Issuu

JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021

NEWS FOR PEOPLE IN PUBLIC MEDIA

‘Pictures on the Radio’ showcases David Gilkey’s photojournalism PAGE 18

Partnership unveils vision for pubmedia’s ‘anti-racist future’ BY TYLER FALK

(Illustration: Jon Krause)

SPECIAL COVERAGE

Tech transitions:

Engineering new paths for public media

igital technology continues to transform public media’s services to audiences and communities. The next wave of change for television — rollout of the ATSC 3.0 transmission standard — opens enormous possibilities for mission-centered applications and new revenue models. Public TV’s early adopters are moving into the next phase of experimentation, navigating new partnerships and applications that may (or may not) get consumers excited about buying a NextGen-enabled TV. Public radio placed similar bets on HD Radio multicasts a decade ago. The technology’s promises

of exceptional sound quality and capacity to add subchannels of specialized program streams enabled stations to preserve music programming while streamlining their formats. But as audiences migrated instead to digital streams, some stations have decided their HD Radio channels are not sustainable. Current’s special coverage of tech transitions in public media also looks at efforts to train and recruit the next generation of broadcast engineers. Many of the technicians who built and maintained public media’s broadcast infrastructure are ready to retire, and stations are struggling to hire their successors. SEE PAGE 10

s current and former public radio staffers took to social media this summer to share stories of racism in the industry, Celeste Headlee wanted to create a safe space where people could discuss their experiences. What started as conversations quickly turned into an initiative to get public radio stations to make systemic DEI changes in their workplace and newsroom practices. The group, which adopted the name Public Media Anti-Racist Partnership, recently published the product of those efforts — an open letter that details concrete steps for public radio leaders to implement the reforms. “An AntiRacist Future: A Vision and Plan for the Transformation of Public Media,” published Jan. 18 on Medium and on Current’s website, had been signed by more than 449 individuals and endorsed by seven organizations by Jan. 22. Headlee, who wrote a book about having better conversations, began convening the talks because she wanted to use her expertise in moderating discussions to bring together people throughout the disparate public radio system. “Our industry is so spread out that, between stations, people don’t talk to one another, and they may not realize that someone else is doing the exact same thing one state over,” said Headlee, who co-hosts PBS’ Retro Report and has also hosted public radio programs. “I just wanted to create a safe place in which people could just share their own experiences and talk about what they want to see happen, ideally.” The first Zoom meeting in July drew 200 people and more who were turned away because of the platform’s capacity limits. Headlee said she saw “passion and energy” from the attendees and thought, “Let’s use it to try to bring about the changes that we have not seen.” That first call also revealed that current and former public radio employees of color shared “alarmingly similar” experiences, Headlee said. Participants told stories about managers who had casually made racist remarks; when they complained, they were told that the comments weren’t racist or were jokes. “A number of people talked about patContinued on page 7

Current 4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW Suite LL05 Washington, DC 20016-8122

PRESORTED FIRST CLASS MAIL U.S. POSTAGE PAID PERMIT NO. 915 FREDERICK, MD

2 | January/February 2021 | Current

CURRENT THINKING

10 things public media should reevaluate in 2021 BY ANDREW RAMSAMMY

020 should be a lesson in the Yogi Berra quote: “The future ain’t what it used to be.” To think that life after 2020 will follow a linear path, you’d be kidding yourself. And the ripples of 2020 will continue long past this year. As I scan public media, I find myself asking: Will public media emerge stronger from the pandemic? It’s too early to answer that question, but this is a perfect moment for self-examination. Hopefully, New Year’s resolutions aside, you’re in an excellent place to think about your future, as I am thinking about my own. As you do, here are 10 things that I hope you’ll forget and consider in 2021:

1. Forget disruption. Consider dispersion.

One of the many lessons from 2020 was the rapid overnight acceleration of digital trends. Legacy businesses that required high-touch in-person experiences, such as stadiums, theaters, restaurants and gyms, went dark. In contrast, digital experiences offered via Amazon, Netflix, Zoom and telemedicine saw meteoric growth, all overnight. What’s clear about dispersion is that disruption is the basis for this digital acceleration, which formed years ago, not in 2020. And it all focuses on one highly monetizable value: the commodity of time. Public media should consider its relationship with time and how audiences perceive it.

2. Forget content. Consider value chains.

If there’s one thing that everyone says is king, that’s content. Lots of resources get poured into it, and publish day comes with a thud. No one shows up at the content party. Content is just one of a string of processes that make up a value chain: content,

.ORG

Visit Current.org for more coverage:

COMMENTARIES

Made for Public Media: To BIPOC colleagues, what is public media?

(Photo: Dilok Klaisataporn/iStock) packaging, distribution, marketing and monetization. Consider how that piece of content moves through the value chain. Great media companies consider themselves as not just content creators but as internal ad agencies that produce the products they sell.

3. Forget funnels. Consider flywheels.

You’ve seen the inverted audience pyramid. You spend all of your waking energy trying to get audiences into the funnel and ultimately down to the bottom, converting them to become members. And at the end of that exhaustive process, you’re done. But this is a short-term linear process, focused on one conclusive achievement: Did they give us money? A flywheel approach begins where the pyramid ends, compounding that work into knowledgeable insights. How do we grow our audiences and members by placing them at the center of what we do and figuring out what drives them? And how do those motivations drive momentum to move our flywheel? Furthermore, how does one’s flywheel attract more genuine underwriters, partners, content creators, staff, etc.? Hopefully, you get the point.

4. Forget all things to all people. Consider one intersectional crisis at a time.

The pandemic has proven that we’re in a state of emergency — several, all at the same time. But trying to cover it all is a lesson in futility. For the past several months, my team at Global Sport Matters has focused on the sport community’s mental health crisis. On the day before Thanksgiving, we got an email from an audience member that underscored our mission and purpose. Be the help to someone in need. Create an immediate impact by offering solutions-based resources accessible with just one click. And remain committed to that one person, indefinitely, despite the untrackable metric that might not show up on an annual report.

5. Forget monoliths. Consider nascency.

Please repeat after me: Communities of color are not monoliths. Developing and engaging with diverse communities should come with an implied understanding that these communities have already been traumatized and marginalized. Approaches to Continued on page 22

Letter from the managing editor

urrent’s first print edition of 2021 marks a change for our legacy publication. With so few opportunities to meet in person and share strategies for managing change, we aim to create a new space for Current as “public broadcasting’s meeting place” where news reporting and analysis informs and inspires your conversations with colleagues. Our special coverage on “Tech Transitions,” which begins on page 10, is a deep dive into technology and audience-service decisions that public media stations face — how to prepare for ATSC 3.0 television broadcasting, what to do with HD Radio channels that few listeners tune into, and how public media can attract and retain a new generation of broadcast engineers. This year, we’ll be focusing special coverage on six themes featured on our website and in bimonthly print editions. In March, we’ll explore how workplace changes triggered by the coronavirus

pandemic have become permanent (or not). Later, our reporters and contributors will look at revenue trends, the intersection of public media and the arts, and collaborations and consolidations that are reshaping the system. Our Public TV Pipeline is scheduled for November. We also want to engage readers in new ways. See page 14 for “Tech tools to help get the job done,” recommendations submitted by readers, and look for more of these tips on our website. We’ll be fielding short surveys seeking readers’ reactions and hosting webinars that invite your input and questions on special-coverage topics. Watch our newsletter for details about

the “Tech Transitions” webinar, an interview with OPB President Steve Bass, scheduled for Friday, Feb. 12. (If you don’t already subscribe, visit current.org/newsletter.) These special series are in addition to the ongoing news coverage, original enterprise reporting and commentaries you’ve come to expect from Current. The news cycle in 2020 was head-spinning, and we know there are so many more stories yet to be told. As always, I invite your feedback (email karen@current.org) on this new approach and what more we can do to help you “keep Current” with public media news and analysis.

“ The news cycle in 2020 was head-spinning, and we know there are so many more stories yet to be told.”

NEWS ARTICLES

Pubcasters urge FCC to allow ‘flexibility’ on proposed foreign government sponsorship rules Public TV advocates hail FCC ruling on ATSC 3.0 New agreement gives KALW nonprofit more control of station Southern California Public Radio receives $500,000 CPB grant for podcast studio After union win, staffers at MPR’s The Current seek to address ‘identity crisis’ CPB receives FY23 raise, denied emergency relief WNET’s plan to address diversity and inclusion leaves some employees feeling shut out Amid the pandemic, ‘Ear Hustle’ pivots to covering COVID within prison’s walls

OBITUARIES

Bill Kobin, influential programmer who led KCET in Los Angeles Longtime field engineer Ron Titcomb dies at 62

Current

4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Suite LL05, Washington, D.C. 20016-8122

Web: Current.org Managing Editor Karen Everhart 202-885-6414 karen@current.org Digital Editor Mike Janssen 202-885-6419 mike@current.org Reporters Tyler Falk 202-885-6465 tyler@current.org Julian Wyllie 202-885-6492 julian@current.org Editorial Interns Stephanie Mirah, Skye Witley Design & Production Kelly Martin kelly@kmartindesign.com Chris Campbell brightoncreative@mac.com Business/Circulation Manager Laura Rogers 202-885-6412 rogers@current.org Advertising Sales Kathy Bybee Hartzell 727-433-2527 advertising@current.org Account Manager, Classified Ads Amanda Iannuzzi publicmediajobs@current.org Executive Director Julie Drizin 202-885-6453 julie@current.org Contributing Editor Theodore Fischer Published 6 times a year as an editorially independent service of American University School of Communication, and funded in part by a grant from the Wyncote Foundation.

Current January/February 2021

4 | January/February 2021 | Current

Quick Takes Grant gives jazz stations ‘monumental opportunity’ to innovate, build audience

ive public radio jazz stations will collectively receive more than $1.3 million through a grant-funded project aimed at developing ways to reach new audiences. The Jazz Media Lab, initiated and funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, will provide each station with at least $225,000 over three years. Each station is also eligible for an additional $50,000 to fund an innovation project around issues such as audience, platforms or generating income. The participating stations are KMHD in Portland, Ore.; KNKX in Seattle/ Tacoma, Wash.; KUVO in Denver; WBGO in Newark, N.J.; and WRTI in Philadelphia. The grant is intended to “provide capacity-building support,” said Maurine Knighton, program director for the arts at the foundation. Stations will receive resources that will allow them to “craft innovative delivery platforms for jazz music” and develop “new ways of engaging creatively with living jazz artists and with the music that those artists are creating,” she said. The grant will also help stations learn from each other and gain insights from audience data through a national benchmark study of jazz audiences. Technical assistance provided through the grant

will support efforts to build greater racial diversity among their staffs, audiences and governing boards, she said. WBGO CEO Steve Williams called the grant a “monumental opportunity” for the participating stations. He sees one of the “core functions” of the project as gathering data to better understand the audience.

Public media owners agree to sell podcast platform Pocket Casts

he public broadcasters who own Pocket Casts are selling the podcast platform, less than a year after it was declared public media’s “answer to Spotify.” A board made up of representatives of Pocket Casts’ owners — NPR, New York Public Radio, Chicago Public Media and BBC Studios Americas — agreed in December to sell the platform, according to NPR’s latest audited financial report. Pocket Casts CEO John Gibbons did not respond to Current’s questions, calling the situation a “fluid event.” NPR spokesperson Isabel Lara told Current that “the plan of a sale” of Pocket Casts is in “early stages of development.” NPR, NYPR and CPM acquired Pocket Casts in 2018, with each taking a one-third ownership stake. The organizations formed Podcast Media LLC, which operates the podcast platform and is governed by a board of representatives from each organization.

BBC Studios Americas acquired a small ownership stake last year — about 3.4%, according to the NPR AFR. NPR and NYPR increased their ownership stakes to 34.6% each, while CPM decreased its stake to about 27.5%. NPR’s financial statement reported a net loss for Pocket Casts in fiscal year 2020. NPR’s share of that loss was more than $800,000. Under public media ownership, the app was made free to download after previously costing $3.99.

PBS distances itself from former staff attorney targeted by Project Veritas

roject Veritas, the group founded by conservative activist James O’Keefe, released and publicized a video of former PBS attorney Michael Beller disparaging supporters of President Donald Trump and discussing the need to reeducate their children. Beller was recorded during conversations with a woman that Project Veritas describes as a journalist. In the video released Jan. 12, he discussed different outcomes of the presidential election. In a fragmented statement in which Beller appeared to be responding to a question about Democratic candidate Joe Biden losing the election, he described going to the White House to throw Molotov cocktails.

PBS issued a statement about Beller on Facebook and Twitter. “This employee no longer works for PBS. As a mid-level staff attorney, he did not speak on behalf of our organization, nor did he make any editorial decisions,” the statement said. “There is no place for hateful rhetoric at PBS, and this individual’s views in no way reflect our values or opinions,” PBS continued. “We strongly condemn violence and will continue to do what we have done for 50 years — use our national platform and local presence to strengthen communities and bring people together.” A second video released after the first went viral showed O’Keefe confronting Beller as he sits at a table outside a restaurant. Beller attempts to leave, and O’Keefe and his videographer continue to pursue him. Project Veritas seeks to expose “liberal bias” and corruption through surreptitiously recorded videos promoted as investigations. A 2011 video sting targeted NPR’s top fundraising officer and within days prompted the resignation of then–NPR President Vivian Schiller. Project Veritas has also targeted CNN and Rep. Ilhan Omar. The anti-PBS campaign targeting Beller describes the video as part of a larger initiative by the group to seek “insiders within mainstream media and government agencies,” according to the video.

