Web radio project helps youth reach large audiences

December 7, 2005 by

A new generation of youth is pushing forward to challenge the boundaries of radio, mixing the old ideas of radio with the new movement of online journalism to create an interactive experience. Youth Radio, a public radio station based in Berkeley, is using their website, Youth Radio, to transform the auditory-only face of radio.

Hon Hoang, who originally worked for Youth Radio as a young adult, has returned as director of new media and conversion.

“Once you get online, people aren’t just trying to listen to things they missed on the radio. You want to engage them visually and through all of their senses. The website is where convergence really takes hold of everything,” she said, explaining that on the site they provide transcripts, audio and some video too.

The website is an interactive option that is beneficial not only to those people who want more depth on a story, but also for those living out of state. Hoang finds that “radio is no longer limited to a local [audience], or even nationally. It is transnational.”

The station, which is mainly funded through foundations and corporate sponsors, has 27.5 million radio listeners, Hoang said, adding that this audience has “increased 400 fold. It’s a cross-promotional kind of thing. There is promotion of the website on the show. You can get the show as a Podcast online.”

The multitude of methods that viewers can use to get information from the website and radio station has led to its growth. These options help to create an overall experience that aids in allowing the audience to relate to the person giving the story. “It was designed to make the reader feel like they were getting a lot out of it,” explained Hoang.

A unique aspect of Youth Radio is that it is driven by the youth, creating a better understanding of the way issues affect young people. One student who works for the station, Lauryn Silverman, won a Gracie Allen award for Hunger’s Diary, a commentary about her personal battle overcoming anorexia. This award is given by the American Women in Radio and Television, Inc. to acknowledge progress toward well-rounded depictions of women in the media.

Having the script and audio for broadcast stories like Hunger’s Diary posted online gives more depth to the audience’s experience, Hoang said. Many of these stories also include poetry, pictures and additional resources, among other features, for interested readers and those going through similar problems.

“The new generation is definitely going to be more aware of sensory things, it is no longer going to be a one-way track — it is going to be more dimensional,” Hoang said.

“Now people are graduating in journalism with a focus in multimedia degree, which is great. This is really where everything is going.”

Filed Under: Sites

Study: Teens shape the netscape

October 10, 2005 by

“[Teenagers] no longer care about 15 minutes of fame, but rather 15 megabytes of fame,” said Jeffrey Cole, Director of the Annenberg School of Communication’s Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California.

In honor of USC’s 125th birthday weekend, Cole gave a speech entitled “The Impact of the Internet on Our Social, Political and Economic Fabric.”

Cole shared his recently completed research study “Ten Years, Ten Trends,” which monitored the Internet usage of 2,000 people over a period of five years. Cole said his findings suggest that the only major factor affecting Internet use is the user’s age.

The impact of the Internet comes mostly from teenagers, he said. Cole’s study shows that 98 percent of teenagers go online and will continue to use the Internet for the rest of their lives.

“This generation of teenagers does not read newspapers and never will. They go online instead,” he said.

His study also concluded that poverty is no longer a major factor in people not using the Internet and that 74 percent of Americans now have the Internet.

“Cost barriers have effectively disappeared as the Internet has become more affordable and accessible than ever before,” Cole said. “The majority of the people not going online do not want to go online. These people simply see no use for it in their lives,” he explained.

Cole said he sees the Internet as enabling users to scrutinize stories in the media closer than ever before. People no longer have to take stories at face value; they now have the resources to look deeper into issues and get a more complete picture of stories than newspapers and broadcast news previously allowed, he said.

Cole plans to speak at the Google Zeitgeist ’05 in late October and at the Cyberspace 2005 conference at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic in November.

Filed Under: People