to do? What will they try to achieve that? What are the metrics saying about what they're doing?" (Read a recap of Spool's session.)

The takeaway: As public media continues to explore new and better ways to engage Americans, we need to remember to listen to those we hope to serve, in order to serve them best. Note: listening is more than just patiently waiting your turn while someone else talks -- it's paying close attention. Observing. Hearing what's on the surface, sure, but also reading between the lines.

3. Come Out of Your Shell

Take a page from the Girl Scouts, and make new friends. Don't be insular. A number of public media folks I spoke to who attended SXSW emphasized how much information and insight they gained by attending a conference outside of the public media industry. Of course, registration is expensive, so the takeaway here isn't necessarily to attend SXSW -- but to make a point of attending conferences and/or networking events outside public media.

This extroversion might also help you discover new fans -- and new talent.

"Public media is much bigger than public broadcasting," notes AIR's Jessica Clark, pointing out that at SXSW "it wasn't just pubmedia folks who attended pubmedia panels." To Clark, this says that "there are many more people knocking at the door than we're letting in."

4. We Haven't Cornered the Market on Storytelling

Sometimes, I think we pride ourselves so much on the quality of our content that we forget how much other good content is out there. SXSW is teeming with storytellers, and with people who have storytelling expertise. I attended a session called Digital Storytelling for Nonprofits, and a friend attended (and raved about) a similar session called Mother Goose Got Punked: Next Gen Visual Stories. There were a ton of sessions on cross-platform storytelling (or "transmedia," the nom du jour), and of course, there was an entire film festival -- one film I especially enjoyed was a documentary called The Source, about a cult (my term) in 1970s LA.

The takeaway here is a corollary to #3 above: Remember that the world is full of storytellers, and stories, and stay on the lookout for the best of both to share with your communities... you may find them in unlikely places.

5. Content Is Only Part of the Equation

A lot of people attend SXSW, in part, to experience the famous Austin sunshine. This year, the festival began with two days of rain -- cold, relentless rain. On top of this, registration swelled to new levels, leaving some people waiting in line for two hours to pick up their festival badge -- and lines continued to greet attendees at nearly every turn. These setbacks placed more pressure on the conference sessions themselves to meet a high quality standard -- and while a number of sessions were strong, many fell short... something that was all the more noticeable in the absence of sunshine, at the end of a long line.

Just as the SXSW brand is about a combination of content (sessions) and the experiences that surround that content (lines, weather), your brand as a public media station/producer is about your content, yes, but also the experience you deliver -- how you make people feel. That means the usability and tone of your website matter. The design of your mobile interfaces matter. Your responsiveness and personality on social media matter. The availability of your content when and where people want it, matters. Imagine you're an inspiring SXSW keynote on a sunny Austin day.

Postscript

My husband and I led a session at SXSW called "Change Happens: Improv for an Unpredictable World," which distilled lessons in adaptability and leadership from the art of improvised comedy. One of the things you learn in improv is that listening isn’t about being polite – it’s about mining as much information as possible from the other person, so you can build the best scene possible. Replace the word “scene” with “story,” “product” or “service” and this lesson applies to business, public media included.

Listen on social media. Listen, everywhere you can, to what your community is telling you it wants, and needs. Listen to experts and practitioners in other industries. Listen for new stories and storytellers, in unexpected places. Then put that all together to deliver not just content, but an experience, that leaves people feeling satisfied.

You'll bring the house down.

iMA Conference 2012: From Rock Stars to Pep Talks

ahirschdc@gmail.com (Amanda) — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 02:31:06 GMT

By Amanda Hirsch

PBS stations need to be locavores, said Allen Weiner, VP of Research at Gartner, at the breakfast that opened this year's iMA conference. "I want farm to table content."

Stations also need to hire "rock stars" (a term I personally hate -- can we just say "talented people"?), according to a number of sessions I attended, and public media as a whole needs -- to put a fine point on it -- to be less white. Read more >>

By Amanda Hirsch

PBS stations need to be locavores, said Allen Weiner, VP of Research at Gartner, at the breakfast that opened this year's iMA conference. "I want farm to table content."

