American Public Media

Not to be confused with American Public Television.

American Public Media

Company type	Non-profit organization
Founded	August 2004; 20 years ago (2004-08) in Collegeville, Minnesota, U.S.
Headquarters	Saint Paul, Minnesota, U.S.
Number of employees	477
Parent	Minnesota Public Radio American Public Media Group
Website	www.americanpublicmedia.org

American Public Media (APM) is an American company that produces and distributes public radio programs in the United States, the second largest company of its type after NPR.^[1] Its non-profit parent, American Public Media Group, also owns and operates radio stations in Minnesota and California. Its station brands include Minnesota Public Radio and Southern California Public Radio. Based in St. Paul, Minnesota, APM is best known for distribution of the national financial news program Marketplace.^[2][3]

Historical ties to Public Radio International

Formerly, much of American Public Media's programming content was distributed by Public Radio International, which itself was named "American Public Radio", or APR, until July 1, 1994. APR was formed by four stations—the Minnesota Public Radio network, WGBH in Boston, WNYC in New York, and KUSC in Los Angeles—to distribute A Prairie Home Companion. PRI owns and produces numerous programs today, but still also distributes diverse programming from many sources. In contrast, APM, which was founded in 2004, predominantly distributes content that it owns and produces itself; exceptions include The Story with Dick Gordon (which ended production in October 2013), the distribution to US stations of the BBC World Service, and the BBC Proms broadcasts from Royal Albert Hall in London.^{[citation needed]}

The split happened as MPR and PRI began seeing each other more as potential competitors after MPR lost the partnership to WGBH to produce The World, and MPR purchased PRI-distributed Marketplace for its own distribution channels.^[4]

APM Reports

APM Reports is the investigative journalism unit of APM,^[5][6] based in St. Paul, Minnesota.^[7] Established in November 2015, APM Reports' journalists are drawn from Minnesota Public Radio and the former American RadioWorks.^[6] It produces documentary as well as investigative journalism.^[6] In 2019, APM Reports journalists Madeleine Baran and Samara Freemark received a Polk Award for season 2 of In the Dark, their investigation into the case of Curtis Flowers, who was tried six times for a quadruple murder in Winona, Mississippi in 1996.^[7][8] This was the first Polk Award given to a podcast.^[7][9] The In the Dark journalists also won two Peabody Awards, in 2016 and 2020, for the first and second seasons of In the Dark.^[10] In 2023, the APM Reports educational team, with journalist Emily Hanford, won a Edward R. Murrow Award (Radio Television Digital News Association) for Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong.

APM Research Lab

APM Research Lab is the research and data journalism unit of American Public Media.^[11] The Lab was established in 2017 under the leadership of American Public Media Group's CEO Jon McTaggart and EVP Dave Kansas with the hiring of its inaugural Managing Partner, Craig Helmstetter.^[12] The Lab was created to further strengthen APM's commitment to factual information as indicated by the tagline "bringing facts into focus."^[13] The unit has conducted several research projects in collaboration with newsrooms within the American Public Media Group and beyond, including partnerships with Marketplace, Minnesota Public Radio News, and PBS/Frontline and the Texas Newsroom.^[14][15][16]

In 2020 the Lab began publishing a project called Color of Coronavirus that tracks deaths due to COVID-19 by race and ethnicity in each U.S. state as well as the nation as a whole.^[17] This project has been cited hundreds of times, including by The Guardian, The Atlantic, Newsweek, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Journal of the American Medical Association.^{[18][19][20][21][22]}

Classical South Florida

Until July 2015, APM operated Classical South Florida (WMLV-FM 89.7), which was sold to Educational Media Foundation, a California-based religious broadcasting company that airs contemporary Christian music; it now brands itself as a K-Love station.^[23][24]

Programs distributed

APM also distributes:^[5]

• BBC World Service
• Classical 24
• Composers Datebook
• The Daily
• Marketplace and companion programs
• The Dinner Party Download
• On Point
• Performance Today
• Pipedreams
• The Splendid Table
• SymphonyCast

Several specials are also distributed by APM on a less frequent basis, including a number of Christmas programs, Giving Thanks at Thanksgiving, and the BBC Proms.

