What do you do when the show you are hosting comes to an end? To find out, I talked this week with Lauren Ober, the former host of WAMU’s The Big Listen. The Washington, D.C., station announced in March that it would end “the broadcast about po

How states are doling out dollars for public media

Jun 19th, 2018 16m 32s

Ever wonder how much your state spends on public media? Do you know how much it spends per resident? And where does that money go? Current has got you covered with a new, comprehensive guide to state funding. It tracks and explains state fundin

New WFAE podcast focuses on survivor of sexual assault

May 31st, 2018 23m 32s

When Sarah Delia at WFAE in Charlotte, N.C., got the idea for what would become the new investigative podcast "She Says," she wasn’t sure what form the project would take, or even whether the person at the center of the story would be willing t

Balancing daily news demands with the pursuit of in-depth storytelling

May 22nd, 2018 42m 8s

Podcasts are a nearly perfect vehicle for narrative storytelling. The episodic nature, the way each chapter is delivered to the listener’s personal device, the inherent intimacy of audio, advertisers’ interests in reaching a connected audience

Stations show off humor, baking skills in Public Radio Cake Week

Apr 19th, 2018 24m 2s

If you work in public radio, you might just be on a sugar detox right now. And no, that’s not a comment on the stereotypically healthy diets of public media staffers. Public radio folks across the country recently took part in the 6th annual Pu

How pubcasters are teaming up to address Pennsylvania's opioid crisis

Apr 5th, 2018 22m

If a major issue is affecting your community, chances are its impact reaches beyond your town line. That’s especially true of the opioid epidemic in Pennsylvania, where the drug overdose rate is more than twice the national average. Earlier thi

Classical station KMFA's musical 50th-birthday gift to itself

Mar 23rd, 2018 20m 26s

What are public media’s classical stations doing to innovate? For one station, the answer involves a throwback to an earlier broadcasting era. Back in the day, radio and TV stations all had jingles. But thet tradition has fallen out of fashion

What's next for WNYC?

Mar 8th, 2018 21m

It was only a matter of time before public media had its own #MeToo moment. And it’s had more than one over the past six months, with hosts and senior leaders changing roles or no longer in their jobs following a range of accusations about hara

Accuracy matters more than ever — so check your facts

Feb 22nd, 2018 20m 6s

You’ve done your interviews, written your script and filed your story. But did you do one last fact-check? No longer just for magazines or long-form projects, some public media newsrooms have begun to apply more robust fact-checking to their da

How new hosts hold onto audiences while being themselves

Feb 8th, 2018 21m 57s

So your favorite podcast has a new host! Do you keep listening? We certainly hope so. I’m Annie Russell, the new host of The Pub. I’m an editor at WBEZ and a stand-up comedian. As I navigate this new role, I wondered how a new host goes about t

Why pubmedia should double down on content for kids

Jan 3rd, 2018 39m 6s

Whether they’re talking to your kids or to Congress, the hosts and characters of public media children's programming are powerful. They promote understanding, inclusion and education. Plus, they’re really entertaining. But is children’s program

Terry Gross turns the tables

Dec 6th, 2017 1h 27m

Terry Gross listens to tons of podcasts — including The Pub — and her own NPR show, Fresh Air, is also one of the most popular podcasts around. And yet, she remains committed to radio, both as a host and as a listener. “I don’t want a world of

Getting personal at Third Coast

Nov 20th, 2017 20m 32s

Should a journalist take to the mic to share a personal story? The short answer: Maybe. Whether you’re a news host who wonders how much to reveal about yourself in your interview questions or an independent podcast producer hoping to mine your

Why WHYY retired its NewsWorks site

Oct 31st, 2017 42m 58s

What is a public media station online? In many cases, its identity is its call letters followed by dot-org. But why? On-air, most stations are a mix of national, international and local programming. So why make the only digital home for those s

How to be the boss

Oct 16th, 2017 28m 26s

You got promoted! Great. Now what? Years of journalism training haven’t necessarily prepared you for the art of managing people. You might even find yourself supervising your peers. Before you know it, you stop getting those invitations to happ

Why stations should help employees relocate

Oct 2nd, 2017 21m 32s

A radio reporter who recently accepted a new job paid for the move by launching a GoFundMe campaign — and not for the first time. Should public media be offering more help to its greener employees to avoid creating a class barrier? On this epis

What is a talk show supposed to be online?

Sep 18th, 2017 49m 38s

Digital producers on public radio talk shows have found many ways to reconcile the difference between a show that's supposed to be appointment listening and a platform that's always available. In this episode of The Pub, we look at a few of tho

Interviewing Jesse Thorn about interviewing interviewers about interviewing

Sep 5th, 2017 1h

Jesse Thorn is an accomplished guy — he’s the host of NPR’s Bullseye and proprietor of the Maximum Fun podcast network. And yet, he feels a little insecure about having never attended journalism school. So this summer, Thorn organized his own j

Lauren Ober, host of The Big Listen, a radio show about podcasts

Aug 7th, 2017 47m 51s

A radio show/podcast about what’s going on in podcasting? The Big Listen from WAMU and NPR is one part “best of podcasting” compilation show, one part industry-insider talk show, and a thousand parts Lauren Ober, its charismatic and affable hos

How to make kids’ podcasts and why you should

Jul 24th, 2017 41m 3s

Half a century after public television made children’s programming one of its core missions, public radio is finally getting into the game with kids’ podcasts like NPR’s "Wow in the World," MPR/KPCC’s "Brains On!" and VPR’s "But Why." Lindsay P

Sarah Alvarez on how to serve low-income people

May 19th, 2017 47m 52s

Surely one of the most effective arguments against the continued taxpayer support of public media is that public media serves a socioeconomically elite audience. What’s the point of subsidizing media for rich people who should be able to pay fo

What the #$%^ does 'narrative' even mean?

May 4th, 2017 53m 1s

Public media has an obsession lately with a certain word. As Only A Game senior producer Karen Given observes in this week’s episode of The Pub, “Just say the word ‘narrative’ and program directors and editors suddenly start paying attention. E

Where will all the spectrum auction money go?

Apr 21st, 2017 47m 34s

The $1.9 billion that noncommercial stations won in the auction isn’t enough to transform the entire public media system, but it will absolutely transform the handful of stations lucky enough to have held valuable spectrum in crowded markets.

Jacqui Helbert and the ethical hazards of university stations

Apr 6th, 2017 42m 4s

You could not make up a better cautionary tale about the hazards of universities controlling public broadcasters than the story of Jacqui Helbert’s firing. The head PR flack for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga fired Helbert last mont

What would actually happen if they defunded CPB

Mar 24th, 2017 48m 32s

So what would actually happen if Republicans in Washington defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? On this week’s show, we try to get the most detailed picture possible of what would actually happen if the Trump administration’s state