Stations also need to hire "rock stars" (a term I personally hate -- can we just say "talented people"?), according to a number of sessions I attended, and public media as a whole needs -- to put a fine point on it -- to be less white. There was a brief awkward/funny moment at the beginning of NPR CEO Gary Knell's keynote when he said, "This may be the widest room I've ever spoken to" -- referring to the room's horizontal proportions -- and a number of us thought he'd said "whitest." Oops. Knell went on to lay out NPR's diversity agenda, which encompasses diverse geography, people, ages and perspectives, making it clear that this is a top priority of his administration. At another session, called "Is There an App for That? Diversity and Innovation in the Digital Age," there was a lively discussion of how public media might better reflect hip hop culture, and how we can not only attract people of color as producers and supporters -- but also, how we can get them to stick around.

Public Media Hearts Start-ups

Another theme of the conference: public media is developing a big ol' crush on start-ups. KLRU's Shane Guiter gave an excellent and highly attended talk called "What Public Media Can Learn from Silicon Valley," in which he made a number of compelling points about building a culture that attracts and retains talent (aka "rock stars"); one key, according to a clip he showed of Steve Jobs, is to ensure that the best ideas always win, regardless of hierarchy -- otherwise, "good people don't stay." Guiter also talked about ways in which start-ups encourage productivity (like holding more effective meetings), and said it's possible to be a "start-up of one" -- in other words, you don't need to wait on others to make change happen.

The next day, PRX announced that it had hired Palo Alto's Corey Ford (former Frontline producer, now Stanford-trained venture capitalist) to head up its new Public Media Accelerator, a concept inspired by the accelerators of Silicon Valley. While Guiter and Shapiro articulated some very clear and positive ways that public media can learn from start-up successes, having worked with some start-ups myself, let me just say -- it's not always so glamorous. Google, Apple and Zappos (the companies Guiter referenced in his talk) are hardly representative of your average start-up. For example: a lot of start-ups are terribly mismanaged, and a lot of them fail. While I think it's great to look over the fence at what we can learn from other industries, I'd just caution us against falling into the trap of thinking the grass is always greener.

Goooo, Public Media!

This, in fact, was another theme of the conference: "Buck up, public media! You're better than you realize you are!" Craig Aaron of Free Press really drove this point home in his "Innovating Public Media Politics" session. We're the most trusted institution in America, he said -- it's time to stop letting our critics frame the debate about our future. And in his talk about the Public Media Accelerator, Shapiro noted that as an industry, we tend to simultaneously have a tremendous superiority complex (regarding the importance of our mission), and an inferiority complex to boot. He compared us to the character Jim from "The Office": smart, a good guy, gets the girl, but at the end of the day... he's stuck working for a paper company in Scranton. It's time to start thinking of ourselves as the Justice League, instead, Shapiro said.

Our trusted brand. Our incredible content. These are powerful assets, a number of speakers reminded us, so we shouldn't get so down on ourselves. When a GM asked keynoter Rhonda Holt, SVP of TBS, how his station could replicate some of her company's successes without having the benefit of advertising dollars, she encouraged him to flip his thinking: What do you have, and how can you leverage that? In other words, focus on the positive.

And there was plenty of positive on display. Several first-time conference attendees I spoke to were wowed by the number of innovative people and projects they encountered. Old-timers commented that there was a stark difference between this year's conference and those of years past, with discussions of "why digital?" replaced by "how?," as in, "how do we get digital right?"

In iMA executive director Jeanne Ericson's opening remarks, a banner hung behind her that said, "iMA: Facilitating a Transition in Public Media to a Truly Innovative and Collaborative Industry." I'd say this year's conference is proof that this transition is decidedly underway.

If you were at the conference, what were your overall impressions? What struck you as key takeaways?

