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John Barth on the "blue M&M"

Glynn Washington on the reluctant protagonist

Glynn Washington on "hostiness"

Juleyka Lantigua on cultural competence

Current webinar: "How to Retain Public Media Employees"

Adam Ragusea Talks Audio Levels With Dylan Keefe And Rob Byers

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Bryan Stevenson on "Tell Me More"

"Bone Valley" Co-Host Gilbert King

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Adam Ragusea Talks Online Comments With Melody Joy Kramer, Mark Memmott and Brian Brennan

On this week’s episode, some common liberties that public media people take with copyright, and fair use expert Patricia Aufderheide tells us whether they’re legal, or should be legal. Also, is "The Pub" too long? Many of you think so. But are you listening with your broadcaster brain or your normal person’s brain? Is there an optimal length for podcasts?

The Pub #11: FAQ on copyright and fair use; How long should podcasts be?

One of the most effective public radio fundraisers ever wants to quit doing pledge drives. That’s the only way host Adam Ragusea can interpret what "This American Life" host Ira Glass said to "Ad Age" last week. On this week’s episode of "The Pub," we contemplate the notion that public radio’s biggest star evidently doesn’t want public radio to be public anymore.

Also on the show:

- Former NPR digital strategist Melody Kramer argues that all public media content should be licensed under Creative Commons so that people can republish it
- NPR’s top audio engineer Shawn Fox dishes on the “secret sauce” behind NPR’s bright, sharp studio microphone sound
- Jonah Sutton-Morse rebuts Adam's justification for using favored pronouns when describing transsexual people

The Pub #17: Ira hearts capitalism; The NPR sound's “secret sauce”; Creative Commons licensing

On this week’s episode of The Pub, public radio Conor Gillies and host Adam Ragusea debate whether podcast ads are a threat to public media's integrity. Gillies wrote an excellent and widely shared piece last week for The Awl, “Podcasts and the Selling of Public Radio.”

Also on the show:

- "This American Life" host Ira Glass responds to the response to his remarks about capitalism, and Adam responds to the response to the response
- Is PBS’s plan to offer on-demand video to donors a violation of everything public media stands for?
- WSKG’s Teresa Peltier and KLRU’s Sara Robertson discuss what young professionals are looking for in a public media workplace

The Pub #19: Podcast advertising, Ira Glass, Membership Video on Demand and more

"This American Life" producer Stephanie Foo is dismayed by all subpar storytelling, but especially that which can be attributed to the lack of diversity in public media workplaces. This week on The Pub, Foo talks about her frank and funny manifesto for Transom.org, “What To Do If Your Workplace Is Too White,” and offers examples of how reporters of any identity can tell better stories about people of color.

Also on the show:

• Novelist and journalist Teddy Wayne describes the contrived informality he hears in the voicing of narrative radio, which he decried in his New York Times piece, “ ‘NPR Voice’ Has Taken Over the Airwaves.”
• We’re at the dawn of a glorious new era! I talk about exciting emerging technologies for recording high-quality remote interviews, from VoLTE to Ringr, while NPR chief audio engineer Shawn Fox predicts the death of ISDN and its replacement.
• What the backlash to a "PBS NewsHour" story about charter schools and the backlash to the New York Times’ exposé about Amazon.com have in common.

This American Life’s Stephanie Foo on how to fix public radio’s whiteness problem

Public media audiences have always been subjected to an alphabet soup of brands: PBS, APT, NPR, PRI, APM, WXYZ. To an extent, this marketing nightmare has been necessitated by the organizational and technological structure of terrestrial broadcasting, in which networks with one brand identity feed content to local stations with their own brand.

But in the digital age, when national networks can serve people directly online, does it make sense to invest in all these hundreds of local public media brands on the Internet? Or should the whole public media community unite behind one brand — one front door online?

“The answer is both,” Bob Kempf says on The Pub. The former head of NPR Digital Services — a unit that exists to help local stations create their own digital products — is two months into his new job as vice president for digital services at WGBH in Boston.

This week on The Pub, we’ll ask what local stations are for in the digital age. Also:

- Barbara Sopato, director of consumer products at NPR, gives me a tour of NPR’s bricks-and-mortar store in Washington and discusses the network’s merchandising strategy — in time for holiday shopping season.
- Host Adam Ragusea argues that there is a growing rift between the people who make NPR and the people who listen to NPR, as public radio’s core audience ages.

NPR's Chief Merch Officer, Barbara Sopato

BJ Leiderman was an underachieving student at American University in Washington — studying “shall we say, chemistry, wink wink,” he says — when a friend who worked at NPR helped him land the gig that would define his career: composing theme music for NPR’s then-new show, Morning Edition. Commissions to score five more national radio shows followed, and now “BJ Leiderman” is a household name among the millions of people who hear it in the credits. 

