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Illustration by Carlos Carmonamedina
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And for several weeks, NPR journalists teamed up with their counterparts at Minnesota Public Radio to report the story of Minneapolis residents confronting thousands of Department of Homeland Security agents who were in town rounding up undocumented immigrants and who shot and killed two American citizens.
The Minnesota station and NPR have a history of working together, MPR executive editor Jane Helmke told me, adding, “This long-term alignment paid off for integral cooperation and coverage for both MPR News and NPR during recent immigration enforcement in Minnesota.”
During the height of the conflict, All Things Considered broadcast from MPR headquarters. Together, the two newsrooms copublished social posts, boosting each other’s reach.
MPR correspondent Matt Sepic’s work appeared on both MPR and NPR. “Our collaboration with National Public Radio is stronger than ever now,” he said. “I think largely because we’ve got a shared Slack channel going with them now, which I don’t know why we didn’t do that before.”
Historically, NPR has not always embraced this kind of collaborative spirit toward member stations. NPR journalists often concluded that the reporters at member stations were not as competent at making great audio stories, responding to two-way interviews with a host, or producing engaging web stories. I want to emphasize that these were assumptions and it’s not clear that they were universally valid, only that they influenced the view NPR staff had of local stations.
Further complicating the relationship, NPR has been uneven in its own technology development, as well as in the development of technology meant to support member stations. That made it hard for the network to act like a true network. NPR debuted its NPR One app in 2014 to strong initial reviews. The app showcases NPR’s blend of national and local content. But over the last 12 years, NPR has shifted its priorities several times and has not until recently marketed the app. It took until 2023 to combine the NPR One and the NPR apps. Further confusing listeners, many station have their own apps. As a result of these competing priorities, adoption by NPR audience members has been slow.
Getting the perfect blend of local and national news is critical for providing consumers with an accurate and useful daily report. Also, public radio’s survival depends on it. NPR doesn’t just create and distribute radio news shows. It also maintains the many technologies that most member stations use to support their websites and connect with people on their phones and other personal devices.
Because the number of people who listen to the radio is shrinking, local public media is transitioning to a system where audio stories are delivered to news consumers via cellphones, computers, tablets and smart speakers, rather than on radios.
The larger the audience that both NPR and local stations can grow outside of radio, the more likely it is that the public radio system will raise enough money to sustain the work and compensate for the loss of government funding.
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Geographic bias vs. political bias |
When Congress voted to defund all of public media last year, NPR’s journalism was often cited as the driving reason. Embedded in their charges of liberal bias, lawmakers claimed that NPR didn’t do a very good job of representing the entire country, suggesting a geographic bias toward news stories on the coasts, where NPR’s newsrooms are headquartered.
That critique was more accurate 10 years ago, when NPR didn’t put as much effort into supporting the entire network.
NPR began taking the member stations more seriously in earnest long before the rescission vote. In 2018, it announced that it was launching collaboration projects in different regions of the country. First up was Texas, where NPR supplied a staff of editors and data specialists to support and coordinate with the public radio newsrooms throughout the state. Eight years later, there are similar hubs in California, the Gulf states, New England, Appalachia, the Midwest and the Mountain West. And they are moving forward with a collaboration in the Upper Midwest that will cover Minnesota, Wisconsin and South Dakota.
Shortly after that, NPR began the long process of rolling out Grove, a shared content management system that supports station websites and makes it easier to share digital stories across the system.
Recently, NPR announced the American Storytelling Collection, an effort to deliver quality narrative podcasts created by member stations to a larger audience of listeners. And just last fall, NPR created a “pitch pipeline,” a pathway for local stations to suggest stories for national distribution.
“There is a really important and smart infrastructure,” NPR executive editor Eva Rodriguez said of the many initiatives. “And from that there is an ease of communication.”
When NPR leverages the expertise of journalists in local public radio newsrooms around the country to augment its staff of national and international reporters, the public radio network rivals The Associated Press in its ability to tell stories from every state.
As stories of national interest pop up across the country, editors look first to member stations for stories that can run on the NPR website and on the app, rather than the AP, said Emily Alfin Johnson, growth editor for network initiatives.
“Local is magical. It plays a huge part in how people consume news,” she said.
With the digital teams more likely to turn to a local station for a local story, rather than an AP write-up, the news magazines are more likely to follow suit. That was on display last week, when two communities confronted targeted violence.
Just before 11 a.m. EDT on March 12, a gunman walked into a university ROTC classroom in Norfolk, Virginia, and opened fire, killing a professor and critically wounding another person. About an hour later, an armed man rammed his truck into a synagogue outside of Detroit, hitting a security guard. Both suspects died.
Journalists from public radio stations in both communities reported the stories to the NPR audience. Alex McLenon of WDET was on All Things Considered that very night, explaining what facts were known. The next day on Morning Edition, McLenon joined WHRO reporter Steve Walsh from Norfolk to discuss the separate attacks. |
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Shifting definitions of local news |
Translating local news to a national audience involves more than just picking up a story from a local station and delivering it to a different audience. There are at least three levels or categories of local news.
