NPR Public Editor by Poynter's Kelly McBride

With all federal money soon to be stripped from public media, it’s clear that NPR and its network of 246 member stations are going to change, and that some of those changes may be significant.

The pending evolution may eventually strengthen public media. But many of the early changes are going to be painful.

In rural areas, some stations are likely to go dark. Many more stations will stop or curtail their local content, the very thing that makes them unique. And some stations may reduce the geographic area they serve, leaving small groups of people in remote places without access to a public radio signal.

If you rely on public radio to keep you informed and you want to influence these changes, pay close attention to what’s happening at your local station, what’s happening in your region and in your state, as well as how NPR is changing.

Since it was established in 1967, the public radio network has grown into a vast and complicated federation. With the imminent shutdown of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, many of the people who run pieces of the public radio network admit that they are having a hard time getting an accurate picture of the entire system, let alone imagining a plan for what is going to happen to the network.

Even though the federal funds accounted for less than 20% of all the money in the system, it has served as the great equalizer by supporting the things that make public radio a network, including the satellite systems on which the content is distributed and the digital infrastructure that allows stations to put news on the internet.

“There’s going to be some kind of erosion that I don’t think we can fully understand,” said Jennifer Ferro, chair of NPR’s Board of Directors and CEO of KCRW in Santa Monica. “Because 57 years of having a governmental subsidy, even though it may not be huge for each particular station, there’s all these shared services that we’ve relied on that are going away.”

It’s not immediately clear who could or should step into the void that CPB leaves behind. Although NPR is at the center of the radio network, running many of these systems as well as creating and distributing the national news content, it is not the de facto leader. In fact, it must constantly balance its loyalty to itself with its obligation to support the survival of the stations.

Ferro has often described the relationship between NPR and local stations as “married but living separately.” I would add that they maintain separate bank accounts and don’t always collaborate on their plans for the future.

"Our system is not set up with a hierarchical structure," Ferro said. "At a time of crisis, like we're in now, it's very difficult for us to organize ourselves to respond because we all operate independently by design."

NPR’s CEO Katherine Maher has articulated a vision for this system that leans heavily on ensuring that stations thrive and then incorporating the voices and stories from local newsrooms across the entire network. She said she’s prepared to work with stations that need immediate help to stabilize, assist in convening stations that might share services, and advocate for more philanthropic resources.

“It’s been a key priority of my tenure to strengthen NPR’s relationship with network members and to move the network to a more collaborative, strategic posture,” Maher wrote me in an email. “A premise of my strategy is that our 50-state national network is mission-critical.”

But the CPB scheduled closure by Oct. 1 is massively disruptive. In today’s newsletter, we’ll look at a few of the most immediate changes the public may notice and how those changes will impact the entire system. — Kelly McBride

Illustration by Carlos Carmonamedina

Here are a few quotes from the Public Editor's inbox that resonated with us. Letters are edited for length and clarity. You can share your questions and concerns with us through the NPR Contact page.

Listeners question future access to local public radio

Gwyn Nichols wrote on Aug. 3: I’m in Phoenix with the fabulous KJZZ. I’m pretty sure we’re going to be able to fund it. But what about stations in smaller rural communities where they might not have as many listeners and they might not have community members hearing much truth? Is there an effort to fund the CPB for missions like that?

The CPB is going away. Compensating for their work is now in the hands of NPR, PBS and the hundreds of stations that comprise the public media network. NPR freed up $8 million to immediately help stations that may not be able to afford the fees they pay to NPR to receive the news programs. I asked Quentin Hope, executive director of High Plains Public Radio in Colorado, to explain his budget. His station serves eastern Colorado, western Kansas and the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas.

For the upcoming fiscal year, High Plains was set to pay a "core fee" of about $62,000 to NPR, which covers the rights to broadcast Morning Edition, All Things Considered and hourly newscasts, as well access to digital content, use of NPR's content management system for the station's website. On top of that, High Plains planned to pay $10,000 for additional programs that fall outside the core news service. After completing NPR's "Rescission Relief" application, Hope estimates those fees will be reduced by about 15% for a savings of about $10,000.

“It’s a nice gesture,” he said. “It’s helped some.”

His total station budget including in kind donations is roughly $1.45 million. He was expecting to receive $220,000 from the CPB on Oct. 1.

He wrote a column describing his plans, including cost-cutting, raising more money from private donors, and tapping into a reserve fund to buy some time to make the transition.

Ferro, the NPR board chair, said the stations that received the largest boost from CPB actually pay relatively low fees to NPR, so the adjustments won’t be the parachute that stations need.

Many stations will probably have to cut the amount of staff and local programming they produce. Local news has always been the most expensive cost for stations, particularly when calculating how many minutes of content are created by every dollar spent.

Cutting local staff and programming would hurt NPR because it would reduce the number of stories and voices that can feed into national programming. The audiences most likely to notice this change are those who no longer hear people from their communities in the national broadcast.

There is a nascent effort among philanthropists to help small local stations. At the moment, it is focused on creating a fund that would prevent stations from going dark and having their broadcast abilities disappear from the public radio network.

The Adopt a Station fundraising effort is a grassroots attempt at helping public media fans give money to small stations outside their own market. It was built by Alex Curley, a former NPR employee, who started a column on Substack in April to chronicle the pending transformation of public media. He estimates that 15% of all public radio and television stations may not survive this coming transition.

“The sad reality is that we are not going to be able to save every station,” he said. “I imagine that we’ll be hearing in the next few months several stations who are taking a buyout for their FM signal or just closing shop.”

Adopt a Station has successfully encouraged people to donate to 20 of the most vulnerable stations. Thus far, the money has been small donations that add up to tens of thousands, but not the hundreds of thousands of dollars that stations will need.

Here are some questions that will likely be answered over the next year. As they are, the shape of all public media will become clearer:

Beyond broadcast, how will consumers find public media news and shows? Will they be able to find local content as well? Will a universal digital strategy emerge?
Will local stations collaborate with each other in ways that provide significant savings?
How much local reporting and public affairs programming capacity will be lost? What will that loss do to the entire network?
Will PBS and NPR move closer together or further apart? What will that mean for stations that hold both a radio and television license?
Will PBS and NPR emerge as the leaders of their networks, or will other entities step in to fill the role that CPB is vacating?

The answers to these questions and many more will determine how NPR and the rest of the public radio network fulfills the promise to provide high-quality news to a universal audience. Consumers have a few ways they can influence these changes, mostly by both tuning in and supporting their local stations.

As these changes unfold, we are here to answer your questions about public radio. — Kelly McBride

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

Amaris Castillo
Poynter Institute

Nicole Slaughter Graham
Poynter Institute

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.

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