Nicole Stewart and her son wait for a bus at the Bonneville Transit Center.

By Peter Moskowitz

Buses in Las Vegas are slow, expensive, and often late, but some of the city’s residents don’t have a choice.

On a recent relatively cool (90 degree) Wednesday afternoon, about 60 people slumped under the sparse shade provided at the Bonneville Bus Transit Center. The station, the size of a city block, is the dividing line between the glitzy Strip and the city’s impoverished North.

Cassie Linsey, a 27-year-old medical assisting student, was taking the bus as a last resort to get to school, because her husband had their car. She said she would rather have spent 15 minutes in the car, than one hour on a crowded bus.

Others were there as temporary solution while their car sat in an auto repair shop.

But for some, it’s a daily necessity they wish they could do without. And with fares set to increase by $5 for a monthly pass in September, the strain of taking public transit in such a sprawling city, is set to increase as well.

“I’m on the bus for eight hours every day,” said Nicole Stewart, a single mother who takes the bus from North Las Vegas, through the Bonneville Transit Center, to drop off her son at a babysitter. She then has to get on another bus to get to work at a Dollar General grocery store.

The Bonneville Transit Center

Stewart said if she gets off work past midnight, as she often does, she has to wait for five hours at her babysitter’s house for the buses to start running again before she can take her son home.

Stewart’s case may be extreme, but her frustrations are shared by many of the regular riders on the city’s residential bus routes.

Complaints at the Bonneville Transit Center on Wednesday ranged from laments about the lack of shade at many stops, to the frequent lateness of buses, which has caused some, like 18-year-old Geral Neishal to miss job interviews.

But perhaps the most frequent complaint was that the 30-year-old system isn’t worth the money.  A one-way bus fare is $2, and there are no free transfers. Daily riders often opt for the month-long, $65 pass, which will cost $70 by September.

Angie DeMarco, a single mother of two, who makes minimum wage working at a 7-Eleven, said it’s simply too much money.

“I have to borrow from my boss to get a 30-day pass, just to get to and from work,” she said. “I’ve even walked to work because of it.”

Angela Torres, a public affairs person for the Regional Transit Commission of Southern Nevada said the bus system is, “a work in progress.” She added that although ridership had increased to 120,000 regular riders last year, Las Vegas will always be a car based city.

“We love our cars,” she said. “We don’t want to leave our cars behind.”

A crowded bus brings passengers from North Las Vegas to the strip.

It’s safe to say Las Vegas’ transit system will never be like New York’s, but it could be better, according to Lisa Schweitzer, a fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institute.

Schweitzer pointed out that because Las Vegas spread rapidly during years of real estate booms, when car-based transit was considered the norm, it will be hard to create a public transit system that can keep up.
But she said if the city focuses on making a hub-and-spoke bus system more efficient by studying ridership, and placing more emphasis on park-and-rides, the city could eventually make public transit more attractive to all its residents

But Schweitzer said those kinds of changes could take years. People like Nicole Stewart say it doesn’t have to take years.

She said if buses just ran a little more frequently, and cost a little less it would make life a lot easier.

NPR listeners can expect to find better coverage of race, ethnicity and culture within the next few years, thanks to a new grant announced by the news organization and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting at the UNITY Journalists Convention Thursday.

Keith Woods speaks at a panel discussion announcing more diverse coverage at NPR. Photo: Althea Chang

NPR received a $1.5 million grant from CPB to start up a desk of reporters, editors and bloggers that will help make stories on Morning Edition and other programs better reflect the communities that NPR serves, executives said.

“This is part about mirroring America,” said Gary Knell, NPR’s president and CEO at an announcement during the UNITY convention. “It’s about staff diversity. It’s about more diverse sources. It’s about stoking a conversation and understanding the audience and growing the audience in public radio.”

The grant announcement comes as NPR and other broadcast organizations work to keep up with the demands of existing listeners and increase the number of people listening, regardless of the medium they use.

“We approach diversity at NPR across a wide spectrum that includes race and ethnicity. It also includes gender, sexual orientation, class, faith, generations, geography, ideology and a number of other things that divide and unite us,” said Keith Woods, who’s in charge of promoting diversity in news and operations.

NPR says it’s also focused on increasing the number of younger listeners it has, citing studies that have found that the average public radio listener is 49. When you put public radio programming on a mobile platform however, that audience’s average age drops to 34, NPR says.

Some of the media companies at the UNITY 2012 Convention sought not only journalists who could write great copy, but also code.

