NPR CEO: We Want to Partner With Journalism Startups

Alexis C. Madrigal Jul 6 2010, 5:40 PM ET

NPR CEO Vivian Schiller wants her organization and its local affiliates to partner with the journalism startup companies that have been growing up through the wreckage of the newspaper business.

The pitch she made here at the Aspen Ideas Festival is simple. Innovative journalism startups can do great work but they have trouble attracting large audiences, a problem David Carr calls "the tyranny of small numbers." Public radio stations have millions of listeners, but limited budgets. Put the two types of organizations together and you have quality, well-researched journalism reaching large numbers of people.

In this short, exclusive video, she describes her vision for collaboration -- and how news startups might best get involved with her organization. She specifically called out three organizations that NPR member stations are working with, and that you should keep an eye on: The Texas Tribune in Austin, the St. Louis Beacon, and the Watchdog Institute in San Diego.

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Alexis C. Madrigal

Alexis Madrigal is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he oversees the Technology channel. He's the author of Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology. More

The New York Observer calls Madrigal "for all intents and purposes, the perfect modern reporter." He co-founded Longshot magazine, a high-speed media experiment that garnered attention from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the BBC. While at Wired.com, he built Wired Science into one of the most popular blogs in the world. The site was nominated for best magazine blog by the MPA and best science Web site in the 2009 Webby Awards. He also co-founded Haiti ReWired, a groundbreaking community dedicated to the discussion of technology, infrastructure, and the future of Haiti.

He's spoken at Stanford, CalTech, Berkeley, SXSW, E3, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and his writing was anthologized in Best Technology Writing 2010 (Yale University Press).

Madrigal is a visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley's Office for the History of Science and Technology. Born in Mexico City, he grew up in the exurbs north of Portland, Oregon, and now lives in Oakland.