MICHIGAN RADIO SELECTED AS “REPORT FOR AMERICA” HOST NEWSROOM • PPM RATINGS FOR DETROIT, NYC, LA & CHICAGO

Michigan Radio has been selected as a host newsroom by Report for America (RFA), an initiative that supports and trains a new generation of journalists.

RFA [link] is sponsored by The GroundTruth Project [link]. GroundTruth is an independent, non-partisan organization that brings together veteran journalists and social entrepreneurs to save journalism.

Based at WGBH in Boston, GroundTruth supports the work of print, online, public television and public radio journalists. RFA is a national service program that places emerging journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. RFA says they will support 250 emerging journalists and 164 host news organizations during the coming year.

According to IRS 990 filings, during the calendar year 2018, GroundTruth received over $6.4 million in revenue. Major contributions came from the Knight Foundation, the Facebook Journalism Project, the Joyce Foundation and the Google News Initiative.

Michigan Radio is the only radio news organization in the state that was chosen to be a RFA host newsroom. 

Other Michigan news organizations participating include the Detroit Free Press, Detroit Public Television, the Traverse City Record-Eagle and FlintBeat.com.

As part of RFA, Michigan Radio will hire a new reporter who will focus on coverage of mental health care in Michigan. 

Applications for this and other available RFA positions are being accepted now until Jan. 31 at reportforamerica.org.

In the November Nielsen Audio PPM ratings, WUOM in Ann Arbor, Michigan Radio’s flagship station, was heard by almost 200,000 estimated weekly listeners in the Detroit metro. 

Michigan Radio’s repeater stations in Grand Rapids and Flint typically reach 250,000 t0 300,000 weekly listeners in at least four Nielsen Diary markets.

In New York City four public radio stations had the largest number of estimated weekly listeners since the summer. 

WNYC-FM, WNYC-AM, WFUV and WBGO were all up.

WFUV and WBGO were both up in AQH share.

Pacifica’s WBAI was a no-show again in November.

KCRW increased both its AQH share and estimated weekly listeners.

KCSN 88.5 FM had Los Angles’ biggest gain in weekly listeners.

KKJZ lost ground in AQH share but increased their estimated weekly listeners in November compared to October.

KPFK continues to lag behind all other noncom stations.

In Chicago WBEZ is on a roll, steadily increasing their AQH share and weekly listeners. We don’t have access to hour-by-hour data, so we hope WBEZ’s gains were due to the new midday talk and interview show Reset with Jenn White.

If you haven’t seen WBEZ’s website, check it out [link]. We give it an A+ for its ease of navigation, nice type style and news takeaways.