The first level of local news is reporting done for the community by reporters in the community. People living in Detroit and Norfolk last week needed different information than the rest of the country. In addition to knowing what happened, they needed to know when the public safety crisis was over, what roads or facilities were blocked and how the attacks were disrupting their communities.
The second level of local news is reporting done from the community for everyone, everywhere. When journalists deliver local news to a national audience, the structure of the story is often much simpler, explaining the basic facts, like the reporters from Detroit and Norfolk did last week on Morning Edition.
In the third category of local news, reporters take outsiders into their community to see and understand a story in a different way, like this story from KVPR in central California, which explains why California farmers opposed their state’s political redistricting. |
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Depending on how you consume public media content, you’ll find a different experience.
NPR’s legacy audience — the people who turn on a radio to listen to the magazine shows like Morning Edition and All Things Considered, will likely hear their local stations provide headlines and stories.
Just over 10% of the stories they hear directly from NPR will be local stories that fall into the second and third categories — told by local reporters for a national audience. That mix has been consistent for the last five years, even as NPR has been increasing its support of local news.
However, listeners who tap “play” on the NPR app or scroll through it will quickly encounter community-focused local news as well as local stories told for a broader audience.
When new users hear a local newscast in the first week, 80% of them will still be using the app two weeks later, said Joel Sucherman, the general manager of the NPR app. He’s responsible for getting more audience on the NPR app and growing revenue for both NPR and member stations. Younger news consumers are particularly keen to hear local stories, he said.
“It’s what we call sticky behavior. We have decades of data that show the general public is interested in a mix of national and local news,” he said. “And that is one of the superpowers of public radio. We have that.”
There’s roughly one million active users on the app every week, Sucherman said. And for many local stations, the app is the No.1 driver of on-demand listening (people streaming audio stories, podcasts and newscasts.)
“We’re starting to integrate the NPR membership service more deeply into the app so that it becomes the best place to use your NPR+ benefits,” Sucherman said.
One million weekly active users, however, is not enough. Only a small portion of the people who listen to public media donate to their local station. Right now, there are just over 3 million individual donors to NPR member stations across the country. That number grew after the CPB rescission vote. But it’s not clear if the new donors will stick around.
To remain financially strong, NPR will have to continually grow the number of people who use the app or station websites to ensure that donors to their local stations also grow.
It will take more than great content. It takes a well-designed app that is constantly improving and acquiring new audiences. Users rate the NPR app a 4.8/5 on Google Play and 4.6/5 on the Apple App store. However, users have to peck around to personalize the features. NPR app developers are working to make the user experience smooth and intuitive.
That said, the app encourages people to identify a local city and pick a station, which then triggers the local flavor, or feed. That could be done automatically, but that wouldn’t be very public media-esque, “We don’t force that on people,” Sucherman said.
Users can set any local station to be their home base. And they can switch to listen to and read stories from other stations. Users can have only one home station at a time, though. To get content from different locations, they can flag or follow shows.
People who have mastered the app settings get the richest and most personalized blend of national and local news. They are served the most recent stories from All Things Considered and Morning Edition, their local news, as well as news and podcasts from stations around the country.
“Our audience has a nuanced understanding of what local means to them,” Alfin Johnson told me. “A lot of our efforts this season are about leveling up the local experience.”
It’s clear from looking at these initiatives that local news has never been more important to NPR. The challenge in 2026 is twofold. First, it must succeed in further integrating national and local content. But simultaneously, it must master the complex technology that will find audiences outside of radio and deliver them to local stations, who can work on converting them into donors.
NPR has to act quickly to leverage the local network in a way that will compensate for the loss of federal funding. If it is unsuccessful, local stations will shrink, and the strength of the local network will evaporate. If that happens, all news consumers will suffer. — Kelly McBride |
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The Office of the Public Editor is a team. Reporters Amaris Castillo and Nicole Slaughter Graham and copy editor Merrill Perlman make this newsletter possible. Illustrations are by Carlos Carmonamedina. We are still reading all of your messages on Facebook, Instagram, Threads and from our inbox. As always, keep them coming.
Kelly McBride
NPR Public Editor
Chair, Craig Newmark Center for Ethics & Leadership at the Poynter Institute |
Kelly McBride
Public Editor |
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Amaris Castillo
Poynter Institute |
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Nicole Slaughter Graham
Poynter Institute |
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The Public Editor stands as a source of independent accountability. Created by NPR's board of directors, the Public Editor serves as a bridge between the newsroom and the audience, striving to both listen to the audience's concerns and explain the newsroom's work and ambitions. The office ensures NPR remains steadfast in its mission to present fair, accurate and comprehensive information in service of democracy.
Read more from the NPR Public Editor, contact us, or follow us on social media. |
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