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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

"Wild Boys"

Bryan Stevenson on "Tell Me More"

"Bone Valley" Co-Host Gilbert King

"Crime Show" Excerpt

Host Adam Ragusea dissects some public media show themes, talks with Current Senior Editor Dru Sefton about the demise of public TV's History Detectives, and interviews an frequently cited expert source about whether such sources should be paid for their contributions to newsgathering.

The Pub, Episode 2: Theme Songs, "History Detectives" and Paying Sources

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

Back in 2012, Jennifer Brandel had the best new idea in local news that anyone has had in a long time. Rather than report the same old stories, ask the audience: What have you always been curious about? Use democratic online tools to pick the best questions, then go out and answer them as best you can.

That was Curious City, a Localore project based at WBEZ in Chicago. It has since been imitated and replicated dozens of times over.

In January, Brandel started Curious Nation, a spin-off company designed to help franchise the Curious City model to other cities. Last week, Curious Nation became Hearken, and with the new name comes a new and broader mission: to help journalists do work that better reflects the information needs and desires of their audience.

Also this week:

- We conclude last week’s investigation into why some national program producers are opting to self-distribute their shows

- WHYY Vice President for News and Civic Dialogue Chris Satullo argues that stations shouldn’t just do journalism — they should support good community journalism, whoever is doing it

The Pub #22: Curious City creator Jennifer Brandel goes national

NPR has joined a lobbying organization that appears to be fighting a proposed increase in royalties to musicians. For singer-songwriter and artist advocate David Lowery (Cracker, Camper Van Beethoven), it’s dismaying to see NPR run with that particular crowd. On The Pub, Lowery makes the case that public radio should get on what he sees as the right side of a matter of social justice.

Also on the show this week:

- Doug Mitchell, founder and director of NPR’s Next Generation Radio training project, says public radio needs more talent developers and scouts, like him.

- Host Adam Ragusea proposes a procedure to ensure honesty in editing.

The Pub #24: Cracker, Camper Van Beethoven frontman says NPR is standing against artists

An airing of the winning Morning Edition promo created by WWNO-FM in New Orleans. Recorded live during the 2015 Public Media Development and Marketing Conference in Washington, D.C. Recorded July 10 by Ben Mook, Current.

WWNO-FM's winning Morning Edition promo clip

"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

When you listen to a public radio station, can you tell immediately whether you’re hearing local or national programming? If yes, that no doubt owes to many factors, but one is NPR’s signature mic sound. It’s bright, it’s clear, it’s crisp, and it cuts over the noisiest of cars/trains/planes or whatever is competing with NPR’s programming for the listeners’ ears.

On this Thanksgiving episode of "The Pub," we reprise a pair of old segments we did about NPR’s secret mic sauce, including an interview with NPR’s chief audio engineer Shawn Fox, who gladly divulged the recipe.

Also, we revisit our conversation with former "Marketplace Money" host Tess Vigeland. Since we spoke, her book about quitting your job with no backup plan has come out, and she’s decided on yet another non-plan: traveling the world for who-knows-how-long.

Why Local Shows Sound Different From NPR

Is there such a thing as excessively authentic pronunciation? If it exists, it has certainly occurred on public radio, where everybody from classical music announcers to news reporters seem to have a little too much fun pronouncing foreign (to them) words and names.

In this holiday encore episode of The Pub, we revisit host Adam Ragusea’s guide to finding the sweet spot between insensitively Anglicized pronunciation and pretentiously exoticized pronunciation.

We also listen back to an interview with veteran public radio host Celeste Headlee about the art of writing pronouncers — rough textual representations of how a word or name should be said.

Plus, we listen again to a talk with political scientist Patrick O’Mahen, who says his research proves countries that spend more money on public broadcasting have better-informed citizens.

Celeste Headlee on How to Write Pronouncers

Authentic Vs. Pretentious Pronunciation

On this week’s episode of "The Pub," longtime public radio host Diane Rehm discusses her impending retirement, her advocacy for physician-assisted suicide, and who might replace her in the host chair. And host Adam Ragusea shares his thoughts on NPR’s recent controversial move to conspicuously brand its hourly newscasts as “live.”

