The Producer

We have a number of new blogs at NPR that show promise:

The Two-Way (news)
All Tech Considered (personal technology)
A Blog Supreme (jazz)

Take a look and let us know what you think!

My colleague and friend Ketzel Levine said farewell to National Public Radio today after a career as one of the network’s most distinct and enjoyable voices. But not to worry, she is already building a new public profile beyond NPR with her blog Ketzel Uprooted.

I worked with Ketzel on her Talking Plants blog, and on the Web presentation of her Take Two radio series. It was a delight to get to know her after listening to her work for years on the radio.

I know she has the moxie to make the most of her unexpected circumstance.

We launched a new set of social media tools on NPR.org on Sunday night. I know it’s not groundbreaking stuff. But it’s a big moment for us and we hope to use it to connect with our audience in new journalistic ways. Go ahead and create a profile on the site if you’re a fan of NPR!

For a little while now NPR has had a small visual-journalism team in place. Now they have a podcast. You should subscribe. It’s worth watching. They’re leading the effort to translate NPR’s strength as audio storytellers into a world they call Radio Pictures. You can also find their work at NPR.org/multimedia.

John Poole, Coburn Dukehart, David Gilkey and Keith Jenkins are NPR’s multimedia department. They are producing the stories that take NPR into the realm of sight. Check it out. I think you’ll like it.

(In case it’s not obvious, I work for NPR. But, I think, that has very little to do with my admiration for the multimedia team. )

It was a trip to the past, or future — however you look at it, when REM played a set at Stubbs Bar-B-Q in Austin as part of the 2008 SXSW festival. The show was streamed and recorded for posterity by NPR.

There has been some noise surrounding the upcoming album by the group, Accelerate. The band is supposedly back to a sound that will again win the hearts of a larger audience. I’ll reserve judgment on that claim.

I’m not really an unbiased listener as I’ve enjoyed much of their post mega-success work, including New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Up and Reveal. And I enjoyed this concert, especially the chance to again hear “Electrolite” and “Walk Unafraid.”