OPB Accepts Peabody Award

Earlier today, OPB accepted the 69th Annual George Foster Peabody Award for its series "Hard Times." The awards were announced in April and presented today at a ceremony in New York honoring the 36 winners.

The oldest prize in broadcasting and international in scope, The Peabody Award is considered among the most prestigious in electronic media and recognizes excellence and meritorious work by radio and television stations, networks, Web casters, producing organizations and individuals.

The awarding committee praised the series for its "smart, compassionate radio coverage of the impact of the financial crisis on ordinary folks."

“OPB is focused on telling the important stories of Oregon and its people. The Peabody is a great honor and is recognition of our commitment to explore the diversity of experiences in our communities," said Steve Bass, president and CEO of Oregon Public Broadcasting. "A tremendous amount of dedication, investigation and collaboration went into developing a series that put a real face on the economic crisis in Oregon."

The complete archive of the "Hard Times" series is available at news.opb.org/hardtimes.

An OREGON ART BEAT Special: "Teaching Creativity: Is Art the Answer?" Premieres on May 27

How important are activities like painting, band, choir or dance in Oregon's cash-strapped schools? As budgets are cut around the state and student performance on standardized tests is prioritized over more creative tasks, making time for the arts has become a controversial issue. Why do we continue to teach the arts as classes get bigger and budgets continue to shrink? Or, from a different perspective, do we lose something as a community if our children aren't learning creative thinking skills in the classroom? In "Teaching Creativity: Is Art the Answer?", OREGON ART BEAT looks closely at the relationship between arts education and creativity in our public schools.

This half-hour special airing on Thursday, May 27 at 8pm investigates arts education in three situations around the state:

Milwaukie choir director John Baker fears that his award-winning choir program will not be around for long. He's taught at Rex Putnam High School for 30 years. His choirs have a reputation as among the best in the state, but enrollment is dropping in all the art and music classes. His choir is declining in size, but still winning at state. If it eventually disappears, he worries about the impact on the school community.

Michael Geisen uses music, theater and drawing to keep his students engaged with science at Crook County Middle School in Prineville. His teaching strategies helped him earn the National Teacher of the Year award in 2008, but he's struggling with increasing class size and decreasing budgets.

Young Audiences has provided artist-in-residence programs around the state for decades. In Portland we follow two artists who provide intensive instruction in mask making and drawing during their one week in "residence" in the classroom. For some students, it may be the only formal art education they receive all year.

Advocates say that the arts can be a bridge to help students understand complex material across many different subjects. Others argue that creative thinking is a critical skill for the workforce of the 21st century. While Oregon has art education standards and benchmarks that students must meet, finding the time to teach creative thinking skills is a challenge in classrooms across the state. Why are we trying to find time to teach these skills at all? "Teaching Creativity: Is Art the Answer?" explores these questions and makes some surprising discoveries.

More on Special Website
At opb.org/teachingcreativity, find original video featuring stories of how art influenced the lives of some Oregon celebrities, links to resources, a place to share your story of how art education affected your life, and more.

THINK OUT LOUD Looks at the Arts in Education
On Friday, May 28, THINK OUT LOUD will continue the discussion on the arts in education. Tune in to the stations of OPB Radio at 9am and go to the THINK OUT LOUD website to join the discussion.

ART BEAT at School
Bring OREGON ART BEAT into your school or home classroom. Visit our new and improved site to find more than 700 streaming video clips and improved search tools, plus teacher's notes and lesson plans with related activities, resources and projects. It’s a great way to engage kids in learning and creating.
www.opb.org/education/atschool/

You can watch entire ART BEAT broadcasts at watch.opb.org. Video of the stories featured on ART BEAT can be viewed online immediately following the broadcast at opb.org/programs/artbeat.

Check out the ART BEAT blog at http://blogs.opb.org/artful/

About OREGON ART BEAT
OREGON ART BEAT, Oregon Public Broadcasting's Emmy-Award winning local arts series, is in its 11th season. ART BEAT profiles Northwest artists, musicians and artisans -- from an operatic baritone to a bit-and-spur craftsman to everything in between. The program airs Thursdays at 8pm and Sundays at 1am and 6pm. In the Mountain Time Zone of Eastern Oregon, the program airs at 9pm Thursdays and repeats at 7pm on Sundays. Funding for OREGON ART BEAT is provided in part by James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation and the Kinsman Foundation. More information is available online at opb.org/artbeat.

