Current.org - For People in Public Media / Published at American University School of Communication

Transom.org has awarded small radio production grants from its Donor Fund. The online watering hole and how-to site for radio producers provided grants of $1,000 each to six producers who will debut work on the site next year with help from Transom editors:

• The Core, a series of podcasts launched by a group of teenagers working with Open Orchard Productions;
• William Dahlberg, who will produce a story about an unsolved murder in his hometown of Newbury, Vt.;
• Erin Davis, who will create a multimedia project about “adventure playgrounds”;
• Andrew Forsthoefel, who will produce an hourlong documentary about his cross-country trip that began in October 2011;
• Mary Helen Miller, who will complete a radio documentary about a mixed-race group of Tennesseans; and
• Lauren Ober, who is working on a story about “a quest to find meaning in life after your life has been saved at the cost of someone else’s,” according to Transom.

The Donor Fund is a pool of money created in 2011 from individual contributions of Transom readers. Grants of $500 to $1,000 were awarded to five producers last year, and their programs have been featured on Transom throughout 2012, according to Jay Allison, independent producer and Transom founder.

This year’s grant recipients were selected from a pool of 40 applicants.