Each of these discrete services are elements in a new professional discipline called "online news." Every news director is familiar with some of these elements, but few of us feel fully prepared to manage--and, more important, to build a new media franchise--on these new forms of content creation and service delivery.
Over the next six months, the Public Radio News Directors (PRNDI) with support from the Integrated Media Association, will provide public radio news professionals with a series of five webinars about online news and how it is currently being practiced within public radio.
The initial segment of the series will be, basically, an introduction, with a look at some research and a walk through a few PRNDI member sites.
The second segment will build on this. We will ask three News Directors: How much are you investing in new media? How has your staffing changed? How has your daily production process changed? How are you solving some common digital media problems? And....how many people are you reaching and how often are you reaching them?
In the third segment we look at the integration of local and national news online. Very few stations would succeed as a stand-alone radio news outlet, if they did not present a strong schedule of national news programs. Do we think it will be different online? If so, why? Currently, the models seem to be suggesting that the best online service approach is "aligning your on line and off line services." For most stations, that means increasing their presentation of NPR, PRI and APM news online.
In the final segment of the webinar series, in April, we will provide some four training sessions in important new media techniques, with the content of those sessions to be chosen by the webinar participants in the early stages of the series.
THE CONTENT AND SCHEDULE
Session 1: What do we know about News Online today?
Thursday, January 28
We begin with an overview of “news online” with emphasis on end-user behavior and attitudes: how are people using online news? What are they looking for? Paul Jacobs, General Manager of Jacobs Media, will present some news-related insights drawn from the 25,000 respondents to the 2009 Public Radio Tech Poll, conducted last fall for IMA and PRPD. This session will also provide two short case studies, providing an initial look at how stations are investing in, producing and distributing new media news content.
Session 2: Content Management, Staffing, Newsroom Organization
Thursday, February 25
In our second session, we will probe more deeply into the organizational design, software and hardware technology, and staffing issues that all of us will be facing as we move from audio to multi-format production. The second session will look in more detail at the investments and the skills required for efficient workflow in the contemporary newsroom.
Session 3: Leveraging the Power of National News
Thursday, March 25
How can stations efficiently and effectively expand the NPR franchise online? In this session, we will devote the entire session to examining how staff from WBUR and NPR re-designed WBUR’s website—and transformed it from a “companion website (for a radio station)” into a news destination with a high level of both local and national content.
Session 4: Expanding Local News Capacity
Thursday, April 29 and Friday, April 30
In April, we will provide two webinars devoted skill-set development. These sessions will be shaped around the needs of webinar participants. We expect that the sessions will time allocated to use of photos, working with bloggers, turning audio into text and other techniques that are central to bringing public radio news online in the coming decade. Note: this last webinar will run for one-hour each day over two days. The last session will look to present training in 4 contemporary news techniques.
WHO CAN ATTEND?
All webinar sessions are open to all staff members at PRNDI and/or IMA member stations or organizations.
HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?
The webinars will be free to all PRNDI and IMA members.
HOW DO I SIGN UP?
A series of webinar promotional emails with links to the sign up page will be sent each month PRNDI member News Directors (and others who have paid PRNDI dues) and to all primary e-mail contacts in the IMA member database.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Call Mark Fuerst at 845-876-2577
or write to publicmedianews@gmail.com.
