“NEXT GENERATION RADIO” TELLS STUDENT STORYTELLERS “THINK AUDIENCE”

NPR's Next Generation Radio [link] says 2017 was one of its best years ever. In a report to stakeholders, Next Generation founder and Director Doug Mitchell said the project trained and mentored 57 rising journalists between January and October this year.

Next Generation, a partnership including NPR member stations and US colleges and universities, is a digital first, multimedia project targeting college students and early-career professionals who are interested in in-depth journalism and storytelling. Each student is paired with a mentor for an intensive, on-location "boot-camp."

NPR's Next Generation Radio Class of 2017 • Doug Mitchell on the right

According to Mitchell, each participant is given an assignment to find one person with a great story to tell. The participants then design the approach to the story, do research, conduct interviews and produce the feature.

Each student-mentor team is advised to think “audience first.” This is an important part of the training because Next Generation wants graduates of the program to do relevant and substatial work. Each team must answer questions like “who cares” and “why should people care” before finishing the piece.

Next Generation Radio has had a big impact on public media because it is an incubator for new journalists with diverse backgrounds. Among the graduates are:

• Audie Cornish, Co-Host of All Things Considered;

• Nicole Beemsterboer, Senior Producer for NPR’s Investigation Unit;

• Celeste Headlee, Host and Executive Producer for Georgia Public’s daily news and interview program On Second Thought;

• Lee Hill, Senior Digital, Editor at WNYC;

• Phyllis Fletcher, Managing Editor at Northwest News Network in Seattle;  

• Nancy DeVille, Network Producer for Youth Radio in Oakland; and,

• Ericka Cruz Guevarra, Breaking News Reporter at KOPB, Portland

Doug Mitchell founded Next Generation Radio in association with NPR in 2000. He explains the project in this YouTube video:

According to Mitchell, in 2018 Next Generation Radio is planning on working with these partners:

University of Houston/Houston Public Media (January 8-12)

University of Southern California (March 12-16)

Georgia Public Broadcasting (May 7-11)

University of Nevada, Reno (June 4-8)

WHYY Philadelphia, PA (June 25-29)

KUOW Seattle (Early Career) July 16-20

Oklahoma City/KOSU (July 30-Aug 3)

KUT Austin, TX (Aug 13-17)

Capital Public Radio Sacramento, CA (Oct 15-19)

To apply, go to http://nextgenerationradio.org/apply/

In his report, Mitchell says the bottom line is:

"What we do is reinforce what they've wanted to do, or, open their eyes to what they could do."

THE DAILY ZOOMS UP THE PODCAST CHART

The New York Times weekday podcast The Daily [link] continues to gain new listeners. Hosted by Michael Barbaro, The Daily says of itself: This is how the news should sound. As a frequent listener, I agree.

According to the October Podtrac chart (on the left), The Daily is now the #2 podcast in the US. Last month The Daily was #5 and in July it was #10.

Also gaining ground were NPR’s Up First and How I Built This. iHeartMedia’s Trending Songs/Pop, a weekly countdown show [link], made its debut on the Podtrac chart.