Melissa Block Reports from the Scene of the Chengdau Earthquake
In the years to come, I think Melissa Block’s reporting from the Chengdu earthquake will become a defining moment in her career. She and Robert Siegel were in China working on an unrelated series for NPR’s All Things Considered when the earthquake struck. Block’s initial report on All Things Considered is some of the most compelling radio I have ever heard. It’s not just a matter of being on the scene as it happened. It’s not just a matter of capturing amazing sound. What makes this so striking and so memorable is the human face Block puts on the story from her amazement and wonder at the event to the horror of the scene of a collapsed middle school. I cannot imagine how difficult this report was to file and I am really in awe of the skill and grace she brought to this work.
“In the industry podcast…”
This is not, I expect, the first time this has happened, but tonight in the story “Alabama County Faces Bankruptcy” filed on NPR’s All Things Considered, WBHM’s Tanya Ott does a terrific job of pulling a highly relevant piece of sound from the derivative management services industry podcast, DerivActiv. It happens around 2:25 into the story.
I recently quietly marked the three-year anniversary of the first pitch I made to a prospective client regarding podcasting. As I looked back on my slides from that meeting, I found I had predicted that traditional media would embrace and even dominate podcasting, but there would be considerable business opportunities in enterprise podcasting. Goes to show that even when you’re right, you’re probably only guessing part of the picture. I would never have imagined the sort of on-the-spot expert commentary that an enterprise podcast could provide to traditional media.
It certainly changes the way I think about news-gathering.
The Local News Initiative: Morning Edition Grad School Stations Increase Listener Service
I have been providing logistical support for Morning Edition Grad School (MEGS), a project of the Local News Initiative, since shortly after its inception. I was very pleased to see a report that MEGS stations are enjoying a measurable benefit for their participation.
There is good news from stations that participated in the first four Morning Edition Grad School (MEGS) workshops. The first examination of the Morning Edition Grad School’s impact on audience shows that 80% of ‘graduating’ MEGS stations increased listener service during Morning Edition, while only 20% did not. These increases in audience service were determined by comparing listener hours to Morning Edition from Fall 2006 and Fall 2007.
Read the complete article here.
