NPR

WYSO Helps Build Statewide News Service

March 3, 2022 By Dayton937

WYSO is one of seven public radio stations across Ohio that will collaborate to create and operate The Ohio Newsroom, which launches today.

The Ohio Newsroom will be the state’s largest daily statewide radio and digital news service, thanks to a two-year, $375,000 grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). The funds were awarded to Ideastream Public Media, the organization managing The Ohio Newsroom, and will help support the implementation of the service, including leadership, governance, staffing and content development. In addition, WYSO and its partnering statewide public radio stations are now conducting a nationwide search for The Ohio Newsroom’s first managing editor.

Every public radio station that broadcasts NPR in Ohio is invited to join The Ohio Newsroom. In addition to WYSO, these stations have signed on to participate in and contribute to the collaborative news service: Cincinnati Public Radio, Ideastream Public Media (Cleveland), WCSU (Wilberforce, Ohio), WGTE (Toledo, Ohio), WOSU Public Media (Columbus, Ohio) and WYSU (Youngstown, Ohio).

“WYSO has tripled its reporting staff in the last couple of years, becoming a leading source of local and regional news as well as content that has statewide significance,” said Luke Dennis, WYSO general manager. “We are eager to bring our expertise and vision to the table and to work with all of these public radio newsrooms to shape, contribute to and benefit from this service.

Future Ohio Newsroom reporting can be found on The Ohio Newsroom page on WYSO’s website.

Wendy Turner

Wendy Turner, Ideastream Public Media’s first general manager of Ohio public media services, is leading The Ohio Newsroom in addition to managing The Ohio Channel and the Ohio Public Radio and Television Statehouse News Bureau on behalf of all Ohio public television and radio stations. Turner is also part of Ideastream Public Media’s executive leadership team. Prior to joining Ideastream Public Media, she served as the general manager of WKSU public radio in Kent, Ohio.

Turner is responsible for hiring staff for The Ohio Newsroom with full consultation from the newsroom’s statewide station partners. Staffing begins with securing the newsroom’s managing editor. A national search is taking place to find the right candidate to fill this integral position. Job seekers can find information about the managing editor role and apply online at https://www.ideastream.org/about/careers. Additional positions will be added to The Ohio Newsroom as its implementation continues.

Turner said, “Securing The Ohio Newsroom’s first managing editor, and later, more reporters, will mean more in-depth stories, expanded digital content and even better statewide coordination on breaking news.” She added, “Ohio’s public media organizations have a long history of collaboration. We look forward to continuing this tradition of successfully serving Ohioans through The Ohio Newsroom.”

For years, the partner stations have worked together to share collaborative content initiatives and reporting that are relevant to a statewide audience. The Ohio Newsroom expands their ability to continue with this important work in a cohesive, strategic manner. Examples of past collaborative projects include “Learning Curve” and “Justice Matters.” The partners are also working on a new collaborative editorial project that will launch this spring — the first content initiative that will be released under The Ohio Newsroom.

Plans for The Ohio Newsroom began in July 2019 as a concept for developing a statewide news collaborative, with a $70,000 grant from The George Gund Foundation to conduct consumer research. In October 2020, Ideastream Public Media, Cincinnati Public Radio and WOSU Public

Media announced that they had been awarded a $56,500 grant from CPB to develop a business plan and a sustainability model for the collaborative. Then, as plans were further solidified among Ohio’s public radio stations, CPB awarded the project $375,000 in October 2021 to begin the collaborative’s implementation.

Said Dennis, “These funders have made it possible for public radio stations in Ohio to become an even more valuable source of unbiased news and information. WYSO is grateful for their support.”

Dinner Party Download Starts Today on WYSO

October 7, 2017 By Dayton Most Metro

You’re invited to join WYSO every Saturday, starting today at 10am for “Dinner Party Download.” Described as a fast and funny hour of culture, food and conversation: “public radio’s arts & leisure section.” In every episode you’ll learn a joke; bone up on an odd bit of history and then wash it down with a themed cocktail recipe; meet artists of note; have your burning etiquette questions answered; savor an emerging food trend; and hear your new favorite song.

