[audio/video of the panel] [wiki notes] [questions from participants]

10:00 - 11:00 Panel I: What the Broadcasters are doing

Panel Presentations

The panelists described how their public broadcasting organizations are embracing online features (blogs, citizen reporter databases, podcasts) and traditional television and in-person meetings to combine the best of the new technologies, existing infrastructure and the public needs in this rapidly changing and unpredictable internet world.

The following are key points from the speakers.

Panelists:

David Liroff (WGBH Vice President and Chief Technology Officer),

Terry Heaton (President, DONATA™ Communication),

Bill Buzenberg (Senior Vice President of News, American Public Media/ Minnesota Public Radio).

Moderator: Chris Lydon (Host, Open Source from PRI).

Chris Lydon - Introduction

This panel will address the underlying question – is the internet the new public? How will public broadcasting justify its “public” role today?

For example, WGBH came out of a history of the industrial revolution of innovation and diversity with the support of the Lowell family. It was an aggressively anti-commercial voice with an incessant appeal to the public for support. Now in Steve Colbert’s world and self-publishing and self-broadcasting, the question is now: what is the new role of public broadcasting. Is the internet waiting for public broadcasting to feed the public space?

Bill Buzenberg, American Public Media/ Minnesota Public Radio

Minnesota public radio has been “obsessed with user-created content.” They have initiatives that span from a mini music encyclopedia Wiki (music and its history from classical to polka to jazz and rock) to gather.com (25K subscribers of user created content.)

Teaming citizen reporters with Minnesota Public Radio journalists and analysts
Public Insight in Journalism: a 3-year effort that uses a public database of 18, 000 citizens to solicit reporting and stories for specific MPR stories. MPR has three on-staff analyst to work with the public content and journalists to create timely and in-depth stories – otherwise unknown without the internet. The contacts include their profiles of occupation, income and other elements that allows MPR to target their efforts to seek feedback and reporting on issues related to their backgrounds which has be a tremendous success in enriching MPR stories and breaking news coverage of state-based news. For example, the participants who are in the medical field (nurses, doctors) can conduct reporting for a series an MPR journalist will produce and broadcast.

Results: Over 100 stories have come out of the projects and the once suspect journalists are now supportive. MPR will be rolling out the project nationally. They are obtaining hundreds of suggestions on a regular basis through the database and Idea Generator.

Next steps: MPR is seeking partnerships, such as with nationally-syndicated Market Place (8 million listeners), and they are working on the infrastructure and quality control process to ensure a smooth transition to reach a national audience. They are also talking to other public radio stations in other states to share content and replicate their work.

MPR also has the facility the Center for Innovation in Journalism to train citizens people on journalistic practices.

Interactivity and Public Policy

MPR online discussions, public debate and simulations have educated politicians and informed their public policy decisions.

Idea Generator is an online feature that poses a question on a topic, such as the education achievement gap, and convenes a town hall meeting with the public and key stakeholders and broadcast the discussion.

Public Simulations on Public Policy Decision-making: Allowed the public to review the state budget and make accounting decisions to see the impact of the choices on public policy as a state legislator would. They can email their results to their state rep and governor to communicate their views. The state rep see the value of understanding what their constituencies. MPR broadcast a series of stories and they saw from the consensus that raising an excise tax on tobacco would be on option which was implemented based on the MPR simulation.

Public Symposia: MPR convened a day-long symposia with local partners and universities to discuss the “future of small towns” with the public.

Outreach: MPR is conducting presentations to community groups and follow-up with targeted surveys to users on listservs to encourage more participation and inform their future work.

Terry Heaton, DONATA™ Communication and consultant to WKRN-Nashville

Everything about web-based interactivity requires broadcasters to listen or embrace “personal technology” which is counter-intuitive to their training as they are taught to speak, not listen.

The challenge for his clients to accept is that they should launch new electronic initiatives despite the fast-pace of the media and that once they release a project, it is outdated. Currently, personal – or consumer - technology is disrupting a significant part of the business of mass technology.