Current January/February 2021

PEOPLE IN PUBLIC MEDIA

NPR welcomes new leaders to its legal, development and training teams.

Starting new jobs with NPR this month are Elizabeth Allen, who signs on as chief legal officer, general counsel and secretary; Leora Hanser, chief development officer; and Whitney Maddox diversity, equity and inclusion manager. Allen most recently worked as VP, general counsel and secretary at Gannett. She succeeds Jonathan Hart, who departed last fall. “Liz brings an extensive background in media and experience leading and guiding the kinds of strategic business decision making we need to do as we move NPR forward,” CEO John Lansing said in a press release. Hanser brings experience as CDO of the U.S. Soccer Foundation and as SVP for partnerships at the National Geographic Society. She signs on nearly 20 months after the departure of her predecessor Stephanie Witte. “I am eager to bring my track record of growing revenue to drive and support philanthropy not just at NPR but with Member stations,” Hanser said in a news release announcing her appointment. Maddox most recently worked as the assistant director for leadership development and racial justice initiatives at Georgetown University’s Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching and Service. She joins the NPR Training team and will lead antiracism workshops and other training for NPR and member stations, among other duties, according to Keith Woods, chief diversity officer.

The WNET Group hired Beryl Harold as senior director for diversity, equity and inclusion.

She will report to Eugenia Harvey, an EP who was promoted in June to lead a restructuring of DEI practices at the New York City–based public TV station group. Harold most recently worked as human resources and diversity director for the Westchester Community Opportunity Program. She has also been an associate vice president in the HR department for Virgin Atlantic. “I am excited to partner with Beryl to expand and enhance The WNET Group’s DEI initiatives and objectives,” Harvey said in a news release. “Her expertise in leading HR, diversity and change management programs in both the non-profit and media settings will be an asset as we work to further weave DEI into the fabric of our organization.”

OPB’s Lynne Clendenin is preparing to retire in March.

In a note to colleagues, Clendenin said she had planned her retirement date “before 2020 took hold.” She added, “Public media has a critical responsibility m ov i ng for w ard and in many ways I will miss not being a part of it. I know it’s time to hand the Clendenin

Allen, left, is NPR’s chief legal officer, while Maddox leads antiracism training for NPR and member stations; Dorian is CEO of Public Broadcasting Atlanta. baton to others who can enthusiastically, energetically, knowledgeably and passionately play a role in leading the way forward.” Clendenin, who retires as VP of programming, joined OPB’s executive team in 2006. She began her media career as a jazz announcer, jazz director and television host for KBVR, owned by Oregon State University, according to a biography on the university’s website. Clendenin also co-hosted OPB television’s Oregon Art Beat, managed KMHD Jazz Radio and worked as a Weekend Edition host and producer.

Management

Jennifer Dorian, a veteran of Turner Broadcasting and WarnerMedia, signed on last month as president and CEO of Public Broadcasting Atlanta, which operates NPR station WABE and PBS station ATL PBA. She was most recently GM for Turner Classic Movies and previously worked as VP of branding for TNT, TBS, TruTV and TCM. Dorian was also GM of FilmStruck, Turner’s first direct-to-consumer streaming service. Dorian succeeds Wonya Lucas, who departed last year to lead Crown Media Family Networks. Scott Woelfel, who served as interim CEO during the transition, will continue as chief content officer. Chuck Holmes stepped down as executive director and GM of WBHM in Birmingham, Ala., in December to become executive director of the Alabama Humanities Alliance. Prior to joining WBHM in 2017, Holmes worked at NPR as deputy managing editor and supervising senior editor of Morning Edition. Will Dahlberg is leading the station in an interim capacity during the search for Holmes’ successor. Pioneer PBS in Granite Falls, Minn., hired Shari Lamke as president and GM. Lamke brings extensive experience in production management from her 38-plus years at TPT in St. Paul, Minn., according to the release. She joined TPT in 2000 and worked on the launch of the Minnesota Channel as a senior director. She succeeds Les Heen, who resigned last year to become a government affairs specialist at the Libby Law Firm. Community radio station KOPN in Columbia, Mo., hired Miquel Calçada as GM. Calçada has worked in broadcasting for more than 30 years, according to a station release. A native of Catalonia, Spain, Calçada hosted the first live TV talk show in the country and went on to host other public TV shows. He later established and sold t wo c om m e rc i a l Calçada radio stations.

Development/Marketing

Rebecca Kaplan Haase is SVP of sponsorship for New York Public Radio. She previously worked as VP of sales and distribution at Hearst Communications’ King Features, which syndicates columns, comics, games, puzzles and editorial cartoons. Before that she worked in several marketing roles during an 11-year span with the Washington Post. Richard Bland is VP for foundation and government development at WETA in Washington, D.C. Bland most recently worked as COO for the Washington National Cathedral. He has also been COO for the Faith and Politics Institute, and national director of policy, advocacy and development for Save the Children. Olivia Wong is the new VP of marketing and communications for American Public Television. She succeeds Jamie Haines, who will retire next month. Wong d e p ar te d W E TA i n Wa s h i n g t o n , D.C., where she was senior director of strategic communications. Before joining the station Wong in 2016, she held several public relations roles at GBH in Boston, including associate national publicist and senior account executive overseeing publicity for Masterpiece.

Technology

After postponing his planned retirement in 2019, Tom Rogers has signed off as director of engineering for Mountain Lake PBS in Plattsburgh, N.Y. He continues to work part-time as a consultant. Kurt Lanning, broadcast operations technician at the station since 2019, stepped up to succeed him as director of engineering and technical services. Rogers joined Mountain Lake PBS in 1990 after serving in the U.S. Air Force; he had directed the engineering and operations at the station since 2014. Corey Schreppel, a technical director for American Public Media/Minnesota Public Radio, has joined the New York Times as senior audio systems engineer. Schreppel has worked at APM/MPR since 2014. He previously was an audio production instructor at Boston University and a recording engineer for the New England Conservatory of Music.

Content

Matt Thompson is leaving his role as editor-in-chief of Reveal at the Center for Investigative Reporting to join the New York Times. He will edit Headway, a new journalism initiative focused on national and global investigations. Thompson joined Reveal in 2019 and oversaw the public radio show and podcast produced with PRX, as

well as television and documentary projects. He previously worked as executive editor at The Atlantic and directed vertical initiatives at NPR, including Code Switch and NPR Ed. NPR political correspondents Scott Detrow and Asma Khalid will become White House correspondents covering the Biden administration, according to an announcement by NPR Chief Washington Editor Shirley Henry. The reporters previously covered the Democratic primary race and President Joe Biden’s candidacy. Aaron Glantz is departing Reveal to become senior investigations editor for the California Newsroom, a new collaboration between the state’s public radio stations and NPR. Glantz will help build the joint investigative unit. “It took a lot to pry me away, but the new gig is really special,” Glantz said on Glantz Twitter. He will report to Managing Editor Joanne Griffith. Glantz was a senior reporter for Reveal. KQED in San Francisco hired Marisol Medina-Cadena as a producer for the podcast Rightnowish, an arts and culture show focused on the Bay Area. She had been a contributor to KQED and produced for KCET in Los Angeles. In addition, Alexander Gonzalez joins the station as local feature news editor. Gonzalez arrives from WLRN in Miami, where he worked as a producer. Kojo Nnamdi will end his run as host of The Kojo Nnamdi Show, the signature local talk show of WAMU in Washington, D.C., on April 2. Nnamdi has hosted the program since 1998. Nnamdi will continue to host “The Politics Hour,” a popular Friday feature of his week-daily show, and carry on the station’s “Kojo In Our Community” event series. When Nnamdi signs off, WAMU will stop producing a local midday talk show and pick up The Takeaway f o r Mo n d a y - t o Thursday broadcasts. WAMU said the pause allows Nnamdi the staff to assess “the changing needs of our community — including changes to lifestyles, media consumption and community priorities due to the pandemic.” James Blue III left his senior content and producer roles at PBS NewsHour to become SVP and head of the Smithsonian Channel. He will also oversee factual and unscripted content for MTV Entertainment. Before joining NewsHour in 2015, Blue was a White House correspondent, Washington bureau chief and head of special events for Arise News. WNYC in New York City hired Nsikan Akpan as health and science editor. He previously worked as science editor for National Geographic and as a digital producer in science for PBS NewsHour. Brian De Los Santos is an editor for LAist, which is overseen by Southern California Public Radio. De Los Santos is currently a digital strategist for The Desert Continued on page 22

6 | January/February 2021 | Current

‘THE GUY WE’VE DUBBED GODOT’

He drove them crazy, but NPR reporters will miss ‘unstoppable’ arts editor Tom Cole BY JON KALISH

ver the course of the 40 years I’ve freelanced for NPR News, I’ve worked with some great editors. But there have also been some real doozies. An editor who came to NPR from CBS admonished me not to “bite the hand that feeds you” after I complained about her chronic failure to submit paperwork for payment. Another editor, a notorious sexual harasser, now deceased, assigned a secretary to edit me. And then there is Tom Cole, a senior editor on NPR’s Arts Desk who retired this week after 33 years at the network. Like many of the reporters who collaborated with him over the years, I know that Cole was the best editor I have worked with my entire career. But as more than one of his colleagues noted at his farewell Zoom party Jan. 15, editing with Cole was at times the journalistic equivalent of waterboarding. Many a public radio journalist fumed while waiting for the man to call them back to resume an edit. Cole’s legendary time-management issues were playfully lampooned by Arts Desk freelancers Jeff Lunden and Naomi Lewin in a parody of the Broadway show tune “Mame” they recorded for Cole’s Zoom farewell. You said you’d do an edit at 10, Tom It’s now 12:20, please tell me when, Tom You might be calling. It would be oh so very helpful just to know How long we will be sitting and waiting for the guy we’ve dubbed Godot For a couple of years I vented about the Waiting for Tom Cole process in logs of our edits that I showed no one. During an edit for a story about mixtapes in January 2004, there were 23 entries in the log detailing edit appointments made, broken and rescheduled with ostensible reasons (“snow,” “death of Captain Kangaroo”). Breaking cultural news did take its toll on Cole’s ability to work with reporters at previously arranged appointments. But why would it take nine months to finish an edit on a story with a member station reporter? That’s what happened to Anita Bugg, whose piece on the Texas singer/songwriter Vince Bell aired on Weekend Edition Saturday in January 2000. Bugg was Nashville Public Radio’s news director at the time. Bugg is now VP for programming at the station. She had encouraged one of the station’s reporters to pitch music stories to Cole but warned her about his rep as a curmudgeon. The reporter, Jewly Hight, is one of several freelance or member station reporters who share the experience of badgering

Cole at Neda Ulaby’s wedding in 2014. (Photo: Emily McManamy) Cole for a year or longer before he accepted their first story. Finally, in 2014 Hight got a go-ahead from Cole to do a piece about elderly country balladeer Mac Wiseman. She has filed stories on Nashville’s country music scene regularly for Cole since then. “He was someone who, if you do good thinking and have good ideas and then bring him good writing and good tape, then you can earn his respect and trust forever after,” said Hight, who recently was hired as the editorial director of WNXP, Nashville Public Radio’s new music station. A few of the reporters who participated in the Zoom farewell recalled being amused by the sounds Cole made during edits, including gum-chewing, eating lunch and what one reporter described as something that sounded like a cat coughing up a hairball when he expressed his displeasure. And as much as Cole fought for airtime for his reporters’ stories, he also fought with his reporters. “Over these many years we’ve had breakups, usually initiated by me,” said Karen Michel, a veteran freelancer who worked with Cole for most of his 30 years on the Arts Desk. “I truly love the guy, no matter how crazy he makes me.” Asked about the chronic cancellations and delays in editing, Michel replied: “The bottom line is, people would put up with that because he was a great editor.” “A couple of times over these 30 years, I’ve left a message saying, ‘You know, I have better things to do than wait for you,’” said Howie Movshovitz, a Denver-based free-

