American Public Media (APM) is an American company that produces and distributes

public radio Public broadcasting (or public service broadcasting) is radio, television, and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service with a commitment to avoiding political and commercial influence. Public broadcasters receive ...

programs in the United States, the second largest company of its type after

NPR National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...

. Its non-profit parent,

American Public Media Group American Public Media Group (APMG), formerly the Minnesota Communications Group, is the non-profit parent organization of Minnesota Public Radio, American Public Media, and Southern California Public Radio. Jean Taylor is APMG's President and C ...

, also owns and operates radio stations in

Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

and

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. Its station brands include

Minnesota Public Radio Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) is a public radio network for the state of Minnesota. With its three services, KNOW-FM, News & Information, KSJN, YourClassical MPR and KCMP, The Current, MPR operates a 46-station regional radio network in the upper ...

and Southern California Public Radio. Based in St. Paul,

, APM is best known for distribution of the national financial news program ''

Marketplace A marketplace, market place, or just market, is a location where people regularly gather for the purchase and sale of provisions, livestock, and other goods. In different parts of the world, a marketplace may be described as a ''souk'' (from ...

''.About us
American Public Media. Retrieved on 2008-05-20.

Historical ties to Public Radio International

Formerly, much of American Public Media's programming content was distributed by

Public Radio International Public Radio International (PRI) was an American public radio organization. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, PRI provided programming to over 850 public radio stations in the United States. PRI was one of the main providers of programmi ...

, which itself was named "American Public Radio", or APR, until July 1, 1994. APR was formed by four stations—the

network, WGBH in Boston,

WNYC WNYC is an audio service brand, under the control of New York Public Radio, a non-profit organization. Radio and other audio programming is primarily provided by a pair of nonprofit, noncommercial, public radio stations: WNYC (AM) and WNYC- ...

in New York, and

KUSC KUSC (91.5 FM broadcasting, FM; "Classical California™ KUSC") is a listener-supported european classical music, classical music radio station broadcasting from downtown Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States. KUSC is owned and ope ...

in Los Angeles—to distribute ''

A Prairie Home Companion ''A Prairie Home Companion'' was a weekly radio variety show created and hosted by Garrison Keillor that aired live from 1974 to 2016. In 2016, musician Chris Thile took over as host, and the successor show was eventually renamed ''Live from He ...

''. 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 ''The Story with Dick Gordon'' was a weekday interview program hosted by Dick Gordon, former host of WBUR's ''The Connection (radio program), The Connection'' and, before that, fill-in host for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's national ra ...

'' (which ended production in October 2013), the distribution to US stations of the

BBC World Service The BBC World Service is a British Public broadcasting, public service broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC. It is the world's largest external broadcaster in terms of reception area, language selection and audience reach. It broadcas ...

, and the

BBC Proms The BBC Proms is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in central London. Robert Newman founded The Proms in 1895. Since 1927, the ...

broadcasts from

Royal Albert Hall The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London, England. It has a seating capacity of 5,272. Since the hall's opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world's leading artists from many performance genres ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

. 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 The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique, while others talk of a "plu ...

'', and MPR purchased PRI-distributed ''Marketplace'' for its own distribution channels.

APM Reports

APM Reports is the

investigative journalism Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, racial injustice, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend m ...

unit of APM, based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Established in November 2015, APM Reports' journalists are drawn from

and the former American RadioWorks. It produces

documentary A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

as well as investigative journalism. In 2019, APM Reports journalists

Madeleine Baran Madeleine Baran is an American investigative journalist. She is best known as the lead reporter for the APM podcast '' In the Dark''. She has received accolades including three Peabody Awards, a Gracie Award and two Sigma Delta Chi Awards for h ...

and Samara Freemark received a

Polk Award The George Polk Awards in Journalism are a series of American journalism awards presented annually by Long Island University in New York in the United States. A writer for Idea Lab, a group blog hosted on the website of PBS, described the award ...

for season 2 of '' In the Dark'', their investigation into the case of

Curtis Flowers Curtis Giovanni Flowers (born May 29, 1970) is an American man who was tried for the same murders six times by the same prosecutor in the U.S. state of Mississippi. Four of the trials resulted in convictions, all of which were overturned on app ...

, who was tried six times for a quadruple murder in

Winona, Mississippi Winona is a city in and the county seat of Montgomery County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 4,505 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, down from 5,043 in 2010 United States census, 2010. Winona is known in the local ar ...

in 1996. This was the first Polk Award given to a

podcast A podcast is a Radio program, program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. Typically, a podcast is an Episode, episodic series of digital audio Computer file, files that users can download to a personal device or str ...

