IPBS (https://ipbs.org/author/mnewman/page/2/)
Don’t let the name fool you. The Happy Little Fest, hosted by Ball State PBS on October 29, is going to be a BIG deal. Ball State PBS—which brought Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting to the world for many years—will be celebrating the 80th birthday of the beloved painter and instructor. And the station is also celebrating its 50th year on the air.
The Indiana Debate Commission will host a single debate between three U.S. Senate candidates on Sunday, Oct. 16, with a one-hour broadcast starting at 7 p.m. Eastern on your local Indiana Public Broadcasting Station.
IPBS member stations were big winners at the recent Society of Professional (SPJ) Journalists awards banquet recognizing the best work of 2021 in Indiana print, broadcast, and online journalism. IPBS member stations earned nearly 40 awards, including eight among the IPB News team. Lauren Chapman, IPB News digital editor, was named Indiana Journalist of the Year for her nuanced and expansive coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Chapman won in the Special Honors Division for “her dogged, relevant, detailed, human coverage of Covid-19,” according to the SPJ judging panel. “It is a story that affected (and still does) almost every citizen in her area, the USA, and the world.”
IPB News was also honored with first place awards for education coverage, radio sports reporting, radio continuing coverage, radio public affairs, and best COVID-19 initiative; second place awards for medical/science and environmental reporting; and a third place award for sports reporting. IPB News is a collaboration of the state’s nine public media newsrooms and a shared statewide team, which includes journalists from several station newsrooms.
VINCENNES, Ind. – The Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations Board of Directors has elected Nichole Carie as its new president.
Carie is the director of operations for Vincennes University’s public broadcast stations Vincennes PBS, WVUT-TV, and The Blazer 91.1, WVUB-FM. She also serves as the general manager for Vincennes PBS.
Seventy-five public media stations, including WFYI Pubic Media (Indianapolis) and WVPE-FM (Michiana), have been selected to participate in the Digital Transformation Program, a virtual program developed by the Poynter Institute to educate, assist, and coach public media senior leaders and their staff on the best strategies and tactics to transform their organization’s digital operations and culture. The training is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
$983K Grant Supports Community Engagement Journalism in Underserved AreasWASHINGTON, D.C. (July 19, 2021) – Indianapolis-based WFYI will lead America Amplified 2.0, a public media initiative designed to instill journalism practices that meaningfully address local information needs through active listening and engagement. WFYI will establish a central team to lead and develop community engagement journalism practices at 20 public media stations, especially in parts of the country traditionally underserved by media, including rural areas. The initiative is funded through a $983,451 grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The initiative builds on the success of America Amplified, a CPB-supported partnership of public media collaborations focused on community listening and engagement. Initially launched in 2019 to strengthen public media’s ability to incorporate community and citizen perspectives into election coverage, the collaboration also helped shape public media coverage of the coronavirus pandemic to include perspectives from communities across the country, including weekly call-in radio shows co-hosted by public radio stations in different parts of the country.
“At WFYI, we believe engagement is the key to expanding audiences and deepening impact through all our public media platforms,” said WFYI President and CEO Greg Petrowich.
IPBS is providing an unparalleled pathway to distance education for K-12 students throughout Indiana, adhering to both its education and public service mandates. Member station WTIU in Bloomington, along with partners SpectraRep and the Jennings County School Corporation, recently launched datacasting to aid students learning from home with little or no internet access. Watch the Journey Indiana segment entitled, For Our Kids: Educational Datacasting in Jennings County, to learn about the extraordinary impact that datacasting is having on this Indiana community.
INDIANAPOLIS – WFYI Public Media announced today that reporter, editor and host Mariam Sobh has been selected as the new host of Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations’ (IPBS) statewide talk show, All IN, which is produced at WFYI. Sobh’s experience telling stories across a range of media have helped audiences learn more about a wide range of topics, from politics and police violence to bee swarms and fashion. Her first day on the program will be March 15, 2021.
WASHINGTON – February 22, 2021 – America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) today presented the Champion of Public Broadcasting Award to Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb, in recognition of his support for Indiana public television stations’ initiative to provide remote learning services to students without broadband access.
As Indiana schools prepare to continue e-learning in 2021 to protect against the spread of COVID-19, more than 84,000 Hoosier students still don’t have Internet access at home. Some schools and organizations are working to install temporary hotspots to close the learning gap, but the Indiana Public Broadcast Stations group (IPBS) is working on a cheaper and perhaps better alternative. IPBS stations currently beam television signals into nearly every Indiana household. Using those same signals, the stations can also “datacast” specific and targeted educational materials from teachers into homes. It’s cheaper than installing Internet hotspots, won’t be stymied by large files and comes with the added bonus of PBS-level educational curriculum. Jennings County School Corporation will use the option in January, which will make Indiana only the second state in the union to teach via datacasting.