Understanding two “value propositions” allow broadcasters to straddle both markets/spheres.

1. Following the traditional content creation model of taking media unbundled at point of origin and rebundleing at the point of consumption is “suicide” relegating media organization to being only a content provider. Local media is completely ignorant of this fact.

2. Mediated people make their own media.

“Personal Media Revolution – what do you do when the deers have their own guns – get into the ammunition business.”

Enriching Local Content with Local Voices

An example of embracing the above concept includes Heaton’s client WKRN – Nashville that has blog database with 400 blogs in Nashville that adds more at a rate of 15-20 per week. There is a blogsphere exists on a local level and someone needs to maintain a record of who they are.

In addition to the blogs, WKRN aggregates RSS feeds of the local bloggers and WKRN picks the best content of the day. Further, they created an Ad Network that allows blogers to monetize their own websites creating a self-sustaining model for citizens to voice their views. For example, a local restaurant server is a blog aggregator who has been working in this capacity for the past six years and was a server for the past 10 years.

Results: The benefits of this outreach to the public includes (but is not limited to) more influence, web visitors, and revenue for WKRN.

David Liroff, WGBH

It is not incidental that GBH traces its history to the public discussions of the 1830s, though, it has only been a third of that history that this discussion has occurred through mass communications where the audience and communicators were anonymous to each other. It is now difficult for these broadcasters to change there are reasons to be optimistic that they can adapt.

One phenomenon to note is the power of distributing and marketing traditional broadcast content on the internet. For example, WGBH programs are amount the top search hits on google - multi-million amounts of entries on the most general of search words. Of the 448 million hits on “evolution,” the WBGH PBS series on evolution was number 2. For a “Jesus” search, of the 217m hits, the rebroadcast of Frontline “From Jesus to Christ” was number 6.

Thus, it is premature to walk away from the power of broadcast media as the primary form of media distribution.

Public Participatory Media: On an ongoing basis, WGBH is providing more outlets and features for the public to submit content. ”Morning Stories” that is a series of personal experiences prompted the listeners to create their own stories and send them back to GBH which is now apart of the show. A forthcoming program titled, “We Shall Remain” about Native American life and culture is using cell phones to include their life stories from the sources themselves.

Public symposia: BGH.org/forum will be providing public lectures funded by the Lowell foundation harkening back to the public forums from the 1830. More of this involves a commitment to public values, not relying on technology.

Partnerships: They are working with the Open Media Network to provide archive public media content.

Services for special populations: Tracing back to the 1970s at GBH that media must be accessible, for example visual and hearing impaired efforts to create captioning continues to work for standards National Center for Accessible Media to ensure those populations also move with the technology.

The Future for Public Media

As Pat Aufderheide at the Center for Social Media has said, the key issue for public media to address is the issue of public engagement for the improvement of democracy. It is dangerous for-profit will engage in active citizenry. The media barons do not wake up thinking about how to better serve the public interest, it is of these public media organizations.

The Only the Paranoid Survive says that in the corporate media world fewer and fewer of the old rules apply and the new rules haven’t been written yet which define where all of the media organizations are these days. This isn’t just about morphing out of a geographic-based broadcast mode and now through mutual interests. The emergence to a global conscious and interconnectedness requires drilling past the notion that some day all institutions, governments and organized life will go beyond the geographic distance that hinders interaction. We have yet to begun to see the consequences.

At WGBH, it was ironic that the jazz hosts who started a jazz blog caused others at the station to be horrified they would have direct contact to the audience without any vetting. A slight nudge reminded them of the obvious fact the host already speak through a 100 watt tower broadcasting to all of New England.

As Ken Vine at WNET said, “we aren’t going to broadcast our way out of this one.”

Lyndon wrapped-up the panel discussion by commenting on how the public knows more than the journalists, such as the editors and writers at the New York Times.