Tag Archives: NPR

Intern Edition Website Launch

Posted on by Ryan K.

One of the unique aspects of an internship at NPR is that interns here are expected to learn by doing their own show: Intern Edition. Yesterday, we launched our multimedia website and the audio premiere with a screening at NPR’s headquarters here in Washington D.C.

Embracing the inner geek in me, I helped out with web stuff. I assembled ten years of audio through the painstaking process of ripping old Real Media files second for second. But tech speak aside, it meant listening to a ton of old audio produced by young people starting back in 1999. And a lot of the stories are particularly compelling.

My real job for yesterday was to keep the buzz going on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Today, I’m trying a new tool to schedule tweets to go out automatically at certain intervals with links to our content. So far, it’s working alright. Interns produced 30+ stories so we have plenty of content to work with in the last two weeks of our internship.

But perhaps the best thing so far has been working with some fantastic fellow interns. I know that a lot of these people will end up being amazing journalists both radio and otherwise. It’s not enough to be smart, these folks have the skills to be sharp curators of information and ideas, working on multiple platforms.

So, definitely check out the website and browse around.

A New NPR.org!

Posted on by Ryan K.

nprheader

We launched a new NPR.org today! It was a nearly 12 hour work day of on-and-off testing to make sure the site was ready. More details later, more sleep now.

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On Tone

Posted on by Ryan K.

I had a housemate ask me the other night, “What does it mean to be snarky?” Snarky. Well, snarky is somewhere between sarcastic and biting and true and funny. Snarky goes for the laugh. And the internet is full of snarky. In fact, the internet is the best place for snarky — audiences fall in love with the Arlington Rap, for instance.

But of the 574 posts I have done on MiddBlog, how many times did I really do “snarky” right? I think there was a point that would have taken it as a compliment if someone were to describe MiddBlog as snarky. But what I really wanted was for students to feel the tone of MiddBlog as authentic. And I may have tried to be snarky only to access that authenticity.

Authenticity is a word we discuss at the NPR social media desk a lot. The bottom line: be genuine and don’t fake it. Don’t fake the snarky to gain authenticity, it doesn’t work.

If my natural tone isn’t snarky, then what is it?

So Does This Make Me Fashionable?

Posted on by Ryan K.


This pink ball of roses hangs over my desk at NPR. Everyone always comments on how my desk is so well decorated. That’s because I sit at Lisa Simeone’s (host of World of Opera) desk.

But the other reason I post this photo is because I’m testing out the Blackberry Tour, the phone from which this photo was snapped. My boss raves about his iPhone 3GS so it seems I’m getting pressured quickly into smartphone madness. It’s nice having constant access to maps and email in addition to mobile uploading of photos like this but to be honest, I don’t need it. I have little desire to be online while I’m on the move mostly because I’m online all day anyway at work.

Intern Edition and the Next Gen Journal

Posted on by Ryan K.

When I’m not working hard on all my Social Media Desk duties (like blogging or moderating comments), I’m hacking away at the new NPR Intern Edition blog.

I’ve been working hard to curate a section called “Next Gen Journal Consider This Journalism” with posts from young people on the future of journalism. This has been a fascinating project because not only do I get to work with NPR interns, but also interns and young people at various media outlets from the Boston Globe to Foreign Policy Magazine.

The impetus for such a project came from reading through the 800+ people that I follow on the @NPRinterns twitter stream. Many of the tweets are by PR representatives pontificating on the future of journalism. Most are alarm-bell articles that are meant to get internet traffic and be passed around the web. I wanted to know what future journalists (people who had already devoted themselves to the craft) thought about the future of their industry. After all, they are the ones that would have to make it work.

This is a bit broader than the idea of next generation radio, a concept that is in the NPR archives for past interns. More than ever, NPR interns must be multimedia savvy. We were told by the NPR VP of News and WATC Host last week to be able to be a freelance journalist with skills in all media, not just radio or print.

Furthermore, I want to reinforce the importance of the question: “What is the future of journalism?” I don’t think I’ll come to a conclusion but the process of discussing it should be worth it.

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