The Public Media Accelerator: A New Path Forward for Public Media?

ahirschdc@gmail.com (Amanda) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:47:32 GMT

By Amanda Hirsch

The new Public Media Accelerator from PRX and the Knight Foundation is a fascinating concept, and if it works, it could reinvigorate public media and help position us for long-term success. How? By harnessing the business acumen of mission-driven entrepreneurs and tech smarty-pants; pairing them with public media’s existing assets, such as editorial excellence and community service; and fueling essential content and services in a financially sustainable manner.

(If you haven’t been reading about the Accelerator, then for additional context, I highly recommend reading this MediaShift article by PRX executive director Jake Shapiro and this Neiman Labs article by Andrew Phelps.)

Disruptive Innovation

To be clear, the Accelerator isn’t about incremental improvements to existing content and services. “We're excited about ideas that change the game through some systemic or business model insight,more so than smart improvements to the way things already work,” says PRX CEO Jake Shapiro. In other words, the Accelerator is about disruptive innovation – ideas that fundamentally change business as usual, the way Amazon.com changed e-commerce, or Netflix changed the way we access video. Read more >>

By Amanda Hirsch

Disruptive Innovation

To be clear, the Accelerator isn’t about incremental improvements to existing content and services. “We're excited about ideas that change the game through some systemic or business model insight,more so than smart improvements to the way things already work,” says Shapiro. In other words, the Accelerator is about disruptive innovation – ideas that fundamentally change business as usual, the way Amazon.com changed e-commerce, or Netflix changed the way we access video.

Shapiro cites donations and voluntary giving as one example of an area ripe for this kind of rebirth.

What good are these big ideas, I wondered, if the system resists adopting them? Shapiro’s answer: if a product or service is funded by the Accelerator, its business model needs to demonstrate that said product or service would be attractive to end users – which could be stations, producers, or plain-old members of the public. And in order to be funded in the first place, all projects need to demonstrate the strong potential to attract follow-on funding. The result? A good idea with no chance of on-the-ground viability would not in fact be considered a “good idea.”

Shapiro notes that this high bar could mean that ideas the Accelerator funds will need to address problems whose scope extends beyond the public media industry alone. And he’s the first to admit that given the experimental nature of all this, “if we’re taking big enough risks, some of the projects we fund won’t work.”

What Does the Accelerator Mean for You?

As of today, the Accelerator is a concept, with a $2.5 million commitment from the Knight Foundation behind it. It will exist as a project at PRX, with its own full-time director -- a position Shapiro hopes to fill asap. Currently PRX is hosting a series of advisory meetings with leaders inside and outside the public media community, including those who’ve been involved with other accelerators, to flesh out how, exactly, the Accelerator will operate in service of its grand vision. For example: What specific criteria will applicants be required to meet? What will the exact structure of the Accelerator be?

Shapiro says he hopes to have questions answered prior to the iMA meeting at SXSW so PRX can make some announcements at that time. He hopes the Accelerator will be making its first round of investments by summer.

In the meantime, he says stations should definitely be thinking of themselves as potential applicants -- as well as "potential investors, incubators, acquirers and users of Accelerator projects." In addition, Shapiro invites stations to consider: If you could invite the people inventing the Facebooks of the world in to tackle public media’s problems – what would you want them to do? He welcomes input and ideas via email (jake at prx dot org), as they can help influence the Accelerator team’s thinking (just note that the Accelerator isn’t set up to accept formal applications just yet).

As of now, Shapiro guesstimates that if the Accelerator funded, say, 12 projects… one third might be from known players within the public media field; one third might be “hybrids” -- teams that straddled public media and private enterprise, like PRX itself; and one third might be brand-new players – entrepreneurs with no previous involvement in public media, but who demonstrate alignment with core public media values.

The Accelerator Promise

The most exciting thing about the Public Media Accelerator, as I see it, is how it can start us down a path of leaning less on federal funding – or on any funding model that relies on us proving our collective value as “public media.” (Let me emphasize -- this is my take, not a stated goal of the Accelerator project.)

