I bet that many organizations are also having the same internal conversations and being as frustrated as he is.

Looking at where the death threats are is a more productive area of discussion.

For public media Death lurks here – We have to have a much wider based and much larger public that thinks that we are not merely important but VITAL to them. If we don’t we wont make it.

“Wider based” means that we have to break out of our current demographic – of on TV being over 50, mainly white middle class and well educated – on radio of being over 40 and the same.

The challenge of doing this has been the restrictions of our “Air”. We have only 24 hours and one place on the dial.

So to change programming enough to bring in a very different demographic is to piss off the existing foundation with no real chance of adding the new. Example, the CBC have quite good show on the Native Canadian world – my bet is that most of the traditional audience switch off immediately and that First Nation’s people are not going to be tempted to become enthusiastic listeners of the CBC based on one program. This type of programming is lose lose. For NPR it was a new hip morning show called Bryant Park. What station in its right mind will drop Morning Edition for a new entrant aimed away from its main audience?

So long as Public Radio and TV have a secure foundation on their Air – they cannot expand their audience.

Also loyalty and more important financial and voting support merely based on liking content is no longer enough. When I came to Canada in 1972, I was used to the BBC and became a fanatic PBS watcher. There was no other source of good content then. Now there is tons of great content elsewhere. The old tie to content is much weaker.

So how then can Public Media avoid DEATH? How can it expand its reach to a much wider and diverse public? How can it deepen the connection beyond the relatively weak one of content?

An answer is appearing in the work of 70 plus stations working in the 32 worst hit markets in the US where the Economy is destroying the middle and lower classes. In this project – called Facing the Mortgage Crisis – stations are working with each other to pull together/convene groups of community support into a platform that can help people cope with this the greatest crisis to hit most Americans since the 30’s.

This is where the DEATH threat can be answered and this is where Social Media and the whole 2.0 perspective is invaluable.

Here stations are helping people who do not and will NEVER watch our mainstream Air. BUT they do interact with our specialty Web Sites that are focused on this issue and hence on them. More we do a lot face to face. Sometime at the station and many times in libraries and other places of trust such as churches. More, we give the community partners a face and a voice too.

It is the 2.0 web that is at the heart of this ability to offer something meaningful to people who will not connect to our traditional content on our traditional air. Ironically, as the crisis affects all, many of the white middle class are now in the same boat. They too use our 2.0 world as a new resource. In time a common crisis, as in war, brings all together. All people share a common fear and grief. All wonder what to do and how to keep going? All worry about their kids.

I predict that something great can emerge from our web – but it is not about getting more people to watch Nova or listen to All Things Considered.

So what then was my CIO’s Death fear?

I offered up this to chew on. They are in the mutual fund business. Their funds are sold by brokers who do not work for them.

Trust in Brokers, in the market and even in the idea of getting rich by punting in the markets has been weakened. Fund managers still tout their ability to realize performance that can only be achieved by taking huge risk.

What would happen to their business if we had a 1933? After the crash in 1929, the market recovered as it is today. But like today, the market came back independent of how people lived and how the economy at the human level existed. It was a second bubble. The market crashed again and the great depression hit full force. Employment did no rebound until 1941. Stock prices and activity in the market did not return until 1954.

What if we have another 1933 in 2010? Would such a collapse end all faith in the current financial system? What is the risk of that happening – 10% – 30 % – 50% – 60%  – whatever the risk is substantive and worth planning for.

My idea of his DEATH threat was that if they did not do something to show that they could be trusted, that if we had a 1933, they would disappear as did most people like them in 1933.

So how could they become legitimately trusted? How could they hold onto to a public that had lost trust in the system? My advice was this.

Most people are fiscally illiterate. Most know nothing about household economics in the Greek sense of the basics of the human financial life cycle. People know nothing about how to save and why, borrowing, cash flow, how mortgages work, compound interest. Most know nothing about the value of and how risk works. Why you can take risks early but not late in life etc. If they did most would not be in the trouble that they are in now. Most think that it is normal and to be expected that they can get Maddof returns year after year not seeing that such returns imply impossible risk.

The entire fund business is like the food business – we have been trained to seek something that is not sustainable – double digit returns for ever and cheap food forever. Can we train people to be more real? I think not but people can train each other.

Most people now are waking up to the fact that they don’t know enough about money and how it affects their life. They are hungry to learn more. To take control over their financial lives, just as many today are using the web to take control over their health.

What if this firm was to set up a foundation to act as the Trusted Place on the web where people could teach each other all these things?

