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WXXI Public Broadcasting: Emma Jacobs

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All Tech Considered
1:53 am
Fri December 7, 2012

To Catch A Suspect — On Pinterest

Credit Pinterest
People wanted by the police in Pottstown, Pa., are displayed on the Pinterest page of a local newspaper. The police department's social media strategy, which aims to get the images of criminals seen by more people, has also been adapted in Philadelphia.
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Originally published on Fri December 7, 2012 8:35 am

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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The Salt
3:28 pm
Mon November 12, 2012

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

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Credit Emma Lee / WHYY
Chris Costa and one of her chickens on her farm in Downingtown, Pa. Costa and her partner, T.J., found the land for this farm through a sustainable agriculture program.
Credit Emma Lee / WHYY
Eleanor Morris Illoway samples greens from farmland that she leased to organic farmers.
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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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Energy
3:50 pm
Thu July 26, 2012

Pa. Town Chases New Energy Dream After Oil Bails

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Originally published on Thu July 26, 2012 5:24 pm

Marcus Hook, Pa., had been a refinery town for 109 years. But caught in big changes to the world of energy, the plant shut down last winter. Now the community's young mayor wants to reinvent the community as a hub for the natural gas industry.

Around the Nation
4:10 pm
Mon April 2, 2012

America's First Celebrity Robot Is Staging A Comeback

Credit Hulton Archive / Getty Images
Musician Lois Kendall plays the bass while the robot Elektro "conducts" on stage as part of a Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing demonstration at the 1939 World's Fair in New York.
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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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World
10:30 am
Thu March 1, 2012

An Inuit Builder Crafts His Last Canoe

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Credit Emma Jacobs
Goudie's last canoe hangs next to the form used to mold the wood. The unfinished canoe is weighted down with sandbags to keep the canvas taut.
Credit Emma Jacobs
Joe Goudie uses clamps to stretch the canvas tightly before nailing it to the canoe's wooden frame. The task takes three pounds of brass tacks.
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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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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.