By Claudia Cruz

The UNITY 2012 Convention has brought journalists to Las Vegas from across the country for professional development, networking and in search of job opportunities.

And lately, media companies find themselves in search of more than just a multi-platform journalist with great writing skills. They also consider journalists versed in website development, analytics and other technical jobs.

“We’ll look at a journalist web developer with a sports background,” said Beth Rogers, part of the human resources team at ESPN. “Yes, they would be an asset but we haven’t seen too many.”

At the exhibit hall of the south convention center of the Mandalay Bay Hotel that housed the various recruiters at UNITY, job postings included CMS web developer and front-end web developer positions at the Boston Globe.  Fox News had an opening for an Application Developer and though Patch.com sought editors, positions on their website include several for engineers.

But the usefulness of writing code is not limited to the development of a media company’s digital presence or for tracking the number of or engagement of users. A journalist who can tack on that skill can be a valuable asset in the newsroom.

“They are able to think better directly about the readers, which are in the end our customers,” said Joyce Terhaar, executive editor and senior vice president of The Sacramento Bee.

Terhaar explained that The Bee’s tech team—which includes former journalists—sits in the newsroom and that the news team works very closely with them, especially during election period.  In addition to their help with the interactive election guide, they became instrumental in helping voters access election results in 2010 when the California Secretary of State’s website went down because of an overload.

“The tech team was on it,” she said. “And it might not have been the same if there weren’t there.”

In foresight of the change in the demands and interests of media companies, journalism schools have begun to include in their curriculum courses that teach students how to code. The CUNY Graduate School of Journalism has introduced coding, web visualization, web design and other advance skills. But so have Columbia University School of Journalism, Emerson College among others.

“There is demand within the journalism program to add a web development class,” said Bill Abbate, an admissions officer with Emerson College.

The evolution in both undergraduate and graduate journalism programs not only reflects the need in the industry, but the skills that new journalists already have.

“Many of our journalism students are digital natives,” said Allysson Hill, dean of admissions at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. “They already know so much stuff and are able to apply it to the workplace.”

According to Terhaar, some of the best journalism programs, like the USC Annenberg School, have started to adapt to this new digital news space. Some even align their computer science and journalism departments, she added.

“Once those kids come out, they’ll have a different perspective and will propel our industry forward,” Terhaar said.

The new President of UNITY, Joanna Hernandez

At a time when journalism and the media industry are facing massive changes, thousands of minority journalists, including a contingent from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, will convene in Las Vegas this week to discuss diversity issues, network and sharpen their new and old media skills.

The convention of UNITY Journalists – a consortium of Asian American Journalists Association, Hispanic American Journalists Association, Native American Journalists Association, the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association – is being held for the first time without the National Association of Black Journalists. NABJ, the largest organization of minority journalists, left UNITY because of differences over how money was shared among the groups and other issues.

Photo Courtesy Rob Young

NABJ’s departure and the inclusion of the mostly white National Lesbian and Gay Journalists members prompted many to say that UNITY was abandoning its core mission of advocacy for minority journalists. It prompted a name change from UNITY Journalists of Color to UNITY Journalists.

“We’re still for diversity and inclusion, but now the mission is broader,” explains UNITY President Joanna Hernandez. “Whereas before it was journalists of color, we also included in our mission a concern for issues that are important to the LGBT community.” Hernandez, a former editor at the Washington Post, recently became the director of career services at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

Last April, NABJ left the UNITY group over financial disputes. And while UNITY hoped for a reunion this year, NABJ stood by its decision that, “as a business model, UNITY no longer is the most financially prudent for NABJ and its membership.”

Instead, NABJ held its own convention in June, which it announced along with plans to withdraw from UNITY.

UNITY was initially formed to increase representation of people of color in the newsroom and dispel ethnic stereotypes. But this year’s convention is likely to show at least a slightly different mission.

Still, Hernandez is hoping that NABJ will rejoin UNITY. But NABJ officials remain non-committed.
“We would never say we won’t talk to Unity again, but the ball’s in their court,” NABJ president Greg Lee told Poynter last month.

But NABJ wasn’t the only organization concerned about finances. Membership numbers, and revenue from those memberships, have declined in line with the economic downturn.

For instance, from 2008 to 2009, NAHJ memberships declined nearly 33 percent, to 1,543 members from 2,292, according to Anna Lopez-Buck, the Interim Executive Director of NAHJ. She says job cuts have been a big part of the decline, and the number of NAHJ members has fallen further, to 1,259 members this year.

