Posts Tagged NPR

Pub Camp – The Virus Spreads – What will you do?

Posted by Rob Paterson in Advice, Collaboration, Context, Engagement, Impact, Journalism, Local, Network, Partners, Personal Story, Technical on October 27th, 2009

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Nearly 250 people attended Pub Camp in Washington recently to talk about how best to use social media in Pub Media

Here is a great summary by Andy Carvin with film footage by John Proffitt

PubCamp Sampler from John Proffitt on Vimeo.

Many stations will be having their own local Pub Camp soon

PubCamp 101 from John Proffitt on Vimeo.

What will you be doing?

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2 million on track to lose their homes in 2009 – No chance of saving any without help

Posted by Rob Paterson in Context, Journalism, National, Network on September 9th, 2009

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In a report by NPR today we see part of the problem. The scale and the complexity of the number of homes going into foreclosure is overwhelming. Without the help we offer, there might be no chance.

First of all the sheer scale of the challenge.

Tiffany Palmer, who works on the call center floor, says more and more homeowners are in trouble because they’ve had their hours cut at work or because a spouse has lost a job. With the recession, there are now a lot more middle-class people with decent credit who can’t pay their mortgages. Nationally, one-third of the people who are falling behind on their mortgages are in traditional “prime” fixed-rate mortgages.

Bank of America has 8,000 people working on the problem and gets about 2 million calls a month. BUT the process is still opaque and will only work if the applicant has a lot of help.

Economists, including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, have repeatedly said that preventing foreclosures is good for the housing market and the whole economy. But, in many cases, loan modifications aren’t going through.

The U.S. Treasury Department has started issuing banks foreclosure report cards. The last one found that under the president’s plan, Bank of America had modified only 4 percent of loans that were more than 60 days delinquent. The bank says it has doubled that number in just the past month. The next report card is due Wednesday.

The last report card found that JPMorgan Chase extended loan-modification offers on 20 percent of its delinquent loans. CitiMortgage was at 15 percent and Wells Fargo had modified only 6 percent.

Janine Emlinger, a 48-year-old homeowner in Curtis, Ohio, says she’s been trying for a year to get a loan modification, but Bank of America keeps losing her documents. So she keeps falling further behind on her payments.

Our work may be just beginning.

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Unemployment – Planet Money offers a Big Picture

Posted by Rob Paterson in Context, Journalism, National, Network, Partners on September 4th, 2009

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Planet Money have done a great job today covering the Unemployment situation – Yea Laura!

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Reinventing yourself?

Posted by Rob Paterson in Advice, National, Network, Partners, Personal Story on September 4th, 2009

reinventing-yourself

The unemployment numbers are in today and they look worse – I will post details later. But here is a bright spot – Many are not hoping to get their old job back but are working for themselves doing things that they love. It’s not for everyone – but it was for me back in the day – worth thinking about. (This clip is from PRX’s excellent page on stories about the Financial Crisis which you can explore here

By Laura Hertzfeld | Published: September 2, 2009

I recently spoke with two Los Angeles residents who are turning their time out of work into a chance to try something new. Jamie Rubin, a former online news producer is now designing nursing shirts for new moms at Milkstars. Brian Zeno was in sales and is now managing rock bands. The story was on today’s Morning Edition on NPR.

Some of the tens-of-thousands of Americans who have lost their jobs in the recession are turning crisis into opportunity. Instead of searching for a new job in the same field, they are turning their passion into a paycheck.
Lose Your Job? Follow Your Passion

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Foreclosures Rise in July

Posted by Rob Paterson in Context, Journalism, National, Partners on August 13th, 2009

foreclosures-rise-in-july

From NPR today:

Foreclosure actions across the nation were up 7 percent in July compared to the previous month, and rose by nearly one-third compared to a year ago, according to real estate marketplace company RealtyTrac.

The company said filings such as default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions were reported on more than 360,000 U.S. properties during the month. One in every 355 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing in July.

“July marks the third time in the last five months where we’ve seen a new record set for foreclosure activity,” said RealtyTrac CEO James J. Saccacio. “Despite continued efforts by the federal government and state governments to patch together a safety net for distressed homeowners, we’re seeing significant growth in both the initial notices of default and in the bank repossessions.”

The company said that Nevada documented the nation’s highest state foreclosure rate, with 1 in 56 housing units subject to a foreclosure action. California was next with a rate of 1 in 123 housing units.