People

• Madeleine Baran, host and lead reporter of In The Dark
• Lynne Rossetto Kasper, former host of The Splendid Table
• Francis Lam, host of The Splendid Table
• Nora McInerny, host of Terrible, Thanks for Asking
• John Moe, former host of Hilarious World of Depression
• Kai Ryssdal, host of Marketplace and co-host of Make Me Smart
• Molly Wood, former Marketplace tech correspondent and former co-host of Make Me Smart with Kai and Molly
• Dave Kansas, former President of American Public Media

Accolades

Year	Award	Category	Nominee(s)	Result	Ref.
2022	Peabody Awards	Podcast & Radio	Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong	Nominated	[25]

References

1. "Minnesota Public Radio". Minnesota Public Radio. Retrieved 2016-12-16.
2. Marc Fisher (July 29, 2007). "To Air Is Divine, Say Backers of Imperiled Station". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2008-05-20.
3. About us. American Public Media. Retrieved on 2008-05-20.
4. "Minnesota Public Radio Acquires Marketplace Productions". PR Newswire. 14 April 2000. Retrieved 22 April 2016.
5. "Programs". American Public Media. Retrieved August 3, 2020.
6. Chris Worthington (May 11, 2016). "Who we are and what we do". APM Reports. American Public Media.
7. Eileen Sullivan (February 19, 2019). "New York Times Wins Two George Polk Awards". New York Times.
8. Orion Donovan-Smith (February 22, 2019). "In a crowded field of Polk Award honorees, spotlight falls on podcasts". Investigative Reporting Workshop.
9. First Podcast Honored With A Polk Award, Inside Radio (February 20, 2019).
10. APM Reports' In the Dark Wins Second Peabody Award, American Public Media (June 10, 2020).
11. "APM: Investigative & Impact Units". American Public Media. Retrieved 23 March 2022.
12. Grinapol, Corinne (28 April 2017). "Craig Helmstetter Is Named Managing Partner of APM's New Research Lab and Analyst Group". AdWeek. Retrieved 23 March 2022.
13. "Doubling down on credibility". APM Research Lab. 12 October 2017. Retrieved 2022-03-23.
14. "These are the states benefiting the most from the $28-billion farm bailout". Marketplace. 2019-12-12. Retrieved 2022-03-23.
15. "Minnesota's Diverse Communities Survey". MPR News. 11 October 2021. Retrieved 2022-03-23.
16. "Topic: Rural Health Care: The Other Texas Drought | FRONTLINE | PBS | Official Site". FRONTLINE. Retrieved 2022-03-23.
17. "Color of Coronavirus: COVID-19 deaths analyzed by race and ethnicity". APM Research Lab. Retrieved 2022-03-23.
18. "Exclusive: indigenous Americans dying from Covid at twice the rate of white Americans". the Guardian. 2021-02-04. Retrieved 2022-03-23.
19. Pinsker, Joe (2021-01-05). "4 Numbers That Make the Pandemic's Massive Death Toll Sink In". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2022-03-23.
20. Goyette, Jared. "On the way to the store, a mask giveaway to protect African Americans from coronavirus". The Washington Post. Retrieved 23 March 2022.
21. Stolberg, Sheryl Gay (2020-06-07). "'Pandemic Within a Pandemic': Coronavirus and Police Brutality Roil Black Communities". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-03-23.
22. Dowling, Marisa K.; Kelly, Robin L. (2020-07-21). "Policy Solutions for Reversing the Color-blind Public Health Response to COVID-19 in the US". JAMA. 324 (3): 229–230. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.10531. ISSN 0098-7484. PMID 32496524. S2CID 219315923.
23. John Strasswimmer (July 18, 2015). "Sale of WPBI-FM to leave NPR, classical music gap". Palm Beach Daily News. Archived from the original on September 5, 2015. Retrieved 2015-08-24.
24. Ben Mook (July 8, 2015). "American Public Media Group aims to sell Fla. classical network to religious broadcaster". Current. Retrieved 2015-08-24.
25. "83rd Peabody Award Nominees".

External links

• Official website
• Current – the newspaper about public TV and radio in the United States