The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the Poynter Institute have selected 50 public media stations for the second phase of their “Digital Transformation Program.” This initiative aims to enhance digital operations and audience engagement in public media.

According to CPB, which is providing funding for the initiative, the updated program builds upon the success of Poynter’s first Digital Transformation Program, which in 2022-23 trained 79 public media entities and 458 station personnel.

This second phase offers two tracks: a nine-month Fundamentals Track and a six-month Advanced Track. Each track will be offered every year for three years beginning in 2025, with a capacity to train up to 225 public media stations.

Each participating station team will learn about core strategies and best practices to drive audience engagement and revenue growth. In addition, stations will receive data analytics training to improve their data literacy and decision-making skills.

This first group of 50 stations will receive Fundamentals training virtually, with stations participating in cohorts consisting of 25 station leaders and staff.

The 50 stations selected include 22 public radio stations, 12 public television stations and 16 joint license stations. One group of 25 stations will start in January 2025 and the other in March.

See the 50 stations selected here.

This article originally appeared on TV Tech sister brand Radio World.

Localism is a key factor in American's trust of the news media, and local TV leads the way.

That is according to 2018 Poynter Media Trust Survey and comes as the President launches almost daily attacks on the press as enemies of the people and conspirators with his opponents, and as the threat of "real" fake news from foreign actors has Washington forces on edge and critically eyeing edge providers.

A large majority (76%) of Americans have either a "great deal" or "fair amount" of trust in local TV news, followed closely by local newspapers, the study found. But only 59% say that about national newspapers, 55% for network news and 47% for online news.

The study found that, generally, only 12% trust the press a great deal while 44% say they have a fair amount of trust.

Only a third of the respondents (32%) said the media deal fairly with both sides.

That's the bad news. But there was good news as well.

[Read: Survey: Local TV News Is Booming]

The good news is that those levels of trust and confidence are actually higher than a 2017 survey. In 2016, for example, only 32% said they had either a great deal of fair amount of trust in the media. For the current survey, that total is 54%.

In addition, a strong majority (66%) says news organizations “keep political leaders from doing things that shouldn’t be done."

The survey found that more than 25% of Americans say the government should have the right to revoke the broadcast licenses of news outlets that fabricate stories. The FCC already has that power over deception from broadcast licensees who are licensed to operate in the public interest. But the issue became a political flashpoint with President Donald Trump suggested licenses should be revoked over stories he believed were made up, a category that appears to also include stories critical of him and/or using unnamed Administration sources.

FCC chair Ajit Pai has pledged to Congress there would be no politically-driven license revocations.

According to Poynter, the study was conducted "among a representative sample of the U.S. population by the survey company YouGov, which recruits a large panel of opt-in respondents and then uses a weighting and matching algorithm to construct a final sample that mirrors the demographic composition of the U.S. population."

ST. PETERSBURG, FLA.—The Poynter Institute is offering drone journalism training in partnership with Google News Lab and the Drone Journalism Lab at the University of Nebraska, the National Press Photographers Association and Shenzhen, China-based drone maker, DJI.

The training initiative will start with a series of intensive three-day workshops that prepare journalists to study for the Federal Aviation Administration’s Part 107 drone pilot’s certificate. The workshops also will provide hands-on flight time with DJI drones, and focus on drone journalism ethics, community best practices and coordinated operations in a breaking news environment, as well as coverage and application ideas. Poynter said it would expand the program with online training later this year.

“One reason we wanted to conduct these workshops is because we were seeing one-day training workshops that are too expensive for journalists. We want to put this knowledge within reach of every newsroom regardless of size,” said Poynter’s Al Tompkins, who is organizing the workshops. “Plus, journalists have unique training needs that are different from others who want to use drones in their work. Journalists will need specialized training around privacy concerns that drones raise in some people’s minds.”

Four universities are serving as hosts and partners for these workshops:

• University of Georgia Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, March 17-19
• Syracuse University Newhouse School of Public Communications, April 21-23
• University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication, June 16-18
• University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication in Portland, Aug. 18-20

“Drones are purpose-built context machines. They can, in less time and at vastly reduced costs, give a viewer an understanding of the scale and scope of a story unlike anything else journalists have in the toolbox,” said Matt Waite, a leading voice for drone journalism through his work at the University of Nebraska’s Drone Journalism Lab and occasional contributor to Poynter.org. “Just getting a drone straight up 100 feet in the air has the power to change our understanding of how big, how far, how wide, how massive something is. And it can be done safely and for very little cost.”

Seating is limited to 60 participants at each location. The cost for the three-day workshop—underwritten by Google—is $295. In addition, funding from Google News Lab will support a limited number of travel scholarships for members of the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association, Native American Journalists Association and NLGJA, the Association of LGBTQ journalists.

Journalists (including newsroom teams), journalism students and journalism educators are encouraged to attend. Poynter also welcomes newsroom managers who will be making decisions about drone deployment and need to understand the legal implications of drone photography.

The workshops also include NPPA’s legal counsel Mickey H. Osterreicher who has worked for years speaking on behalf of journalists as the federal government drafted regulations for where and when drone journalists could fly.

“NPPA has been at the forefront in advocating for the use of drones for newsgathering. With that opportunity comes an inherent role of operating sUAS in a legal, safe and responsible manner,” Osterreicher said.

For more information and to sign up for the workshops, please go to about.poynter.org/training/in-person/drones-17.