“ Tom would walk into the studio with a four-reel mix, and you knew it was probably going to be the hardest thing you did all day — or all week. But it was also going to be the best thing you did.” — Stu Rushfield, Weekend Edition technical director

lancer who has taught at the University of Colorado and been a film critic for member stations KCFR and, currently, KUNC. “My wife once said that listening to us on the phone was like listening to an old married couple,” Movshovitz said. Although Cole denies that he generated more stories and got them on NPR’s daily newsmagazines than other editors at the network, former and current NPR staffers say otherwise. “Tom champions the work of reporters with a zeal and passion that doesn’t always get the appreciation it deserves within the company,” said Laura Bertran, who served as senior editor on the Arts Desk until taking a buyout and retiring in 2012. “He’s a very strong advocate for the work of the reporters that he edits. He gets it on the air.” Shereen Marisol Meraji, host and senior producer of NPR’s Code Switch, is one of several reporters who referred to Cole as one of their favorite editors. Recounting when he went to bat for her during the edit of a piece about 1993, a golden year of hiphop, Meraji told Cole’s Zoom gathering about one actuality in the story in which a rapper said, “You got to treat the rap game like the dope game. You feel me? It’s a beautiful thing. You’re claiming more fame than the dope game. You’re making more money than the dope game. And it’s more legal than the dope game.” “I think most editors would have been like, ‘Could you choose another quote?’” Meraji told the Zoom gathering. “But Tom was, like, ‘Okay, yeah, we’re gonna go with this.’ The story got turned down by ATC, and he’s like, ‘No problem. We’ll find another show that’ll take the story.’” He did find another show: Morning Edition. At one point there were 112 people in the video call, some Zooming in from as far away as Asia and the Middle East. Among

the well-wishers was Bilal Qureshi, a 2007 Kroc Fellow who went on to become a producer and editor on All Things Considered. Qureshi now freelances for the network. “I initially thought when I would pitch things to you and you would accept them, that it was kind of amazing that my marginal ideas could air in the mainstream,” Qureshi said from Dubai. “It’s been amazing how you’ve made so many of us feel like story ideas that we had could actually breathe and exist in other people’s ears, and for that I’m always going to be grateful.” Cole will be remembered for his devotion to the craft of making radio as much as his ability to shape stories editorially. Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher described G-Strings, Cole’s Sundaymorning music show on Pacifica outlet WPFW-FM, as “a jazz breakfast that sounds like sunrise.” And NPR senior arts critic Bob Mondello noted that when it came to mixing, “Tom could kind of make your voice float on the music in a way that had to do with the rhythms of your speech and the rhythms of the music so that it feels bigger than what you’ve written. You feel like there’s more there.” At the Zoom farewell party, Stu Rushfield, technical director of Weekend Edition, recalled the old pre-digital days when radio stories were edited and mixed on reel-to-reel tape recorders. “Tom would walk into the studio with a four-reel mix, and you knew it was probably going to be the hardest thing you did all day — or all week,” Rushfield said. “But it was also going to be the best thing you did.” At first, Cole didn’t object to the switch to digital editing because he was allowed to work with an engineer in a studio. But when the network decided that editors would Continued on page 22

Current January/February 2021

Anti-racist future Continued from page 1

terns of abuse that led to the departure of journalists of color,” Headlee said. “They all said that there was very little concern when [journalists of color] left, even if they were only the most recent in a line of people to leave an organization. What’s more, there were many stories about managers setting up listening sessions to hear complaints about inequality and racist behavior but then taking no action in response to what was said during those meetings.” Since that first call, Headlee has convened about 10 Zoom meetings to work on short- and long-term goals for changing public radio.

Agenda for public radio newsrooms

he believes that public media provides the best chance “to have an equitable, representative, just structure of … news media that’s actually available to all people.” “I’m obviously a very outspoken critic of the internal structures and the ways that they’ve excluded people in public media and journalism in general,” Wallace said. “But in terms of journalism, it’s still true that some of the best journalism is coming out of public media. So I’m not a person who’s like, ‘Forget about it. Let’s just leave it in the dust.’” But Wallace said he believes that public media requires radical structural change. “That means not just fire the person at the top and replace that person, but in some cases take over the radio station from the licensee that is upholding a white-dominant structure within that radio station,” he said. “It’s a vision of community ownership and community empowerment that might really require significant shifts in power.” Another one of the group’s initiatives is a mentoring program. Wallace said that one of his roles within the group has been to talk with public radio journalists about using community organizing tactics to make changes in newsrooms. “If one person speaks out and that person is alone, it’s easy for them to be centered, to be fired or become a target,” Wallace said. “If one person speaks out, and lots of other voices from that same shop join them, it’s a little more tricky for the leadership to figure out how to quash

“ Our industry has supposedly been working on these issues for, like, 25 years, and the needle has barely moved.”

Some of the partnership’s goals for reform are similar to those backed by Public Media for All, a coalition that organized an initiative to support and track progress of DEI reforms for public media organizations to implement over three years. Both groups call out labor issues such — Celeste Headlee as pay inequity and overreliance on temporary employees. both white employees and people of color. But the partnership is also taking on Some are PDs and news directors; at least problems unique to public radio news- one is a station GM. rooms. A vision statement for transforming The group has ambitions beyond the coverage calls for an end to the pursuit of open letter and reforming public radio’s objectivity as a standard practice in jour- workplaces and journalistic practices. nalism. Newsrooms should “instead pursue At the first meeting, Headlee surveyed fairness, transparency and accuracy.” attendees about whether they wanted to “Stations hire journalists of color in work to save public radio or start an orgaan attempt to prove their commitment to nization on their own. The majority said diversity, but don’t value their perspectives they want to do both. and experiences in reporting and covering One of the partnership’s long-term goals the news,” the letter said. “Ultimately, this is starting a production company led by hurts newsroom staff, hiring and retention people of color and producing content for efforts, and the news audience.” public media and beyond, Headlee said. Additionally, the letter says that organi- Group members want to create a new comzations should “rigorously pursue” sources pany because they doubt that public radio and audiences that are diverse and create will change fast enough, she said. “statements of belief for journalists and the “Our industry has supposedly been public,” such as “Black Lives Matter” and working on these issues for, like, 25 years, “Climate change is real.” and the needle has barely moved,” Headlee Beyond changes in newsrooms, the let- said. By creating a production company, the ter also urged public media organizations partnership could “get more voices, diverse to take specific steps to implement the voices and more people of color in leaderpartnership’s goals. ship immediately,” she said. For instance, in its section on makHeadlee is using Patreon to support ing amends for past mistakes and harm the partnership and said that she’s havcaused to individuals and communities of ing informal conversations with funders color, the letter said that leaders must doc- to “begin the process of applying for ument if former employees left the organi- funding. It looks like it is fundable and zation due to experiences of racism, sex- that there would be interest.” Support ism or other forms of discrimination, and would ideally come from a mix of grants publicly apologize. and solicited donations. “This includes removing white people who have created a hostile work environ- Envisioning ’significant ment for people of color, and the leaders shifts in power’ who have been complicit in that hostile Lewis Wallace, one of the group’s members, work environment,” the letter said. no longer works in public radio but wanted The group goes on to lay out five ways to be involved in restructuring and reform“we will know amends are working,” including the system. ing if former employees who were harmed In 2017, Marketplace fired Wallace for return to their jobs “or get to a place where speaking out against the pursuit of objecthey would be comfortable recommend- tivity in journalism. He went on to write a ing that another person of color take their book, The View from Somewhere: Undoing former positions.” the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity, and The partnership surveyed participants to co-founded Press On, an organization that identify areas of reform. Headlee estimated supports Southern journalists and media that more than 50 people were involved in makers practicing movement journalism. drafting the letter. The partnership includes Wa l l a c e s a i d h e w a nt e d t o b e current and former public radio employees, involved with Headlee’s group because

that. And that’s, I think, the shift that we’ve seen over these last few months is a shift toward a lot more people in a lot more newsrooms being ready to move in that sort of collective orientation.”

’I’ve never seen this much momentum’

Tom Godell, a public radio veteran and GM of WUKY in Lexington, Ky., said that he decided to join Headlee’s group as a white ally because he is “distressed by what I see at other stations. I’m distressed to see that journalists of color are not treated with the kind of respect they deserve.” Godell has worked in public radio since 1976 and says that public radio managers, who are often older, white and male — demographics he falls into — discuss diversity, equity and inclusion at conferences. “Everybody seems on board, but then when the rubber hits the road, there are problems,” he said. Headlee’s effort stands apart from past DEI efforts in the system because it’s led by people of color and the “victims of this racism,” he said. Godell said it was an “eye-opener” in meetings to see how pervasive racism is in the industry. “Every person of color in this organization has a story to tell, and it’s not a good one,” he said. After so much talk and little action on DEI issues in public radio through the years, Godell said he’s hopeful that this group “can break some ice and really get this discussion moving forward. I’ve never seen this much momentum before, and I’m very excited about that.”

8 | January/February 2021 | Current

UNRAVELLING OF ‘CALIPHATE’

Stations, PRPD press the ‘Times’ to account for ‘lapses in judgment’ BY TYLER FALK

Dolnick said that the timing of the Daily episode guest-hosted by Mills “was a mistake and sent an unintended signal that undermined the gravity of the ‘Caliphate’ editors’ note.”

he New York Times’ handling of revelations about its award-winning podcast Caliphate prompted public radio leaders to question decisions made by the news organization and actions taken by Michael No line drawn ‘in the sand’ Barbaro, host of the Times’ podcast and According to PRPD’s Goldstein, a group of radio show The Daily. stations approached her about the Times’ In a Jan. 11 letter to the New York decision-making following the Jan. 5 pubTimes, the Public Radio Program Directors lication of Hot Pod, the podcast newsletter Association and leaders at more than 20 staby Nicholas Quah, which highlighted the tions asked the Times to take responsibility problems with Caliphate. for “lapses in judgment” and to take steps Stations asked PRPD to help them com“to remedy them now and in the future.” But municate with the Times about their conthe letter did not call for specific changes at cerns, Goldstein said. A group of news/talk The Daily, which airs on 288 stations. PDs was already planning to meet on Jan. 7, The unraveling of Caliphate’s credibilso Goldstein asked American Public Media, ity began after a key source for the 2018 which distributes public radio broadcasts of podcast about the Islamic State terrorist The Daily, to join the call so stations could group was charged by Canadian authorities share their concerns. last year for perpetrating a hoax about his Editorial leaders at the Times told PRPD that they are working to strengthen the reporting At the end of the call, stations asked involvement with the group. A subsequent of their audio unit. (Photo: mizoula / iStock) Goldstein to write the letter to the Times. investigation by the Times found “a history Not all station leaders believed the letter of misrepresentations” by the source and our workplaces and many have made public ment” for Barbaro to interview Baquet with- went far enough, Goldstein said. “no corroboration that he committed the statements about their own commitments out disclosing his relationship with Tobin. “There were a couple of stations who atrocities he described in the ‘Caliphate’ to meaningful and measurable change,” “How are we to trust that difficult ques- felt that we should have made more specific podcast,” according to a Dec. 18 editor’s PRPD and stations said in reference to the tions would be asked, answers would be requests of the New York Times and less of a note on the podcast’s web page. Each epi- Times’ handling of Mills. “From an optics demanded and the truth would be sought?” general ask for a response,” Goldstein said. sode of Caliphate has been updated with an perspective, we feel your decision was not the leaders wrote. “This was a moment for “But we felt that what was important in the introductory statement by Barbaro reciting just tone-deaf, but blind to the current transparency, that moment is now lost and moment was to communicate our concerns a version of the editor’s note. landscape in which we now exist.” there should be accountability for this lapse and … not try to draw a line in the sand.” After publication of the editor’s note, The disparity in treatment between in judgment.” “The resolution we’re hoping to come to NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik Callimachi and Mills prompted women to In a response Tuesday to PRPD, Sam is that the New York Times takes responsireported that a follow-up podcast about describe on social media their experiences Dolnick, the Times’ assistant managing edi- bility for the lapses in judgment that we feel Caliphate’s errors, which featured a discus- with Mills, who used to work for New York tor, said the organization’s standards “are are important,” Goldstein said. sion between Barbaro and New York Times Public Radio’s Radiolab. Kelsey Padgett, a the same in audio as they are across all of Station leaders have different ideas Executive Editor Dean Baquet, omitted dis- former Radiolab employee, tweeted that The New York Times.” about what would qualify as taking responclosure of Barbaro’s connections to Caliphate. Mills once poured a beer over her head in “We believe we’ve handled what was a sibility, she said. “Some stations are going Episodes of Caliphate ran on The Daily front of her co-workers after she called his significant journalistic lapse with account- to be satisfied with the New York Times and relationships between the two produc- favorite karaoke song “hipster.” Padgett later ability,” Dolnick wrote. “We are deeply com- saying we messed up and we'll do better,” tions extended behind-the-scenes. Barbaro told the Washington Post that Mills’ behav- mitted to continuing to pursue ambitious Goldstein said. “And some stations want is engaged to Lisa Tobin, Caliphate’s EP; and ior included “speaking over female cowork- audio journalism and have already begun more concrete action.” Andy Mills, who helped launch The Daily, ers, rephrasing others’ ideas as his own, bad implementing changes that will make our “I feel it is inappropriate to demand that was a reporter and producer for Caliphate. mouthing others’ ideas and work, etc.” audio report even stronger.” an organization fire employees ... or take some Folkenflik also reported that he sort of personal action against them,” was among four journalists whom Goldstein said. “I don’t think that’s Barbaro contacted to ask that they PRPD’s place to make those demands.” “temper their critiques of The Times Houston Public Media told and how they framed what hapCurrent in a statement that it has pened.” He reported that Barbaro removed The Daily from its schedule told NPR host Lulu Garcia-Navarro “until further notice.” KCRW in Santa that she was “hurting the feelings of Monica, Calif., and Texas stations people at the newspaper.” KUT in Austin and Marfa Public PRPD President Abby Goldstein also dropped the program. — Letter to New York Times by PRPD President Abby Goldstein and Radio wrote the letter to the Times. It was “Recent discoveries have led us co-signed by leaders of 24 stations to question whether The Daily, a 24 pubradio station leaders that carry the broadcast version national podcast, adequately repof The Daily. Three more stations signed A 2018 report by The Cut focused in The podcast episode with Barbaro and resents Houston Public Media’s core values on after the letter was sent, Goldstein part on Mills’ mistreatment of Radiolab col- Baquet was an “audio version of our edi- and standards,” HPM said. Barbaro’s failure told Current. leagues. A former employee said Mills “start- tors’ note, not an accountability interview, to disclose his connections with Caliphate The letter said Barbaro’s attempt to influ- ed hitting on her” when she joined the show which Dean had already given to NPR.” was “not consistent with Houston Public ence the coverage of journalists was extreme- and would “interrupt work conversations to Dolnick wrote. “With that understanding, Media’s commitment to transparency and ly troubling.” The host’s actions “are in direct tell her she was pretty, come up behind her we did not see a need to make reference to journalistic standards,” the station said. conflict with our ethical guidelines and they desk and give unsolicited back rubs.” Michael’s relationship with Lisa Tobin, the “Houston Public Media strives to avoid call his general credibility into question.” Radiolab addressed Mills’ alleged behav- Executive Producer of the Audio team.” even the appearance of impropriety,” the ior in a Jan. 7 post on its website. “At the Dolnick also said that Barbaro sent “pri- statement said. ‘This was a moment for transparency’ time, show leadership initiated a response vate messages through social media that “We deliver trusted programming to lisPRPD and the stations also admonished from WNYC to address Andy’s behavior, may have made recipients feel that their teners across the country, and when that the Times for reassigning Caliphate host but it didn’t happen fast enough and it criticism was unwelcome” and that Barbaro trust is shaken, we have a responsibility to Rukmini Callimachi, who had been cov- didn’t do enough,” the statement said. “We “deeply regrets that. Editors have discussed ensure it is addressed,” an APM spokesperering terrorism, “while giving greater visi- can’t change the past, but we can promise their expectations with him going forward.” son said in a statement. “We are optimistic bility to her white male counterpart Andy you that we are all holding this show, and Regarding concerns about Mills’ con- that our communication between the New Mills.” Mills guest-hosted an episode of each other, accountable for making sure duct, the Times is taking the allegations York Times, PRPD and our station partners The Daily just days after news broke of that no person has to experience anything “very seriously,” Dolnick said. continues a dialogue so that we further our Caliphate’s faulty reporting. like that again.” “We thoroughly review all complaints collective work addressing journalistic “Many public media companies are PRPD and station leaders also told the received, and will take any appropriate cor- principles and inequities in the workplace undergoing massive shifts in the culture of Times that it was a “serious lapse in judg- rective action,” Dolnick said. while serving audiences.”

