Why go to Harvard when you can get smart super-fast just watching this TED Talk by Harvard Law Professor Larry Lessig? It's a fascinating romp through the politics of fair use and the "ecology of creativity."

The makers of The Corner, radio producer Jenny Asarnow and documentary photographer Inye Wokoma, are pushing out a new project called 206 Black – The Diaspora.  Diaspora is a powerful word meaning dispersal. It’s been used to describe the movement (usually involuntary) of people from their homelands: Jews, Palestinians, Africans, and others.

206 Black is a social media/multimedia project that aims to collect the stories of African Americans who used to live in the Central District, the neighborhood that Wokoma says was once the “center of gravity” for the Seattle's black community. 

Wokoma's stunning, larger-than-life portraits of Central District residents were featured both in the public art installation at 23rd & Union and on the Corner website. Wokoma has lived in the Central District for most of his life. He raised two teens in that neighborhood and now lives with his wife and 3 year old  “in the home that has been in the family for decades.” Wokoma says he also “owns another that was the first purchased by my grandfather back in 1948.”

The past few weeks, I've been participating in a series of live twitter chats between a diversity of public media makers and thinkers. These chats have been happening on Monday nights at 8 pm ET using the hashtag #pubmedia. (Join us!).

Twitter probably isn't the best way to have a group discussion of this sort, given the 140 character word limit. But there are positives: it is egalitarian, spotaneous, public and attributed. Plus, the "conversations" have been interesting. We've tweeted about investments in social media, asked who in public media is "getting it right," how we might better collaborate with "like-minded" journalists and non-profits, etc.

This week's Twitterbash about impact measurement was led by Jessica Clark, co-author of Beyond the Echo Chamber. She is helping assess and evaluate the impact of MQ2 projects. During the chat, I raised this question:

This American Life: How do we love thee? Let me count the ways: 60,000 apps downloaded from the iPhone store in the first month! At $2.99 a pop, that means the TAL-app developed by PRX is well on its way to being a bestseller and a healthy, respectable source of revenue.

And who would expect anything else? Ira Glass is a public media rock star. Once upon a time, when I told people I worked in public radio, they would ask, “Do you know Terry Gross?” Nowadays, it’s always Ira, Ira, Ira.

Scott Simon might have more than 1.3 million followers on Twitter (myself included) but who else in public radio has inspired pillows and tattoos, possible graffiti and blogs like “Dear Ira Glass?”

Tomorrow is Ruth Seymour's last day as General Manager of KCRW, the eclectic, hip NPR station she's led for more than three decades. An event honoring her last night at the Getty Museum brought together station staff, community leaders and public radio people, including AIR Executive Director Sue Schardt, who captured this video of Ruth's parting words. Ruth is preceded by Warren Olney (To the Point), KCRW's Sarah Spitz, and David Bomford of the Getty.

How can public radio build on its success, better serve its current audience, and reach an even larger segment of the U.S. population? The Corporation for Public Broadcasting wants to know. So, they turned to Tom Thomas and Terry Clifford of the Station Resource Group, two of the big brains behind public radio, and asked them to lead the effort. They engaged a Public Radio Audience Growth Task Force, consulted with a veritable Who's Who of Public Radio Influentials and published their findings last month in a report called "Public Radio in the New Network Age." Have you read it?

I have to admit, in this era of 140-character tweets, RSS feeds and distracted web surfing, a 95-page report (even on a topic I care about) seems like a commitment bordering on marriage. Fortunately, they catered to the special needs of the attention deficient among us and produced a summary of recommendations that's only 12 pages. If you care about the future of public radio, there's no excuse not to read the whole thing.

"Welcome to The [Un]Observed, a Radio Magazine of candid conversations and explorations, works in sound and produced pieces from around the world. We're exploring the intimate, and sometimes surprising, moments of art, culture and life."

The [Un]Observed is a new launch and very promising start-up by MQ2 finalist Tania Ketenjian. The site is like a delicious mouthful of rich, dark chocolate - a sensual treat that elicits feelings of happiness and satisfaction, a sampler to savor, worth every calorie consumed. The [Un]Observed features some truly interesting and unusual audio art, sound poems and stories. Many of these pieces have aired or appeared elsewhere, but this new platform unearths them from the archives, revives and refreshes them, giving them a second life.

Earlier this month, the National Center for Media Engagement hosted a webinar to share the innovative models of MQ2 with public radio and public television stations across the country. More than 130 people in the public media world registered for this hour-long online event, which featured AIR Executive Director Sue Schardt, KUOW's Jenny Asarnow of The Corner: 23rd & Union, and Kara Oehler of Mapping Main Street. If you missed it, you can catch the whole thing which is archived right here.

Thanks to Anne Wilder, Bryce Kirchoff, Charles Meyer and everyone else at NCME who helped make this Webinar a success. 

As usual, there were more questions than time would allow. We agreed to gather up the unanswered inquiries and do our best to provide responses. If you haven't watched the Webinar, I suggest you do that before reading the Q & A below. Questions are in bold. Answers are in italics. 

Although few NPR listeners may recognize his name, Bill Siemering is one of the most important makers of public radio. He created NPR's All Things Considered, launched Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and Soundprint, the documentary series. He's a MacArthur "genius" who founded Developing Radio Partners, which supports community radio as a lifeline in countries around the world. Years ago, I heard him speak about his work in Mongolia. One of his inspiring quotes has become somewhat of a mantra in public radio circles:

"The original meaning of broadcast is to scatter seeds. Some take root, some don’t. But it’s a wonderful nurturing kind of image for a community, to be scattering seeds, to be casting out ideas, information, the arts...and enabling people to be nurtured by them."

As we go marching, marching toward the emerging high-speed, multimedia, mobile, cross-platform future of news, I would like to know: Are you with? Do you go with the flow? Or fight the current? Are you leading, learning, adapting, evolving? Or are you fossilized, stuck on the sidelines, a bystander, secretly hoping for a back-to-nature movement that shuns the new journalism and embraces the basics?

Amid the shifting landscape of American media, there is a growing awareness that in order to survive and thrive, we must push and challenge ourselves in ways we never have before. Since we can't expect to get or find jobs, we have to create them instead and be our own bosses. (Go ahead and hire yourself...or fire yourself for insubordination!) Can we, in this post-Seinfeldian universe, be the "masters of our own domains?" 

Yes, we can! We are the Olympic athletes of public media. We are pumped. We aim for our personal best. We triumph with speed and accuracy. We have team spirit. We respect our competitors. And, we're always always in training.