Public stations get $10M for local news

WXXI to lead initiative Upstate

By The Associated Press
Posted: 5:28 pm Thu, March 25, 2010

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Public radio and TV stations across the country will receive more than $10 million over the next two years to boost local news coverage as newspapers decline.

On Thursday, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced the creation of local journalism centers in five regions. NPR and PBS stations in each region will collaborate on covering key issues, including immigration, agribusiness, the economy and health care. They jointly will hire about 50 multimedia journalists.

WXXI Public Broadcasting was selected to lead the initiative Upstate, and plans to provide reports on innovative technology and its role in rebuilding Upstate New York’s economy.

WXXI, along with Buffalo’s WNED, Oswego and Syracuse’s WRVO, Binghamton’s WSKG and Albany’s WMHT will partner to create the center and together will hire five additional reporters, one at each station.  The grant also will fund an editor and a managing facilitator at WXXI to coordinate feature reports and news spots, as well as an interactive web portal.

“We are extremely pleased that WXXI and our neighboring … stations were selected to participate in this CPB initiative,” WXXI President Norm Silverstein said in a statement. “Our news center will allow us to pool resources with our partners to provide more extensive multi-media news to the communities we serve about innovative technology and efforts to rebuild the Upstate economy.”

The Upstate center will focus on “The Innovation Trail,” employing multi-media reporting to aid the public’s understanding of the impact of investment in research and technology projects throughout the region, the ways in which universities and medical centers are creating opportunities in emerging technologies and other industry efforts to transition from a manufacturing to a knowledge-based economy.

“This is a commitment to journalism,” CPR President and CEO Patricia Harrison said. “As we look at this environment and the impact on newspapers, we just felt we had to … try something innovative and ensure that we hired real journalists as part of this initiative.”

Experienced journalists let go by shrinking newsrooms could provide a pool of applicants, she said.

The funding also initially targets the Southwest, the Plains states, the upper Midwest and central Florida, and Harrison said she hopes to expand the effort.

Stations were selected on the basis of a business plan that included an outline for becoming self-sustaining within two years.

“The idea of pulling together radio and television for content that is broadcast and online … is going to be our template going forward,” Harrison said.

The new regional news desks could feed content to national news shows on PBS and NPR, as well as to local stations, officials said.

CPR — already the single largest source of funding for NPR and PBS — will provide $7.5 million of the investment for the project, while the stations involved contribute $3 million.

The local news effort must be self-sustaining within two years, Harrison said.

“If it’s of value to the community, there’s potential to get foundation support or individual support,” she said, “even in this troublesome economy.”