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Rick Karr

Rick Karr contributes reports on the arts to NPR News. He is a correspondent for the weekly PBS public affairs show Bill Moyers Journal and teaches radio journalism at Columbia University.

From 1999 to 2004, he was NPR's lead arts correspondent in New York, focussing on technology's impact on culture. Prior to that, he hosted the NPR weekend music and culture magazine show Anthem, and even earlier in his career, worked as a general assignment reporter and engineer at NPR's Chicago bureau.

Rick was nominated for an Emmy award for his 2006 PBS documentary Net @ Risk, which made the case that the U.S. is falling far behind other nations with regard to the speed and power of its internet infrastructure. He's also reported for the PBS shows NOW and Journal Editorial Report.

Rick is a member of the songwriters' collective Box Set Authentic. He lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with his wife, artist Birgit Rathsmann.

  • The Federal Communications Commission is getting ready to auction off more broadcast spectrum and that has the folks who use wireless microphones very worried.
  • Robert Downey Jr. is a name well-known to moviegoers, but did you know that the actor's father also happens to be in the movie business? Robert Downey Sr. is an acclaimed director whose early underground films have just been restored.
  • Painter Joe Andoe has lived in New York for more than 20 years, but he never stopped thinking about his hometown. Tulsa, Okla., inspires his paintings, and it's where Andoe built a reputation as a wild man and party animal. Now Andoe has cleaned up his act and written a memoir about his journey from juvenile delinquency to a successful career in art.
  • As new ways of receiving radio programs gain hordes of fans -- from satellite services like XM Radio to Internet tools like Audible.com -- a decidedly lo-fi approach is making waves. Low Power FM radio is being touted as an alternative to generic, commercial programming.
  • The technologies that record companies blame for a downturn in retail sales -- computers, CD burners and the Internet -- are also allowing musicians to do more of the things that record labels used to do. In a three-part series, NPR's Rick Karr profiles artists and Internet sites embracing emerging business models.
  • An innovative program in New York will have diverse artists contribute samples of their work to a trust. Over time, some of the works should increase in value. The money raised will allow the trust to pay out pensions when the artists retire. NPR's Rick Karr reports.
  • Search engines may soon use personal information to return better search results. Google's plan to offer an e-mail service that delivers ads based on e-mail keywords has privacy watchdogs nervous. NPR's Rick Karr reports.
  • A $1 billion-a-year industry has sprung up offering advertisers and other businesses advice on how to get the most consumer traffic out of their Web pages. Most are ethical, but some specialize in building pages that trick search engines into thinking they're more important than they are. In response, engines continually tweak programs to prevent misleading returns. NPR's Rick Karr reports.
  • If Web users don't pay to search, how do search engines make money? In the third report in a five-part series about Internet search engines, NPR's Rick Karr traces the ways companies such as Google and Yahoo earn cash.
  • In the 1990s, Stanford students Sergey Brin and Larry Page figured out how to use the structure of the Internet — the way pages link to one another — to put the most relevant items at the top of a search list. Their discovery transformed their garage startup, Google, into the Internet's top search engine, a household name and even a verb. NPR's Rick Karr reports.