“ We feel your decision was not just tone-deaf, but blind to the current landscape in which we now exist.”

CHILDREN’S TELEVISION

BY GABE ROSENBERG

ho will mourn for Caillou? Not parents, that’s for certain. Whether their children are young or already grown, parents across the world greeted with glee the news that PBS has finally canceled Caillou, an animated show about a bald young boy, after 20 years on the air. Caillou began life in 1989 as a children’s book series by Montreal author Christine L’Heureux and illustrator Hélène Desputeaux. An exchange student from the Canadian channel Télétoon, Caillou premiered on PBS in September 2000 and ran for 177 episodes before entering syndication in 2010. Children’s educational television, a genre PBS pioneered, is notoriously difficult to perfect — a fidgety formula balancing entertainment, early developmental needs and parental tolerance. Even so, Caillou the show and Caillou the child inspire malice largely unparalleled among cartoons. “Caillou is definitely enemy number one on a lot of my friends’ lists,” said Andy Chow, a statehouse reporter for Ohio Public Radio. Chow has two children — a 5-yearold daughter and a 2-year-old son — and says Caillou is one of very few shows that was entirely banned in his home. “As someone who’s watched many episodes, I still haven’t been able to actually understand what it’s trying to accomplish,” he says. The backlash has been festering for ages. In a 2014 SBNation article, Spencer Hall took a break from writing about college football to call Caillou a “despicable, spineless 4-year-old boy who cannot do anything.” More than 10,000 Redditors subscribe to r/CaillouHate, which decries the “little bald bastard who sucks and can’t do anything right.” Even John Oliver took aim: “F*** you Caillou, grow some hair and leave the house,” Oliver ranted in a 2014 episode ostensibly about net neutrality. “Find out what the world’s aboot!” (For the record, Chouette Publishing, the Montreal company that created Caillou,

Why parents rejoice in the departure of PBS’ ‘Caillou’ says that the character was initially envisioned as a 9-month-old baby and remained hairless when he grew older to maintain visual continuity.) In 2015, Caillou topped an AV Club list of “8 kids’ shows to avoid at all costs,” landing above Barney & Friends, Dora the Explorer and a slew of non–public-media offerings. Whereas Barney primarily irritates through singalongs, and Dora may lose points for repeatedly questioning your children, parents say both are dwarfed by Caillou’s main offense: his personality. “He is bratty, has tantrums and is often unkind. His entire world revolves around himself and his own needs and desires,” says Joanna Schroeder, an L.A.-based writer and media critic who focuses on parenting and gender. If children’s television icons like Mister Rogers and his protégé Daniel Tiger, star of the current PBS hit Daniel Tiger’s

Neighborhood, demonstrate values like social skills (how to share toys and play together), emotional development (coping with stress) and clear communication (talking about your problems), Caillou offers whatever is the opposite of a role model. “We would just have our kids act like Caillou the rest of the day, and it really seemed counterintuitive to what we’re going for,” Chow says. Schroeder says Caillou exhibits bad behaviors that are normal for preschoolers, but on such a scale and regularity — seemingly in every episode throwing a fit — that they’re normalized and even encouraged. And Caillou’s own parents are complicit, whether he’s bullying his little sister or losing the class hamster. “Somehow Caillou often seems to win out, and his bad behavior is encouraged by his parents, who offer little structure or role-modeling,” Schroeder says.

Current January/February 2021

Chouette claims that Caillou’s misbehavior has a purpose. “Like adults, children go through difficult periods, but they lack the communication skills to articulate everything they feel. Caillou’s experiences are an attempt to translate the inner life of a child and his varied and sometimes contradictory feelings,” the publisher’s website explains. (“Bruh Caillou need to calm down,” a commenter wrote below.) Joel Oliphint, an editor at the alt-weekly Columbus Alive, made no attempt to hide his glee over the downfall of this “bald-headed whiner with the dying-chipmunk voice.” He says that his own kids mirrored the actions they saw in Caillou — down to copying his fear of thunderstorms. “I don’t like storms, Daddy,” Caillou says in one episode after being awoken by the sound of thunder. Caillou’s dad teaches him to count how far away the thunder gets, allowing Caillou to return to bed, but the damage is already done — Oliphint says his kids never remembered the ending. The breaking point for the Chows came during an episode where Caillou’s dad asks the two kids to help buy a present for their mom. “The dad looked at him and said, ‘This is our little secret. You know how to keep secrets, right?’” Chow says. “And the whole episode was about keeping a secret.” Chow said that went entirely against their intentions to keep kids safe and make sure they can tell adults what’s happening. Next to the rest of the PBS Kids lineup, Caillou was the baldheaded stepchild who lingered long past his welcome. “In other words, pretty much everything on PBS is better than Caillou,” Schroeder says. “Is Caillou a dangerous and damaging show? Certainly not. But in a world full of beautiful, lovingly created shows for preschoolers that both comfort and encourage preschoolers, why offer a show that falls so short of the mark?” PBS declined Current’s request for an interview for this article. In a statement, a spokesperson said that Caillou was retired “as part of our ongoing efforts to continuously refresh our offerings to meet the needs of today’s kids.”

10 | January/February 2021 | Current

TECH TRANSITIONS

(Illustration: Jon Krause)

PubTV powers-up ATSC 3 experiments Early adopters prepare to put NextGen TV plans into action BY SCOTT FYBUSH

or several years now, broadcasters have been awaiting the real-world arrival of Next Gen TV, the new ATSC 3.0 digital TV transmission standard. Its promises of more robust home and mobile reception, increased data capacity, greater interactivity and improved picture quality have been topics of countless panel discussions, white papers and experimental broadcasts. With rollout slowed in 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic, “ATSC 3,” its shorthand name among engineers, is poised to move closer to real-world implementation in 2021. While proponents remain bullish about the technology’s prospects, they see plenty of challenges in the year ahead for public broadcasters. These include managing the costs of the conversion, securing simulcasting partnerships with other stations, calibrating investments and planning for the limited availability of receivers for consumers.

PubTV’s ATSC 3 pioneers

As of January 2021, only a handful of pioneering public broadcasters are airing Next Gen TV signals. WKAR in East Lansing, Mich., became the first public TV station to transmit in ATSC 3.0 in early 2020, thanks to an experimental FCC license that allowed it to broadcast two separate signals. Once the pandemic hit, WKAR had to scale back its plans to use the experimental signal as part of its NextGen Media Innovation Lab, said GM Susi Elkins. “NextGen TV” is the consumer-facing brand name for the new technology. Elkins

“We had lots of visitors coming in, doing demos of service applications, especially in education and emergency alerting,” she said. “And we’d been working on ideas for fundraising in the NextGen environment.” WKAR’s engineering team has been in the lab working remotely with partners, Elkins said, albeit on a slower pace than they had hoped. While continuing to run ATSC 3 experiments, WKAR has narrowed its focus to education. The tests coincide with this month’s launch of the statewide Michigan Learning Channel as a linear ATSC 1.0 service. For now, the channel provides on-demand access to some content through its website. WKAR hopes to eventually add interactive functionality to the broadcasts over ATSC 3 signals. Public TV’s ATSC 3 class of 2020 includes other stations that joined partnerships of commercial stations on the technology’s leading edge. In Portland, Oregon Public Broadcasting’s KOPB joined six major commercial stations in a marketwide partnership. Several of the commercial stations use KOPB’s ATSC 1.0 transmitter to provide their “lighthouse” signals for local audiences. KOPB sends its signal to a commercial station that encodes it for ATSC 3 transmission. In Phoenix, “we invited ourselves into the Pearl test,” said Karl Voss, Arizona PBS chief engineer, of his station’s entry into one of the largest ATSC 3 test beds. Voss had been planning to use a spare transmitter and antenna to build his own experimental facility. He wanted to test whether the new standard would work better on VHF frequencies than the disappointing coverage Arizona PBS has experienced with ATSC 1.0 digital. Once the large commercial broadcasters in the Pearl consortium began

Current January/February 2021

TECH TRANSITIONS

their operations in Phoenix, “they sucked the wind out of all of our plans to do this ATSC testing ourselves,” Voss said. “We’re still in kind of a science experiment mode right now,” Voss said of Arizona PBS’ participation. The ATSC 3 transmitter in Phoenix receives the station’s PBS Kids subchannel off the air and retransmits it. So far, Voss said, the only viewers are operations staff in the station’s master control facility. Voss obtained an early ATSC 3 TV designed for the Korean market and reprogrammed it with software for the U.S. Operators use it to monitor the test channel. “As [Pearl engineers] play with the encoder, suddenly we’ll find ourselves ‘off the air’ because they were playing with some new setting,” he said. “As more ATSC 3 TVs become available, we’ll have to become serious about taking it from a science experiment back to a broadcast entity.” More public TV stations are hoping to join WKAR, OPB and Arizona PBS as NextGen TV broadcasters this year. In Research Triangle Park, N.C., only “some regulatory stuff ” stands between PBS North Carolina, the new brand of UNC-TV. The state network is sending an ATSC 3 signal over a transmitter operated by local NBC affiliate WRAL-TV, said Chief Technology Officer Fred Engel. As early as 2018, PBS North Carolina partnered with WRAL to conduct over-the-air ATSC 3 tests of a digital paging application developed for statewide public safety messaging. Right now, Engel said, North Carolina’s public safety officials use analog technology that dates to the 1950s to send voice paging to volunteer fire agencies. Armed with partnerships and grant money, including pilot funding from the National Association of Broadcasters, PBS North Carolina opened its Public Safety Research Center at its headquarters last year. Its engineers were conducting closed-circuit tests of encoders, decoders and other ATSC 3 technology even before the state network had access to an over-the-air transmitter. By midyear, Engel hopes to convert one of his network’s full-power signals, WUNKTV in Greenville, to ATSC 3. The station would then become an over-the-air test bed for any ATSC 3 technologies engineers want to try out.