. The ''In the Dark'' journalists also won two

Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Foster Peabody, George Peabody, honor what are described as the most powerful, enlightening, and in ...

s, in 2016 and 2020, for the first and second seasons of ''In the Dark''. In 2023, the APM Reports educational team, with journalist Emily Hanford, won a

Edward R. Murrow Award (Radio Television Digital News Association) The Radio Television Digital News Association (formerly the Radio-Television News Directors Association) has been honoring outstanding achievements in electronic journalism with the Edward R. Murrow Awards since 1971. The Murrow Awards recognize ...

for ''Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong''.

APM Research Lab

APM Research Lab is the research and

data journalism Data journalism or data-driven journalism (DDJ) is journalism based on the filtering and analysis of large data sets for the purpose of creating or elevating a news story. Data journalism reflects the increased role of numerical data in the p ...

unit of American Public Media. The Lab was established in 2017 under the leadership of

's CEO Jon McTaggart and EVP Dave Kansas with the hiring of its inaugural Managing Partner, Craig Helmstetter. The Lab was created to further strengthen APM's commitment to factual information as indicated by the tagline "bringing facts into focus." The unit has conducted several research projects in collaboration with newsrooms within the

and beyond, including partnerships with

Minnesota Public Radio News KNOW-FM (91.1 MHz) is the flagship radio station of Minnesota Public Radio's news and information network. It is licensed to Saint Paul and serves the Minneapolis-Saint Paul radio market. The station is non-commercial and listener-supported ...

, and PBS/Frontline and the Texas Newsroom. In 2020 the Lab began publishing a project calle
Color of Coronavirus
that tracks deaths due to

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...

by race and ethnicity in each U.S. state as well as the nation as a whole. This project has been cited hundreds of times, including by

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher based in Washington, D.C. It features articles on politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 185 ...

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly news magazine based in New York City. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely distributed during the 20th century and has had many notable editors-in-chief. It is currently co-owned by Dev P ...

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

, and the

Journal of the American Medical Association ''JAMA'' (''The Journal of the American Medical Association'') is a peer-reviewed medical journal published 48 times a year by the American Medical Association. It publishes original research, reviews, and editorials covering all aspects of ...

Classical South Florida

Until July 2015, APM operated Classical South Florida (WMLV-FM 89.7), which was sold to

Educational Media Foundation Educational Media Foundation (formerly EMF Broadcasting, abbreviated EMF) is an American nonprofit Christian media ministry based in Franklin, a suburb of Nashville. EMF is the parent company of K-LOVE and Air1—the world's largest contempor ...

, a California-based religious broadcasting company that airs contemporary Christian music; it now brands itself as a

K-Love K-Love (stylized as K-LOVE) is an American Christian radio network. Owned by the Educational Media Foundation (EMF), a non-profit Christian ministry, it primarily broadcasts contemporary Christian music. As of June 2019, the network's progr ...

station.

Programs distributed

APM also distributes: * ''

'' * '' Classical 24'' * ''Composers Datebook'' * '' The Daily'' * ''

'' and companion programs * ''The Dinner Party Download'' * ''

On Point ''On Point'' is a radio show produced by WBUR-FM in Boston, Massachusetts, and syndicated by American Public Media (APM). The show addresses a wide range of issues from news, politics, arts and culture, health, technology, environmental, and bu ...

'' * '' Performance Today'' * '' Pipedreams'' * '' The Splendid Table'' * ''SymphonyCast'' Several specials are also distributed by APM on a less frequent basis, including a number of

Christmas Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a Religion, religious and Culture, cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by coun ...

programs, '' Giving Thanks'' at

Thanksgiving Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in October and November in the United States, Canada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil and Germany. It is also observed in the Australian territory ...

, and the ''

''.

People

, host and lead reporter of ''In The Dark'' *

Lynne Rossetto Kasper Lynne Rossetto Kasper is an American food writer and radio journalist. She was the founding host of the American Public Media program '' The Splendid Table'', whose targeted audience is "people who love to eat." The weekly program features a seri ...

, former host of ''The Splendid Table'' *

Francis Lam Francis Lam is an American food journalist, cookbook editor, and since 2017 the host of American Public Media's '' The Splendid Table''. Early life and education Lam was born to Chinese immigrant parents living in New Jersey and working in Man ...

, host of ''The Splendid Table'' * Nora McInerny, host of ''Terrible, Thanks for Asking'' * John Moe, former host of ''Hilarious World of Depression'' *

Kai Ryssdal Kai Ryssdal (; born October 8, 1963) is an American radio journalist and the host of ''Marketplace'', a business program that airs weekdays on U.S. public radio stations. He also co-hosts the spinoff podcast ''Make Me Smart'' with Kimberly Adams. ...

, host of ''

'' 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

References

External links

*
''Current''
– the newspaper about public TV and radio in the United States {{authority control 2004 establishments in Minnesota Podcasting companies Organizations based in Saint Paul, Minnesota Organizations established in 2004 Non-profit organizations based in Minnesota