Leiderman sincerely relishes his public radio fame, but it’s been a tough high-water mark to try to reach again in the years since. He’s a delightful, charming and talented guy whose life and career have been hampered by mental health problems, chronic illness and his white whale of an album — a collection of pop tunes called “Natural Public Leiderman” that he’s been working on for decades, hoping to capitalize on his NPR fame.

This week on The Pub we hear some of that album, along with the story of how Leiderman got his big break with NPR and what he’s been doing since.

Also, we catch up on some of the public media news that broke while the show was on holiday hiatus, including NPR Silicon Valley reporter Steve Henn’s very public resignation, the release of a rap album based entirely on samples from public radio programs, and Oregon Public Broadcasting’s excellent coverage of the ongoing armed occupation of a federal building.

BJ Leiderman And His White-Whale Album

In a sane world, it wouldn’t take a whole show to explain how music rights work for broadcasters. But alas, we require the services of Leah Garaas, digital producer for The Current, Minnesota Public Radio’s Triple A music station. On this week’s episode, a primer on music rights for everyone from station program directors to independent podcasters. 

Also, Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal live-tweets a Republican debate and tells a presidential candidate to “shut up.” Kosher for a journalist? Our host Adam Ragusea thinks so, but others disagree.

A Primer on Music Rights with Leah Garaas

Kai Ryssdal vs. Marco Rubio on Twitter

If you’ve ever heard some digital slurp, bloop or BOOM in a radio story and thought “How’d they make that?”, listen to this episode of The Pub to find out. Sound designers Jonathan Mitchell of Radiotopia’s audio fiction podcast The Truth and Alex Overington of New York Public Radio/Q2 Music’s Meet the Composer podcast open up their laptops and demonstrate how they create the kind of digital effects that pervade today’s high-touch audio storytelling.

Also on the show:

- An analysis and a defense of WBAA’s decision (since reversed) to drop This American Life from its schedule.
- WNYC Vice President of On-Demand Content Paula Szuchman previews WNYC’s upcoming women’s podcast festival “Werk It.”
- Audience members play a game called “Auto-Tune the Radio” in which they have to identify famous public radio voices that have been amusingly altered.

Sound Design with The Truth's Jonathan Mitchell and Meet The Composer's Alex Overington

On this week’s episode, recorded live at the Public Radio News Directors Inc. conference in St. Louis, two editors play a game we call: Betcha Can’t Fix This Script!

Also, NPR Collaborative Coverage Senior Editor Bruce Auster discusses the impending editor shortage in public media and ways that the system could help foster the next generation of editors.

Plus, host Adam Ragusea considers whether public radio is really experiencing an “existential crisis,” as proclaimed recently by The Wall Street Journal.

WSJ Declares An 'Existential Crisis' In Public Radio

Live Mix Examples

Jon Kalish documentary on Tom Lopez

Why has no one ever heard of Don Voegeli? He composed one of the most famous and enduring pieces of theme music ever written — the dignified fanfare that has played at the top of NPR’s “All Things Considered” every evening for four decades. It’s one of hundreds of pieces Voegeli composed for the early days of public radio.

Unlike “Morning Edition” theme composer BJ Leiderman, who negotiated a perpetual on-air credit for his work, Voegeli never asked for credit. He didn’t even ask for money. As a music professor at the University of Wisconsin and longtime employee of WHA (later Wisconsin Public Radio), Voegeli saw the music he contributed as simply an extension of his regular public service mission.

Don Voegeli died in 2009, but now his son Jim is hoping to remind the world just how talented, prolific and widely heard a composer his father was.

Jim has just completed assembling the four-CD collection Beautiful and Lovely: The Music of Don Voegeli. It includes many variations of the “ATC” theme, along with dozens of other early public radio themes, film scores, concert music and commercial jingles heard nationwide.

On this week’s episode of “The Pub,” Jim plays his favorite pieces from the collection and talks about his father’s remarkable and occasionally tragic life.

Also, in the Opening Shot, I talk about Ira Glass’ misnomer faux pas at PRPD, the BBC show “Sarah and Duck” and its amazing theme song, the resignation of BBC radio chief Helen Boaden, and the cancellation of Gimlet’s widely praised Mystery Show.

Jim Voegeli on Life and Music of His Father, Don

Opening Shot: Ira at PRPD, “Sarah and Duck” Theme Song, Etc.

Intro: Who Is Don Voegeli?

NPR put out a crowing press release this week, headlined “NPR Sees Large Ratings Increase,” that I think made a complicated and perhaps unknowable situation seem a lot simpler — and perhaps a little rosier — than it really is. On this week’s episode of "The Pub," I invite NPR audience development chief Israel Smith and researcher Susan Leland to really flesh out the numbers and speculate about what’s driving them.

Also, in the Opening Shot, I talk about the abortive prosecution of Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman and whether the First Amendment really does grant special rights to journalists (short answer: no).