Here is a very helpful interactive map from NPR that shows us the situation

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A Story Pyramid – Laura Conaway & Planet Money

Posted by Rob Paterson in Collaboration, Engagement, Journalism, Local, National, Network, Partners, Personal Story on July 30th, 2009

How do you cover your community with no or little money? At Planet Money they ask for help and they “listen” to Twitter.

Here are a couples of examples that Laura used to show how you can do this

The “Clown” Tweets Us – PM has a deep and keen Twitter fan club – I call it the PM Tribe – So here a PM Twitter Fan Tweets the Show – The Listening part of Twitter.

@planetmoney #economy I am Children’s entertainer #clown. Work was way dwn jan-april. (-%87 for me.) now better, but #swineflu panic a prob

PM calls her and uses her story in part of their podcast. The Deepening Phase

Morning Edition likes the story and bumps it up and put in on the main show – The harvest phase

People ask all the time – “How do we bring the voice of the citizen into the station” – well this is one way that you can do this.

By the way – for us PM Twitter fans/Tribe the pay off is when our bit goes on the show. Like Golf, the tiny chance that it might is the massive incentive.

The result is that you not only deepen the engagement that you have with your community, but you get ahead of the story. You get the story before it is a story. You have an intelligence system like no other.

Here is another of these Pyramids or ladders:

Terri Weiss tweets her employer’s demise – First, they stop the coffee:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/01/first_they_stop_the_coffee.html

Terri Weiss tells her story on podcast

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/01/hear_can_i_borrow_20.html

Terri Weiss, with a little more production, on Morning Edition

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99790809

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It’s Getting Worse

Posted by Rob Paterson in Collaboration, Context, Journalism, National, Partners on July 29th, 2009

homes

Here is the full post (Thanks to @littof) by Laura Conaway at Planet Money

This chart shows two things, really. First, we can see the scale on which struggling homeowners have managed to keep their homes by getting lenders to rework the mortgages. Second, we can see the scale on which the sheer number of struggling homeowners has risen. The strugglers are outpacing the rescued by a factor of seven.

The Center for Responsible Lending, which produced the chart, is calling on Congress to protect families. The advocacy wants the goverment to the most of the federal Making Home Affordable program, which launched with a goal of reaching 4 million families and has so far gotten only 200,000. Mortgage servicers met with the Obama administration today and promised to speed things up.

The Center is also asking Congress for legal changes that would allow bankruptcy judges to rewrite mortages on principal residences. It’s lobbying for the Consumer Financial Protection Agency proposed by the Obama administration. The new agency has faced criticism from Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke and FDIC chair Sheila Bair, some of whose current power would be subsumed by the new regulator.

Planet Money pal Felix Salmon notes an idea from the Center for Responsible Lending’s director, Keith Ernst, for a mediation program to work out deals between mortgage services and lenders. Salmon writes:

I fear that Congress is beginning to get reform fatigue, after so many attempted solutions have failed. But that’s no reason to stop trying new things — in fact, it’s a good reason to try even harder.

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NPR’s New Web Site – Symbol of a New Local/National Network

Posted by Rob Paterson in Collaboration, Context, Engagement, National, Network, Partners, The Web on July 27th, 2009

NPR.org launches today. It’s more than a visual makeover it is the cornerstone of a strategy:

The renovated Web site, featuring a cleaner look and easier navigation—is the linchpin, she explained to NEWSWEEK last week, of a strategy to transform NPR into the No. 1 destination for free news on and beyond the radio. “We have to be a multiplatform play,” she said. For Schiller, that means building on NPR’s reputation as a broadcaster of national and international news, by extending its reach into local news. She plans on relying more on local member stations to fill what she sees as a “scary” void in local coverage as hometown daily newspapers fold. (Newsweek interview with Vivian Schiller)

In terrestrial radio and TV, there was a natural alliance between local and national – now on the web there has to be a viable alliance as well.

The technical components are now available – PBS and NPR are making most of their content available on the web. The missing link is how to use the web locally to make use of this in a way that serves the audience and that serves the system.

FTMC gives us the ideal “Space” to try to work this out. For each station now has a special piece of “Web Real Estate” based on the most pressing real need of its community where most of the national web content has been focused. This will surely be our best chance to discover how to make this new alliance work.

