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Mayday!

We've been served a virtual eviction notice by our blog service provider. After May 1, they will no longer automatically transfer our postings (including the Listening Post blog, the In Box news blog, and half a dozen others) into the NCPR domain. They have offered alternative accommodations, but we are unhappy with the view, and have decided to make the move to hosting this big chunk of ncpr.org ourselves.

As Ben Franklin (aka Poor Richard) said of moving: "Two removes equals one fire." Blogs are, in theory, portable, like a mobile home. But in practice of course, the wheels are off, two sheds and a deck have been built on, hay bales anchor the roof, and your truck can't haul the load. This week I have been doing the equivalent of pouring the new slab, digging the well and getting utilities run in, but it will be a while before it feels like home again. There are thousands of posts and tens of thousands of comments to unpack. Please excuse the mess.
The perfect mobile home would emulate the turtle. A used NASA space suit perhaps. Tired? Just lie down in a snowbank. Home base could be any AC outlet. Getting to work? Maybe one of those cool jet-packs! But I digess...

One April

April is Poetry Month, and in the sprit of April folly I have accepted the challenge of my monthly poets' group to write a new bit of verse each day during the month. I am an erratic and slothful writer (outside my faithful weekly missives here), but I feel that challenging times like these call for heroic efforts, or at least heroic couplets.

So I have thrown up a blog, One April, to expose my efforts to the universe, in the hope that you may join me there, attaching April poems of your own as comments on my daily offering. Or you can just post cruel jibes and pithy retorts (but only if they are written in some difficult poetic form, such as the villanelle.)

Or you can join the folks (32 so far) who have accepted the 2010 Spring Haiku Challenge, and submitted 17 or so syllables to the collective trove. If you're more poetry consumer than producer, you can tune in Wednesdays at 1 pm for Life Distilled: Four Decades of U.S. Poet Laureates all during April, and of course, to The Writers Almanac, each weekday morning during The Eight O'Clock Hour.

Or you can just wear a black beret, practice ironic disdain, smoke unfiltered cigarettes, and linger over espresso until May Day.

Public Radio is from Mars

I first ran across the public radio business model in Robert Heinlein's 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land. The protagonist, Michael Valentine Smith, was raised by Martians and returned to Earth as a young man. Equipped with a novel understanding of the world and peculiar powers by his alien mentors, he tries to pass on his secrets in a way that would be accepted by his more mundane peers--by founding the Church of All Worlds. Enterprising reporter Ben Caxton (think Brian Mann with notepad and fedora) is briefing Jubal Harshaw, Mike's crusty human mentor (think Daniel Schorr, but with a swank bachelor pad), about doings at the church:

"Then they took the collection. Mike doesn't do even this church style--you know, soft music and dignified ushers. He said nobody would believe this was a church if he didn't take a collection. Then, so help me, they passed collection baskets already loaded with money and Mike told them that this was what the last crowd had given, so help themselves… But if they felt like giving… give. Do one or the other--put something in, or take something out."

While public radio is neither sacred--nor even sacred cow--our business model is in keeping with the spirit. What you take away in this year of listening is what the last crowd of public radio members has given. What you put into the basket now is what the next crowd will help themselves to. World without end.

"Jubal said thoughtfully, 'That pitch, properly given, should result in people giving more…'"

Or so we grok it, my water brothers and sisters. "Waiting will fill." Hopefully by Saturday at noon.

My Tuesday surprise

Everyone has their favorite things that they like about public radio, and with our spring fundraiser starting on Monday, yes--we of want you to be thinking along those lines. Me? I like surprises--something that takes my world view and just kicks it down the road. My latest "driveway moment" came while I was drinking my morning coffee on Tuesday. NPR science correspondent Joe Palca was talking about research into using the unique mix of bacteria we leave behind us wherever we go as a means of identifying people whether they have left their own DNA behind or not.

