I started writing Thursday afternoon about the NPR purchase of Public Interactive, but I figured I’d better stop. I have experience with both entities, I’ve read the press release, but I’m going to give the NPR and PI community 24 hours to express their thoughts first.
Because, at face value and based on the PR piece, I’m baffled as to why this is such great news.
The only way this purchase makes sense is if there’s something new NPR is planning that didn’t get described in the press release.
Please, public media blogosphere and Twitterverse, educate me! Can you complete the equation in this post’s title?
Gravity Medium 
I have used the PI tools for some time and while they are good, they haven’t much changed. I don’t see any downside to the NPR and PI coming together (no matter who is the buyer) for stations compared to what else is available. Of course I’ve seen nothing as far as features that we will get with this new venture, but from my point of view this is a good thing. I don’t know if Iowa Public Radio has plans to move in a PI / NPR direction for the site (which two of the three stations had already done in the past four years on their own) but I support that direction for us at this point.
Makes sense to me. More production troops and and more capacity to provide web help for stations that don’t have their own expertise.
I can’t think of any advantage in NPR’s an PI’s web shops competing with each other to service the same stations. Better an efficient monopoly that offers more comprehensive services.
NPR Digital Media’s Darren Mauro just posted this blog post on the Inside NPR.org blog.