We start this discussion July 28th with the webinar on this very topic:

Please join us, along with your team, on Tuesday, July 28th at 3 p.m. ET for a webinar to discuss how to best utilize national content options.  The webinar will be hosted by the National Center for Media Engagement, a national project partner.

With Facing the Mortgage Crisis, you have created new and unlimited content platforms—your blogs and websites devoted to Facing the Mortgage Crisis.  Now that you have this unlimited “real estate,” how do you best take advantage of it?  How do you choose national content that best fits your local community?  How do you contextualize national content for your local community?

Todd Mundt, Vice President and Chief Content Officer at Louisville Public Media and Managing Editor of The Mediavore, and Laura Conaway of NPR’s Planet Money will share their editorial and contextualization processes.  Additionally, Carolyn O’Hara (The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer) and Bobbi English (Sesame Workshop) will share exciting national content options that will be available to your stations.

We’d like to invite you to ask any questions (to be answered during the webinar) before Tuesday—please post a comment by noon on Monday, 7/27 to the blog post on Ning entitled “July 28th Webinar Details.” You will also be able to join the conversation and ask questions during the webinar.

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ThinkTV’s List of Great Content

Posted by Rob Paterson in Context, Journalism, National on July 23rd, 2009

NewsHour
The Mortgage Meltdown
Foreclosures in Wealthier Monied ‘Burbs May Signal Trouble Ahead
Mortgage Fraud Sweep Nets Hundreds of Arrests
What causes Mortgage Rates to Rise and Fall?
Foreclosures more than Double: Uptick seen in Durable Goods
Fed tries to ease Impact of Mortgage Crisis on U.S. Economy
Why didn’t the Private Mortgage Insurance advert the Current Banking and Credit Crisis?
Financial Worries, Credit Crisis felt Around the Globe
Patchwork Nation

Nightly Business Report
A Tale of Five Cities: PBS’ Nightly Business Report Talks to Homeowners about the Mortgage Crisis

NPR
Foreclosures Up as Unemployment Soars

NOW
Coping with the Mortgage Mess
Mortgage Mess
Will Washington Fix the Mortgage Mess?
Housing Crisis: You Asked, She Answered
Help for the Homeowners
Expert Advice on Controlling Debt

Pawn Chronicles
Living on the Fringe

This American Life
The Giant Pool of Money

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Busting the Bureaucracy

Posted by Rob Paterson in Context, Journalism, Personal Story on July 18th, 2009

Morning Edition, May 15, 2009 · New figures out this week show that foreclosure filings are up 32 percent from a year ago. Our Planet Money team found that some people in the mortgage industry are saying something remarkable: As many as half of these foreclosures don’t need to happen. (NPR)

At the heart of the matter is therefore the bureaucracy of the lenders. Many just cannot be bothered. Even though the losses are greater through foreclosure – it is bureaucratically easier for them to foreclose and so they do.

How do you cope with this? I think we have to use the power of story to make this a national issue.

As an individual, this is very hard – Here is a blog of the Littof family that I found on Planet Money. They had a short sale that would have given the bank a much better return. But as you will see in this story, they found it very hard to prevent the bank from just pushing the button. Why? Because I think for the people at the bank, there was less to do by foreclosing – Foreclosing is very easy from a paperwork point of view. So you get stalled.

So that was our goal. Avoid Foreclosure. And we did. It got close there for a minute or two. But we did it. Thanks to our Realtors and our persistence. It takes a lot of persistence. If you’re facing foreclosure, fight it. How? Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. Ask questions. Call your Governor, your Representative, write letters. Anything you can think of. Just stay in action. And stay committed. That’s our advice.

As local specialists it is also hard. In Cleveland there is a group of lawyers who specialize in this type of case – where the house is able to be saved but where the bank doesn’t care. Here is a remarkable piece of evidence of this bureaucratic push back as we listen in to the lawyers at work (Ideastream)

I think that we have found a leverage point here. A fix will be to make foreclosure harder bureaucratically for the lender.

How to do that?

Maybe to introduce a major penalty if it can be proved that the lender did not exercise its best efforts to do the best for its shareholders and the borrower?

Whatever – Before anything gets done – a lot more people in power have to know that this is a problem and a problem that can be solved by regulators. To do that, we need more stories like this – if we get a national range of stories like this – we will be able to influence what is going on.

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