Here’s what I mean: We’re a disaggregate ecosystem – a motley crew of individuals and organizations motivated by a similar desire to serve the American public through media, but working toward different visions of what that service should look like. In today’s uber-competitive media and funding landscape, our disaggregation is a liability, because it keeps us from clearly defining a collective brand promise, and cohesively marketing that brand. As a result, we leave a scattered impression on the American media consumer of just what, exactly, public media is, and why it deserves government support.

But if we shift to new models – models that support our disaggregate ecosystem – then suddenly, a fundamental characteristic of our community, one that has often been a political and financial liability, may suddenly become, if not an asset, then at least, not an obstacle. In other words – there’s less pressure on us to tell a collective story, and prove our collective value, if our disaggregate content and services are supported by business models that truly take this disaggregation into account.

The potential downside? “Public media” as an entity ceases to exist. Citizens unite not behind “the need for public media,” but behind the specific content and services they love – islands they may not see as part of a larger whole. But here’s the thing – does this larger whole really exist, today?

I’m not saying the Public Media Accelerator will be our savior. Like any big audacious idea, it could succeed or fail spectacularly; based on PRX’s impressive track record, I’m inclined to bet towards success, but time will tell. Even if it’s wildly successful, though, it alone won’t free all of public media from reliance on federal funding. What it might do, though, is show us all a clear path forward.

Share your thoughts >

Localore: Producer-Driven Innovation at Stations

ahirschdc@gmail.com (Amanda) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:07:19 GMT

By Amanda Hirsch

Localore is a $2 million initiative from AIR (Association of Independents in Radio) that is attempting to fuel long-term innovation at stations, with producers as the engine oil. Specifically, the project aims to use producer ingenuity and creative applications of technology to bring new audiences to public media (see AIR executive director Sue Schardt's comments to the NPR board last year on the importance of reaching new audiences). This week AIR announced the 10 winning projects that will receive Localore funding; see the press release and project list, and read Andrew Phelps' excellent summary for Neiman Lab. Each project is producer-driven, but based at a station (some of the producers are station employees, others are independents).

Inspired in large part by The Corner, an independent public media project funded under the last major AIR initiative, MQ2, AIR intends for Localore producers to "find the corners...to go to far reaches of the community where people don't even know about public media," Schardt explained. Jessica Clark will be documenting the status and outcomes of each project on the Localore blog, hoping to inspire similar work throughout the public media community.

The design of Localore assumes that it's easier for an individual to innovate than it is for an organization -- particularly an organization as under-resourced as many stations. "Stations want to innovate," Schardt told me, "but they're busy 24/7 cranking out the sausage." Station staff are stretched thin, she explained, and struggle to find the time or brain space to do anything other than their day-to-day work. The solution? Arm an inspired individual producer with the resources to operate outside of the institution, and separate from the station's daily demands.

This sounds great -- but how does it solve the core problem, of stations not having the resources to innovate? Schardt emphasizes that the stations participating in Localore all have "skin in the game," management buy-in, and are committed to creating long-term institutional change. She notes that during the application process, producers and stations needed to work together to submit video or other media to the "station runway" -- this meant that out the gate, stations had to commit resources to the project. Beyond this initial investment, every station is contributing both cash and in-kind resources on top of AIR's funding, for a collective contribution of over $650,000. And producers aren't just using stations as office space -- each participating station has identified a project team, with specific staff members designated to provide production or editing assistance, measure impact and more.

Schardt hopes the active involvement of stations means that once Localore funding comes to a close, the project leaves behind "DNA" and "native intelligence" beyond whatever media the producer creates, helping stations continue to engage any new audiences longterm. She also notes that AIR is helping participating stations identify opportunities for future funding. In addition, in his piece for Neiman Lab, Phelps reports that several Localore producers will be using Zeega, an open-source platform for interactive media development that grew out of MQ2; Zeega's Kara Oehler has said she's anxious for these producers to help inform the platform's core features, with the hope that "as opposed to just ending up with a bespoke mix of technology experiments after Localore ends, these projects will make a lasting contribution to the tools for public media."

