Radio Waves

The International Center for Journalists and Public Radio Exchange are teaming up on an initiative to share and rebroadcast stories across borders via a new Web-based service.

Participants in the two-year program, which is being funded by the McCormick Foundation, will start out in Washington, D.C., where they will take reporting field trips, interview policy-makers and experts (including Federal Communications Commission staff) and attend a Sept. 17 panel discussion at the National Press Club on whether the Obama administration's stimulus package is expanding broadband access for minority communities.

ICFJ trainers will then visit participating radio stations in the United States and Latin America to provide hands-on training focusing on radio-news production, improving Web content and using the digital platform developed with PRX, aimed at improving the stations' ability to produce and stream digital audio through the Internet.

Radio Joint Audience Research released the fourth installment of its MIDAS survey on online radio in the United Kingdom, finding that the total of regular online listeners jumped 35% during the past six months, to 3.9 million from 2.9 million in October 2008, paidContent:UK reported.

RAJAR found that 7.8 million people in the United Kingdom have downloaded podcasts, up from 7.2 million in October 2008 and 6 million earlier in 2008. But the radio-audience-measurement group also found that only 4.2 million people listen to podcasts at least once per week and only 28% find the time to listen to them. In addition, only 4.5% of its 1,153 respondents paid for podcasts.

Jess Todtfeld and TJ Walker are currently in the process of breaking the Guinness World Record for most radio interviews in a 24-hour period.

But they're not just keeping it on the radio — the entire 24-hours are being live streamed on FoxNews.com.

Todtfeld, a former Fox News producer, and Walker are promoting their book, "Secret to Foolproof Presentations," and appear to have broken the record already. The record stood at 72 before they began today at 6amET, and the duo have done more than 80 as of 6pmET today.

They'll continue throughout the evening and into the morning, and the live stream continues as well.

WebNewser has obtained a memo sent from National Public Radio SVP of News Ellen Weiss about some leadership changes as public radio continues to change with the times including an audience that continues to fractionalize. NPR went through a re-org after about 18 months ago and, writes Weiss, "Since that time it has become even clearer to me that we must deepen the integration of our newsroom, establish better and faster communication between units in News and others in the organization, and foster even more ambitious, distinctive storytelling and enterprise reporting every day on our shows and online."

Dick Meyer, Editorial Director of NPR Digital, will now oversee newsgathering across all platforms. Meyer joined NPR from CBSNews.com a year ago and had been at CBS News Radio and TV for 14 years before that. This means NPR is now looking for a Managing Editor of Digital News.

The entire memo, including other changes, after the jump...

continued...

Today on the mediabistro.com Morning Media Menu, we're joined by Fanscape CEO Larry Weintraub.

Fanscape is a "digital engagement marketing agency," and expanding the world of marketing into new media possibilities. He will also be appearing at the Mediabistro Circus, June 2-3.

"It's been years of us trying to educate brands about, 'you need to get in this'," he says of the new media marketing landscape. "And yes, people are going to say bad things but if you don't get a handle on that conversation, participate in the conversation, they're just going to say bad things, and you're not going to have any say about it."

Also discussed: Twitter's "headline" status, how Hulu is "disproving the theory of the YouTube culture" and how the economy has affected the way he does business.

You can listen to all the past podcasts at BlogTalkRadio.com/mediabistro and call in at 646-929-0321. Tomorrow on the Menu: IFC Media Project host Gideon Yago.

Click here to receive mediabistro.com's Daily Newsfeed via email.

More of Beet.TV's interview with former NYTimes.com chief Vivian Schiller, who now heads up NPR. Interestingly, The radio chief doesn't see a lot of opportunity for original video production from non-TV media.

BeetTV's Andy Plesser talks with the new-ish CEO of National Public Radio Vivian Schiller who weighs-in on the free vs. paid content model for newspapers. "I'm not very bullish on people paying for news content," the former head of the NYTimes.com says. "I'm guilty of being the person that lead the effort of ending Times Select [NYTimes.com's paid service]," says Schiller. More below:

• Related: Today's mediabistro.com "So What Do You Do?" also features the NPR boss...

ABC News' Rick Klein joined us today on the mediabistro.com Morning Media Menu podcast. Klein is heavily involved in many of the new media aspects at the traditional media outlet of ABC News, and he's discuss the "New Tools of the Trade" at the TVNewser Summit (March 10, NYC).

This is a time of grand experimentation in journalism," he said. "This is something I tell up and coming journalists all the time. This is an exciting time to be a journalist, despite all the financial problems, because we're trying a lot of new things. There are only a couple times in the history of the business where you get to play around, experiment."

He also talked about how Twitter and other new media is affecting the traditional way of reporting. "In my mind it doesn't replace the longer form of journalism and the more comprehensive reporting, but as a supplement, a compliment, I think it's fantastic," said Klein.

Also discussed: Klein's take on the state of the newspaper industry, why the World News Webcast is successful at ABC and how Twitter helped him book a guest.

You can listen to the podcast live at 9amET on BlogTalkRadio.com/mediabistro and call in at 646-929-0321. On tomorrow's "Menu": Tammy Haddad joins us.

Click here to receive mediabistro.com's Daily Newsfeed via email.

Today on the mediabistro.com Morning Media Menu podcast we're joined by the two hosts of the "Rotten Tomatoes Show" on Current TV (premieres Thursday at 10:30pmET).

The show, hosted by Brett Erlich and Ellen Fox, will incorporate user interaction and rely heavily on a Web component in addition to the TV program. Check out more information here.

"People now have a way, when they're evaluating something, of taking a bunch of different people's opinions and using it to determine whether they want to buy the thing or not," said Fox. "It is more fun getting people's web cam reviews and seeing them excited or bashing a movie...versus the same two white guy critics mouldering up there in the fake balcony." Said Erlich: "But don't worry, I am a white guy and I will be mouldering."

Also discussed: three word movie reviews (can be submitted here), the Oscars and Blago's upcoming book.

Click continued to see a video preview...

You can listen to the podcast live at 9amET on BlogTalkRadio.com/mediabistro and call in at 646-929-0321. On tomorrow's "Menu": Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC's Morning Joe.

Click here to receive mediabistro.com's Daily Newsfeed via email.

continued...

Former CNN correspondent (and host of an upcoming PBS documentary) Miles O'Brien was a guest this morning on the mediabistro.com Morning Media Menu podcast.

He talked about the reaction to his much read blog post about the Buffalo plane crash — writing what he normally would have been talking about on CNN. "I was pretty bowled over by the response...People are thirsty for information from sources they feel they can trust," he said. "And they will seek you out. And in the blog world you do get linked and re-linked and bounced around that echo chamber in ways that are extremely effective."

He also gives his take on an effective money-making play by the print world — what he dubs a "freelance virtual newspaper." "The truth is when you take away the overhead that's associated with newspapers and for that matter running an organization like CNN, you can run a pretty lean operation online," he said.

You can listen to the podcast live every morning at 9amET on BlogTalkRadio.com/mediabistro and call in at 646-929-0321. Coming up next week we have guests from CBS, Current TV and more. Stay tuned...

Click here to receive mediabistro.com's Daily Newsfeed via email.