Something exciting happened during
WHYY's fall pledge drive. And it
wasn't a riveting
Terry Gross interview. For the third consecutive year,
NPR stations saw growth in the 25-to-40 demographic. Welcoming this
younger demographic will not be easy for WHYY, Philadelphia's NPR
affiliate and home for political discourse and intellectual public
programming. So the station created
NewsWorks, an online news and
commentary site, launching Nov. 15. Enlisting its own journalists and regional content providers, NewsWorks hopes to create a hyperlocal news
focus and bring enlightened discussion from the airwaves to the
internet.
"The 2008 election was a great thing for NPR stations because a lot of
people considered NPR to be the most reliable place to get news on that
election so we brought a lot of new people into the tent," says WHYY
Director of News and Civic Dialogue Chris Satullo. "Now we are trying to
keep them. We are looking for two key demographics we hope will be the
early adopters of NewsWorks. One is the younger technologist
professional group--the creative class in Philly. And the other is the
middle-aged professional who has been an NPR fan for a long time."
One of the goals of NewsWorks is to replicate the open discussion
created on air at WHYY and bring it to the internet. Website comment
boards are not traditionally known for scintillating conversation so
NewsWorks will employ a self-governing rewards system, allowing users to
give points to other users for contributing a valuable comment. By changing commenting and by asking the right questions, Satullo believes productive dialogue can occur online.
"We are going to work very hard not to frame things as black and white, left vs. right," says Satullo. "We are trying to get the 360-degree opinions and how people's experiences shape their opinions."
Source: Chris Satullo, WHYY
Writer: John Steele