With great pleasure, the Berkman Center congratulates the Public Radio Exchange for winning the MacArthur Foundation’s 2008 Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, along with seven other fantastic nonprofits.
Launched in 2003 with Berkman Fellow Jake Shapiro at the helm, the Public Radio Exchange (PRX) has become the premier digital clearinghouse for public radio and a leading platform to foster the communities in which public media thrives. PRX links independent producers, local stations, and listeners, helping to surface new voices and to aggregate, promote, and rate fresh content. PRX has distributed over 24,000 (!) pieces to stations, bringing independent radio to millions (!) of listeners (and generating over $650,000 (!) in royalties to producers). PRX also helps producers and stations reach new audiences online through on-demand modes such as podcasting. (For more info, see PRX's About and check out Jake's interview about PRX with managingrights.com.)
In short, as Jake put it in Berkman’s tenth anniversary report, “PRX has made good use of its Berkman DNA, and found early inspiration in the idea of being ‘an entrepreneurial nonprofit exploring cyberspace and pioneering its development.’” With uncertainty in broadcast news and newspapers, not to mention at NPR, PRX demonstrates how nonprofit public media resources can fill gaps online and help public broadcasting transition to a digital age. The Berkman community is tremendously proud of our PRX affiliates’ accomplishments -- and of their prospects.
The MacArthur Award gives PRX a big boost with which to build organizational capacity, to develop and extend its pioneering web application, and to launch a fund to seed creative audio work through projects such as the amazing Generation PRX, last year’s Public Radio Talent Quest, and new PRX brainchild BallotVox. (For details on how PRX plans to use the MacArthur Awards, hop over to this page and scroll down.)
Encore: congratulations, Public Radio Exchange!
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