Alex Blumberg | |
|---|---|
 Blumberg at the 68th Annual Peabody Awards in 2009. | |
| Occupation | Producer, Journalist |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Oberlin College |
| Notable awards | George Polk Award |
| Spouse | Nazanin Rafsanjani |
Alex Blumberg is an American entrepreneur, radio journalist, former producer for public radio and television, best known for his work with This American Life , Planet Money , and How to Save a Planet . He was the co-founder and CEO of the podcast network Gimlet Media. [1]
Blumberg received a B.A. from Oberlin College and is currently an adjunct professor of journalism at Columbia University. [2] After graduating, Blumberg lived in Russia for a year before returning to his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio and eventually moving to Chicago. In Chicago, he taught science at a private school for four years. [3] In 1994, he spent the summer interning at Harper's Magazine in Brooklyn. Later, he was introduced to Ira Glass through a mutual connection and was able to land a position as an administrative assistant on This American Life. From 1999 to 2014 he was the producer for the public radio show This American Life and his stories were regularly featured on the show. [4] From 2007 to 2009 he was the executive producer of the television version of This American Life.
Prior to This American Life, he worked as a freelance radio reporter, contributing to This American Life, the Savvy Traveller and Chicago Public Radio. In 2008 he collaborated with National Public Radio economics correspondent Adam Davidson to co-host the Planet Money podcast, which posts new episodes twice weekly. [5]
In August 2014, he started Gimlet Media along with Matthew Lieber. [6] Initially pitched as the American Podcasting Corporation (APC), Gimlet Media is a podcasting business. Blumberg documented the startup process in the first season of a podcast hosted on Gimlet Media, titled StartUp. [7] The second season follows "Dating Ring", another startup company. [8] Apart from StartUp, Gimlet Media has launched several other podcasts, including Mystery Show, Surprisingly Awesome, and Reply All. [9] The company has raised $1.5 million in seed funding. After raising most of its initial capital from investment firms Betaworks, Lowercase Capital, and Knight Enterprise Fund, Gimlet invited the listeners of its shows to help raise the last $200,000 through crowdfunding platform Alphaworks. [10] In December 2015, Gimlet closed a Series A round of funding that raised $6 million at a $30 million valuation. [11] On February 6, 2019, the Swedish audio streaming service Spotify announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Gimlet Media. [12] Blumberg departed Spotify in November 2022, after his remaining projects were cancelled by the parent company, and many employees were laid off. In June 2023, Gimlet ceased to exist and remaining projects and employees were absorbed into Spotify Studios. [13]
Blumberg has a chapter giving advice in Tim Ferriss' book Tools of Titans.
Blumberg won the George Polk Award in Radio Reporting for his reporting with Adam Davidson for a May 2008 This American Life show titled "The Giant Pool of Money". The piece explained the highly complex chain of events that led to the subprime mortgage crisis by showcasing interviews with participants at each sector of the crisis. [14] The episode was linked widely in the blogosphere and remains one of the show's most-downloaded podcasts. [15]
He won first place at the 2002 Third Coast International Audio Festival for his story "Yes, There is a Baby." His story on clinical medical ethicists won the 1999 Public Radio News Directors Incorporated (PRNDI) award for best radio documentary. [2] In 2009 he appeared on an April 12 Episode of NBC's Meet the Press to talk about the financial crisis. [16]
He shared three Gerald Loeb Awards: the 2013 Broadcast Enterprise award for "When Patents Attack" on This American Life , the 2014 Online award for "Planet Money Makes A T-Shirt," [17] and the 2017 Audio award for his story "Dov Charney’s American Dream". [18]
Laura Sydell formerly reported on Digital Culture for NPR. She was born in New Jersey, and is a former senior technology reporter for Public Radio International's Marketplace, and a regular reporter on for National Public Radio's All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition. She was a Freedom Forum Teaching Fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at University of California, Berkeley, teaching about reporting on culture.
Ron Lieber is an American journalist for The New York Times, where he writes the "Your Money" column. He is the recipient of three Gerald Loeb awards for his writing in the column. He previously wrote the "Green Thumb" column for the Wall Street Journal.
"The Giant Pool of Money" is an episode of the radio show This American Life which originally aired on May 9, 2008. The episode described to a general audience the causes and factors which led to the subprime mortgage crisis. Specifically, the show aimed to show the chain of people who were "participants up and down the subprime food chain".
Laura Sullivan is a correspondent and investigative reporter for National Public Radio (NPR). Her investigations air regularly on Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and other NPR programs. She is also an on-air correspondent for the PBS show Frontline. Sullivan's work specializes in shedding light on some of the country's most disadvantaged people. She is one of NPR's most decorated journalists, with three Peabody Awards, three Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, and more than a dozen other prestigious national awards.
Planet Money is an American podcast and blog produced by NPR. Using "creative and entertaining" dialogue and narrative, Planet Money claims to be "The Economy Explained."