Finding the right partners

That’s possible for PBS North Carolina because WUNK’s signal overlaps with those from other transmitter sites in its network comprising a dozen full-power transmitters and 25 translators. When the Greenville site switches to ATSC 3, broadcast viewers in eastern North Carolina should be able to continue watching PBS North Carolina on one of four other ATSC 1 signals. Without changes in FCC rules, other public broadcasters will face some difficult choices as they plot their own conversions. Right now, the commission requires broadcasters to ensure that 95% of their ATSC 1 coverage area will

People within coverage areas of pubTV ATSC 3 datacasting pilot

1.65 MILLION

Households across five pilot sites lack access to the internet

MILLION

(Source: WITF presentation slides)

(Source: US Census Bureau, 2018 American Community Survey)

| 11

retain over-the-air service for at least five years after they launch ATSC 3 broadcasting. In most markets, broadcasters will make that happen by entering channel-sharing agreements like those already in place in Portland and Phoenix. One broadcaster operates its transmitter as an ATSC 1 “lighthouse,” carrying both its own signal and simulcasts from its partners, while another broadcaster that has converted to ATSC 3 carries its own and its partners’ signals in the new format. Agreements designed to work well in compact, centralized markets like Portland fall apart, however, in places like Lumberton or Linville, N.C. — locations of other PBS North Carolina transmitters. “In many cases, there’s nobody within miles of us,” Engel said of remote transmitter sites where no commercial stations are available as partners. “If we have to adhere to the FCC’s 95% coverage rule, in some of these areas [conversion] is just not going to happen.” Cost is another potential obstacle for many broadcasters’ ATSC 3 conversions. While some ATSC 1 transmitters can be easily converted, others will have to be replaced. At PBS North Carolina, all but one of the network’s full-power transmitters were replaced during the FCC’s repack of broadcast spectrum, and the upgrades were financed by auctioning some UHF frequencies to wireless providers. For stations that weren’t so fortunate to earn auction proceeds, the costs of a full rebuild of transmitter and antenna “could be a seven-figure number,” Engel said.

New potential for datacasting

An ATSC 3 broadcast signal monitoring station in WKAR's NextGen Media Innovation Lab. (Photo: w.r. Richards/WKAR-MSU)

For those stations weighing whether the costs of the ATSC 3 conversion are worth it, capabilities such as 4K ultra-high-definition video or enhanced surround sound won’t tip the scales. Instead, it’s the potential for a fatter, more robust data pipe to homes, schools and businesses, said Ron Hetrick, CEO of WITF in Harrisburg, Pa. In partnership with other pubcasters, Hetrick Continued on page 14

SIGNIFICANT DATES FOR ATSC 3 DEVELOPMENT APRIL 13, 2016

America’s Public Television Stations and a coalition of ATSC 3.0 proponents petition the FCC to approve the core transmission technology for the new standard. They urge the commission to allow local stations to introduce the technology on a voluntary, market-driven basis.

SEPT. 8, 2016

The Advanced Television Systems Committee announces approval of a flexible physical layer transmission system as the final standard for ATSC 3.0. The system allows broadcasters to tailor their signals to combine different services based on the needs and coverage areas of local markets.

SEPT. 20, 2017

Public Media Co., a consultancy that originally focused on public radio signal acquisitions, forms the Public Media Venture Group, a coalition of public broadcasters exploring potential mission-based applications and revenue models for ATSC 3.0.

NOV. 16, 2017

The FCC adopts rules for broadcasters to

deploy NextGen TV technology on a voluntary, market-driven basis. The regulations require early adopters to partner with other local broadcasters in channel-sharing deals, ensuring viewers continue to have access to their over-the-air programming in ATSC 1.0.

ATSC 3.0. The station and Michigan State University’s communications school open a NextGen Media Innovation Lab to test applications for early-childhood education, telehealth and distance education.

JAN. 2018

A CPB-commissioned white paper on NextGen TV implementation advises public stations to take a “cautious approach” and evaluate scenarios for deployment in their markets before making firm commitments to channel-sharing deals or ATSC 3.0 transmission.

JUNE 20, 2018

WKAR in East Lansing, Mich., becomes the first noncommercial station to receive an experimental FCC license to transmit in

PMVG spins off from Public Media Co. to become an independent nonprofit business development corporation. PMVG operates as an affiliate of a new public benefit corporation, Public Media Group, a technology infrastructure company advising public and commercial broadcasters on NextGen TV.

JUNE 3, 2020

The FCC adopts rules for waiving simulcast requirements for public broadcasters that can’t find a simulcasting partner. Stations will receive waivers if there are three or fewer full-power TV stations within their designated market areas.

APRIL 2018

Arizona PBS begins experimental ATSC 3.0 broadcasts of the PBS Kids 24/7 channel. The tests, conducted through Pearl TV’s Phoenix Model Market project, mark the first collaborative single-market test of NextGen TV.

APRIL 16, 2019

Public TV leaders join MSU officials celebrating the opening of the NexGen Media Innovation Lab. From left: Lonna Thompson of APTS, MSU President Samuel Stanley and Dean Prabu David, Engel of PBS North Carolina and Elkins of WKAR. (Photo: Amanda Pinckney/WKAR-MSU)

JAN. 19, 2021

The FCC adopts rules for distributed transmission systems, allowing stations to use multiple transmitters to strengthen their signals, especially for viewers who rely on indoor antennas, live at the edges of a station’s existing coverage area and those who watch on mobile devices.

12 | January/February 2021 | Current

Current January/February 2021

| 13

14 | January/February 2021 | Current

ATSC 3.O

Continued from page 11

and WITF have begun piloting a program to use their datacasting capabilities to deliver educational media to schools and homes, bridging the digital divide that widened when the pandemic forced schools to launch at-home learning programs. In addition to Pennsylvania PBS’ seven member stations, participants include state networks in Kentucky, South Carolina and South Dakota, and an alliance of Indiana stations. “All of us have realized that there’s this moment in time where we have this captive audience with our education departments, and we have this engagement directly with students and teachers,” Hetrick said. “If there’s a time to actually start testing what ATSC 3 can look like, there’s no better time than now.” WITF has contracted with Public Media Group to develop software and build a cloud platform to power the education service, according to Erik Langner, PMG president. The pilot is slated to launch by the end of March. Plans call for the platform to be fully operational this fall. While initial rollout will happen over existing ATSC 1

TECH TRANSITIONS

of units for sale online, including a networked receiver from SiliconDust and several models of TVs with built-in ATSC 3 receivers. Go to your local warehouse store, as Arizona PBS’ Voss has been doing, and the scenario for adoption is bleak. “When I went shopping, either they’re doing a great job hiding the fact that the TVs can receive ATSC 3, or I just didn’t see any,” he said. Wolf sees a “chicken-and-egg process” happening between the consumer electronics makers not wanting to put the product out there until there’s transmission, and the broadcasters not wanting to launch ATSC 3 signals until more consumers can receive them. Some ATSC 3 advocates theorize that datacasting will push the medium forward even before consumers catch on. “The conversion to 3.0 may very well be driven by the fact that the business-to-business applications of 3.0 are so powerful that that’s the thing that drives this,” said Vincent Curren, consultant to PMVG. Whatever happens to the conversion logjam in 2021, proponents of single-frequency networks aim to begin using their technology to bring stronger signals to stationary receivers and what they hope will be a new generation of mobile devices that can receive ATSC 3. “Our expectation is you’re going to start seeing SFN deployments in late 2021 and a significant number of

“ If there’s a time to actually start testing what ATSC 3 can look like, there’s no better time than now.” —RON HETRICK, WITF datacasting bandwidth, Hetrick is eager to begin moving the project into the ATSC 3 world. The alliance plans to distribute more than 30,000 “gateway” units to schools and homes. Those boxes can receive signals transmitted in ATSC 1 and ATSC 3, creating links between home and school Wi-Fi networks. As demand grows, manufacturers plan to roll out less expensive gateway units with additional features, Hetrick said, including LTE wireless connectivity that will provide a return data path for more real-time interactivity. That hardware is largely being funded by grant money, as is the software to power the educational data platform. The costs of turning on an ATSC 3 signal in the Harrisburg market, however, will be borne by WITF. Hetrick said he hopes to begin transmitting in ATSC 3 later this year, likely through a channel-sharing deal with another station in his market. “We have this opportunity to test learning,” Hetrick said, “but there’s so many other really cool things that can come into play. Journalism applications, really connecting and thinking about audience development and member engagement, through the ATSC 3 back channel. ... We think there’s just some really neat applications for us and for the entire system.”

Delayed rollout to consumers

Technologists at national organizations expressed optimism about prospects for ATSC 3 advancement during this year, especially after the difficulties of 2020. “The technical challenge of this last year has been much more focused on just making sure everything works 24/7 every day, making sure that the needs of the audience are taken into account with content,” said Eric Wolf, PBS VP of technology strategy and management. “I think this is going to be the pivotal year,” said Public Media Venture Group CEO Marc Hand. At last year’s Consumer Electronics Show, participants expected more ATSC 3 transmitters to light up and wider rollout of receivers to the consumer market. “Obviously, a lot of things have conspired to slow that process down. I think that will change dramatically in 2021.” Limited availability of ATSC 3 receivers for consumers has delayed everything. Cutting-edge adopters in early ATSC 3 markets can choose among a handful

large and medium markets transitioning to 3.0 in anticipation of eventual SFN networks,” said PMG’s Langner. His company is actively engineering SFN projects in major markets including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, New York and Boston, where he said an SFN system could double the number of homes that can receive a usable signal indoors.

New decision-makers in D.C.

Some of the next steps in the ATSC 3 transition will be guided by the political transition in Washington. With new Democratic leadership in the White House and Senate, and the pending appointment of the next FCC chair, ATSC 3 proponents are eager to see if the feds invest in deployment priorities such as educational datacasting. “I’m hopeful that a more bipartisan perspective will emerge to really help support some of those things,” Curren said. “When you look at issues like the digital divide [in broadband access], there seems to be strong bipartisan support.” After resolving many regulatory questions about educational datacasting at the end of Ajit Pai’s tenure as FCC chair, the next commission faces a rulemaking to determine whether SFN signals at the edges of markets can be as strong as PMG and other advocates hope. Proponents also hope for resolution of the coverage replication challenges of public broadcasters such as PBS North Carolina, whose transmitter sites don’t match up neatly with commercial markets. Whether or not stations have concrete plans to light up 3.0 signals in 2021, or even beyond, Curren says now is the time to at least begin strategizing for the next generation of digital broadcasting. “There’s a real advantage in taking responsibility for ourselves right now,” he said. “Do what we can now to take control of our own destiny.” There’s room for patience and caution, too, the system’s leaders say. “This can flow at an organic rate,” says PBS’ Wolf. “The FCC hasn’t set a deadline, the receivers that are out there receive both ATSC 3.0 and ATSC 1, so it can happen as the business allows and circumstances allow.” People who live in the communities where ATSC 3 signals are available “will get the benefits.”

Tech tools to help get the job done

ometimes the technology you use in your everyday life can make you yell at your computer screen. Or a gadget you buy because it sounds so useful just ends up gathering dust in a desk drawer. Tech that really works is worth holding on to. And during the pandemic, we’ve come to depend more than ever on tools that connect us, save time and keep us organized. We asked people in public media to tell us about their favorite tech tools. Here are some of their responses.

RHONDA HOLT SVP, Information Technology, PBS

Bose SoundSport Headphones. I love them because the sound is awesome no matter what I’m listening to.

LOUISE CONKLIN Executive Assistant, Project Manager, NPR

I bought a used treadmill desk I found in Facebook Marketplace to cope with working from home, and it’s been a godsend. When I was HQ-based, I walked about three miles a day as part of my daily commute, and I also moved around my office constantly and was a stairs-only person. Moving before, during and after the workday kept my energy up and helped me cope with the constant context-shifting in my job. The treadmill desk has replaced some of that activity and has also helped resolve the back and muscle pain issues I was dealing with in my less-thanideal home “office”; it’s also a great stress reliever.

TODD MUNDT Senior Managing Editor, Here & Now The work tool I’ve come to depend on is my 11-inch iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. I carry it around all day at work and use it constantly. The GoodNotes app is where I write all the notes for the show: pitches, assignments, notes from meetings, info about guests, to-dos. GoodNotes is 2/3 of a split screen — the other 1/3 is Outlook, to monitor NPR reportables. The Slack app connects me to NPR, H&N and PRPD Slacks. Safari has tabs for the NPR electronic rundown as well as NewsFlex, NPR’s proprietary software for the shows. If there’s a redesigned iPad Mini this year, I might actually switch to a slightly smaller screen that's even more portable.

BRENDAN BYRNE Reporter/Host, WMFE, Orlando, Fla. Transcription software has come a long way, and I can’t imagine my life without Otter.ai. It transcribes recorded or live audio, and it’s pretty accurate (I cover space and science news — it does a great job with some niche words and acronyms). It also allows you to share transcriptions with other users. I can’t imagine writing a feature story without it anymore. Pretty reasonably priced for how powerful it is, and it has a mobile app for in-the-field recording/transcribing. I recommend it to anyone in news.