OREGON EXPERIENCE: "The White Plague" Premieres Monday, May 17

“If we all searched our family histories, we would find that at some point, we have all been touched by the tragic disease tuberculosis."
-- Jay D. Kravitz, M.D., Global Health Center

Tuberculosis. Consumption. White Plague. Ancient Egyptian king Tutankamen died of it. So did a long list of other well-known historical characters: from Frédéric Chopin to Stephen Foster; Eleanor Roosevelt and Ho Chi Mihn; Sarah Bernhardt and W.C. Fields and many more. American singer Jimmie Rodgers recorded “T.B. Blues” before succumbing to the sickness himself. Tuberculosis has plagued humanity for a long, long time. And in many parts of the world, TB still reigns as one of the deadliest of all diseases.

"White Plague," the next episode of the OREGON EXPERIENCE series, explores the history of tuberculosis in Oregon and elsewhere. Airing on Monday, May 17 at 9pm, the program, produced by OPB's Eric Cain, portrays what had been the real immediacy of the threat. “White Plague” employs excerpts from old films and personal accounts from two individuals -- each a one-time patient in a TB sanitorium, but each experiencing a very different outcome.

Today, in the Pacific Northwest, tuberculosis may not be an everyday word. But many Oregonians remember when it was. As recently as the 1940s and '50s, children lined up at school for TB skin tests. Mobile X-ray trucks parked at offices and factories to administer chest X-rays to workers.

Over the years, untold numbers of Oregonians developed active tuberculosis disease, and thousands tried to recuperate in one of the state’s public sanitoriums. But many -- perhaps even most – died from the disease, because until the 1950s, tuberculosis had no cure.

Oregon was the first Western state to build a public TB hospital and was, for a long time, the epicenter of TB surgery in the Pacific Northwest, because until 1946, Portland had the region’s only medical school. Two Portland doctors, brothers Ray and Ralph Maston, achieved national recognition for their open-chest procedures which helped pave the way to modern thoracic and heart surgery. But all of those facts have faded into history.

Oregonians don’t talk much about TB anymore, because they simply don’t see very much of it here. But elsewhere in the world, it continues to kill more than 2 million people a year.

Watch the complete program online anytime after May 17 at
opb.org/oregonexperience or at watch.opb.org.

About OREGON EXPERIENCE
OREGON EXPERIENCE is an exciting history series on OPB TV that brings to life fascinating stories that help us understand who we are and that reinforce our shared identity as Oregonians. The series, co-produced by the Oregon Historical Society and Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB), takes advantage of the extensive film, video and stills from the archives of OHS and OPB, and draws upon the expertise of OHS researchers and historians. Each half-hour show features captivating characters -- both familiar and forgotten -- who have played key roles in building our state into the unique place we call home. Funding for OREGON EXPERIENCE is provided in part by Ann & Bill Swindells Charitable Trust, James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation and Oregon Cultural Trust.

OPB Hires New Reporter for Its Central Oregon Bureau

Oregon Public Broadcasting has hired David Nogueras to staff its Central Oregon Bureau. Nogueras will be stationed in Bend and file reports from throughout the region. OPB opened the Central Oregon Bureau in 2007 to expand its coverage of this dynamic part of the state.

“There is no shortage of great stories for David to cover,” said Morgan Holm, OPB's vice president of News and Public Affairs. "Hardly a week goes by without a big story from somewhere in the region, whether it’s the economy, an environmental issue or a different perspective on the impact of some federal or state rule.”

"These stories affect not only the quarter of a million Oregonians living in the region," said Holm, "but also many others who visit the area for business, recreation and education. We’re looking forward to hearing his reports on OPB Radio and sharing them on OPBNews.org," he said.

Nogueras graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont, and was previously a producer for ALL THINGS CONSIDERED and WEEKEND EDITION at National Public Radio's headquarters in Washington in 2007. He was selected for an NPR reporting internship at KPBS in San Diego in 2008, following in the footsteps of previous recipients Ari Shapiro, Guy Raz and Andrea Seabrook.

OPB's Central Oregon Bureau allows expanded news coverage from across the region. Coupled with the Northwest News Network bureaus in Salem, Richland (Washington), Spokane/Coeur d'Alene and Olympia, OPB continues to expand the reach of our reporting to provide a wide range of in-depth stories for our audience.

You can read about David Nogueras and the rest of OPB's radio staff on our Radio Staff Page.

