The Walter Cronkite School announced Monday the bureau chief for its new Public Insight Network bureau, which has been in operation since February and officially launches in the fall.
Rebecca Blatt, formerly of Washington D.C. public radio station WAMU 88.5, will be starting as PIN bureau chief on March 17. Blatt has been with the station since 2008 and has managed PIN projects for it since 2011.
The Public Insight Network is a database of more than 200,000 sources with different areas of expertise and backgrounds run by American Public Media, the nation’s largest owner and operator of public radio stations and the second largest producer of public radio programs after NPR. Potential sources register their information with the database and agree to be contacted by journalists –- from print, digital, broadcast and radio news organizations — with questions that relate to them.
The Cronkite bureau will be the first physical location for the database, said Linda Fantin, who runs PIN as the director of network journalism and innovation for American Public Media.
With the introduction of the PIN bureau, in addition to the expansion of the school’s sports journalism program, students have more opportunities to gain professional experience. These two programs join the existing Cronkite NewsWatch and Cronkite News Service programs –- with bureaus in both Phoenix and Washington D.C. –- as well as the New Media Innovation Lab and Public Relations Lab.
“We always keep our eyes out for things that we should be adding and doing,” Cronkite School Associate Dean Kristin Gilger said. “There’s a lot of student interest in these professional experiences and there should be. Not many journalism schools do anything like this. It’s one of the things that distinguishes the Cronkite School and makes us excellent.”
Like the rest of the Cronkite School’s professional programs, students can enroll as they would with a class and work at one of the bureaus or labs several days a week. Graduate students also have the option of including the PIN bureau with their capstone, splitting their time between the bureau and Cronkite NewsWatch or Cronkite News Service.
“The professional program experience is such a rich and rewarding experience for our students,” Gilger said. “We want as many options for them as possible, and we want as many of them to do these as possible.”
Reporters traditionally submit queries to the PIN database themselves or through a specific employee at their news organization who has been trained to work with the database. The 12 organizations currently participating in the pilot semester of the PIN bureau instead communicate with Cronkite School students who serve as middlemen between the reporters and the sources they’re hoping to contact.
The students write, edit and submit queries for sources of specific demographics themselves. Interested sources respond and students put them in contact with the reporter.
Journalism junior Dominick DiFurio is one of two students currently working part time with the PIN bureau. He said he “immediately fell in love” with the work he does with the bureau.
“It’s a really cool marriage of traditional journalism and new media,” DiFurio said. “We’re delivering a service to these newsrooms that’s really valuable.”
Fantin likened the database to the Rolodexes of the past. Rather than digging through dozens, if not hundreds, of old notebooks for expert sources and go-to contacts, reporters can use the database to find the best people to speak with.
PIN also encourages diversity of sources, allowing reporters to search for people of a specific demographic and providing easier access to people in minority groups that were previously excluded from most news coverage and are often still under represented.
“We asked, ‘How can we broaden and diversify the source pool and voices in our reporting so we’re not going with the same usual suspects?’” Fantin said.
In its first month, the bureau processed 18 requests from seven clients across the country. The students submitted 15 queries that were sent out to a total of more than 15,000 potential sources. This yielded three published stories so far, with several more currently in progress.
Fantin said she hopes the bureau will prove to be a model for “human-centered, engagement-driven journalism.” PIN is helping to solve some of the business model issues affecting the journalism industry by rethinking the way reporters find and communicate with sources, she said. And if the bureau is successful, American Public Media might consider expanding the Cronkite School bureau or adding similar programs at other journalism schools or institutions.
“PIN is both a method — a way of journalism based around engagement and community impact — and a toolset,” Fantin said.
Gilger said the bureau allows students to learn traditional journalism skills such as finding sources and editing information alongside more contemporary abilities like innovative thinking and entrepreneurship.
“I thought this would be a great experience for students as they enter a world of journalism where the audience is a much bigger piece of the equation,” Gilger said. “It fills a little niche at the Cronkite School that we really didn’t have.”
Fantin agreed, saying, “This has the potential to create a rich pipeline that can only help their job prospects. … Students being able to not only get that experience but design it and lead it and carry it out, that’s exciting.”
The new sports journalism program, which is being run by Assistant Dean Mark Lodato, was launched in October 2013 with three new full-time professors, an expanded Major League Baseball spring training reporting class and more than a dozen sports reporting skills classes. Students also have the opportunity to work from the newly opened Cronkite Sports bureau at the ASU California Center in Santa Monica.
And in February, the Cronkite School announced a new Super Bowl reporting class that would begin in the fall semester. Students will produce content for Fox Sports Arizona, the Arizona Republic and azcentral.com.
Both the PIN bureau and the revamped sports program will officially launch in the fall 2014 semester. Students have the opportunity to gain professional experience and develop skills in real newsroom settings, as well as build relationships with reporters and editors.
“With the bureau, we’re proving to the professional world the caliber of work coming out of the Cronkite School,” DiFurio said “These programs really open up doors for students like myself.”
Contact the reporter at kkoerth@asu.edu