ERNESTO AGUILAR PD, National Federation of Community Broadcasters

Slash (getslash.co). I have tried many task/to-do list managers, including notebooks and dozens of apps. I use Slash because of the simplicity of its interface, which belies the depth of per-task management tools, phone/desktop integration and variety of efficiencies, including Pomodoro, Eisenhower Matrix, and time tracking. Responses collected and lightly edited by Digital Editor Mike Janssen

TECH TRANSITIONS

Current January/February 2021

| 15

High fidelity, low listenership

As some stations end HD Radio signals, others hold hope for audience adoption BY TYLER FALK

hanges spurred by the pandemic have prompted two public broadcasters to scale back their use of HD Radio, the heavily promoted technology that never quite caught on despite its promises of better sound quality and new programming streams. Last fall, Wisconsin Public Radio ended more than half of its HD Radio services after its state licensee urged it to cut costs. Meanwhile, Oregon Public Broadcasting stopped producing an HD music stream in part because the pandemic has stifled volunteer participation. HD Radio rolled out more than a decade ago, with CPB providing grants to help convert hundreds of stations’ transmitters to the technology. But listeners need digital radios to enjoy the higher-fidelity broadcasts and tune into the digital subchannels that some stations use for additional news and music services. With that hurdle in place, adoption has been slow. According to last year’s Public Radio Techsurvey, conducted by Jacobs Media in partnership with Public Radio Program Directors Association, 14% of respondents — most of whom were selected from public radio stations’ databases — said they use HD Radio. That’s up from 6% in the 2012 version of the survey but still puts HD Radio

near the bottom of all technology used by the respondents. By comparison, the 2020 survey showed that 67% of respondents use streaming audio or connect phones in their cars, neither of which Jacobs measured in 2012. “We really did have high hopes,” said WPR Director Mike Crane, “but obviously we’re not in an environment where such [CPB] grants are going to be coming out again. And so continuing to maintain a service that wasn’t providing real service just wasn’t sustainable.” In hindsight, HD Radio “just has not turned out to be a boon that people may have hoped that it would become,” said OPB CEO Steve Bass. Yet some station leaders still see promise Crane for HD Radio through educating consumers about the technology and as more cars come to market with digital radio built in. Xperi, which now owns the technology, reported in an investor deck last year that 52% of U.S. automobiles have HD radio.

Significant HD cuts in Wisconsin

In 2007, WPR added 13 HD Radio transmitters throughout its state network to broadcast its news and entertainment programming, along with an all-classical channel that had been previously available only as an online stream. “Just like many public broadcasters, we were excited by the possibilities of multicasting,” said WPR’s Crane. “We’ve certainly seen some value in that on the television side with HDTV, but ... it’s been less so with radio,” he said. One reason is that digital TV “was a complete turnover of technology,” Crane said, whereas

HD Radio “has always been a hybrid technology that continues to analog broadcast.” In October, the station decided to end HD Radio broadcasts on seven stations. The Wisconsin Educational Communications Board, a state agency that holds licenses for some WPR stations, asked the broadcaster to reduce costs. WPR will save about $60,000 annually and reduce long-term capital expenses. Crane said that engineers have told him for “a long time” that adding HD to a transmitter “has been more costly financially, but also damaging over time to the systems in a way that would require more maintenance, more replacement over time.” So when deciding which services to cut back, Crane considered those concerns and the low audience for WPR’s HD channels. “I do not like the idea of taking off anything, because if you go back to the very beginning — not only of public radio 50 years ago but to our station more than 100 years ago — we’ve always been about providing maximum service,” Crane said. “But if the evidence is that no service is actually provided, then it becomes necessary, particularly in a tighter budget, to just say, ‘Let’s not keep doing it. It’s not going anywhere.’” Crane estimates that the combined weekly cume for the stations that were turned off was fewer than 500. The decision caused minimal outcry, aside from a volunteer at one station whom Crane described as an “audiophile” and who said he was disappointed because Continued on page 21

16 | January/February 2021 | Current

TECH TRANSITIONS

Help

Wanted Stations struggle to recruit, train a new generation of broadcast engineers BY AUSTIN FAST

ne of Bill Fawcett’s first acts in retirement wasn’t sitting back and cracking open a cold one. Instead, during a frigid week in early January, he climbed a transmission tower high above the mountains of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley to repair WMRA’s ice-damaged antenna. For a quarter-century, Fawcett joked he was the engineering department for the small public radio station in Harrisonburg, Va. With four transmitters, one translator and a full-time staff of nine, WMRA provides NPR news and talk programming to the mountainous region. Its all-classical station, WEMC, delivers signals to four counties. WMRA started searching for Fawcett’s successor as chief engineer last September, so why is he still working post-retirement? “We consider the first search failed,” said GM Matt Bingay. “We can't necessarily compete straight up with a major market as far as salary. It's just not in our budget.” Bingay could count the number of applicants to the first search on two hands. Two candidates declined job offers because of the pay. For the second search, Bingay convinced the station’s university owner to bump Jason Quinn, manager of broadcast technology at New Mexico PBS, installs new VHF antennas on a up the salary to attract more potential chief engineers. translator in Farmington, N.M. (Photo: Jason Quinn) The shortage of qualified engineers isn’t confined to small stations like WMRA, though the problem is acute in rural communities. Public and Plus, she said, “Young people aren’t necessarily in the position to be mentored like commercial broadcasters, both in radio and television, are struggling to fill vacancies they used to be.” of these critical jobs. Many stations now choose to keep contract engineers on call instead of hiring The workforce of broadcast engineers — those who know to fix broadcast trans- full-time staff. mitters, tubes and wires — is reaching retirement age, according to surveys conducted On-the-job training and mentorship made all the difference for Geary Morrill, annually by the Society of Broadcast Engineers. Far fewer skilled young people are regional director of engineering for the radio broadcasting company Alpha Media waiting in the wings to take on their roles. The apprenticeships that provided training and chair of SBE’s education committee. In the 1970s he worked at a small station in to the engineers who are now approaching retirement are increasingly rare. Lansing, Mich., and gravitated toward a more technical role. The seven engineers on New Mexico PBS is among the public broadcasters struggling to attract quali- staff provided the training he needed to build a career. fied engineering applicants. Dan Zillich, director of engineering, has posted an open “I was aware of it because it was there,” Morrill said. “If you happen to be working broadcast technology technician position twice. Bank tellers and producers have been in a situation … with a contract engineer, you don’t even see that person. How do you among more than two dozen applicants; only one candidate was qualified with the even learn?” skills the station needs right away. WUNC also needs to hire a chief engineer. Job postings have attracted a fraction of Training bundled with mentorship interest that the public radio station in Chapel Hill, N.C., has garnered for other open To help solve the problem, SBE recently launched a new Technical Professional positions, said Graham Youngblood, director of IT/engineering. Training Program. Recruiters gave different reasons for their hiring challenges — the geography of Introduced in December, the program bundles over 100 on-demand webinars on their communities of service or the financial situations or priorities of their stations. topics ranging from radio frequency technology to networking, a hard copy of the Victoria St. John, president of the Association of Public Radio Engineers, pointed SBE Broadcast Engineering Handbook, the exam fee for SBE’s entry-level “Broadcast to erosion of the organic apprenticeship model that provided training to early-career Technologist” certification and access to a personal mentor — all at the cost of $475. engineers when broadcasters were locally rooted and robustly staffed. The apprenThe mentoring component is key, said SBE President Wayne Pecena, noting “there’s ticeships evaporated during periodic mass layoffs triggered by corporate consoli- just so much you can learn from book.” dation of commercial broadcast properties and downsizings within public media. “This is our way to try to recreate that [apprenticeship experience] as best that can Engineers who are starting or switching their careers have found more lucrative be done with some limitations of those resources,” Pecena said. Mentors will ideally opportunities elsewhere. work within the trainee’s organization. SBE will assist in setting up those relationships. “People with that type of technical acumen are now being offered all kinds of other SBE is drawing on its collection of training resources and services to create the jobs in different industries,” St. John said. “‘Hey, let’s go work for Google.’ Or, ‘Let’s program, essentially streamlining the training process for broadcasters and state start our own podcast. Maybe design a game.’” broadcasting associations looking to educate promising young engineers.

TECH TRANSITIONS

Current January/February 2021

| 17

People with technical acumen “are now being offered all kinds of other jobs in different industries. ‘Hey, let’s go work for Google.’ Or, ‘Let’s start our own podcast. Maybe design a game.’” — VICTORIA ST. JOHN, APRE PRESIDENT

Kira Parker, VPR broadcast/transmission engineer, at the Mount Mansfield tower site in Vermont. Inset: Bingay, left, and Fawcett on a tower site during repairs to a damaged WMRA antenna. (Photos: Matthew Smith, Matt Bingay) SBE’s program follows the launch of the Public Radio Satellite System’s Public Radio Engineering Training Program in summer 2019. In public radio recruiting, many prospective engineers possess information technology skills, but few have experience with RF technology, said Michael Beach, VP of distribution at National Public Radio. RF knowledge and know-how are critical to maintaining the transmitters, studio-transmitter links and satellite systems that deliver signals to listeners’ radio sets. Station leaders may see mergers or increased automation as reasons to cut back on engineering staff, but Beach points out these changes won’t reduce the number of towers or equipment they operate. “Adding technical systems increases the need for installation and maintenance,” Beach said. “The larger a state or regional network becomes, the more complicated their network technology becomes.” PRETP modeled its three levels of certification after SBE’s certifications, progressing from Certified Public Radio Operator to Certified Public Radio Technologist and finally Certified Public Radio Engineer. PRSS’ goal was to recruit 15 engineers during the program’s first year, Beach said. To date, 26 engineers representing 19 stations from across the country have enrolled for the first level of training. The Certified Public Radio Operator level costs $1,700 and includes engineering handbooks, registration for the National Association of Broadcasters and Association of Public Radio Engineers conferences, and one year of SBE membership.

Futureproofing the workforce

The Public Radio Engineers Conference, which typically precedes the NAB Show in Las Vegas in March, offers a chance to share ideas and ask advice of other engineers. APRE President St. John said the opportunity to network is the biggest benefit for engineers. Last year, APRE expanded its scholarship program to cover all costs for six recipi-

ents to attend the conference, which was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. St. John said APRE worked hard to recruit people who were new to the field or early in their careers. APRE contacted “stations that are remote, rural [or] Native stations” and those with limited funding, St. John said. “Those were the people that we actually reached out to in our scholarship committee to say, ‘Do you have smart young people that you want to have this opportunity to learn the industry?’” Crowds at broadcast engineering conferences trend older, white and male, said WUNC’s Youngblood. He advises hiring managers who are recruiting to do more to connect with women and people of color. “It’s not helpful if everyone looks the same and acts the same in anything, as far as I’m concerned,” Youngblood said. “Everyone can build as many training programs as they want, but just because you build it, doesn’t mean they’ll come. There needs to be an actual reason for … people to want to do this.” Veterans’ organizations are another option for finding qualified candidates due to the military’s use of RF technology throughout its branches, noted Zillich of New Mexico PBS. With the challenges that digital disruption poses, radio’s inherent challenge is to “futureproof ” local stations as “content-creation organizations” that distribute over airwaves and digitally. Just as the most successful journalists are comfortable working with emerging storytelling platforms, Youngblood said, the most successful engineers will combine RF know-how with IT skills of the future. NPR’s Beach agrees training programs aren’t the whole answer. “It has to be part of a larger industry effort that requires consistent attention,” Beach said. “Stations that rely exclusively on a shrinking number of already sparse contract engineers to respond when problems occur will find themselves off the air more often as systems age.”

18 | January/February 2021 | Current

PICTURES ON THE RADIO

Telling people’s stories with heart and soul

A new book memorializes the work of David Gilkey, showcasing the late NPR photojournalist’s unique talent for capturing images of humanity amid deadly conflict

BY L. WAYNE HICKS

avid Gilke y’s role wit h National Public Radio initially confused some people. “David always did find it amusing, trying to explain to people that he was a photographer for a radio network,” said NPR correspondent Jason Beaubien. “And, certainly, people who didn’t know NPR or know that we were trying to expand what we were doing online would often find it amusing. David was always quite happy to play along with that.” “When people would say, ‘Hey, how do you get pictures on the radio? How do you see pictures on the radio?’, he would look at them and he would lean in close like he was going to tell you a secret,” said Quil Lawrence, another NPR correspondent. “And he would say, ‘If you listen really hard, you can see the pictures.’” Gilkey was 50 when he was killed during a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan in June 2016. Zabihullah Tamanna, a freelance Afghan journalist and interpreter who was working for NPR, also died in the attack. Gilkey traveled the world during the nine years he spent at NPR. Now a collection of 187 photos from those assignments appears in a new book, Pictures on the Radio: From the Frontlines of History with NPR News (powerHouse books, $50). “We want this book to remind everyone of David’s ability to use his camera to draw us into events and parts of the world that we would probably never see,” his mother, Alyda Gilkey, wrote in the preface to the book. “His ability to capture the humanity in stories from the earthquake in Haiti, the tsunami in Japan or the Ebola epidemic in Africa and hold the viewer’s attention was his unique talent.” Gilkey grew up in Portland, Ore. His father, an amateur photographer, equipped the family home with a basement darkroom and rewarded his son’s good behavior with access to it. An avid photographer by high school, Gilkey studied the subject at Oregon State University but dropped out after his first newspaper internship. He became a staff photographer at the paper, the Daily Camera in Boulder, Colo., and took on assignments typical for a small metropolitan newspaper. But he was eager for more, especially foreign assignments. Knight Ridder, the Daily Camera’s parent company and then the second-largest newspaper publisher in the country, sent Gilkey abroad. He shot the downfall of apartheid in South Africa

and warfare in Rwanda. His photos were printed in t he Miami Herald, t he Philadelphia Inquirer and many other Knight Ridder publications. Gilkey cemented his reputation in the mid-1990s at Knight Ridder’s Detroit Free Press, where he worked for 11 years and racked up a series of honors, including Michigan Photographer of the Year. Most assignments kept Gilkey close to the Motor City, but the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, changed everything. Two weeks later, he was on the ground in Afghanistan covering the U.S. invasion for Knight Ridder. “Reporting in general, you can do sort of after-action reporting and tell a story and reassemble a story that’s already happened, especially in a conflict zone,” Gilkey explained in a 2013 post on NPR’s website. “But as a photographer, you don’t get that choice. You have to be there, and in most cases, you have to be in the middle of it.” Gilkey joined NPR in 2007 when the newsroom was building its digital news operations and adding video coverage to its website. Initially hired as a videographer, Gilkey had just won a national Emmy for