The number of NLGJA members, though relatively low compared with some of the ethnic organizations, has been fairly steady however. For the past several years, membership has remained at about 600, says Matthew Rose, the organization’s membership coordinator. But that may not be because previous members have remained with the group, but rather as former members decided not to renew their memberships, a new group of journalists join.

“Our membership has been steady for a few years now,” Rose says. “The organization has seen a lot of change, though. As journalism changes and media changes, so do the journalism groups.”

Seeing as we were at a public radio conference in Chicago, it was only fitting to check out the bastion of public radio in that fair city. The Third Coast Festival was actually founded as part of Chicago Public Radio – which broadcasts as WBEZ-FM in the city – back in 2000 before it split off to bec0me a non-profit last year.

WBEZ is located on scenic Navy Pier, just past the Ferris wheel and across from the Billy Goat Tavern, another Windy City institution made famous by the SNL skit with Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, and John Belushi.

WBEZ intern Lars Weborg graciously welcomed us Friday afternoon for a tour. He works on Eight Forty-Eight, the local news magazine show which many people mistakenly believe refers to the time the show airs. In point of fact, the show starts at nine and the name refers to the station’s street address on Navy Pier. “They think we start twelve minutes late every time,” he said.

WBEZ’s 2008 Emmy award (“Outstanding Nonfiction Series”) for This American Life:

Where the magic happens:

The newsroom:

Approaching the headquarters of Vocalo:

Vocalo is a program that began in 2007 under the umbrella of Chicago Public Radio in an attempt to reach a more diverse audience than that of NPR. “Make the radio you want to hear,” says the Vocalo.org Facebook page.

Since we at the entrepreneurially-minded CUNY Graduate School of Journalism love a good community-based, innovative journalistic endeavor, we were excited to learn about a public radio program that truly incorporates the public. It relies largely on user-generated content: music, stories, questions. As of last year, it reported more than 5,000 contributors.

Vocalo DJ’s Sarah and Luis, about to go on air:

Listen to Lars talk about Vocalo:

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

One of the biggest national stories this past weekend was the Rally to Restore Sanity/Keep Fear Alive in Washington, D.C., and one of the biggest local stories was the satellite rally held in Chicago’s Grant Park. On the scene, we met up with Brad Flora, founder of The Windy Citizen, who said CUNY J-School’s own Jeff Jarvis was one of his inspirations when he began brainstorming ideas for what he described initially as “a Huffington Post for Chicago.”

Brad and his cadre of interns, bloggers, and tweeters gave us an up-close look at how a young, modern company covers a local story and fosters community discussion online.

Conversations With Windy Citizens from Emily Johnson on Vimeo.

The Third Coast Audio Festival was memorable and inspiring for many reasons, but most of these reasons boiled down to hearing an excess of fantastic radio. At an award show, we heard pieces that stung our eyes with tales of justice lost and justice found, of acts of humanity and lives filled with loneliness and love. During the opening session, we listened to three-minute documentaries that showcased what clever editing and sly humor can do in the right hands. And during the “Beyond the Front Lines” session with Jamie Tarabay, I found my breath stolen by a chilling intimacy evoked with the simple sound of sloshing water.

Tarabay is an NPR reporter who spoke with candor and feeling about her time covering the war in Iraq. She played several pieces that she worked on during those years; one of them told the story of people who dived in the river to retrieve bodies. A man spoke of seeing a human head float by. “That was the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” he said.

The story left an impression; Tarabay noted that the NPR audience responded to the piece in a gratifying way. “These people are so amazing,” she said. “We had so many calling in and saying, ‘Who do I give money to so this guy can get a life jacket?’”

Between showing examples of her work, Tarabay answered questions from a curious audience who asked about topics that ranged from the logistical (how to prepare for reporting in dangerous countries) to the philosopical (what radio offers that is different from television) and personal (how the things she has seen affect her current life).

Tarabay listened quietly, her head down, as she played the heartbreaking tale of an NPR reporter and friend whose father was kidnapped. “This one’s still hard for me to listen to,” she noted.

She spoke of the tug-of-war of that conflict reporting plays with the people who do it: she missed weddings, Christmases. She is haunted by the many dead bodies she has seen, waking up at 4 in the morning with apocalyptic nightmares. Still, she felt a powerful urge to go to Haiti after the earthquake and found it difficult to reconcile not being there. “It’s addicting,” she explained.

She also talked about the popular misconception that the correspondents were living in the lap of luxury during the war in fortified surroundings. “We were never in the ‘green zone,’” she said.

