PBS Ombudsman→ The Mailbag: More on ‘MAKERS’ and Other Stuff

2014-02-12 Today's ombudsman's mailbag is a brief follow-up to the last one that was devoted to what I described as "a pre-emptive strike" by critics of some individuals slated to be profiled in six new one-hour documentaries that will be part... …›

Recording Not By The Book

Tight budgets, technological advances, and the impulse to experiment are leading some producers to record “not by the book.” Does it work?

PBS Ombudsman→ The Mailbag: A Pre-Emptive Strike on More ‘Makers’

2014-01-23 When you make an announcement before a group of reporters at the semi-annual Television Critics Association conference, you are likely to get some publicity. Among the announcements made by PBS at this year's gathering in Pasadena was news that six... …›

PBS Ombudsman→ The Mailbag: A Letter from Bill Moyers

2014-01-22 This edition of the mailbag contains just one letter. It is a response from Bill Moyers to the Ombudsman's Column posted on Jan. 9. That column dealt with a couple of issues surrounding the Jan. 3 presentation of the weekly... …›

PBS Ombudsman→ The Mailbag: A Lot More on Downton; a Little More on Moyers

2014-01-15 As has happened before, when something we think of as sort of contemporary — a gay kiss, a loved one lost to a fatal car accident, a rape — unfolds amid the gentility of Downton Abbey, some viewers object. I... …›

PBS Ombudsman→ The Mailbag: A Downton Downer and Other Things

2014-01-13 Despite on-screen warnings by PBS at the beginning of last Sunday's edition of Downton Abbey that the segment was rated TV-14 and "The following drama contains scenes which may not be suitable for all audiences. Viewer discretion is advised," many... …›

PBS Ombudsman→ Over the Air or Off the Air?

2014-01-09 The powers that be at PBS were dancing in the aisles earlier this week (I didn't really see this but it was undoubtedly in the minimum-physical-contact, please; we're British style) when it was reported that the season four debut of... …›

NPR visuals team blog→ Animation With Filmstrips

2014-01-08 This post is cross-posted with our friends at Source. Animated gifs have immediate visual impact — from space cats to artistic cinemagraphs. For NPR’s “Planet Money Makes A T-Shirt” project, we wanted to experiment with using l …›

NPR visuals team blog→ We’re hiring a web developer

2014-01-06 Love to code? Want to use your skills to make the world a better place? The visuals team (formerly known as news applications) is a crew of developers, designers, photojournalists and videographers in the newsroom at NPR headquarters in sunny Washing …›

NPR visuals team blog→ How And Why Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration Rocks (Published At Source (source.opennews.org))

2014-01-02 Case Study: The UX process behind the 'Planet Money Makes A T-Shirt' project, written for Source. …›

PBS Ombudsman→ Different Strokes From Different Folks

2013-12-19 It is still sort of holiday-quiet in the ombudsman's mailbox, but one critical letter from a viewer in Miami raises an editorial issue that I seldom get asked about — a comparison between NPR (radio) and PBS (television) coverage of... …›

RadioSutton→ Does Public Radio Have a Leadership Inferiority Complex?

2013-12-13 One of the more perplexing situations in public radio is the failure of NPR to find and develop strong executive leadership from within the public radio system. It appears that that is unlikely to change as the NPR Board selects its next CEO.  N …›

PBS Ombudsman→ The Mailbag: The Holiday Spirit Is on Hold

2013-12-13 The leader of North Korea had his uncle executed and a mentally-unbalanced sign-language fraud managed to stand next to President Obama in South Africa, but it's been relatively quiet these past two weeks for the ombudsman; no big controversies and... …›

NPR visuals team blog→ The Book Concierge: Bringing Together Two Teams, Nine Reporters, And Over 200 Books

2013-12-10 This post is cross-posted with our friends at Source. We started the Book Concierge with the NPR Books team about four weeks back in early November. I worked alongside Danny Debelius, Jeremy Bowers and Chris Groskopf. The project centered on Books’ …›

NPR visuals team blog→ Collaborating On The T-Shirt Project (Published At Source (source.opennews.org))

2013-12-02 Interview: Brian Boyer talks with Source about the Planet Money / NPR Visuals project 'Planet Money Makes A T-Shirt.' …›

PBS Ombudsman→ The Mailbag: Bye-Bye Bobbleheads and Lots of Other Stuff

2013-11-21 The ombudsman's mailbag has become quite stuffed in the past week or two, and in the past few days in particular, because of lots of email from people upset about a short video offering from PBS Digital Studios that was... …›

PBS Ombudsman→ ‘It’s (Not) Okay to be (Not) Smart’

2013-11-19 The headline above is my edited version of the title of a PBS Digital Studios production of "A Very Special Thanksgiving Special/It's Okay to be Smart." The idea, its webpage states, is to "be thankful for everything science has given... …›

NPR visuals team blog→ How We Made Lobbying Missouri (Published At Source (source.opennews.org))

2013-11-12 The design process and code behind the NPR / St. Louis Public Radio campaign finance project. …›

PBS Ombudsman→ More Words About ‘War of the Worlds’

2013-11-08 Last week's column dealt with a documentary aired on Oct. 29 as part of the PBS "American Experience" series. The hour-long program marked the 75th anniversary of the famous 1938 CBS radio broadcast of the Orson Welles dramatization of a... …›

NPR visuals team blog→ Network Diagrams Are Hard (Published At Source (source.opennews.org))

2013-11-03 It's a challenge to make legible, useful, responsive network diagrams. …›

PBS Ombudsman→ War of the Words

2013-10-31 Sometimes, when journalists talk among themselves about stories they have read, the phrase "burying the lead" comes into the discussion. What is meant by that is a story that has important information way down inside the text, rather than at... …›

PBS Ombudsman→ Muhammad on PBS: Was It Good for the Jews?