Here is where all the rules of 2.0 would come into play. The web, interactivity, social groups, partners – the whole gamut of 2.0 is here. By learning how to do this here, the old firm will also then see with new eyes what else they can do back in the mainstream.

I asked in closing what would this mean in terms of the brand and the industry if they were to do this? What if they did a really authentic job of providing the trusted space where people could help each other take back their financial power?

He could see in a heart beat that this would change the relationship – just as I am seeing signs that FTMC is changing the relationship with Public radio and TV.  At first the two worlds of the “Academy” and their traditional business would be separate. But over time there would be some kind of convergence. For who of us knows as much as we should and who of us does not have something to offer?

In time the very nature of the business would change too as will in the end mainstream TV and Radio – but this way the change would be shaped by the active participation of millions of people formerly known and “audience” or “Clients” who right now don’t even have a name.

For what is the label for a person who is part of the ecology that is the new wider enterprise?

So what do you think? Can you radically change your foundation offering without killing the golden goose? Think GM or the Newspapers – all their cash flow came from the old – but DEATH was waiting for sure. How could they have found another part of life where they could have added real value and so attached a much bigger group of people to them?

I am sure that there is an answer. Do you have one?

It also works on Blackberry – Here is the NPR Download page.

Staci Kramer’s article is very comprehensive and will show you the direction of the strategy in detail.

National Public Radio is already a leader in podcasting. But a free NPR News iPhone app that launched Saturday night opens up a new dimension for the network and its member stations with live and on-demand mobile streaming. It’s also the first app to make reading the news and listening to it equally important, providing full-text coverage along with audio. In addition to NPR’s own programs and those it distributes, the app includes direct access to local shows from more than 600 member stations live and on demand.

Here is Scott Simon with a tour

Here is more on this by Ben Parr for Atlanta Internet Marketing

NPR News [iTunes link], which just became available for download, offers the same core features of other news apps like AP Mobile [iTunes link], primarily that you can browse the day’s big stories and read news articles in multiple categories. However, no other news app is linked to 1000+ NPR radio stations, news programs, and live streams, meaning you can listen to your news anywhere, anytime.

The App adds a strong audio layer to the news reading experience. While it’s simple enough to read the day’s top stories, you can also listen to most of the day’s top stories as well. A speaker icon next to most articles allows you to listen in on stories, and the playlist feature lets you queue up the stories you want to listen to if you’re busy, on-the-go, or just need to keep occupied.

The other key aspect of NPR News is that you can listen to any NPR program and any NPR station, including both live radio and past shows and podcasts. There has to be thousands upon thousands of hours of archived content available, not including the live radio. You can even pick out your station with GPS.

While many news organizations are floundering in the era of social media and even struggling to survive, NPR has thrived. Its innovative social strategies have served it well, and the NPR News iPhone app is just the latest solid innovation from the non-profit news organization.

How do you cover your community with no or little money? At Planet Money they ask for help and they “listen” to Twitter.

Here are a couples of examples that Laura used to show how you can do this

The “Clown” Tweets Us – PM has a deep and keen Twitter fan club – I call it the PM Tribe – So here a PM Twitter Fan Tweets the Show – The Listening part of Twitter.

@planetmoney #economy I am Children’s entertainer #clown. Work was way dwn jan-april. (-%87 for me.) now better, but #swineflu panic a prob

PM calls her and uses her story in part of their podcast. The Deepening Phase

Morning Edition like the story and bump it up and put in on the main show – The harvest phase

People ask all the time – “How do we bring the voice of the citizen into the station – well this is one way that you can do this.

By the way – for us PM Twitter fans/Tribe the pay off is when our bit goes on the show. Like Golf, the tiny chance that it might is the massive incentive.

The result is that you not only deepen the engagement that you have with your community, but you get ahead of the story. You get the story before it is a story. You have an intelligence system like no other.

Here is another of these Pyramids or ladders:

Terri Weiss tweets her employer’s demise – First, they stop the coffe:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/01/first_they_stop_the_coffee.html

Terri Weiss tells her story on podcast

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/01/hear_can_i_borrow_20.html

Terri Weiss, with a little more production, on Morning Edition

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99790809

I am also profoundly affected by this work because I am now seeing that all the effort put into learning how to cope with the web by NPR, the system and me back in the day is paying off.