Listen to Tarabay talk about their living and reporting conditions here:

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Google reader, RSS feeds, podcasts – today’s consumers have the tools to tailor their news intake exactly how they want it. NPR listeners want to read stories online. New York Times readers want to hear a podcast. Some editors are following consumer demands and increasingly seeking multimedia packages from their reporters. Doing a print story? Bring a flip video camera along. Radio? Bring a still camera for an audio slide show, too.

Sue Schardt, executive director of AIR

Sue Schardt, the executive director of the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR), sees the push towards online journalism reflected in AIR’s new members. “We’re seeing a strong shift in age and orientation,” Schardt explained. She says one-third of new members work in online journalism primarily, compared to only seven percent of the entire membership.

Listen to an interview with Sue Schardt at the Third Coast Conference:

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

News packages like Mapping Main Street, KQED Public Media’s QUEST, and NPR’s Argo Blog Project, are combining different media platforms, including slideshows, blogs, and video, to enhance radio. Radio reporters with savvy web design skills may get the upper-hand when they’re looking for a job in today’s market. Radio editors often want new talent to have online skills, too.

Carl Scott, an AIR scholarship recipient and self-described “computer tech-guy,” says his know-how in web-design has definitely helped him get work. “I’ve been able to stay afloat in journalism because of that background,” said Scott.

But more multimedia in a story isn’t always merrier, explained Amy O’ Leary, a news editor at NYTimes.com. She thinks journalists should be conscious of the different ways people are experiencing content and that content should not be based on the most recent fad.

O’Leary recalled five years ago when podcasting was a fad.  It wasn’t sustainable, she explained, and only the strongest ones with a focused audience survived.

“I think you have to be really careful about trends and fads,” said O’Leary. “And the idea of, ‘Give us multimedia. Give us bells and whistles.’ That doesn’t necessarily make for good journalism.”

O’Leary used an example from the NYTimes.com to make her point. It was an animated piece about securities lending. She said they chose to make it interactive because it was a hard issue to understand and discuss. But she explained that doesn’t mean news organizations should do animated pieces about everything.

“I think it’s wrong to do multimedia just because you want to,” O’Leary said, “The story should drive that format.”

There aren’t a lot of audio editing applications for smart phones–and they don’t hold a candle to software like Audition and ProTools–but they can be useful for small projects & quick deadlines. Most have the capacity to record, edit, fade, mix, upload and download audio files, etc. The Monle app by American Public Media was featured at the 2010 Third Coast Audio Conference in Chicago.

Monle iPhone Application

The application is not very compatible to the iPhone 4G because it was produced for the iPhone 3G. I have a 4G and the application constantly crashed or froze on me while I was producing on it. Ochen Kaylan is the creator of the program. He says he’s in the process of making it more compatible to the 4G. In a review of Monle and another audio editing app, Hindenburg Mobile from Nsaka, Transom.org’s Jeff Towne noted that the app tended to crash often, though he didn’t mention for which type of iPhone.

The major difference? Hindenburg has one audio track, while Monle has four. Towne says Monle is better for layering audio and Hindenburg is better for editing within tracks. In the Transom.org article, Towne writes that he expects better models of smart phone apps to come soon:

“It’s almost certain that these apps will add more features, and that new programs will join them, so tomorrow, who knows what will be possible? …It’s unlikely that we’ll abandon our full-sized computers completely, especially for long-form and complex productions. But for a time-sensitive story in the field? An iPhone might be enough…”

Here are additional audio editing options for smart phones:

• Poddio (iPhones)
• Audioboo (available for Androids and iPhones)
• Ringdriod (for Androids)
• Meteor (Window Mobile)

Here, Ochen explains why he created Monle:

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Ochen Kaylan, creator of the Monle application

The Monle company held a “Powers of 10″ contest in honor of the 10 year anniversary of the Third Coast Conference. The challenge? Produce sixty-seconds about the number ten in less than forty-eight hours using the app. The winner got an iPad.

People came up with some fun ideas. KQED Public Radio‘s Rachael Myrow produced a montage of ten voices reciting Rumi poetry.  Jim Leesch, a math teacher at North Shore Country Day School in Illinois decided to do something about the mathematical powers of 10 – ie: 10² = 100, 10³ = 1,000, 10⁴ = 10,000, etc. A KALW Radio producer made a piece with people saying “Happy Birthday” to Third Coast in 10 different languages.

I produced a montage of voices talking about memories from when they were ten years old and–not surprisingly–most of them were embarrassing. It’s pretty low audio quality (disclaimer, I did it in an hour!), but kind of fun nonetheless:

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]