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Public Media Camp Round-Up

Katie Donnelly

Innovative public media projects were in abundance at Public Media Camp 2009 last weekend, a public media “un-conference” co-hosted by NPR, PBS and the Center for Social Media, in conjunction with iStrategyLabs. Over 250 public media stakeholders gathered here at American University to share their thoughts about public media and strategize about its future. This week’s Showcase features a brief overview of just a few examples of the many exciting projects we encountered at PubCamp. Stay tuned for more information about these projects (and the many others we learned about last weekend) as we may be profiling some of them more comprehensively here in the future.

One of the much talked-about projects last weekend was NPR’s Argo Project. (The title is a reference to Jason and the Argonauts.) The project, which is currently in development, is looking to maximize online news content by offering ongoing, in-depth, location-based news coverage on specific issues. According to Kinsey Wilson, Senior Vice President of Digital Media at NPR, the project aims to “develop robust niche verticals” in major U.S. markets, including San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Washington, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York. These markets were selected “to allow for a better footprint” and to make use of existing resources and support. Wilson explained that he had been involved in implementing a similar concept at USA Today and the result was a 10-fold increase in traffic. Through that process, Wilson explained, he learned a great deal, including “expect to learn as you go” and that “there is no magic formula.” Within six months of getting the Argo Project off the ground, NPR hopes to open up the platform to additional stories through a to-be-determined application process. However, according to Wilson, “There’s no reason people can’t take this same insight and apply it on their own with existing blogs and existing toolsets.” For more details on this project, check out this comprehensive article from Current.

Another public broadcasting project to watch out for is FluPortal, a wide scale public media collaboration that functions as a clearinghouse for reliable information on the H1N1 virus. Like Economy Story (profiled here last month), FluPortal is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and spearheaded by PRX and NPR. The project provides exhaustive resources for public media stations covering H1N1. In addition to a comprehensive blog, FluPortal offers stations embeddable content, including H1N1-related maps, Twitter feeds, widgets and badges. The project is evolving rapidly – and additional customizable widgets are currently in development.

Another project that will be officially launching shortly is the Participatory Culture Foundation’s MiroCommunity. Miro is an open-source video player developed with non-profits in mind. According to their website, “. . . at the heart of the Miro mission is the commitment to offer independent and non-commercial creators access to the very same audience. There's no longer any reason why you need a big budget to reach a big audience, even with HD video.” MiroCommunity is a web service that helps organizations develop customizable video presentations with an emphasis is on creating community through online discussions and open-source tools. I had a chance to speak with the Participatory Culture Foundation’s Anne Jonas at PubCamp, and she had this to say: “We are trying to be a local video hub. There’s excitement about improving existing media outlets that have been doing this work for a very long time while at the same time involving the local community.” You can see Miro in action at: Medfield.TV, Economy Story, Open Cast Project, and Quote-Unquote.

Finally, there is the Northern Community Internet Project, an intriguing community journalism initiative. In contrast to some of the large-scale projects such as Argo, this one is intentionally focused on small, rural communities in Northern Minnesota. With the help of grant money from the CPB's Public Media Innovation fund, Northern Minnesota radio station KAXE-FM led a collaboration in creating a hyperlocal journalism site that includes content from both professional and volunteer citizen journalists. (Some citizen journalism training was included in the project). The site covers approximately a dozen small towns across Northern Minnesota – most of which have no local newspapers. According to Martina Tran of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, it was important for this project to focus on the citizens of small towns because “news affects them very differently than some of the national projects acknowledge.” The Northern Community Internet Project has built a successful infrastructure, but the project’s developers are currently dealing with the issue of how to maintain and further develop their project when they no longer have major grant funding.

For another take on PubCamp and additional examples of innovative projects that were discussed there, see Future of Public Media Project Director Jessica Clark’s recent post at MediaShift.

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