Your Hosts and Party Planners

RICO GAGLIANO has worked in public radio for over a decade. His pieces have been heard on All Things Considered, Weekend America, The Savvy Traveler and other series, but he was best known as a reporter on “Marketplace,” for which he filed stories from England, Ireland, Sweden, The Netherlands, India, South Korea and across the good ol’ USA. He also penned and performed many of the show’s “Marketplace Players” comedy sketches. Prior to radio, Rico worked as a TV writer on shows for MTV, ABC, Fox Family and The Cartoon Network… and as a freelance print reporter for LA Weekly, the Village Voice, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and others. He continues to contribute pieces to The Wall Street Journal and Dwell magazine. Rico co-created, performed and wrote for the circus-like L.A. sketch comedy troupe The Ministry Of Unknown Science, which at various times required him to drop his pants on stage, stand fully clothed in frigid ocean waves for half an hour, and stand way too close to the explosion caused by detonating a sex doll filled with propane. The troupe had a top-10 video podcast on iTunes and filmed pilots for Spike TV and the SyFy Network. Rico holds an MFA from the American Film Institute. He’s been a fan of dinner parties since childhood, when it meant he got to eat in his parents’ bedroom and watch TV all night while the grownups sat around in the dining room getting wine-tipsy.

BRENDAN FRANCIS NEWNAM has been winning dinner parties since first taking a seat at the kid’s table at his family’s holiday gatherings. Granted, by then he was in his 20s and had graduated from Rutgers at the top of his class while the rest of his tablemates were toddlers, but, still, a victory is a victory, even if you make a 5-year-old cry. A long time foodie, during the height of America’s cupcake craze, Brendan sought refuge in Europe, where he wrote and edited travel guides, music reviews and celebrity profiles for various websites and magazines, including Vice and Blackbook, and delivered lectures on the ontology of the gin martini. But even la dolce vita gets old, and he returned to America to embark on a career in law. But after earning a JD and spending a summer fighting for prosecutorial reform in Bulgaria, he was seduced by public radio’s siren call. (Or maybe that was the sound of corduroy rubbing?) Before launching The Dinner Party Download, he produced and reported for national public radio shows including “Marketplace,” “Marketplace Money,” “Fresh Air,” and “Weekend America,” and, in his spare time, created and produced “Audiovant,” one of the first music interview podcasts. Though he now has a stable income and is chipping away at his law school debt, Brendan continues to freelance for various outlets, including Dwell, Modern Farmer, Saveur, and CNN.com, where, in 2011, he penned a series of travel tales called “The State I’m In.” Brendan is also a past Knight Media Fellow, and lest you think he has a face for radio, the national fashion website Racked named him a “style icon,” and that’s without even knowing about his tattoo of the word “tattoo.”

JACKSON MUSKER wears many party hats. He calligraphs and hand-delivers invitations to our Guests of Honor. He folds napkins into endangered species for our Main Courses (to raise awareness). And he serves as the test subject for every cocktail, which is an issue on Deadline Friday. Jackson landed his producer position after reporting/producing stories for L.A.’s beloved arts & culture show Off-Ramp. Prior to his radio gigs, he studied English at Duke University and double-minored in History and North Carolina-style BBQ. Jackson enjoys writing fiction, teaching kids, critiquing movies, butchering other languages, and bemoaning the Dodgers’ annual collapse. He has contributed to NPR’s Morning Edition, The California Report, the San Francisco Bay Citizen, and Cyberfrequencies.com.

MICHELLE PHILIPPE loves bite-sized dinner party food and doesn’t talk with her mouth full. Which is really important when she’s narrating our “History Lesson with Booze” segment. In addition to telling you what happened this week in history for DPD, she tells you what’s coming up tomorrow in the “Marketplace Datebook.” Michelle, herself, tries to live in the moment. She does that as an actor. And until she lands her dream job playing an evil alien space queen, she considers herself lucky to have a pretty cool job at Marketplace. Though she doesn’t have the proper wardrobe for it, Michelle is also an amateur gardener. She grows tomatoes which she loves to eat and which her husband loves to compost.

The Invisible Becomes Visible – This American Life Hits the Big Screen

May 8, 2012 By Dayton Most Metro Leave a Comment

Radio Spectacular Comes To The Big Screen Via This American Life Live!