Top: Spc. Jotiar Saaty of the 101st Airborne yells for more ammunition during a 2010 gun battle with insurgents in Afghanistan's Kandahar province. Inset: The cover of Pictures on the Radio. (Photos: David Gilkey/NPR) “Michigan Marines: Band of Brothers,” a 23-part Free Press video series following a Marine Reserve unit from Michigan that fought in the 2006 ground war in Iraq. Technical limitations at NPR prevented the newsroom from producing videos as quickly as desired, said Keith Jenkins, a veteran Washington Post photographer who is now senior director of visuals for NPR. Gilkey and fellow videographer John Poole pivoted to produce still photography. When Jenkins arrived at NPR in 2008, his job was to set up and lead multimedia operations. Early in his career at NPR, Gilkey found himself covering the outbreak of fighting between Israeli and Palestinian forces in the Gaza Strip. A sniper firing rubber bullets hit Gilkey’s lens, leaving a dent and knocking the camera from his hands. “It definitely rattled him,” said Jenkins, who was Gilkey’s editor at the time. “Clearly, if the sniper could get the lens, he could have gotten anything else.” For the rest of his life, Gilkey found him-

self in the middle of all manner of conflicts and disasters. He did not take unnecessary risks, Jenkins said. Gilkey was “a lot more cautious” than other photographers working overseas. “We would be in places that were one step away from hell, and he would create these images … that were actually really beautiful,” said Beaubien, who collaborated with Gilkey to report on recovery and rebuilding of Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. “They were composed in a way that at times were like paintings. You know — some security guy just emerging from this smoke and fog in the midst of this fire … burning in downtown Port-au-Prince amidst all the rubble. The images themselves were beautiful, even as what was happening around was so devastating and awful.” Pictures on the Radio is divided into nine chapters and includes Gilkey’s photography from Haiti and a more relaxed weeks-long assignment traveling across Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railway. The book begins and ends with Afghanistan, focusing first

PICTURES ON THE RADIO

Current January/February 2021

| 19

Clockwise from top left: Gilkey, left, and Lawrence in Afghanistan around 2011. (Photo: Quil Lawrence/NPR); Gilkey‘s camera on display at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Elizabeth Gillis/ NPR); A morgue worker walks among thousands of bodies that were left outside the central morgue at the National Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in January 2010. (Photo: David Gilkey/NPR)

“ He put a lot of heart and soul into his work. He was passionate about photography but ... even more so, really passionate about telling people’s stories.” — Keith Jenkins, NPR on the combat Gilkey witnessed and finally on the country’s people and culture. The images are striking. Young soldiers are seen at rest and at war. One photo shows a soldier caught in mid-yell as he calls out for more ammunition during a gun battle. Another captures a sleeping Marine, the mud wall next to him decorated with images of pinup girls. Pictures from Haiti show death and suffering, including an image of a sea of bodies left on the ground outside a hospital. “He put a lot of heart and soul into his work,” said Jenkins. “He was passionate about photography but also, or maybe even more so, really passionate about telling people’s stories. … I think that passion and that heart comes through in his pictures.” “He was able to earn people’s trust, and people felt comfortable being vulnerable

with him,” said Ari Shapiro, co-host of All Things Considered. “You see that when you look at his photographs. There is a layer of defense that drops away in those images, and it lets you into an inner life that not many people can get access to.” Among his many accolades, Gilkey won the Sergeant Major Dan Daly Award in 2012 from the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation. The award, originally given annually to honor writing about Marines, expanded in 2011 to include excellence in photography. Gilkey was the first civilian to win it.

’I really don’t smile that much’

Gilkey estimated in 2013 that he had spent the equivalent of four years embedded with U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. “David felt a kinship with the troops

because he had also been deployed for so long,” said Lawrence. “He was not a military wannabe, a military cheerleader. But after a while, he had a lot more in common with a veteran who had done three Iraq deployments and four Afghanistan deployments than he had with most other people.” Lawrence met Gilkey in the winter of 2001 when both were covering the war in Afghanistan. Lawrence was reporting for the BBC then. “You noticed him because he looked some sort of a Special Forces master sergeant,” he said. Standing about 6 feet tall and built like a linebacker, Gilkey had taken to shaving his head. After his death, his colleagues revealed his newsroom nickname: “Smiley,” for his somber demeanor. “I really don’t smile that much,” Gilkey said in 2008. “It’s not that I am unhappy or depressed. It’s just not in my nature. I tend to take life a little seriously.” Lawrence now covers veterans’ issues, a beat he developed with Gilkey. The two partnered on such stories as homelessness among veterans. Gilkey once interrupted Lawrence’s vacation to suggest covering a group of disabled veterans planning to climb two peaks in Yosemite National Park

on Sept. 11, 2013. “He knew he was going to get great visuals,” Lawrence said, “but he was also thinking in terms of radio and thinking in terms of story.” Having covered the war from the beginning, Gilkey was determined the soldiers and their fight not be forgotten. “The Afghan war is something that he cared deeply about, both about the Afghans caught in the middle and the U.S. troops, and especially the Marines who were there,” Jenkins said. “He felt somebody needed to tell their stories. Even as the country was losing interest, he felt it was really important that those stories still be heard.” “We at NPR felt it was still our responsibility to tell those stories, and that is ultimately what led him and the crew that was there at the end to still be there and still be doing that work when a lot of other organizations had kind of stopped,” Jenkins said. Pictures on the Radio is only the latest tribute to Gilkey, who was posthumously inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame in 2017. NPR erected two memorials. A series of his photographs hangs along one wall near the entrance of NPR West in Culver City, Calif. In the lobby of NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., a tribute to both Gilkey and Tamanna notes that they “died in pursuit of bringing important stories to the world” and displays the Canon 5D camera that Gilkey was carrying when he was killed. “Part of why that memorial, at least for me, is so powerful is that it’s just a camera sitting there,” Beaubien said. “It’s got the dust from Afghanistan on it. But I sort of … feel that blast that must have come at that camera and must have come at him in the final moment.” “It’s a remarkably powerful memorial that they have there,” Beaubien said. “It’s a little hard to see it at times, but I’m also often reminded of the lighter moments with him when I see it. So it’s a complicated memorial, at least for me. … It accomplishes what it set out to do — to make you think about him, think about his life, think about the danger that he regularly would put himself in, in order to get some of these images.”

20 | January/February 2021 | Current

SPLIT DECISION ON DTS ‘SPILL OVER’

Service-boosting ATSC 3.0 technology clears ‘important hurdle’ at FCC BY SCOTT FYBUSH

n its final major decision of the Trump era, the FCC issued a Report and Order Jan. 19 setting new technical standards for the distributed transmission systems that public broadcasters hope to use to provide more robust ATSC 3.0 digital signals to more viewers. The ruling was a split decision, with the two Democratic commissioners issuing partial dissents in their last actions in the minority. “It’s a good order,” said Lonna Thompson, EVP of America’s Public Television Stations. “It’s very fair.” Thompson and other DTS advocates say they’re happy with the decision, though it didn’t give them everything they had asked for in their initial FCC filings. It hinged on two questions about the multiple on-channel transmitters that make up a DTS system: a technical issue regarding the extent to which DTS transmitters near the edge of a station’s primary signal coverage can “spill over” some signal beyond that contour; and a regulatory question of whether that spillover coverage can be written into FCC rules or whether individual waivers of the rules are needed for each such case. The commissioners divided along party lines on the waiver question, with both Democrats, Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks, arguing for requiring waivers in any case where spillover exceeds a “minimal amount.” In their statements, Rosenworcel and Starks both cited concerns from Microsoft and other stakeholders about the possibility that spillover signals could interfere with so-called “white space” use of the UHF spectrum, transmitting broadband data over frequencies not in use locally for digital TV signals. If the waiver proposal had passed, it would have created too much uncertainty for many broadcasters, Thompson said. With stations budgeting millions of dollars for ATSC 3.0 conversions, APTS argued that they need clarity as they plan whether

(Photo: SasinParaksa/iStock) to include DTS systems as part of their conversions. “Waiver processes take time, and if you have hundreds of stations transitioning, you could have hundreds of waivers backed up,” Thompson said. In the last days of the Ajit Pai–led Republican FCC, though, Rosenworcel and Starks ended up in the minority on that issue. Pai and fellow Republican Brendan Carr prevailed on the ruling, allowing both public and commercial stations to build out DTS systems that have limited amounts of spillover without requiring waivers. “We didn’t get the full amount of what we had asked for,” Thompson said. DTS proponents, including APTS and the National Association of Broadcasters, had hoped the FCC would allow stations to put transmitters near the edges of their coverage areas in locations that might spill a small amount of primary-level DTS signal beyond the predicted primary coverage from the station’s main transmitter. APTS, Public Media Group and other DTS proponents supplied the FCC with reams of research from digital TV experts showing, they said, that their proposal would enhance the usability of ATSC 3.0, or “NextGen TV,” signals within those existing

predicted coverage areas without expanding coverage beyond those areas, as opponents had argued. “Basically, we asked for what we’re legally entitled to,” Thompson said. “We found a new technology that allows us to better serve our communities in our fully protected, licensed coverage areas, and we want to employ that technology now.” The FCC’s ruling creates a compromise standard that will still allow broadcasters to put DTS transmitters near the edges of their coverage areas but with a reduced amount of allowed spillover. The goal of the compromise, Thompson said, was to win over the needed Democratic votes to reach a unanimous decision, something DTS advocates hoped to have in hand earlier in January. With the clock running down on Pai’s chairmanship, the FCC settled on its split ruling in its last days. Even in its compromise form, the ruling gives DTS planners the confidence they need to move forward, said PMG President Erik Langner. “The impact to broadcasters is profound,” he said. “Having a ruling like this so that these localized services can start to

be deployed over many, many more households and devices was very important.” Working with both public and commercial broadcasters, PMG has been designing DTS systems in markets ranging from San Francisco to Dallas to Boston. Its plans call for anywhere from five to eight new transmitters in each market, filling in urban coverage gaps and weak signal areas at the edges of the market. Langner cited studies that show DTS systems can make NextGen signals usable on indoor antennas for up to twice as many viewers as can receive current ATSC 1.0 signals broadcast from only a central transmitter site. The potential benefit can go far beyond just clear TV pictures, Thompson said. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, NextGen TV advocates have been vocal about the many ways ATSC 3.0 signals can deliver educational content and internet access to underserved areas. While Microsoft and other supporters of whitespace technology tout their systems’ potential ability to deliver data, APTS and PMG say public broadcasters are ready to turn on NextGen systems that can offer wireless broadband much sooner. “We have several of our stations that have already participated in market transitions, and we’ve got several more in the works,” Thompson said. The dissenting Democrats are now in the FCC’s majority, with Rosenworcel serving as interim FCC chair, making a petition for reconsideration of the ruling possible. It won’t come from APTS, Thompson said. “We would not try to expand or change anything in the order,” she said. “We’re fine with it.” And with the FCC’s ruling in hand, Langner said, PMG can speed up its planning and buildout. “This was an important hurdle so we could establish clarity for the market in how we’re going to design this infrastructure,” he said. “This way we can lock in the footprint, what populations will be covered and so forth. This helps to get that process moving more quickly.”

Current January/February 2021

HD Radio

Continued from page 15

he “loved how it sounded.” Otherwise, the response was “pretty muted, and that probably was telling,” Crane said. WPR stations that will continue to broadcast in HD include those serving Madison and Milwaukee, where weekly cumes for the subchannels are higher but still only “in the thousands, not the tens of thousands,” Crane said. WPR sees benefits to HD service beyond audience numbers, Crane said. The FCC permits using HD signals to feed analog transmitters, or they can be used essentially as studio-to-transmitter links, he said. “So that’s been a real advantage for us in a couple of places around the state where it’s a really nice, reliable method of delivery,” he said. WPR’s WHA-AM in Madison also broadcasts in part using HD and produces a “really nice-sounding signal” when functioning, “which has been an issue, too,” Crane said. Crane said he does see promise for adoption of HD Radio in more cars, “but even there, because it’s getting easier and easier to stream directly to your car using Apple CarPlay and the like, it seems like streaming is going to be the way to go.”