2013-10-29 The question in the headline on this column is not meant to be frivolous. For Jews and their families in America in the 1930s, '40s and '50s — and even to some extent today — events from time to time... …›

PBS Ombudsman→ The Mailbag: Some Viewers Want to Give PBS a ‘Pop’

2013-10-23 The ombudsman's mailbox continues to receive a modest but steady stream of complaints from viewers about those small but obvious promotional blurbs that "pop up" on your TV screen every once in a while during a favorite program to remind... …›

RadioSutton→ Transition for NPR Highlights Major Industry Issues – Part 2: The NPR-Member Station Relationship

2013-10-04 A recent article at Current.org highlighted some of the financial and membership issues facing NPR as it looks for its next leader.  Our last post considered the financial side.  This post considers the membership issues.Curren …›

RadioSutton→ Transition for NPR Highlights Major Industry Issues – Part 1: Financial

2013-10-03 Current.org has a good read on some of the financial and membership issues facing NPR as it looks for its next leader.  On the financial side, Current reports that NPR had its best fundraising year ever in 2013, yet ended the year with a …›

RadioSutton→ Keep Hitting Listeners Right Between the Ears

2013-10-01 Below is the original text from John Sutton’s acceptance speech after receiving the Don Otto Award from Audience Research Analysis and the Public Radio Program Directors association.  You can hear the speech here.  Just like live radio, wha …›

NPR visuals team blog→ Complex But Not Dynamic: Using A Static Site To Crowdsource Playgrounds

2013-09-13 This post is cross-posted with our friends at Source. We usually build relatively simple sites with our app template. Our accessible playgrounds project needed to be more complex. We needed to deal with moderated, user-generated data. But we didn&rs …›

RadioSutton→ Introducing Emodus Research and Sutton & Lee

2013-09-05 A couple of business announcements as the RadioSutton blog returns from a few months off this summer.1.  Introducing Emodus Research, a new company created by John Sutton to help public radio professionals identify and leverage the …›

NPR visuals team blog→ How to Setup Your Mac to Develop News Applications Like We Do

2013-06-06 Updated February 9, 2015 Hi, Livia Labate here, Knight-Mozilla Fellow working with the Visuals team. These great instructions have been verified for OS X Yosemite and a few tips and clarifications added throughout. Updated June 12, 2014. Hey everyon …›

NPR visuals team blog→ User-generated graphics in the browser with SVG

2013-05-31 The challenge For NPR’s ongoing series “The Changing Lives of Women”, we wanted to ask women to share advice gleaned from their experience in the workforce. We’ve done a few user-generated content projects using Tumblr as a bac …›

RadioSutton→ NPR, Its Member Stations, and Trust

2013-05-23 Trust is a funny thing in public radio.  The industry’s business model is built on listeners trusting what they hear on public radio and public radio trusting that listeners will voluntarily pay for content they get for free.  It’s been …›

RadioSutton→ Early Lessons from Planet Money’s Kickstarter Campaign

2013-05-07 NPR’s Planet Money launched a Kickstarter campaign last week to help fund a story it wanted to produce on the life of a t-shirt. This is NPR’s first foray into direct listener fundraising.As we wrote in previous postings and in a commentary for C …›

RadioSutton→ A Not-So-Modest NPR Fundraising Proposal

2013-05-01 Little did we know when writing our last posting - "The Inevitability of NPR Raising Money Directly from Listeners" - that NPR was planning its first test of direct fundraising from listeners.NPR's Planet Money launched a Kickstarter campaign …›

RadioSutton→ Public Radio 2018: The Inevitability of NPR Raising Money Directly from Listeners

2013-04-08 This is the fourth installment in our series on what public radio looks like in 2018.  In this posting, why NPR will be raising money directly from listeners and doing it with the belief that it benefits NPR’s member stations.First, some backgro …›

RadioSutton→ Public Radio 2018: Sibling Rivalry

2013-04-05 This is part three of a series on what public radio looks like in 2018.  In the first posting, we wrote:The largest cause of any station audience erosion will come from within the public radio industry, not from outside competitors.The reason is s …›

RadioSutton→ Public Radio 2018: Radio Still Rules

2013-03-08 This is part two in our series on what public radio is likely to look like in 2018.  You can read part one by clicking here. In this posting, why public radio stations will still be, by far, the most significant source of listening to public …›

NPR visuals team blog→ Be our summer intern!

2013-03-08 Why aren’t we flying? Because getting there is half the fun. You know that. (Visuals en route to NICAR 2013.) Hey! Are you a student? Do you design? Develop? Love the web? …or… Do you make pictures? Want to learn to be …›

HearVox News » PubMedia→ SoundCloud on Sound

2013-02-19 SoundCloud interviews sound-experts about sound: Among the interviewees: Moby, Imogen Heap, Jad Abumrad, Ben Rubin. via The Four Eyes. …›

NPR visuals team blog→ How to build a news app that never goes down and costs you practically nothing

2013-02-14 Our app on a shiny iPad: Inauguration 2013. Prelude I’ve been on the NPR apps team for a little over a month now. I’ll be real – it’s been pretty dope. We launched a slideshow showcasing the family photos of Justice Sotomayor, a …›