A hearty congratulations to the Localore winners and to AIR for their stewardship of this exciting initiative. I sincerely hope that Localore does indeed fuel the kind of long-term change that Schardt envisions -- not just at the 10 participating stations, but throughout the larger public media community, as well. Do you think it will? Share your thoughts.

Crowdfunding Public Media

ahirschdc@gmail.com (Amanda) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:01:34 GMT

By Amanda Hirsch

Need $40,000 to produce a local documentary? Just ask your audience.

That's what filmmaker Sam Mayfield did, for a film she's working on about last year's protests in Madison, Wisconsin. In a blog post on January 13, she wrote,

"We are currently trying to raise $40,000 of our $200,000 budget through Kickstarter, the online fundraising platform that facilitates grassroots investment. We set a target goal and must raise that amount or lose all pledged funds by the set deadline of 12 p.m., January 21. If we are successful, we’ll join over 15,000 artists, filmmakers, activists, and entrepreneurs who have collectively raised over $125 million using this innovative 'crowd-funding' model."

As of January 20, Mayfield had raised $41,162 (her campaign began December 27 -- that's over $40,000 in under 30 days).

Sound too good to be true? Well, in some ways, it is -- Kickstarter and other so-called "crowdfunding" sites like IndieGoGo aren't a silver bullet, where you simply set up a web page asking for money, and the donations come rolling in. (If only it were so!) On the other hand, a lot of independent producers are finding tools like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo incredibly effective, prompting influential nonprofit strategist and author Beth Kanter to recently ask, Are Crowdfunding Platforms the new Patrons of Independent Media?.

These platforms have been kind to a number of producers throughout the public media community. Read more >

By Amanda Hirsch

"We are currently trying to raise $40,000 of our $200,000 budget through Kickstarter, the online fundraising platform that facilitates grassroots investment. We set a target goal and must raise that amount or lose all pledged funds by the set deadline of 12 p.m., January 21. If we are successful, we’ll join over 15,000 artists, filmmakers, activists, and entrepreneurs who have collectively raised over $125 million using this innovative 'crowd-funding' model."

As of this writing, Mayfield had raised $41,850 (her campaign began December 27 -- that's over $40,000 in under 30 days).

Sound too good to be true? Well, in some ways, it is -- Kickstarter and other so-called "crowdfunding" sites like IndieGoGo aren't a silver bullet, where you simply set up a web page asking for money, and the donations come rolling in. (If only it were so!) On the other hand, a lot of independent producers are finding tools like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo incredibly effective, prompting influential nonprofit strategist and author Beth Kanter to recently ask, Are Crowdfunding Platforms the new Patrons of Independent Media?.

These platforms have been kind to a number of producers throughout the public media community. For example, The Sound of Young America's Jesse Thorn, State of the Re:Union's Al Letson and Destination DIY's Julie Sabatier have all used Kickstarter to raise money for their projects, ranging from $5k for video documentaries (Letson) to over $70k for a web series (Thorne). When filmmakers Pamela Yates and Paco de Onis wanted to make their documentary, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, eligible for an Oscar nomination -- which meant securing theatrical runs in New York and LA, and creating a 35-millimeter print of the film -- they turned to Kickstarter for help, and exceeded their $30k fundraising goal; P.O.V. writes about the campaign here.

In other words: crowdfunding works. But not always, and not without a lot of work.

Promoting your Kickstarter campaign requires strategic and consistent effort. "This is going to take up a lot of time. You should plan to devote time every day, or every other day, to make the campaign a success," writes filmmaker Theresa Loong in her excellent "Kickstarter How-To" slideshow (thanks to Cathy Fischer at ITVS for pointing me to this resource). Then again, what effective fundraising campaign doesn't require a lot of effort? Compare the return on investment of your current efforts with the potential return of something like Kickstarter, which excels at raising money for targeted, specific projects.