As a natural-born paranoid, that got my attention. But what really blew my mind was one of those "Everything you know is wrong" experiences. Like most people, I know that we have a lot of bacteria riding along with us. But in his set-up, Joe said, "In fact there are many more bacterial cells in and on our body than human cells." To which his interview subject replied "As far as I'm concerned, the human body is just a large microbial habitat." Yikes! We're outnumbered! This is a whole new way of looking at myself. In addition to public radio web guy, North Country boy, father, husband, and occasional poet, I now had to think of myself as a cruise ship made of meat, with a small crew of human cells catering to the whims of a vast cargo of bacteria as they sailed the Islets of Langerhans.

This led me to look up information about how the ruling majority affected us, discovering that bacteria have a large role in determining what we eat, and whether we are prone to be fat or thin, and other things we thought were under our control, or at least under the control of our own genes. I hadn't had such a good paranoid meltdown in months. Thanks, Joe.
If public radio has blown your mind, let us know in a comment below. And don't forget to drop by online, by phone or by mail, to renew your support for North Country Public Radio.

Dear anonymous

Just as webinars are not quite the same as a face-to-face workshop, online conversations are less satisfying than diner chats and backyard fence conversations. Aside from the lag time between comment and reply, and the absence of facial expression and body language, a lot of people neglect to introduce themselves. That would be you, dear Anonymous. On NCPR blogs and at other visitor comment locations, fully 45% of the conversation is posted by you.

While creating a certain air of mystery has its appeal, and some people have legitimate reason to conceal their identity, I can't believe that nearly half the people who comment need to do so anonymously. Or is it one person typing maniacally through the night? Who can tell if Anon 9:14 pm is the same as Anon 3:27 am"

Why does it matter? Folks who follow the conversation need to be able to tell one voice from another--even if they don't know who it actually belongs to--so they can reply specifically and intelligibly. So please, unless you want to be not only unidentifiable, but indistinguishable from all the other unidentified, don't click "Anonymous" on the comment form. Instead select "Name/URL." Name can be anything you like, from "G" to "greatsatan2012," and the URL (web address) can be nothing--it's optional. Just as with "Anonymous," you don't need to register anywhere or log in to use this option. And for those of you comfortable with using your real name, please do so. I always do; it makes things more friendly.

Almost like being there

I just got off my second Go-to-Meeting webinar of the week--the first as a presenter, the second as an attendee. For those of you who have never had the pleasure, a webinar is a conference held via computer. The presenter's computer screen shows up on everyone's screen, and you call in for the audio on your phone, or use a headset and microphone connected to your computer. You can text in questions, and you can kibbitz with your virtual neighbors via chat. It has, in short, all the disadvantages of in-person business meetings, combined with all the disadvantages of not seeing who you are talking to, and having no doughnuts to pass around the table.

But the upside is substantial, too--you get together with colleagues more often than you would if you had the expense and time committment of travel, plus nobody can tell if you are asleep, in your underwear, neglected to shave, or are playing trash-can basketball with your crumpled up handouts. As a presenter, you hope to keep everyone's attention; as an attendee, you know better.

The gold standard for human interaction is--and will always be, I hope--being in the same room, breathing the same air. To my loss, I am finding that I am scoring less gold--talking more on the phone instead, chatting online, sending email, posting on Facebook, writing on blogs. In a way, it is a step back from the mobility revolution of the 20th Century, when the confluence of cheap high-speed travel and increased leisure time brought out the nomad in people in a way that hadn't been seen since the Neolithic era. This feels more like the 19th Century in some ways, when travel was arduous and expensive. In those days, we sent our words to one another via post, instead of getting together. The lag time is a lot less in modern communication, but it is isolating in the same way, even though I suspect many letters were also written by unshaven people in their underwear. But the literary charm of the writing is no longer as high as it once was, and it is not almost like being there.

Big Web Pow-Wow, part 2

Thanks for weighing in last week about where NCPR should be going in exploring new online platforms and future online strategy. The main takeaways so far from listeners encourage us to go slow, to think more deeply about our real strategic needs, and to not lose sight of our core mission as broadcasters. You can read all the conversation so far at this address:
http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/blogs/brainclouds/2010/02/big-web-pow-wow.html
Last week's post was pretty "top-level" in its approach. I'd like to ask you to weigh in now on some specific areas we are talking about exploring.

