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Mike Pesca, Andrea Silenzi and Andy Bowers Discuss The Gist with Adam Ragusea

Adam Ragusea Talks Audio Levels With Dylan Keefe And Rob Byers

The Pub, Episode 1: Jian Ghomeshi, Drinking Games, Local News with Legs

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

Host Adam Ragusea goes in-depth on what exactly vocal fry even is, talks with NPR veteran Jacki Lyden about her new micro-news organization reporting on fashion, and hears from West Virginia Public Broadcasting CEO Scott Finn about five things that public media can learn from commercial media.

The Pub, Episode 5: Vocal fry redux, Jacki Lyden on fashion, and lessons from commercial media

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

"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

Martha Little is only a couple months into her new job in commercial media, as senior producer for original content development at Audible. But she previously worked everywhere in public radio — Marketplace, NPR, WNYC, WBUR, America Abroad — and she has a recommendation for her old field.

Public media workplaces work better when they are “feminized,” she says, meaning when workplaces are flatter and more collaborative, rather than being lorded over by an exalted boss, the conventional model she describes as more “masculine” (acknowledging that such gendered terms are merely a convenient shorthand).

Also on the show this week:

• Brooke Gladstone from WNYC’s On the Media helps me answer your random public media questions, including: Is it better to financially support your local station or the specific organizations that produce the shows you like?
• With the help of an excellent package of stories by Current’s Ben Mook about executive compensation, I argue that big-time public media leaders make too much money. Not way too much money, but too much.

Public media execs make too much

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Ben Harrison Via IpDTL

Ben Harrison On His IPhone Via Ringr

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

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

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

This episode of "Made Possible By..." brings together Ross Terrell and Jack Mitchell. Terrell is a reporter/producer at Public Broadcasting Atlanta. Mitchell was the first employee of NPR and the first producer of All Things Considered. He later worked as director of Wisconsin Public Radio and as a professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has also written about the history of NPR and public broadcasting.

The producer who made Susan Stamberg the first woman to anchor a nightly news broadcast in the U.S. gives some advice to those starting out in public media. “Do not take everything as gospel," Mitchell says. "Just because we’ve always done it this way doesn’t mean you can’t try something a little different.”

Please subscribe to Made Possible By… 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. Made Possible By… is also available on NPR One.

We welcome your feedback on the show: You can reach us at news@current.org or on Twitter at @currentpubmedia.

NPR Founder Jack Mitchell

Terry Gross Doesn't Want a World of Just Podcasts

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

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.

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!

Winners of Public Radio Cake Week Describe Their Winning Desserts

What do you do when the show you are hosting comes to an end? To find out, I talked this week with Lauren Ober, the former host of WAMU’s The Big Listen.

The Washington, D.C., station announced in March that it would end “the broadcast about podcasts” after two years because it wasn’t picked up by enough stations. Ober just wrapped up the show in May. We talked about what she gained from the experience, how she’s using her newfound free time and what she’s planning next.

I wanted to talk to Ober about her show ending because this show is ending. Current announced this week that it is ending production of The Pub. The podcast didn’t draw enough underwriting support to cover costs. And if you work in public media, you know that making something good takes resources and time.

Though this is the last episode of The Pub, Current may well get back into the podcasting game in the future if we can cover the costs. We welcome your ideas and proposals, so don’t be a stranger. Get in touch with Digital Editor Mike Janssen at mike@current.org.

And if you want to keep in touch with me, I’m on Twitter, and you can still find me at my desk at WBEZ in Chicago. Many thanks to our fans for your support and listening over the years.

As we sign off, lessons from someone who's been there

WBUR Third Love podcast ad

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

"If you're stir-crazy..."

"If social distance..."

"Our Show" — Tasmania

"Our Show" — Amsterdam

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

Radio debut of "Alice's Restaurant"

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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