Letson notes that Kickstarter campaigns have a built-in sense of urgency, which helps drive support, because people know that if you don't reach your fundraising goal, you don't get to keep any of the donations you've received. That's right: with Kickstarter, it's all or nothing. That's not the case with IndieGoGo, which lets you keep your contributions no matter what -- but if you don't reach your goal, the site takes a larger cut. Another option is GoFundMe, which Letson says has helped him raise money for theater projects -- but again, he notes that the downside of the site is that it lacks Kickstarter's sense of urgency, leaving supporters feeling like they may have all the time in the world to make a donation... meaning, you may be less likely to reach your goal in the desired timeframe.

To be clear, you wouldn't use Kickstarter or these other tools to raise money for your station in a general way ("support WXYZ"); rather, you'd use them to raise money for a particular project or show. Letson observes that this can be a great way to engage the community in helping you create something of value for them. Think of MoveOn.org, which asks you to help fund the script of a specific commercial, for example, rather than making a general appeal to "help us do the progressive work we do." When the commercial is finally produced, you feel a sense of ownership - "I helped make that."

Spot.us is a site that takes this idea and applies it specifically to journalism, allowing news orgs and reporters to raise money to help cover specific stories. American Public Media (APM) acquired Spot.us late last year, and it'll be interesting to see how Spot.us and APM's Public Insight Network (which supports crowdsourced journalism) can work in concert.

Previously, PRX and Louisville Public Media (LPM) partnered with Spot.us to create Story Exchange, a service that "gives listeners a chance to help create quality local journalism by directly supporting stories that matter to them"; now other stations are considering getting on board. As John Barth of PRX explains, Story Exchange is intended to help station newsrooms do ambitious reporting while giving community members "skin in the game" with local news; as Barth sees it, crowdfunding is just another form of community engagement.

Since the Story Exchange launch in April 2011, LPM has successfully funded four out of six news stories in the ballpark of $200-$400 a pop. While this is not a huge volume of reporting (or a large pile of cash), the fact is that Story Exchange helped LPM provide coverage it otherwise couldn't have produced. As LPM's Todd Mundt explains, the funding supported, for example, "a series on Coal Ash that exposed a problem that had existed in a neighborhood near a big power plant for years, and gave a voice to citizens who didn't have one." He says,

"Story Exchange is a really interesting tool. I don't know exactly where it will go, but there is something here that's important and interesting. As far as we can tell, people - some of whom are members, and some of whom aren't - see value in providing direct support for a story on a topic that matters to them. From our end, it's a nice little bit of support, management supports it, we maintain total editorial control and our firewall is untouched. I see it developing as a way to produce some signature content with a measure of direct listener support."

Again, as I said above, crowdfunding is not a silver bullet. Just like other fundraising techniques, sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't -- and marketing matters (a lot). But increasingly, crowdfunding is an approach that many independent media makers are finding effective, and more stations would do well to begin experimenting.

Do you have experience with crowdfunding? Share lessons learned.

Helpful Resources:

Crowdfunding: Kickstarter How-to (With a Nod to IndieGoGo and Touscoprod) (slideshow)
Are Crowd Funding Platforms the New Patrons of Independent Media? (from Beth Kanter's blog)
MediaShift's coverage of crowdfunding

In addition, the websites for Kickstarter, IndieGoGo and GoFundMe offer tips and tutorials.

Public Media Games: Playing With Our Mission

ahirschdc@gmail.com (Amanda) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:50:02 GMT

Public media takes itself pretty seriously. But what if the best way to deliver on our mission wasn't through seriousness, but through play?

By Amanda Hirsch

Public media takes itself pretty seriously. But what if the best way to deliver on our mission wasn't through seriousness, but through play?