First is a new approach to the front page at ncpr.org. We propose to make page one more "newsy." Right now, news is available only in headline form there. We'd like to move the news one click closer--putting at least one story onto page one in full, with photos and direct audio links. We'd like to include more timely content about network programs, rotate new features through the home page more often, and make page one run deeper--including some NPR blogs, as well as NPR and other national features. The numbers driving this decision tell us that the average NCPR visitor is coming to the site only twice a month. A more news-heavy approach, starting at the home page, we hope, will encourage more people to put ncpr.org onto their daily news beat.

Second is a different approach to social media such as Twitter and Facebook. To date, our presence there is primarily driven by feeds that automatically put archive NCPR news and blog content into the social media space. We propose to move the clock ahead a little, giving more info about what's coming up instead of what's gone by. And we hope to use these platforms to engage the audience in story and program incubation, and to build such features as our winter and summer reading lists. And we hope to get more of the NCPR staff engaged with these platforms to post about what's happening in their areas.

Third, we hope to reorganize our approach to the music and arts of the region online, creating a more lively and two-way conversation about local music, regional arts, and cultural life--using new blogs, social media, and listener-submitted media in a more interactive way.

There are more areas where we are looking for change, but these three ought to be plenty for today. Give us your thinking in a comment below.

Big web pow-wow

Sorry for being a day late with the Listening Post this week. Yesterday NCPR had an all-day retreat to have a big think about our future in online media. This is the first time since ncpr.org was launched almost ten years ago that we have all gathered together around these issues. A lot has changed in the intervening years. The most important top-level changes have occured in three areas:

1. The notion of a single web site as a destination toward which the audience is directed is outmoded. An online media operation must now be able to function across multiple sites and platforms--to go to where the audience goes--as well as to bring the audience to where the media operation lives.

2. The notion that an online media operation is one that "talks" while others "listen" is outmoded. People have the expectation of two-way communication and active participation. Instead of being the folks that own the microphone, we are members of a social network comprised of NCPR and "the group formerly known as the audience."

3. The notion that the online media operation creates the content and the audience talks about the content is outmoded. Part of a public service mission online is to put tools in the hands of citizens to create media directly, or to collaborate in the process by which online media is created.

There is a lot of tactical thinking involved in addressing these new realities. We are hoping that Listening Post readers can help us with that thinking. Where do you expect to find an active NCPR presence? What kinds of interaction do you want to have with the NCPR community? What is missing from our service that you think should be within our "wheelhouse?" What are we wasting time on that doesn't well serve the community? What questions are we forgetting to ask? Let us knows what's working or not working for you in what we offer on various platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and mobile devices, as well as at ncpr.org.

More at Big web pow-wow, part 2

Smarting

Being at the epicenter of a lot of news and public affairs programming here at NCPR, and being reasonably well-educated, we tend to think of ourselves as pretty well-informed, pretty--you know--smart. Turns out that a lot of what we think we know ain't necessarily so. A couple of Pew Research news quizzes made the rounds of the station this week, and most of us took a stab at them. On the whole we did pretty well on the political quiz:
http://pewresearch.org/politicalquiz/quiz/index.php
with all handily beating out the average score of 6 correct out of 12 questions.
But once the topic moved beyond our borders into the global quiz:
http://pewglobal.org/quiz/iq/questions/
it was a walk of shame. None of us did better than 50%. I scored 3 correct out of 12, exactly as well as a chimp pushing the buttons at random would do. Not only that, I tied for low score within the station. Now I can only think of myself as the smartest guy in the room if I am alone in a one-seat outhouse. Ouch.
If we're at all representative of an American average in knowledge of how the world sees itself and the US, this can not be a good thing. Policies that are not based on knowledge can only succeed by chance. The odds do not favor it. Take a stab at the quizzes yourself and let us know how you do, and what you think it means.