On May 10 the ultimate “shared experience” will be simulcast in over 550 theaters between the US and Canada as PRI’s award winning show, This American Life (TAL) brings radio to the big screen for the third time! TAL host and executive producer (and public radio rockstar) Ira Glass, serves as ring master for the cinematic event broadcasting live from NYU’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in NYC. The Invisible Made Visible is the theme for this production, starring a veritable “whose who” of the public radio culture!

For starters, there are feature stories from Ira Glass himself, as well as regular contributors David Sedaris and David Rakoff and yet another regular, Mike Birbiglia, throws in a short film into the mix. Also joining these TAL all stars is the host of NPR’s Snap Judgment, Glynn Washington, as well as comic Tig Notaro, author Ryan Knighton (to the delight of Canadian TAL fans) and live music with audience interactive Android / iPhone App performance by the band OK Go. Original animation and projected illustrations will be sprinkled throughout the show plus special surprise guests!

BUT WAIT! There’s MORE! What, you may be asking yourself, would a radio show be without dance? The Monica Bill Barnes & Company of New York is not only featured in this performance, but was the motivation behind bringing This American Life back into the cinema! In a recent interview, Glass recounts how inspired he was while attending a live performance of Monica Bill Barnes & Company for the first time…

“There was something about they way they did their performance that reminded me of our radio show. There was something about the personality of it and the way the dances unfolded. They were just very good actors. The pieces seemed to be about moments of awkwardness and anxiety and the thought flashed in my head.” Glass went on to say that, “Our audience would really be into this, it’s just like our radio show…but it’s entirely visual, maybe we should think about doing another cinema event.”

I asked him how long it took from the actual moment of inspiration to the concrete production of this live show. He was surprisingly specific…

“I saw the dance show (I’m pulling it up on my calendar as we speak) June 4th, 2011, but we didn’t really decide to do it until September.” He cites being in ‘infinite editing mode’ on a Birbiglia film during the Fall of 2011 and preparing for the January 2012 Sundance Film Festival, for putting this live event momentarily on the back burner.

Yet, this moment of inspiration led Glass into a parallel universe to produce The Invisible Made Visible. For the better part of the last year, while continuing to work on the radio show, Glass found himself in “the weirdest period of my life” approving drafts from Disney animators, attending dance rehearsals, as well as working with the band OK Go in developing an interactive iPhone & Android app. To heighten the shared experience, the vision for the music app is to include 50,000 audience members in a musical performance with OK Go, similar to the bands 2012 interactive music video, Needing/Getting which aired as a Chevrolet commercial during the Superbowl.

“We basically tried to invent things that you could never do on the radio.” – Ira Glass

This production is not the only cinematic venture in the life of Ira Glass. In the summer of 2011 he co-wrote and shot a feature film with humorist and author Mike Birbiglia titled Sleepwalk With Me, which is based on Birbiglia’s This American Life piece of the same name which, in turn, was developed into a book and one man show. In January of this year Sleepwalk With Me received an audience award at Sundance Film Festival and will be go into general release August 24, 2012.

When asked what his thoughts were pertaining to the Invisible Made Visible project, he laughingly said, “I wished for a multi media adventure and I got my wish!”

When I asked Ira if fans could look forward to these cinematic/multimedia events on a regular basis, say every two years or so, he gave an enthusiastic nervous laugh, saying, “I have no idea if we’ll ever do it again! It is such an ambitious sort of undertaking that with all the animations and movies and things like that, it’s either going to be the most AMAZING thing that we have ever put on, or, it’s going to be a complete train wreck! There’s no middle ground! It’s going to be the greatest triumph of the shows history OR we will always look back on this day as the WORST thing that we ever attempted. Nothing in between is possible!” (more nervous laughter) “That is my promise to the audience!”

Judging from the success of the radio show, the brief stint of This American Life on Showtime and the last two cinema events, Glass doesn’t have much to worry about. The financial weight of this, the third, live show is much less daunting than the previous one in 2009. That entire production was funded from the pockets of TAL and was an extreme business risk.

