On September 22, AIR will join with CPB at the PRPD Programming Conference to unveil AIR's new initiative—designed to turbocharge invention in multiplatform journalism by producers, while expanding public radio and TV station's connections with new communities.  If you're attending the conference in Baltimore, please join us Thursday evening at 5:30 for the official launch event, and be sure to stop by and say hello at the AIR booth on the exhibit floor.

Beginning September 15, producers—including many of the readers of this blog—can get a jump start on applying for the initiative by going to AIRmediaworks.org.

We aim to cast a wide net to recruit talented independent radio, TV, film and online producers, as well as those already working at public stations. Know someone who might be perfect? Please let them know, and please spread the word to your own networks.

Are you a fan of the MQ2 projects and this blog?

Then keep your eyes peeled over the next few weeks, as we bring you some exciting announcements, a new name, and a brand new site design!

At AIR HQ, excitement is building as we prep for the launch party for our new MQ2-inspired production initiative slated for September 22 in Baltimore (watch this space for details soon!). 

The festivities will take place at the Public Radio Programming Conference, where independent producers will also find plenty of other reasons to celebrate. In collaboration with PRPD, AIR has provided CPB-funded New Voices scholarships to a cohort of promising makers (see last year's crew), arranged discounts for AIR members, and organized a lively series of panels, below. High-profile AIRsters are even opening and closing the event—RadioLab's Jad Abumrad kicks things off, and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media (among many other ventures) will close with the conference benediction.

The upshot? The entire range of public radio stations, makers, networks and researchers will be on hand in Baltimore to grapple with new content strategies. Join us:

AIR New Project Launch Reception with CPB
September 22, 5:30-7:30

This morning in L.A., attendees at the West Coast Public Media Camp met to synthesize yesterday’s discussions on three topics: Election 2012, integrating online and reaching the whole community.

Here are some choice tweets from the discussion that I assembled using Storify:

Calling all independent radio producers, public stations, and allies—please cast your vote for AIR's proposed SXSW panel:

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Driving the Change: Public Media goes Transmedia

Moderator: Sue Schardt, AIR

Proposed Speakers:

Jad Abumrad— Radio Lab/WNYC-Radio
Kara Oehler—Media and Place Productions, Inc.

News innovation junkies have been keeping a close eye on the progress of the Knight-Mozilla News Technology Partnership (aka MoJo), which aims to place developers and tech-savvy journalists in high-profile newsrooms around the world to design next-generation reporting tools.

Like AIR's MQ2 project, and upcoming initiative (More details to come soon!), MoJo began in the spring with a call for creative producers. From there, 63 participants were selected to take part in the Knight-Mozilla Learning Lab, a month-long course featuring lectures from news-hacker luminaries like Wired Editor-in-Chief Evan Hansen (listen here).

"There was a theme running through the talks: openness. Not only were the lectures meant to get participants thinking about how to make their projects well-designed and up to web standards, but they also generally stressed the importance of open-source code," observe Nikki Usher and Seth C. Lewis in a Nieman Journalism Lab post. 

Launched in May by DC-based station WETA, inReads is no place for introverted bookworms. Instead, the site aims to foster lively discussion about "social readia"—i.e.,  topics springing from the nexus of books, technology and culture. 

Executive Editor Felicia Pride—an independent multimedia producer, author and regular correspondent for Publisher's Weekly—describes the brainstorming process for the project in her introductory post:

"It led to debates like: Where are books headed? How are we reading? How do we talk about reading now? And because our talks involved a range of minds including techies, bibliophiles and business people, they were layered and thought-provoking. Who knew building a web property would be so philosophical?...I can’t tell you how excited we are to spark conversation and build community with you—techies, bibliophiles, cultural critics, those in between, and those who blur the lines."

Thanks to AIR member and crowdsourcing guru Annie Shreffler for this report:

Last weekend, a group of web developers, designers and journalists took over the New York City offices of the digital news site Gawker. There, they set up temporary headquarters and pulled an all-nighter to create--out of a giant batch of crowdsourced text, photo and audio files—a new issue of Longshot Magazine.

See more buzz about Longshot Magazine on Storify.

This is the third time since April 2010 that collaborators across the U.S. have convened, in person and online, to create a magazine in 48 hours—and the first issue to include Longshot Radio (Listen below.) Co-founders Alexis Madrigal, Sarah Rich and Mat Honan began the new 24-hour open call for content at 12 p.m. on July 29^th  (PST) via email, Twitter and the magazine’s Tumblr blog. Meanwhile, their ad-hoc team assembled to start editing, creating art, design and layout for a new magazine. Their deadline: 3 p.m. (EST), July 31^st.

A good rule for crowdsourcing media content: give the audience specific ways to to respond. For some, it was enough to know Longshot’s new theme was Debt. But the editors knew some potential contributors would appreciate more direction. They wrote, “We kept hearing from people that they really wanted to do something but they (were hungover) had too much work or (forgot until the last minute) were stuck at a cousin’s wedding. So, [these] challenges provide a few quick ways to have the Longshot experience.” 

To make the challenges fun, WNYC Radio reporter and Longshot Radio senior producer Alex Goldmark introduced a word game. Armed with an audio recorder, he modeled an example for other potential radio field collaborators by asking passersby to finish one of five statements, such as, “A credit card is like a first date because ________________.”

Building upon earlier success and plenty of press, the Longshot team enjoyed terrific results this time around. A total of 672 submissions came to the magazine in the form of text and images. Longshot Radio also boasted 40 visitors to a “Story Corps on steroids” booth set up at the McNally Bookstore near the Gawker base. Audio answers to the challenge questions came in as complete pieces or even phone calls, and the team had producers sign up from Baltimore to Berlin to help edit. Nearby volunteers transcribed audio files for print.

Longshot Radio! from S.P. Sullivan on Vimeo.

What makes Longshot succeed is an ethos that gathers like minds together to work like hell to create something out of nothing, just to see if it's possible. The welcoming tone of the project is reflected in its standing public invitation:

We need writers, photographers, illustrators, videographers, information designers, editors, proof readers, fact checkers, baristas, chefs, bartenders, and carpenters. (Especially bartenders). We want submissions ranging from 140 characters to 4,000 words. Please send us your strongly reported narratives, design fictions, interviews, data visualizations, cartoons, family portraits, how-to guides, maps, obscure histories, recipes, war reporting, photo-essays, blueprints, ships’ logs, scientific papers, charticles, wood cuts, curio boxes, product reviews, and box scores.

23:36 minutes (21.61 MB)

Grab the popcorn! Through September 22, ITVS  will be celebrating its 20th anniversary by streaming a collection of 20 seminal documentaries for free in their Indies Showcase:

Over the past few weeks, we've been showcasing visualizations that reveal shifting aspects of the independent producing environment, including new work habits, rising patterns of mobile usage, and new outreach strategies. This last post in the series highlights resources to help producers craft their own infographics.

Online journalist Geoff McGhee set out to learn more about cutting-edge visualization tools in a year-long Stanford fellowship, and then built a handy site documenting his findings: Journalism in the Age of Data. In a series of short videos (or one long video split into chapters, below), he documented the state of the field, cautionary tales, and inspiring tools and examples as of mid-2010. The film's last chapter features free online tools that lay designers can play with to tell simple stories, such as ManyEyes and Wordle, as well as fantastic showcases, such as Visual Complexity, Flowing Data and Infosthetics.

"It's like we're in the early days of cinema," Eric Rodenbeck of Stamen Design tells McGhee.