Back in 2005 NPR did something that I think is still unique. They hosted a mammoth engagement process, New Realities, that involved over 300 stations and over 1,000 people. The purpose was to discover what the web would all mean. You can see the results in so many of the actions that NPR and the radio system have taken since then. This new site is a pinnacle of that collective insight

But at first, at the end of the process, I and many who had been involved were disappointed. For the immediate result was not there – or so I thought. For two years, like seeds in the ground, there was little or nothing to see. But with NPR Music, the real green shoots began. Since then, the seedlings have grown and multiplied.

I had been foolish and naive. I thought that the conversation would produce results immediately.

But! Now – 4 years later – I am beginning to see the real result. And it is this. That NPR and the lead stations in the system are convinced and are committed to making the web work. They also have a common language.

This is simply not true for most others in the media world. They have not had this personal and deep experience with each other in an examination of what will come.

I think I see the true result of New Realities now. It is cultural readiness. For is not Culture the main barrier?

He is influential

He is connected

He is a peer of the reluctant

All people really need to know is that this is OK and useful. Only people in your organization like Dan can help

So at NPR, where it is vital that most people adopt – what do the folks do – they tell the story of Dan the Coach.

Before this, Andy Carvin got Dan and Scott Simon on air to try this. Scott is also very influential and is younger than Dan dut he is not a kid.

Andy, the NPR Social Media Guy, is being very shrewd and clever – What is your plan?

Scott, as a follow-up:
“The time when it’s easiest to master disruption is the time when sometimes you feel like you don’t need to do it because your core business is doing pretty well.”

Scott, on value:
“When you think about business models it’s important to unpack it and say, ‘What are you doing that’s going to create value? What are you doing that will allow you to deliver value? And how are you going to make sure you capture that value?’”

Vivian, on freeing up their content:
“We want people – we want our users and listeners to look at it and create – to look into our archive, look at our content and figure out other ways to display and to distribute our material so that it reaches the most number of people.”

Scott, on search:
“A good editor is really critical in guiding me somewhere and sometimes I don’t even know what I’m searching for; I need to have some discovery. And again, these two other jobs related to search—the guiding and the discovery—are places where I think today’s solutions still don’t address those areas particularly well.

Scott, on quality:
“[Companies] really have to recognize that quality is a relative term and convenience and simplicity are oftenpen overlooked innovation levers that people can pull to grow businesses and to create new profit streams.”

Vivian, on the need to experiment:
“[You need] to accept going in that you will try something and many of your experiments will fail and that that’s okay… The “stop doing” is very tough for many traditional media organizations and if there is a “stop doing” there is sometimes a reluctance to try again.

Vivian, on audience interaction:
“Our very powerful, engaged, smart, savvy audience is a huge potential for us in terms of the kind of value they create and you will see more and more of that from us in terms of our interaction with our audience. “

Scott, on opportunity:
“There really is a lot of collective wisdom that still isn’t captured. And if you can find ways as a media organization to help facilitate or tap into that collective wisdom and bring some order to it, it’s an area that still is not completely tapped.”

To download the full doc, click here.

Moderated by Renee Hopkins Callahan and sponsored by Microsoft, the discussion touched on topics ranging from:

• the challenges of today’s news business, NPR’s particular “business” and its need to “be its own disruptor”
• the “misalignment” of business models with real value in some of today’s media companies
• the role of technology in enhancing the user experience
• the importance of good editors and harnessing the collective intelligence of informed human beings
• framing disruption as not just a threat, but also as an opportunity
• the viability of charging for content and other forms of monetizing content
• the need to experiment *and* be willing to fail often
• the importance of innovation even, sometimes, in the absence of a clear business model

Click on the link below to access the full recording of the conversation – you can play it in place or download it as a podcast. And stay tuned to this space in the coming days for a trancript of the discussion as well as a highlights piece we’ll be publishing.

The show shed light for the first time on the complex crisis that confronts us. It gave birth to an entirely new kind of news show, Planet Money, that is extending all the lessons learned by the initiating show.

Here is a video of one of the co hosts – Adam Davidson (The other was Alex Blumberg of This American Life) Where Adam does his best to explain how making this show is changing his perspective on how journalists cover complex stories.

I think that in these few minutes, Adam explains the real revolution that has to take place in news.

He tells of his problem with space and time in conventional journalism. How can you talk about say a problem in mortgage backed securities in just 3 minutes when most know nothing abut them. But this is what people have to do in the time constraints of a audio or Video news program or in the space constraints available in a newspaper. Conventional news simply does not offer the time or the space to cope with complex things.

Linear news cannot inform us about complexity and complexity is our world now.

