News Cut: March 13, 2013 Archive

What makes public radio cool?

Posted at 11:01 AM on March 13, 2013 by Bob Collins (14 Comments)
Filed under: Media

It's no secret that public radio audiences tend to be older folk. Not every market has a Current to bring the demographics back toward the middle.

Now, the New York Times reports, NPR chose South By Southwest to unveil a new initiative to make public radio... cool.

Curiously, it took two years for its champion to sell it to the bosses, the newspaper reports.

After about two years of pitching -- "I had to 'sell' it inside NPR," she said -- Ms. Deabler won the financial and logistical backing of the chief executive of the organization, Gary Knell, and his colleagues. Ms. Deabler calls it "a conscious movement to connect NPR with younger audiences and connect these fans to one another."

By "younger," she means listeners under 30, though she is happy to sign up people closer to her own age as well. (She gave her age as "Generation X.") The age of the typical NPR listener falls somewhere between that of the network personalities Peter Sagal, 48, and Carl Kassel, 78; a 2009 study of public radio found that the median age for an NPR News listener was 52, up from 47 in 1999. The median age for a classical radio listener was 65, up from 58. For NPR's Web site, the median age is lower. And for podcasts, it's lower still -- about 36.

And so now, there's a Generation Listen twitter account, on which young people seem to be professing their love of NPR. And a Facebook page with 155 "likes" so far. That's not a lot.

A kiss is (almost) just a kiss

Posted at 3:16 PM on March 13, 2013 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Media

Colorado's legislature yesterday approved civil unions for same-sex couples and the cover of the Denver Post carried a picture that might've been shocking a few years ago.

But of the 247 comments attached to the online article, only two brought up a gay couple kissing on the front page.

But there must have been more phone calls because the director of newsroom operations at the newspaper this afternoon posted an explanation to readers:

One of the missions as journalists is to take our readers where they can't go, and the speaker's office is definitely one of those places. Ferrandino, who is gay, has been fighting to get this bill passed for at least the last three years, and he spoke eloquently on the subject while the bill was being debated. So it made sense to get his perspective.

Walker captured what photographers and photo editors will describe as a "moment," when a picture shows in a single image the essence of the story. As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.

From left, Reps. Paul Rosenthal, D-Denver, Joann Ginal, D-Fort Collins, and Dominick Moreno, D-Commerce City, hold hands Tuesday while listening to comments before a vote on a civil unions bill, which passed. The three lawmakers are gay.

"Ferrandino has been a central part of the entire civil unions debate, for years," Lyons said. "His inclusion feels like the ending to this story, and it would have been remiss to not have him as part of the report."

At least online, more people seemed interested in knowing the story behind the baby bottle. It belongs to the couple's foster child.

(h/t: Romenesko)