Public Media Showcase

In 2008, Mike Rosen-Molina wrote on MediaShift about public access TV's "fight for relevance" in the digital age: Read more...

PBS has launched a new dashboard that allows stations to monitor their social media impact. According to Victor Acquah, Web analytics consultant at Blue Analytics, who helped develop the dashboard, in a recent Webinar, the dashboard allows stations to use "a common set of metrics to help gauge the effectiveness of their social media efforts." Read more...

Not In Our Town (NIOT), "a national movement that encourages and connects people who are responding to hate and working to build more inclusive communities,” demonstrates the power of media projects to both report upon and foster civic action. NIOT harnesses the power of media, grassroots activism and educational outreach to stand up against intolerance and work to "foster safety, inclusion and acceptance." On April 6, this long-running public media project will unveil its new face—a redesigned site that features an interactive map, group pages that support local organizing, a library of videos, and more. Read more...

StoryCorps, whose mission is "to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives," was launched by MacArthur Fellow Dave Isay in 2003. "StoryCorps is a new frontier for public media," Isay said when I spoke to him recently. "It speaks to core values. It's about turning public media into human service." Read more...

Last month, Jessica Clark and I explored how various Public Media 2.0 projects are measuring their level of success in informing and engaging publics. We found that many public media organizations are struggling to measure impact -- and some are relying only on traditional indicators of reach, as opposed to other elements of impact such as relevance, inclusion, engagement or influence. Some projects, however, are taking a more holistic approach that is matched closely to their mission. Read more...