He talks about the problem of the “Authoritative Voice” the voice of God that is used. As a correspondent in Iraq, he and his wife could always tell the newbies – they were the ones who knew what was going on! It is now quite clear that even Henry Paulson did not know what was going on. So why should any journalist pretend that they did? Adam is saying that the right place for a journalist is to be a seeker on behalf of the public.

Top down voices of authority cannot illuminate complexity either. Only an invitation for conversation can unpack complexity’s meaning.

In the first few weeks of Planet Money, I talked with Adam and Laura about their plans and how they might be able to use a web based show. Here in summary is what he told me. In essence they were going to prepare a a big all you can eat buffet. It would suit every taste and would be open 24/7. (BPP was a diner)

• Daily the team would offer up nuggets, small dishes, of current and topical news that they found or that an ever expanding circle of “fans” as per BPP, would send in

• 3 – 4 times a week they would offer up a podcast, a longer form piece – a small audio magazine – this could be and is sliced and diced and added into the main magazines such as All Things Considered, News Broadcasts, Local shows, Morning Edition – what they learned with BPP is that it is better to add great new content into the blockbuster items rather than try and compete with your self. This way PM builds a wide audience by using the network effect. Adam also is a regular guest on the New Hour – thus PBS and NPR are getting closer as well

• Every 6 weeks or so – a long form show such as Giant Money in collaboration with TAL.

• The POV was always going to be – EXPLAIN! The presenters of the show would be representing us. They would start from a position of NOT KNOWING and not understanding the jargon. The irony is that even the so called experts have told Adam that they too have learned from the show. The problem being that they often know a lot about a little but also cannot see the larger whole. So the “VOICE” that we hear is a questioning, uncertain voice. When I say “Voice” I mean literally the timbre of what you hear. The deep profundo voice of God is not allowed on the show. I think key to this voice are Laura and Caitlin who sound like your favorite sisters and not your mother or some Amazonian know it all with power hair. The guys are quizzical and sound a bit like your bright university guy friend who is helping you understand calculus or statistics.

Of course everything is online so it is all available at any time. Hence the “banquet” metaphor.

I find all the hand wringing of conventional journalism a bit lame. 3 minute sound bites, 8 inches of text and the VOICE from the burning bush is actually making the world harder to comprehend.

Don’t all the problems that confront us fit this new kind of treatment? For do you really know what do do in Iraq and Afghanistan? Do you really have the answers to health or to energy? Do you know anyone that really has the answer to our education system?

Is not part of our problem that conventi0nal journalism makes it all but impossible to get to the root of these issues?

I think that the limits of “space” and “time” on conventional media do make it worse. These limits reduce all to bits and bites and give a stage and power to rabble rowsers – look at the cheerleaders in the financial sector!

Planet Money will look like the Model T Ford in 30 years time. But it will I think be seen as the Model T, as the expression of an entirely new and appropriate way of approaching the world that we now inhabit. A world that is made so complex by its vast array of interconnections.

As with all things on the web – the real shift is in relationship and hence POV.  The time and space contraints of traditional media drive the top down expert/god POV. This fitted a less interconnected and hence less complex world. But with a hyper linked world, we live in much more complex times. Only a hyper linked way of gathering and offering the news will fit.

That is the revolution.

Hats off to Adam and Alex – to Ira Glass and to Ellen Weiss

I think that this is self serving rubbish that is simply not born out by the facts. Are the newspapers and is Network TV really the quality source of journalism that they all claim?

When I saw this chart the other day – my little grey cells began to fire big time. What might it mean that NPR’s audience may have increased by nearly 100% over the last 10 years and newspapers decreased by 11.4% and network news by 28%? These are staggering differences and surely demand an explanation?

Here is my hypothesis. It is my observation that most papers and most of the Network News organizations have given up offering context and have made News into a disconnected stream of soundbites and headlines. NPR’s rise has been driven by a focus on providing people with the context and the deep understanding of what is going on.

• For all the claims for investigative journalism and getting to the truth and the bottom of things, Network TV and most papers follow the adage “If it bleeds – it leads” Loud disconnected headlines. Almost no seeking for a context. Almost never asking why or what is really going on. In fact they have made the news more and more confusing by not offering up the bigger picture.

• Generally the papers and the TV networks got the two biggest stories of our time wrong! They generally bought the whole deal about going to war. They generally missed warning signs of the financial disaster that has unfolded. Most still have nothing helpful to say about both today. Most still offer only today’s headlines. Most still confuse the people even more.