Adam Davidson is an American journalist. He was a co-founder of NPR's Planet Money program. Previously he has covered globalization issues, the Asian tsunami, and the war in Iraq, for which he won the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. He and Adam McKay were former co-hosts of Surprisingly Awesome from Gimlet Media. Davidson worked as an economics columnist for The New York Times Magazine and in 2016 took a position at The New Yorker.
Felix Salmon is a British/American financial journalist, formerly of Portfolio Magazine and Euromoney and a former finance blogger for Reuters, where he analyzed economic and occasionally social issues in addition to financial commentary. In April 2014, Salmon left Reuters for a digital role at Fusion. In 2018, he joined Axios as chief financial correspondent.
Reply All is an American podcast from Gimlet Media that ran from 2014 to 2022, featuring stories about how people shape the internet, and how the internet shapes people. It was created by P. J. Vogt and Alex Goldman, who were the show's original hosts; they had previously hosted the technology and culture podcast TLDR for WNYC. Emmanuel Dzotsi became a third cohost in 2020.
Gimlet Media LLC is a digital media company and podcast network, focused on producing narrative podcasts and headquartered in Brooklyn, New York. The company was founded in 2014 by Alex Blumberg and Matthew Lieber, who served as the company's CEO and president respectively until Lieber stepped down in 2022. In February 2019, Spotify announced it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Gimlet for $230 million. In 2023, Spotify announced that they were to merge Gimlet and Parcast into Spotify Studios.
StartUp is an American podcast from Gimlet Media hosted by Alex Blumberg and Lisa Chow. While the first two seasons follow stories of starting businesses – Season 1 about the starting of Gimlet Media itself, and Season 2, a dating company called "Dating Ring" – the third season follows one business per episode. Season 4 began by following Gimlet Media again, then aired episodes focusing on other companies. Season 6 followed the making of the TV series created about the podcast. The most recent season covers the founding of Success Academy Charter Schools in New York City. The final season of Startup premiered in late 2019 and covered the process of selling Gimlet Media to the streaming media company Spotify.
Surprisingly Awesome was an American podcast formerly hosted by Adam Davidson and Adam McKay and subsequently hosted by Rachel Ward and frequently guest hosted by John Hodgman. In each episode, one of the hosts would take a seemingly boring topic, and try to make the other believe that it is interesting. These topics have varied from mold to interest rates. The podcast was hosted by Gimlet Media.
Kevin Roose is an American author and journalist. He is the author of three books, a technology columnist and podcast host for The New York Times. He wrote a book about Liberty University, an evangelical Christian university known for strict rules imposed on students. He was named on Forbes' "30 Under 30" list in 2015.
Nazanin Rafsanjani is an American television and radio producer. She was the head of new show development for Gimlet Media until 2020, and before that served as Gimlet's creative director and a senior producer for The Rachel Maddow Show.
The Pitch is an American podcast hosted by Josh Muccio, produced in partnership with Vox Media. The show features entrepreneurs in need of venture funding as they pitch to a live panel of investors, similar to ABC's hit TV series Shark Tank. Billed as, "A show where real entrepreneurs pitch to real investors—for real money", the podcast aims to capture the essence of what happens when entrepreneurs pitch investors.
Heavyweight is a podcast created and hosted by American-Canadian humorist Jonathan Goldstein where he helps people try to resolve a moment from their past that they wish they could change. The show was produced by Gimlet Media, which was absorbed into Spotify Studios.
The Gerald Loeb Award is given annually for multiple categories of business reporting. The "Video/Audio" category replaced "Broadcast" in 2014 and 2015. It was split into separate "Audio" and "Video" categories beginning in 2016.
Breakmaster Cylinder, also known as The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder or by the initials BmC, is a musical composer and producer who has provided title themes and background music for a number of radio shows and podcasts, principally with Gimlet Media's Reply All. Known for their pseudonymity, Breakmaster Cylinder does not make public appearances and has employed stand-ins for interviews, photographs, and other media appearances.
The Gerald Loeb Award is given annually for multiple categories of business reporting: "News or Wire Service" in 2002, "News Services Online Content" in 2003–2007, "News Services" in 2008–2014, "Online" in 2008–2009 and 2013–2014, "Online Commentary and Blogging" in 2010, "Online Enterprise" in 2011–2012, and "Blogging" in 2011–2012.
The Gerald Loeb Award is given annually for multiple categories of business reporting. The "Broadcast Enterprise" category was awarded in 2012 for a radio story that aired on National Public Radio, and the "Broadcast" category was awarded in 2013 for a television news story that aired on WFAA-TV. "Broadcast" was replaced by "Video/Audio" in 2014.
Parcast is a digital media firm and podcast network, that specialized in producing both scripted podcasts as well as audio dramas. It was founded in 2016 by podcaster Max Cutler and his father Ron Cutler in Los Angeles California.
Media related to Alex Blumberg at Wikimedia Commons
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