Webinars
PRNDI/IMA WEBINAR SERIES

Five Monthly Webinars: January through April on the last Thursday of each month



These NewsOnline sessions were developed
in partnership with the Integrated Media Association
and organized by Mark Fuerst,
Director of Public Media Metrics 





Each webinar will require a separate registration.
This will link you to the webinar sign up page at GoToWebinar.com.




PREPARING FOR THE NEXT TWENTY YEARS

Our listeners are using new media. We know that.

Everyday thousands of public radio listeners tune stream news programs. Thousands of others will read a news story from NPR.org on their IPhone, Others will search for a story in a station online audio archive or sign up to receive the podcast of an upcoming show. These are some of the elements of multi-platform news. Every news director is familiar with the elements, but few of us feel fully prepared to manage--and to build a future franchise--on these diverse forms of content creation and service delivery.

Over the next six months, the Public Radiio News Directors (PRNDI) with support from the Integrated Media Association, will provide public radio news professionals with a series of training and information webinars about new media news.

  • The webinars will discuss case studies of how existing stations--much like yours--are investing in, staffing for and delivering news online.  And we'll look at the results of their work: how many people are they reaching?  How often?

  • In the third segment we will take up the critical issue of local/national news integration.  Very few stations would succeed as a news outlet if they did not present a substantial schedule of national and international news programs.  Do we think it would be different online?  Currently, the models seem to be suggesting that the best online service approach is "aligning your on line and off line services."  For most stations, that means increasing their presentation of NPR, PRI and APM news online

  • In the final segment of the webinar series, in April, we will provide some four training sessions in important new media techniques, with the content of those sessions to be chosen by the webinar participants in the early stages of the series.


THE CONTENT AND SCHEDULE

Session 1: What do we know about News Online today?
Thursday, January 28

We begin with an overview of “news online” with emphasis on end-user behavior and attitudes: how are people using online news? What are they looking for? Paul Jacobs, General Manager of Jacobs Media, will present some news-related insights drawn from the 25,000 respondents to the 2009 Public Radio Tech Poll, conducted last fall for IMA and PRPD. This session will also provide three 10-minute case studies, providing an initial look at how three leading stations are investing in, producing and distributing new media news content.

Session 2: Content Management, Staffing, Newsroom Organization
Thursday, February 25

In our second session, we will probe more deeply into the organizational design, software and hardware technology, and staffing issues that all of us will be facing as we move from audio to multi-format production. The second session will look in more detail at the investments and the skills required for efficient workflow in the contemporary newsroom.

Session 3: Leveraging the Power of National News
Thursday, March 25

How can stations efficiently and effectively expand the NPR franchise online? In this session, we will devote the entire session to examining how staff from WBUR and NPR re-designed WBUR’s website—and transformed it from a “companion website (for a radio station)” into a news destination with a high level of both local and national content.

Session 4: Expanding Local News Capacity
Thursday, April 29 and Friday, April 30

In April, we will provide two webinars devoted skill-set development. These sessions will be shaped around the needs of webinar participants. We expect that the sessions will time allocated to use of photos, working with bloggers, turning audio into text and other techniques that are central to bringing public radio news online in the coming decade. Note: this last webinar will run for one-hour each day over two days. The last session will look to present training in 4 contemporary news techniques.


HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?

The webinars are free to all PRNDI members.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Call Mark Fuerst at 845-876-2577, write to publicmedianews@gmail.com, or contact PRNDI Training Director George Bodarky at 718-817-5561/gbodarky@wfuv.org.