Sages through the centuries have pointed to the transformative power of play. To wit:

"Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play."
- Heraclitus

"Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold."
- Joseph Chilton Pearce

In some ways, public media has been encouraging game play for years, as a visit to PBSKids.org anytime in the last decade could quickly demonstrate (it was Mr. Rogers himself who said that "play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning.") And our gaming efforts haven't been limited to wee ones. As an editor for PBS.org in 2000, I remember working with P.O.V. to create an interactive role-playing activity that put you in the shoes of an INS officer, determining whether to grant someone political asylum. The technology was rudimentary, but the idea was timeless: leveraging interactive media to help people understand a social issue in a new way.

In the years since then, public media has created all kinds of interactive and educational games for learners of all ages, using increasingly sophisticated technology. The examples are too numerous to name, and we should be proud of our accomplishments in this arena. Some recent forays I'm aware of include WNYC's Candidate Shuffle and the upcoming role-player game Flight to Freedom from WNYC. In addition, I hear that Austin, Texas-based Richochet Labs -- creators of QRank, the daily branded quiz game lauded by everyone from Mashable.com to The New Yorker -- is working with a couple public media stations to develop innovative games that tie into on-air programming. More details to come in a future post.

But here's the rub: In addition to helping us understand the world, games can help us shape it, and this may be the untapped frontier of public media gaming. In her TED Talk, Gaming Can Make a Better World, game designer Jane McGonigal opines,

"...When we're in game worlds I believe that many of us become the best versions of ourselves, the most likely to help at a moment's notice, the most likely to stick with a problem as long as it takes, to get up after failure and try again."

McGonigal designed World Without Oil, a game from ITVS a few years back, in which players were invited to "play it before you live it" -- "it" being a world where we literally ran out of oil . In her review of the game, Stefanie Olsen of CNET News wrote, "If you want to change the future, play with it first." Another reviewer noted that the game "taps our collective ingenuity to stop a plausible crisis before it happens – or at least prepare a post-Katrina nation to deal better with a disaster." In other words, the power of the game is that it uses play to unleash real-world problem-solving.

And therein lies the challenge I'd issue to the public media community: How can we play a leadership role in creating games that help individuals strengthen their communities? How can we unleash the power of play to make the world a better place? Join the discussion.

For inspiration on this subject, check out Games for Change, and mark your calendars for their annual conference, coming in June. I also recommend checking out Jane McGonigal's TED talk and website.

New Year, New Innovation? A Wish List for Public Media in 2012

ahirschdc@gmail.com (Amanda) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:56:01 GMT

What's the #1 innovation that's needed in public media in 2012?

I posed that question to the public media group on Facebook, as well as to some additional colleagues via email. The responses ranged from a focus on cultivating a culture of innovation, to calls for more innovative content approaches, to the need to grow public media's audience to provide greater support for our existing innovations. And according to some, what's needed more than anything -- more than any individual innovative approach -- is a shared, collective vision of where public media needs to go next.

Here's a selection of the responses I received...

By Amanda Hirsch

"I think what's still needed most is a change in the culture so that innovation and risk-taking are supported and encouraged."
- Ian Hill, Community Manager, KQED

Several people agreed with Ian, only some of whom were comfortable being quoted in this piece. Adam Schweigert, who recently departed public media (a temporary hiatus, he insists!) after 7+ years in the system, says creating a culture of innovation "will do a lot to help recruit and retain new voices, increase diversity, (and) lead to further innovation in content and technology..."

Veteran journalist Max Cacas, currently Defense Editor at Signal Magazine, but with long ties to public media, argued that a culture of innovation is well and good, but we first need the resources to support such a culture. He offered a specific recommendation:

"I think what is needed is an 'innovation seed bank' that public radio/TV/media outlets in smaller markets can tap into so that they can make efforts to serve new audiences without compromising their existing and ongoing services."

...Which raises a great question (one that was still being debated on Facebook, last I checked): Does building a culture of innovation create resources to support said innovation... or do the resources indeed need to come first?

Kelsey Proud, Online Producer at St. Louis Public Radio, noted, "Some things can be done without money, but others, like equipment purchases, simply cannot."

