Bumps in the road from radio to multimedia

NPR's push into reinvent itself as a multimedia news organization, and the challenges of retraining its journalists and renegotiating its relationships with member stations, are examined in this in-depth feature to be published in the next edition of American Journalism Review and this Associated Press story. The AJR piece looks closely at the Knight Foundation digital media training program that's being offered to NPR's entire editorial staff, and it reveals some misgivings about the new demands being placed on NPR journalists. "The Knight training stuff, it just feels like running away from my job," says All Things Considered producer Art Silverman. "Most people feel as if the radio show must come first, and I'm only being half a producer if I spend half the time dragging a camera around. The upper management is pushing for multimedia, but the middle management people have a radio show to do."