Oregon Public Broadcasting Completes American Archive Pilot

Thousands of Hours of Content Saved, Groundwork Set for Future American Archive

Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) has completed a prototype archive that establishes a foundation for archiving public broadcasting material in the future. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) commissioned the project in January of 2009 to explore the scope of historic video and audio sitting on shelves throughout the public broadcasting system, and to determine what it would take to preserve and archive this historic content.

Twenty-five public television and radio stations took part in the project. In the first phase, the stations conducted a station-wide inventory for content related to two topics: the U.S. Civil Rights movement and World War II era oral histories stations created in conjunction with the 2007 Ken Burns series, The War. Stations inventoried more than 5,200 items totaling over 7,200 hours of content on formats that ranged from 16mm film to 1/4-inch audio to HDCam.

Twenty-two stations continued on to the second phase of the project, restoring, digitizing and cataloging sound and video clips. In this phase, stations archived more than 5,700 items totaling more than 2,300 hours of broadcast material.

Stations found treasures: Author James Baldwin’s 1963 speech “100 Years of Freedom”; an interview with the daughter of W.E.B. DuBois; a young school boy reading his response to the death of Martin Luther King Jr.; a 1981 documentary featuring white supremacists arguing their case for racial re-segregation; and a 1963 series featuring interviews with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

Stations also reported losses: An entire decade of the program “Louisiana Alive;” a 1959 speech by Louisiana Gov. Earl Long protesting the purging of black voters from state registration polls; countless material simply thrown away or lost to deterioration.

“The American Archive Pilot Program saved hours upon hours of extraordinary content,” says OPB’s project manager, Catherine Stimac. “It was Oregon Public Broadcasting’s great pleasure to collaborate with CPB, partner organizations and stations from around the country on this initiative. The American Archive comes at a crucial moment, one in which we realize that public broadcasting’s significant contributions to the chronicle of our country’s history are at risk of being lost.”

OPB ingested more than 3,700 clips into the Archive Prototype. The process of creating the prototype answered several valuable questions for CPB. How much material do stations have and on what formats? What must be done to restore and digitize that content and how much will it cost? What is the best uniform system for coding the metadata?

The prototype will be presented to member stations this May 2010 in Austin at the PBS Annual Showcase. The prototype currently serves for demonstration purposes only. Rights clearances prevent making the material available to the public at this time.

This project gave CPB a solid understanding of the processes required to implement a system-wide archive.

“OPB has set the table for the American Archive: Our inventory, preservation and digital processes will be anchored in their exceptional work,” says CPB’s Matt White, executive director of the American Archive. “An enormous amount of information was gathered during the pilot, and OPB’s smart analysis and detailed documentation allows us to move forward with clarity and confidence.”

OPB's HISTORY DETECTIVES Wins Gold Medal

The popular PBS series HISTORY DETECTIVES has won a Gold Medal at the 2010 New York Festivals International Television and Film Awards. The Series won the Gold Medal in the History & Society category. The producers, Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) and Lion Television, are honored to see HISTORY DETECTIVES ranked among the "World's Best Work."

"This is a terrific honor, and much deserved for our terrific production team," says Dave Davis, OPB's vice president for National Production.

"We are grateful for the award and to PBS who support a show that tells compelling stories about U.S. history to such a wide and popular audience," agreed Lion TV Executive Producer Chris Bryson.

The New York Festivals awarded the medal at a May 3rd ceremony in New York City. Representing 30 countries, NYF Television & Film Awards is one of the most widely respected competitions on the globe. Entries are judged by panels of international award-winning industry professionals recognized as leaders in their respective fields.

Each episode of HISTORY DETECTIVES begins with a viewer's tantalizing question about an object from the past. Viewers join the detectives' journeys as they track unexpected connections between long-ago events. HISTORY DETECTIVES highlights the adventure of history and the intrigue and challenge of ongoing discovery.

HISTORY DETECTIVES features five inquisitive fact finders: Wes Cowan, independent appraiser and auctioneer; Elyse Luray, an independent appraiser and expert in art history; Eduardo Pagán, professor of history at Arizona State University; Gwendolyn Wright, historian and professor of architecture, Columbia University; and Tukufu Zuberi, professor of sociology and the director of the Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

HISTORY DETECTIVES launches its 8th season June 21, 2010, 9pm. It airs throughout the summer on Monday nights following ANTIQUES ROADSHOW.