Opening Shot: Reporters Don't Have Special Rights

When normal people quit their jobs in dramatic fashion, they flip tables, spit in the soup and storm out the door. Public radio people write earnest Medium posts.

That’s what Steve Henn did a year ago when he quit his job covering Silicon Valley for NPR; he wrote about his concern that public radio “may not get its act together to make the jump into the digital age,” adding, “I want to help.”

If Henn is right, help has arrived in the form of 60 dB, the app he’s created with his partners — two former Netflix guys. It resembles NPR One, in that it serves up a curated stream of spoken audio in response to user preferences and behavior, but it differs most significantly in that it focuses on short-form pieces.

60 dB also draws from a much wider pool of content, some of which sounds decidedly un-pubradio.

“I think there’s an appetite for intelligent conversations and reporting on a variety of topics that don’t just appeal to the core NPR audience,” Henn says on this week’s episode of The Pub.

Also on the show, host Adam Ragusea offers a review of what he thinks are the three best new services for recording high-quality audio interviews over the internet. None of them is, by itself, the answer we’ve all been waiting for. But ipDTL, Zencastr and Ringr each have their uses.

Opening Shot: The Best Way to Record Remote Interviews

Intro: What the Hell Does 60 dB Mean?

Josh Nielsen Explains Why Zencastr Records Both A WAV And MP3 Of Each Side

Ben Harrison Via Zencastr's VOIP Connection, Then Via WAV Delivered By Zencastr

Tim Sinclair Via Ringr's VOIP Connection, Then Via WAV Delivered By Ringr

Public media has an obsession lately with a certain word. As Only A Game senior producer Karen Given observes in this week’s episode of The Pub, “Just say the word ‘narrative’ and program directors and editors suddenly start paying attention. Everyone wants narrative. But what the f*** is it? I mean, we all use the word, but what does it even mean?”

Raise your hand if you’ve ever had the same question. All of the hottest shows — in particular those like This American Life and Snap Judgment that seem to transfer especially well from public radio to the podcasting market — feature what is often called “narrative storytelling.” And yet most people, when pressed, probably couldn’t explain the difference between “narrative storytelling” and any other method by which reporters and producers craft stories.

On this week’s episode, Given consults with TAL producer Sean Cole, among other sources, and finally comes up with a satisfying definition of “narrative,” though her journey there is surprisingly perilous and she is forever transformed by an experience that also hints at universal themes about life. (Am I doing narrative right?)

Also on the show, Niala Boodhoo celebrates the first anniversary of her new daily talk show, Illinois Public Media’s The 21st, and she shares her philosophy on how to make an interesting, inclusive local talk show in the 21st century (yes, that’s partly where the name comes from).

Opening Shot: Only a Game's Karen Given Figures Out What the #$%^ Narrative Is

KCRW legend Ruth Seymour talks about her wish for a public radio breaking news system, the creation of "This American Life," and her secrets to doing a lot with very little.

Ruth Seymour on KCRW's days as a scrappy innovator

Terry Gross Doesn't Want a World of Just Podcasts

Opening Shot: To Raise the Bar, or to Fill the Gaps?

A Conversation with Terry Gross About Public Media and Everything Else

It was only a matter of time before public media had its own #MeToo moment. And it’s had more than one over the past six months, with hosts and senior leaders changing roles or no longer in their jobs following a range of accusations about harassment, bullying and inappropriate workplace behavior.

Such allegations have a particular sting for public media’s listeners and employees. Newsrooms that hold public officials and other organizations to account for such behavior seem to be unable to effectively deal with the problem in their own shops. And even as they respond, some staffers say they’re too late.

On this episode of The Pub, we look inside what one writer described as a culture of bullying and exploitation at WNYC in New York City. Boris Kachka’s article about the station was published by New York magazine.

Kachka told me the station “was almost a punchline” as he spoke with WNYC staffers. “It was like, ‘I’ve never seen a worse culture than this, and I’ve worked at’ name-your-horrible-big-media-conglomerate.”

Please subscribe to The Pub in iTunes or your favorite podcast app and leave us a rating and a comment! That will help boost our search results and allow people to find the show more easily.

We welcome your feedback on the show: You can reach me on Twitter; Current’s digital editor, Mike Janssen, is at mike@current.org; and you can contact Current generally at news@current.org or on Twitter.

If you’d like to offer a comment to be used in the program, please send on-mic tape (recorded in a studio, with a kit, a smartphone, anything) to annie@current.org either as an attachment or through Google Drive. Please keep it short!

What's next for WNYC?

NPR freelancers Jeff Lunden and Naomi Lewin sing a tribute to retiring Arts Desk Editor Tom Cole to the tune of "Mame."

Tom Cole Tribute

Current provides news and commentary for and about the world of public media. You'll mostly find our weekly podcast, "The Pub," here.

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