NPR Adds “Live” To Newscast Intro

Live Mix Examples

NPR reporter Sarah McCammon grew up in Kansas City in a conservative evangelical Christian home. She went to private Christian schools and even an evangelical college. Now McCammon covers the Donald Trump campaign for NPR, and if you wondered how she got into a private meeting in June between Trump and evangelical leaders, now you know. Her background has been her superpower out on the Republican campaign trail, where she says she can “speak the language” of evangelical voters.

On this week’s show, McCammon tells the story of how she grew up, how her faith may have changed over time, how she came to journalism and what it’s like on the Trump beat.

Also, New Hampshire Public Radio’s Sam Evans-Brown has the Opening Shot this week, in which he pleads with his fellow environmental reporters to lighten up a little. Evans-Brown hosts NHPR’s new environmental podcast "Outside/In."

NPR Trump Beat Reporter Sarah McCammon

Opening Shot: Sam Evan— Brown Wants Enviro Reporters To Lighten Up

Intro: Tares And Wheat

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?

Trump Meeting

Tares and Wheat

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

Why did McDonald’s heiress Joan Kroc leave more than $200 million of her wealth to NPR and not a cent to PBS? Because no one at PBS returned a phone call. That’s one of the revelations reported by longtime public radio journalist Lisa Napoli in her new book, "Ray & Joan: The Man Who Made the McDonald's Fortune and the Woman Who Gave It All Away."

Also on The Pub this week, we continue our conversation with UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh about whether journalists are at all different from regular people in the eyes of the law, apropos of a prosecutor’s attempt to charge "Democracy Now!" host Amy Goodman in connection to her Dakota Access Pipeline reporting.

Lisa Napoli on Joan Kroc, NPR's Biggest Donor Ever

Intro: It Wasn't McDonald's, It Was Joan

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

Intro: Everyone Wants Narrative, But What the #$%^ Is It?

Half a century after public television made children’s programming one of its core missions, public radio is finally getting into the game with kids’ podcasts like NPR’s "Wow in the World," MPR/KPCC’s "Brains On!" and VPR’s "But Why." Lindsay Patterson, a host and advocate of kids'podcasts, says there remains an enormous amount of room in the market for new children’s shows, and she has practical tips for producers.

Also on this week’s show, the inescapable reason why all opinion journalists, host Adam Ragusea included, end up sucking after a while. And on a related note: The Pub is looking for a new host/producer!

Intro: Kids Love Repitition

If you work in public radio, you might just be on a sugar detox right now. And no, that’s not a comment on the stereotypically healthy diets of public media staffers.

Public radio folks across the country recently took part in the 6th annual Public Radio Cake Week. The tradition started at Vermont Public Radio when several staffers’ birthdays fell around the same time in April. Rather than have one cake to celebrate, the station leaned into the sugar consumption and celebrated with a week of cake. As other member stations learned about the sugar binge, the event took on a competitive quality.

Stations spend all week baking, with each day centered around themes like news story of the year, historic events depicted in cake, “this is not a cake,” station pride and public radio stereotypes. This year a record number of stations participated with cakes that were as visually impressive as they were hilarious and, one can assume, delicious. On this week’s episode of The Pub, we hear from four Cake Week winners about their sweet victories and why they think the event is so special. See their cakes at current.org/thepub!

And there’s no use having a surplus of cake if you have no utensils to eat it with. We hear from staffers at two public media stations who recently found themselves short of forks and spoons at their stations. They took to Twitter to complain and got packages from a little utensil fairy at NPR.

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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!

Winners of Public Radio Cake Week Describe Their Winning Desserts

"Story Princess of the Music Box" — Alice in Wonderland (excerpt)

Arlo Guthrie performing "Alice's Restaurant" live on Bob Fass' "Radio Unnameable" show on WBAI in New York City, 1966 or 1967. Also featuring David Bromberg, Jerry Jeff Walker and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.

Radio debut of "Alice's Restaurant"

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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