NPR has received $3 million in funding to launch a new journalism project that will focus on providing in-depth, hyper-local coverage on community-specific issues on an online platform. NPR received $2 million from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and $1 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
The new funding will allow a pilot group of a dozen NPR stations with the resources to provide in-depth, hyper-local news on a topic that is most relevant to the community where the station is located. The grants also allow the stations to hire new “journalist bloggers,” who will focus exclusively on reporting and aggregating news about a topic relevant to that city. The pilot radio and TV stations have not been chosen yet.
In addition, PBS’s The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer will share its embeddable video player with the pilot participants. The player makes it possible to access and present video content from NewsHour, Frontline, NOW, Washington Week, Bill Moyers Journal, Tavis Smiley and about a dozen local PBS stations. The NewsHour will also feature selected reporting from the participating stations on its Web site.
fyi … grant = no strings attached wad of cash$$
hard to compete with that
This is my fav station on the radio. Everyone else in the car would say differently. But the information and reporting style is great.
forum = thumbs up*
why didn’t they just use the fwix api
I love the pointlessness of the prepended “hyper” in “hyper-local”. Personally, I only pay attention to neo-local, neo-natal, nano-local, uber-local, demi-local, loco-local and loco-motion news, but good on them for trying something different.
Why is this even a topic on techcrunch? Or am i on msnbc.com?
kinda old news, they announced this like 2 weeks ago working with uc Berkeley, the chronicle and maybe the times? or is this a different one?
Your comment is old too. I remember one just like it on another site like 2 days ago.
@Simon – I think you’re thinking of another project they discussed on NPR about the formation of the Bay Area non-profit news org. This sounds like a different grant aimed at different NPR stations nationwide to do some more local stories.
http://www.trendsmap.com
Job done.
Monsato owns NPR. Somehow I smell media manipulation here.
Now why would Monsanto give a shit about local news?
Corporations (besides media conglomerate), don’t own the media. However, they pay so-called “think tanks” and universities so that they can come up with studies that eventually end up in the news.
For example, it’s pretty obvious that Monsanto pays the University of Missouri Plant Science department to come up with new shit. And ExxonMobil and Philip Morris pays the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Center for Consumer Freedom to make people think Al Gore is taking your “freedom” away so that they can keep their record profits for shareholders in the plus side.
Three words: Waste of Money.
Have you ever been to NPR’s website? Is it on your must-check everyday site? What about News Hour? Exactly. Tech innovation isn’t going to come from NPR or PBS, please!
That’s like giving money to Universal Records and telling them to figure out this technology thing.
To be really innovative, they’ll have to shift to a new paradigm. And old media has way too much to lose.
Why not give that money to some upstart at Yahoo News or Gawker or emerging leaders in online news space? People who are already doing it! And have them partner with NPR, PBS etc… Now that would be innovative!