CPB economics initiative spending will total $3 million
CPB said late last week that it will direct $3 million in grants to pubcasting’s ongoing crossplatform programming about the economic crisis.
The Public Service Media Economic Response Initiative, made public in March,
involves 12 entities led by NPR and the NewsHour. Also participating: PBS, Public Radio
Exchange, PRI’s The World, American Public Media’s Marketplace, Nightly Business Report, Youth Radio/Youth Media International, Capitol News Connection, Public Interactive,
New York’s WNYC, and San Francisco’s KQED.
Marketplace, for example, will look at credit and at the wealth gap, and WNYC’s Shovelwatch project will watchdog the government’s stimulus spending. Stations and programs will have access to shows, blogs, online video, podcasts and widgets through a new website, economystory.org.
here’ll be an economic literacy campaign with input from all partners, and a social-media marketing effort. KQED will rework its syndicated web feature You Decide for a series of economic-issue debates. Nightly Business Report will add a web feature “How the Economy Works.”
The initiative grew out of the CPB-backed Facing the Mortgage Crisis project developed at KETC in St. Louis over the past year. CPB has since expanded that project, spending $1.59 million on similar community-engagement projects at stations in 32 metro areas with the highest home foreclosure rates.
Reporters from 22 stations were given fellowships to take a weeklong business and economics reporting workshop at NPR West (separate story). Stations will be able to reuse material from the project on their websites; PBS is fashioning an embeddable online player for content in that format. NPR’s Public Interactive division and PRX will curate collections of producers’ and stations’ local economy coverage.
Web page posted May 27, 2009
Copyright 2009 by Current LLC
