WXXI Public Broadcasting: Emma Jacobs

Former WRVO/Central New York reporter for the Innovation Trail.

Emma Jacobs is a native of Boston. She studied history, so she went for more practical training in public radio at NPR member-stations WNYC and WBUR. She helped shape Wired's Haiti Rewired project, a 2010 Knight Batten Innovations in Journalism Awards notable initiative. 

She's contributed to NPR's National Desk, and to Living on Earth, The Environment Report, Only a Game, Voice of America, and Word of Mouth.  She now reports for WHYY in Philadelphia.

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1:53am

Fri December 7, 2012
All Tech Considered

To Catch A Suspect — On Pinterest

Originally published on Fri December 7, 2012 8:35 am

Credit Pinterest

Pinterest is known as a place where people share recipes, crafts or fashion. But a new set of images have started showing up on the social media site: mug shots.

Bonnie Stankunas has come to the post office in Pottstown, Pa., her entire life. She remembers, as a kid, spotting "most wanted" posters hung on a wall.

"It kind of reminded me of the Wild, Wild West," Stankunas says.

None of the people at this post office remembers exactly when the posters went away, but the FBI stopped sending the notices out a couple of years ago.

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4:01pm

Mon November 12, 2012
The Salt

Kind of Like 'eFarmony': Matching Farmers With Urban Landowners For Fun And Profit

Originally published on Mon November 12, 2012 5:15 pm

Many farmers want their farms to be located close to a city - especially organic farmers who'd like to sell their produce at big urban farmers markets. But the price of land within range of a big city is sky high and only getting higher.

Most small farmers buy their land, but some are now looking to lease in suburban or exurban areas. And to do that, they're using something straight out of Fiddler On The Roof: A matchmaker.

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4:10pm

Mon April 2, 2012
Around the Nation

America's First Celebrity Robot Is Staging A Comeback

Credit Hulton Archive / Getty Images

Before IBM's Watson and Deep Blue, there was another celebrity robot: Elektro.

The first robot introduced to Americans, Elektro was the 7-foot-tall man who greeted millions of visitors who streamed through the gates of the 1939 World's Fair. He even appeared on film, in The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair.

The robot was built as a showpiece for the manufacturer Westinghouse, which made clothing irons and ovens in Mansfield, Ohio, at the time.

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10:30am

Thu March 1, 2012
World

An Inuit Builder Crafts His Last Canoe

In a remote corner of northern Canada, Joe Goudie is at work on his very last boat for sale.

The Inuit community in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador once used wood and canvas canoes to navigate the rivers of Labrador.

Goudie, 72, is Inuit, but grew up as that tradition was drawing to a close.

Today, he's the last person building wooden canoes in this corner of Canada.

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2:27am

Wed February 29, 2012
The Salt

Newfoundland Gives Whole New Meaning To Ice Cold Beer

The year the Quidi Vidi Brewing Co. started brewing beer with iceberg water, a giant iceberg floated up against the cliffs around St. John's, Newfoundland.

"It was a big berg and it jammed right across the harbor here," says Charlie Rees, the brewery's tour guide.

Rees says Newfoundlanders have a curious relationship with icebergs. On the one hand, they're a fact of life. On the other, when that iceberg was in the harbor's mouth, hundreds of people came down to gawk. He took pictures.

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