CPB BACKS KCUR’S “KANSAS NEWS SERVICE” WITH $500K GRANT • "THE DAILY" KEEPS RISING ON TOP PODCAST CHART

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) continues to invest in public broadcasting’s local news infrastructure and content creation. News is working for public radio news stations.  Some public news/talk stations have increased their number of weekly cumulative listeners by double-digit amounts in the past three years. Increases in listeners typically means increases station memberships.

CPB is providing approximately $500,000 to KCUR to expand Topeka-based Kansas News Service (KNS). 

The grant is part of $3.3 million CPB has pledged this year to create or improve five Regional Journalism Centers (RJC).

Locations of stations mentioned in this story circled in red

KNS was launched by KCUR in February 2017 with the support of local and regional foundations. 

Participating stations in KNS, in addition to KCUR, are KMUW, Wichita; KANU, Lawrence; and High Plains Public Radio, a regional network serving rural counties, based in Garden City.  

One Kansas CPB-qualified station, KPRS in Pittsburg located in the south-east corner of Kansas, is currently not part of collaborative. Donna Vestal, Director of Content Strategy at KCUR, says KRPS is welcome to join the other stations:

Donna Vestal

“We are certainly encouraging KRPS to be fully involved with the RJC collaboration. All of the content is being made available to them, and we will be discussing ways to share their work.”

Some of the staff for KNS is already in place. The Managing Director is Jim McLean, based at KNS headquarters in Topeka. The Editor is Amy Jeffries, based in Kansas City.

Vestall anticipates that KNS will be adding new reporters and producers in coming months, including a new digital producer at KCUR, an environmental reporter at KMUW and reporter specializing in agriculture and other rural issue sat High Plains.

Vestall added about the new RJC:

"We're incredibly proud of how the Kansas public media stations are working together. And we have a lot of work to do serving all the communities across the state."

THE DAILY RISES TO FIFTH ON AUGUST TOP PODCASTS CHART

The New York Times daily Monday through Friday podcast The Daily continues to move up on Podtrac’s chart of the top ten podcasts. The roughly 20-minute program hosted by Michael Barbaro is number five on the August Podtrac chart, up from 10^th in July and 12^th in April.

We reviewed The Daily on May 3, 2017. [link]

If you haven’t heard The Daily I urge you to check it out [link]. Each edition contains a long-form story done in ATC-style plus a brief look at headlines for other current stories. The Daily contains lots of first-hand reporting. It is a nice companion to the Times written reporting and seems to be growing in popularity.

As readers of this blog know, I like what Podtrac is doing but I object to the fact that they fail to provide analytic data on their Top Podcast Rankings. Podtrac does provide the supporting numbers for their other monthly chart that shows the top podcast publishers. 

Velvet Beard

I contacted Velvet Beard of Podtrac and asked why they reveal ranking data for one chart but not for the other. She kindly replied:

“We publish free audience numbers at the publisher level but do not make those publicly available at the show level. That is a product decision we have made.”

In other words, the information is embargoed because it is proprietary. I urge Podtrac to reconsider this decision because it hurts the company’s credibility. Without metrics, the list seems more like an impressionistic painting than a scoreboard. Podtrac has the data, so please be more transparent.