“This time we’re doing it for the purest of reasons. It seemed like it would be fun for the audience and fun for us.” – Ira Glass

Even with the hefty price tag of such a production for a cinematic event like this, the thought of the possible higher revenue from Pay Per View is not as attractive to Glass as one might think. The impetus for taking on such a huge endeavor such as this may be explained by something Glass had been witness to in the past. As a huge fan of Howard Stern, Ira recalled how magical it felt to be in a theater with other fans and the moment of sharing the standing “O” when Stern entered the theater.

“One of the big advantages to doing it in a movie theater is, I know that when we’ve done our show live on stage, it’s exciting for people who are fans of a radio show to get together with a group of people who are fans of the same show.” Glass said.

Glass respects the intelligence of the audience of This American Life, and leaves it up them to discern the difference between journalism and story telling. Briefly touching on the recent controversial Mike Daisey episode, Mr. Daisey Goes to the Apple Factory and the following retraction show in March 2012, Glass spoke to issues of fact checking and the responsibility of shows that deliver a mix of off beat news through entertainment.

Pertaining to the pitfalls that can occur with a show such as TAL, Glass said, “Truthfully, I would like to believe that the audience is sophisticated enough that they can tell the difference and that we don’t have to cue them.”

Even in light of his high regard for the audience, technical concerns and complicated timing during this live show is nerve wracking.

“I feel confidence in the material but, it’s a very complicated tech thing to pull off and so I feel very nervous about that.” Glass expounded on that thought by saying, “I feel confident or I wouldn’t be doing a show…but I go into it very, very worried. It’s also the excitement of doing things you’ve never done. Hopefully, with fear comes enjoyment.”

With all the anxiety that comes with producing such an ambitious event, Glass is equally excited about the format. He loves the energy and reaction of a live audience versus being in a sound proof production booth.

“It’s exciting to be on stage in front of people, especially with material that you’re excited to present! Maybe this is a bad thing to say because we have all these people collaborating, but I am most excited about my own part of the show.” Glass went on, saying, “I’m most excited about the parts I get to perform! There’s a story I get to tell at the top of the show and there’s another one in the middle of the show and their both going to be really fun to perform!” Taking on a giddy tone, his inner geek came out while talking about mixing music, quotes and cues live with an iPad. “It’s really fun to do!”

“I feel like we’ve been doing promos on the air and try to express to the audience, ‘No, no! I know I’ve promoted other things but this one is really unusual and special!’ and I don’t know how to wave my arms around enough and say, ‘We’re pulling all the stops out here! Even stops we didn’t know existed!’” Glass added, “I want to communicate to the audience, ‘We’re not kidding this time! You’re not going to want to miss this one!’ The stuff we’re making for the show is so exciting! The animation and the movie that Mike Birbiglia did…they’re so exciting that it’s really hard not to just show (it to) those to people and say, ‘See what we’re talking about?!?’…but then we don’t want to spoil it.”

Dayton, Ohio witnessed this “live” mix in the flesh last May (2011) when Ira performed his solo act at Victoria Theater, in support of WYSO. I was fortunate enough to be in the first class of WYSO’s Community Voices as a producer training. Ira conducted our last class the afternoon before his show. He had a lot of great stories and practical advice. One thing that stands out with me even today was his advice on finding stories, which was pretty simple actually: “Do stories on things that amuse you.”

This American Life has always had its finger on the pulse of what amuses people. Whether it’s tragic or comical, it draws us in. They have done what radio of the past has done; given a shared experience using only sound. This live show is the rare event to bring us the sight that goes with it.

Things you should know before attending the show:

~ Dayton showings are at Regal Hollywood 20 at Fairfield Commons in Beavercreek, Dayton South 16 (near Dayton Mall), and Huber Heights 16. Tickets are $20.00 and can be purchased in advance here: http://www.fathomevents.com/originals/event/thisamericanlife2012.aspx

~ If you have an iPhone or Android and would like to participate in the live interactive “OK Go” performance, (imagine being encouraged to loudly use your phone in a theater), you need to get the App before going to the theater. Cell phone reception is poor in theaters for a reason, so don’t wait to download your App in the theater. You can get it via iTunes or the App store or for easier linkage, go here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2012/04/download-the-live-show-app

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