Yoonhyung Lee, Director of Digital Media Fundraising at KQED, feels that we have plenty of innovation in the system... what's needed are bigger audiences to help translate innovation into sustainability:

"(Innovations) don't necessarily pay the bills. And they don't necessarily garner the kind of audiences that ONE prime time program, ONE hour of drive-time listening would. Innovations are great, but if we can't find the audiences to support them... well, does that falling tree make a sound if no one is listening?"

Of course, when you ask a question about innovation, people tend to respond with their own definitions of the admittedly broad term. Some emphasized that while "innovation" often connotes "technology" in this day and age, technology should not necessarily be the driver:

"While it is a significant driver of change, technology for technology's sake has little meaning. Our imaginations must lead technology. Media makers must first decide what difference they want to make, and for whom. Then figure out the tools to get them where they want to go."
- Sue Schardt, Executive Director, AIR

On Facebook, producer Stacy Bond agreed, voicing her opinion that we should be using technology "to innovate on-air (and in ways that are truly cross-platform, not just safe ways of paying lip-service to cross-platform)." Scott Finn, News Director at WUSF in Florida, wants to see expanded digital reporting and original investigative reporting at the state and local level; "then," he said, "we need to develop the digital infrastructure to share stories across stations and with NPR."

Public media veteran Michael Marcotte agreed that sharing was key, but wants to see it on an even broader scale. While he agrees resources and culture change are key issues, he thinks the main innovation needed in 2012 is a shared vision, and a plan to go with it:

"We share the mission of public media but we don't act in coordinated fashion for the long term success of the entire system. I think 2012's innovation should be a national, collective, shared effort to define and refine the vision that drives strategy, policy and investment approaching 2020."

In a recent piece for Current, Melinda Wittstock -- founder of Capitol News Connection, a start-up that recently closed its doors -- calls public media a "cozy, clubby world," where "risk is a four-letter word." What do you think? Is public media risk-averse? Do we need to begin taking more risks in 2012? If so, which risks should we take?

What risks will you be taking in the new year?

Join the discussion.

Highlights: Crowd-sourcing Public Media

ahirschdc@gmail.com (Amanda) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:13:26 GMT

Public media is known for the exemplary journalism it produces, among other things (Masterpiece Theater... tote bags...). But increasingly, we're also known for the ways in which we include the public in our reporting. Take these projects, for example...

By Amanda Hirsch

In Detroit, text messages from residents of the so-called "Mexicantown" neighborhood helped fuel an investigation by WDET.
In New York, WNYC plotted citizen reports of plowed streets on a map as a city paralyzed by a snow storm gradually began to mobilize.
In Indiana, WFIU assembled 40 tips for green living based on community suggestions, as part of its Earth Eats project.

And of course, in Washington, DC, NPR's Andy Carvin famously curated first-hand accounts of the Arab Spring via Twitter, leading New York Times columnist and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Nicholas Kristof to claim that “Everybody who follows the Middle East owes a debt to Andy” (and garnering Carvin a spot in the Time 100 poll).

Our crowd-sourcing isn't limited to journalism. Around the world, gamers spanning 12 countries used a platform created by ITVS and producer Jane McGonigal to create a collaborative simulation of a global oil crisis, leading CNET to proclaim, "If you want to change the future, play with it first."

This is public media on crowd-sourcing.

The projects listed above only scratch the surface of our community's pioneering, ongoing work in this area, which has been happening for years. The examples are too numerous to do justice in a single blog post, so I'll be creating a Google Doc spreadsheet that can serve as a directory of sorts. Watch the iMA Facebook page for details.

Crowd-sourcing, of course, is an ideal way to include the public in public media, and stations who haven't yet made a foray into this arena should strongly consider doing so. For help getting started, check out WNYC's excellent Field Guide to Crowdsourcing, offering rich documentation of their own crowd-sourcing projects and lessons learned to date. You can also contact PRX for information about their Assignments app, which helps stations collect citizen reports via iPhones; so far WBUR, VPR, KPBS, and WGBH are participating.

So: What's your favorite example of crowd-sourcing public media content? Join the discussion.