Who I am

My name is Alex Curley. I spent over a decade working in public media, most of that at NPR’s headquarters. I held a variety of a variety of editorial and product positions, working on everything from podcast launches, to newsroom promotional strategy, to satellite distribution networks.

What Semipublic is

Semipublic is a data-based look at the public media system in the US. I’ll explore how it works, possibilities for the future, and the events that are currently shaping it. Each insight is powered by the data I’ve assembled of every station’s finances - the most complete public media dataset, I believe, outside of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

You can expect regular posts, between once a week and once every two weeks. Sometimes, I depart from data journalism to cover more lighthearted topics.

All Semipublic posts are free to read when published. Additionally, the graphs and key metrics I reference are publicly available as an interactive dashboard to view and download.

What Semipublic is not

Insider stories or gossip from my time at NPR. Sorry.

There are also several debates about objectivity in public media that are currently happening. I don’t cover those here.

Why become a paid subscriber?

Believe it or not, compiling the dataset took months of work…and I’m not even finished yet. That’s not to mention the costs of data collection tools, hosting, etc. Paying to subscribe to Semipublic allows me to keep going.

Additionally, paid subscribers and founding members will get access to my full SQL dataset at data.semipublic.co, powered by Metabase. As long as you’re an active paid member, you can use the dataset to compare stations in your area, conduct market research, or even to discover insights about public media I’ve missed. The dataset is your oyster.