National Public Radio launched its social network yesterday, finally adding the community aspect to a community-driven news organization.
This is hardly innovative (nor was it a week ago when The New York Times launched one), but NPR acknowledges this in the announcement on its blog.
“NPR is late to this game, to be blunt,” says editorial director for digital media Dick Meyer. He also says they are not launching the service to increase traffic to the site.
So why invest the time and money?
Meyer says it's simply the "respectful thing to do."
But this is also the just latest step in a major initiative to converge online, and attract a younger, wider audience -- i.e., a future source of fund raising as much of its core audience ages.
Downloads of iTunes podcasts have done fairly well, and now the radio station is looking to be a hub for sides of a story, including video, images and text.
NPR also has a mobile site, released a library of open APIs this summer, and is funding a program to train editorial employees on digital storytelling while providing substitutes to fill in and cover their usual duties.
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation coughed up $1.5M for the program, and NPR added an additional $1M, showing that they are very serious about the task.
The one worry, they say, is that by focusing too much on their parent site, they will take away from support for the local stations.
"In a way NPR is showing good leadership by moving to these other platforms, and in a way they've created a bypass that frightens a lot of member stations," says Richard Towne, general manager of KUNM Public Radio in Albuquerque, in the American Journalism Review.
But while traffic has gone up in the past year (a 78 percent increase in August from last year according to comScore), it’s difficult to imagine too many core NPR listeners turning completely to the web instead of the radio.
You can’t read an article or watch a video while you’re driving to work.
NPR boosts online offerings, seeks larger audience [AP]
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