• NPR and other Public radio Producers (WBEZ, WBUR etc) and PBS (Newshour, Frontline. Bill Moyers, Charlie Rose etc.) on the other hand have made a conscious effort to help us understand what is going on. Planet Money has become THE Show on the financial crisis with over a million downloads of its podcasts a week. Margaret Warner is becoming an expert in her own right on the complexities of Afghanistan. It was a special moment to see the regard that Ambassador Holbrooke and General Petraeus gave her last week. She knows as much as any westerner can about what is going on there.

I think that it is this POV – to find the context – that has pulled NPR and Pub Radio away from the herd. I think that there is a hunger in America to understand and that Public Radio and TV are on track to meet that hunger.

Yes the web is important – NPR’s podcasts reach a new un-served audience that is 15 years younger than the radio. Yes most of PBS news is now online and free. But many papers and the networks have most of their news content online too.

In complex times CONTEXT is surely what has made the difference?

Now I see even more exciting moves as CPB realizes that if the resources of Public Radio and TV News and Opinion are aggregated and made even easier to obtain that the lead in audience will widen further. This is now being worked on.

In 2010 Pub Media will go beyond offering context as content but will find the best ways of aggregating this and making it very easy to access and to participate with.

As they get closer to being able to do this I think that the economics will come.

In the next post in this short series, I will talk about the last leg of this stool – the participation aspect of the work. I will look at how the voice of the citizen can be brought in and how Pub Media is planning to transcend news itself and help citizens return to the great tradition of America – of citizens solving their own problems locally.

What will happen in your town when there is no more “Official News”?

Of course I don’t know but it may be fun to speculate. A good way to speculate I think is to think of nature. What does nature do when an over mature system crashes? When say a big tree falls or there is a forest fire?

Nature has a iron-clad set of rules for the death of an over mature system. The rule seems to be – the small and the fast growing fills in the space. In phase 2, the trees that can get height fast and shade out the rest come next. In phase 3 the slow growing larger trees push by aggregate and then dominate. And then the cycle continues.

So if this pattern is reliable then this is what will happen when your community loses its Big News.

• The Fast Growing New Growth  the “Poplars” – The best of the local bloggers will rise in prominence. Some of the personal brands in the old will also join the local blogging scene. These bloggers will not only write about what interests them but some will pull in and filter news from around the world. They will act as much as taste makers and editors as contributors. But many will also wish to focus on what interests them – “Beats” in effect. Food, politics, books, whatever. The new system is largely here but it has low structure and hence low value.

• Aggregation – Very quickly some of these will form an affiliation. We have seen an early variant of this in St Louis with the establishment of the Beacon. The Beacon is an online “News” service made up of many of the best journalists that used to work for the main Paper the Post Dispatch. The Beacon has moved into the offices of KETC, the PBS local TV station. (Postscipt – Here is a major article by The Current – the Trade Magazine of Pub Media on this work) There are plans for KWMU, the local NPR radio station and the local University to move in too. A great addition will be to find a way to pull in the best of the bloggers. This has not yet been done but is surely possible and desirable. Also on the cards will be the power of this local system to pull in great national and international coverage. CPB, NPR and PBS are working on how best to create and offer a combined feed of the best of their News in one easy to use complete forum. As this aggregation phase builds so does the overall value to all parties in it. The Network Effect benefits all. Costs fall, ROI rises. It becomes central to the economic, social and political health of the community. Being so widespread it excludes competitors. You either have to join or die. It is also hugely valuable to the global producers and to the global aggregators. At some point, NPR and PBS and maybe the BBC also have to form their own aggregated system that lives on top of the local system?

• Climax – I think that the climax or mature and stable phase will emerge from the Aggregation process. This is surely what Sloan did for GM? GM in its heyday was built on the aggregation of a number of brands.  But this time, there is a different economic model. This was not the result of a traditional use of financial capital. Now we have a global system that is truly PUBLIC. It has strong economic roots and is sustainable but it is no longer controlled by a few men with access to credit. It would be very hard to attack by any political force as well.

If I am right and that nature does offer us a model, then the Aggregation phase is where the future lies. The people that can lead the aggregation will “win”. If we can do this in the Public sector then the Public will win.

So where will this happen in your community?

In the US I think that St Louis offers us a strong hint. Journalists, Public TV and Radio can get together to offer a home for the rest of the local blogging ecosystem. They can also pull in national and global content and offer up stories from their own place. I think that the current talks between CPB, NPR and PBS are also very encouraging.

But what about Canada? Would the local music station be the aggregator? How easy/hard would it be for a few bloggers to do this – hard I think. We don’t have the emergent local system that the US has. This tells me that the urgency in the US to “see” their total public system for what it is – the future – is extreme.

It’s all there to win or lose.