OPB’s search for an FM translator

OPB also pared back HD service in December when it stopped producing a 24/7 Triple A music stream. The stream was part of opbmusic, which also includes music content for radio and OPB’s website. The music stream relied on volunteers for the programming, which became a challenge as OPB was looking to limit people in its building, said CEO Steve Bass. “So it was kind of a good time to kind of look at the whole landscape and figure out what’s best going forward,” he said. Additionally, David Christensen, who leads opbmusic, will retire in the spring. Opbmusic’s HD stream had a “pretty minimal” audience, even smaller than its

“ Consumer adoption just never was there in great numbers.” — STEVE BASS, OPB internet stream, Bass said. If it had drawn a large audience, “we probably wouldn’t have reevaluated this,” he said. A challenge HD Radio has faced is the lack of a federal mandate to convert, as was in place for digital television, Bass said. Additionally, there was “so much consolidation in FM radio that there wasn’t much interest in having a range of new services within local markets,” he said. “And I think the consumer adoption just never was there in great numbers.” OPB still uses HD for its KMHD jazz service because “it costs nothing. We’re already doing the programming,” Bass said. “It may be a little bit more reach.” Bass is also looking for an FM translator in Bend, Ore., that could take a feed of the HD broadcast. “When we first started with opbmusic here, our thought was, ‘Well, we can put it on HD and maybe a translator will become available.’ And one did, but I couldn’t get a deal for it that would work,” he said. “Unless there’s some other great purpose [for HD] aside from linear delivery of terrestrial radio, I don’t know that it has any significant advantage beyond regular FM,” Bass said.

A home for classical

But for some stations, HD Radio subchannels still provide a way to offer a broadcast service that may not have justified a presence on a primary FM signal. Nashville Public Radio recently moved its classical service to an HD subchannel to make way for a Triple A music format. The classical service was averaging a weekly cume of 30,000–60,000, which wasn’t “financially feasible,” said Steve Swenson, CEO of Nashville Public Radio.

But Swenson said he wanted to continue to provide the classical service “because no one else is doing it, and no commercial broadcaster will do it because it never would make financial sense.” The radio industry has done a poor job of educating the public about HD Radio, Swenson said. The name has caused consumers to associate it with HDTV and its “amazing video,” but Swenson said he sees subchannels as its biggest benefit. “We as an industry really never did a great job of coming together and explaining that and marketing that in a good way,” he said. Nashville Public Radio has been working to educate its audience about the classical HD service since making the switch, buying HD radios for “older” listeners whom “we knew did not have HD radios,” Swenson said. The station has given away 100 radios. “It’s one of those things where we need to continue to market,” Swenson said. “We need to continue to talk about it on WPLN ... so that people know it’s there. We need to make sure that we are doing interesting things on it.” The classical HD channel currently broadcasts Classical 24. But Swenson would like to return to broadcasting the Nashville Symphony’s concerts when they resume, as the station did before the pandemic. The station does not have an audience goal for the classical HD channel. Swenson points out that the classical HD broadcast covers a larger area than the FM signal that it previously aired on. “There’s an opportunity for people who are driving and want the classical music to be able to hear it at farther distances than they would be able to hear it before,” Swenson said.

Consumer side ‘just catching up now’

Christina Kuzmych, GM of Wyoming Public Media, told Current in an email that she believes that HD technology had “great hopes, but didn’t quite take off.” Still, nearly two decades after the FCC endorsed HD Radio, and despite the technology’s slow start, Kuzmych says the consumer side may be “just catching up now” as more new cars become equipped with HD Radio. People in Wyoming drive a lot — the state leads the country in residents’ vehicle miles traveled per capita — so Kuzmych believes stations could still reach listeners with HD broadcasts. “The biggest obstacle now is educating them on the fact that they have HD radios,” she said. Wyoming Public Media broadcasts in HD in 11 markets throughout the state, with news programming on an HD1 channel, classical on HD2 and Wyoming S ounds, a Triple A music s er vice, on HD3. It also feeds translators with HD Radio. The technology allows the network to broadcast more channels in parts of the state where it otherwise couldn’t, and the cost to maintain them is “very low or nonexistent,” Kuzmych said. “Should costs increase we would need to re-evaluate HD radio,” she said. The station doesn’t have an “accurate grasp” on how many people are using the stations in their cars, but, anecdotally, “we know that people are listening,” Kuzmych said. “They complain when the service goes down.”

Pubmedia Business Directory Fundraising/Traffic Software

| 21

Business Planning/Strategy

Fundraising

Technology

22 | January/February 2021 | Current

People

Continued from page 5

Sun. He has had multiple stints working in public media, including at LAist sibling KPCC and KCRW in Los Angeles. Rebecca Feldhaus Adams joined Louisville Public Media as news director. Feldhaus Adams previously worked as news director for WHRO in Norfolk, Va. She has also been an editor for WAMU in Washington, D.C., and a par t-time Feldhaus Adams reporter and editor for NPR. Maddie Schwappach and Zeke Salo signed on as program hosts at Minnesota Public Radio’s The Current. Schwappach, who had been a columnist and intern for the station, previously was music director for the University of Minnesota’s Radio K. Salo previously worked for Minneapolis radio stations Go 95.3 and 96.3. Tracy Mumford, a podcast development producer for American Public Media Group, departed to join the New York Times as an audio producer. Mumford joined APMG in 2014 as a digital producer for Minnesota Public Radio and began working on podcast production in 2017. Paige Pfleger covers arts, culture and music for WNXP, a music station owned by Nashville Public Radio. She previously reported for WOSU in Columbus, Ohio. Sydney Boles was hired as a newsletter and community engagement editor for WJCT in Jacksonville, Fla. Boles pre-

viously worked as a reporter for WMMT in Whitesburg, Ky., and the Ohio Valley ReSource Journalism collaborative, a multistation effort supported by CPB.

Fellowships

Jessica Bakeman of WLRN in Miami and Elizabeth Gabriel of KLCC in Eugene, Ore., were selected for the Education Writers Association’s winter 2021 class of reporting fellows. Each fellowship provides up to $8,000 to help cover reporting and other costs. This class of fellows will focus on coverage of higher education. Black Public Media announced its 2021 cohort for the 360° Incubator+ fellowship, a three-month program designed to support independent producers who are working on projects “that focus on the Black experience.” The fellows include: Elizabeth Charles (Before We Wrap), Dru Holley (Buffalo Soldiers Fighting on Two Fronts), Yeelen Cohen and Ife Olujobi (Fighting for the Light), Tonya Hopkins and Laura Collelouri (The Food Griot Chronicles), Ameha Molla and Rajal Pitrola (Higher 15), Carrie Hawks and Chelsea Moore (Inner Wound Real), Stephanie Etienne and Kanika Harris (Listen to Me) Hazel Gurland-Pooler and Naz Habtezghi (Storming Caesars Palace), Allison Shillingford and J. Lathon (The Ride), and Malkia Lydia and Kahlil Munir (What’s In a Name?). The three-month program, which will be conducted virtually, culminates in the PitchBLACKForum and PitchBLACK Awards, where participants will compete for up to $150,000 in production support. — Julian Wyllie Send news of “comings and goings” to people@current.org

Cole

Continued from page 6

mix without an engineer at their desks, that was a problem. “What I didn’t want to give up was going into the studio and collaborating with the engineers,” Cole said. “I’m a second set of ears for the reporters, and the engineers were a third set of ears for me and the reporters, and it was invaluable. Something has definitely been lost in that.” NPR listeners have heard his voice in voiceovers he did for other reporters’ stories, providing translations or dramatic readings. “If we needed a voiceover, we always thought of Tom Cole, even if it was a 5-year-old girl in Chile,” said Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon, who joked during the Zoom party that Cole had done “several popes, a number of assassins, Hemingway, Ferlinghetti, Shirley Temple Black, Ferdinand Magellan, Ferdinand Marcos, Marco Polo and Tinkerbell." Cole did his own stories as well, a somewhat intimidating experience for colleagues tasked with editing the great editor. He filed features and obituaries for many musicians, especially jazz artists and guitarists — everyone from Dick Dale to Django Reinhardt. In addition to playing a pivotal role in the broadcast of stories about artists the mainstream ignores or undervalues, perhaps Cole’s greatest achievement at NPR is shepherding two generations of newcomers to public radio journalism. “If I had a role in getting new voices on

Cole with a cake made by Petra Mayer, an editor for NPR Books. the air, getting different voices on the air that might not have been heard, then maybe I accomplished something,” Cole told Current. “I’ll say it now that I’m not there anymore: NPR was founded to provide an alternative to mainstream media, [but] it has become more and more mainstream over the years, and I think that’s sort of drifting away from the mission.” I’ll leave the last words to two women who are reporters on the Arts Desk. Cole’s wife, Elizabeth Blair, said: “With him going away, I worry — will other editors have the energy to fight as hard as Tom did? Tom was unstoppable.” And when asked whether the Arts Desk will hire a replacement for Cole, Neda Ulaby, who described Tom Cole as a “powerful moral figure,” said, “How does this guy possibly get replaced? He can’t be replaced.”

Thinking

Continued from page 2

them should include a nuanced strategy that considers self-awareness, cultural consideration, reflection, respect and healing. We should also consider the role of developing true partnerships through established initiatives, like the Local Media Association’s Word in Black. To reckon with public media’s whiteness, listen to what this moment means. Perhaps then you can imagine what public media needs to look like in 2021.

6. Forget the front door. Consider the “God” door.

While much of 2020 focused on the coronavirus’ impact and how it landed in our communities, over 18,000 public and private government computer systems were digitally infected on the back end. The act was coined a cyber-pandemic and created countless numbers of “God doors” in systems that would allow hackers access in complete stealth mode. There’s no question that we should all be self-respecting in the work that we do. But when the stakes are so high, when people’s lives hang in the balance, this is no time to be demure. Public media was hard-hit in 2014 when 56 million credit cards were compromised in an attack that focused on Home Depot. Imagine an organized group of nefarious characters hacking your organization’s cyber–front door tomorrow. Almost all of public media’s digital infrastructure, including fundraising, is susceptible and underprepared for such acts. And this isn’t a matter of if or when; it has already happened.

7. Forget politeness. Consider realness.

As I watched 2020 unfold across every media platform known to humankind, that last line from The Real World kept ringing in my head louder and louder: “Stop being polite and start getting real.” A long-held pretense of journalism is that it should be objective. It should be nonpartisan. It should hold people accountable. It should be professional. I’m not here to argue with those beliefs. But politeness needs to go. There’s no question that we should all be self-respecting in the work that we do. But when the stakes are so high, when people’s lives hang in the balance, this is no time to be demure. If anyone needs help in this department, here’s a clip from a recent debate in which Arizona PBS’ Ted Simons asked then-Sen. Martha McSally about her support for President Trump.

8. Forget Quibi. Consider cheapy.

As I said, much of the success seen in digital-focused businesses didn’t happen overnight. But one digital service that went to the grave in 2020 was Quibi. Insert your jokes here; Quibi should have been a platform that, given the pandemic, would have enough eyes to gaze on its content. But it was more concerned with its celebrity short-form vertical hype and abundance of capital — $1.7 billion — that it burned through in just its first year.

On the flip side, while one can dream, public media will never be as capitalized as Quibi. But its deeply undervalued and underleveraged infrastructure platforms like Passport and NPR One mean that local public organizations have a tremendous digital head start on the competition. You’re paying for it — why not fully leverage it?

9. Forget diversity. Consider MacKenzie Scott.

Forgetting diversity has and will continue to come at a philanthropic cost to public media. Philanthropy is like the airline industry. When one giant titan does something, others usually will follow, not to be outdone. In this case, the airline is MacKenzie Scott. In just the past four months, Scott has given away $4 billion, unrestricted. In a July 2020 post, she wrote that “91% of the racial equity organizations are run by leaders of color, 100% of the LGBTQ+ equity organizations are run by LGBTQ+ leaders, and 83% of the gender equity organizations are run by women.” If Scott had sought similar representation within public media, she would have been hard-pressed to find enough organizations to fund. This trend is just the start of what is coming: accountability through representation and the business case for diversity.

10. Forget public media. Consider service media.

Being romantic about public media is easy. And, sadly, I hear too many waxing philosophically about it. But having an army of public media professionals sitting idle through this moment is a misappropriation of our mission. The decline of local reporting, combined with the spread of misinformation, should push public media to stake out an ever-clear role and agenda. The bang of this drum isn’t new, yet news deserts continue to spread. Some stations have immense networks that they rarely tap, if ever. Blame the system’s lack of focus all you want on changing audience behaviors and shifts in funding and technology, but the problem ultimately comes down to leadership. Public media should adopt a corps model. A Corona Corps has already popped up at the University of Oregon. Its mission: “providing contact monitoring and case management support for positive COVID19 cases or close contacts within the UO community, the greater Eugene/Springfield area and throughout Lane County.” Imagine if we were that corps, or at least partnered with it. At this moment, when we’re at the intersection of disaster, crisis and misinformation, shouldn’t public media have a specific assignment? There should be a public media body similar to the Peace Corps that is engaged in immersive service-driven critical matters — like Report for America, which places talented emerging journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues and communities. Be of service to your public. Many problems that seem unsolvable will begin to disappear in 2021 because the opportunities that come with them will also abound. I guarantee it.

Andrew Ramsammy is director of digital content for Global Sport Matters, a media enterprise at Arizona State University. He previously was director of audience strategy at Arizona PBS, founder of United Public Strategies, director of content projects and initiatives at PRI, and executive producer of The Daytripper.

Current January/February 2021

| 23

Current January/February 2021

| 24