Will NPR Save the News?

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New CEO Vivian Schiller in NPR's New York Studio | Photograph by Julian Dufort

Infographic: Finely Tuned 

The most successful hybrid of old and new media comes from the last place you'd expect. How NPR's digital smarts, nonprofit structure, and good old-fashioned shoe leather just might save the news. Days before the inauguration of Barack Obama, three dozen essential employees of the country's largest news organization are finalizing logistics in their Washington, D.C., war room. The A team of editors and producers will arrive the night before and sleep in cots on-premises, while reporters take up positions around D.C. in subfreezing temperatures, to go live at 5 a.m. Remote broadcasting units will be powered with battery packs stuck inside insulated pizza boxes, heated with chemical hand warmers. The rambunctious room quiets when the silver-haired editorial director delivers his Hill Street Blues speech: Be careful out there. "What I worry about is something bad happening in the real world," he says. "We are planning coverage of a scripted event, but it may not be scripted."

As the world now knows, the big day went off with scarcely a hitch. And National Public Radio proved once again that it's the country's brainiest, brawniest news-gathering giant, as several million people tuned in and more than 40,000 sent in updates from across the Mall and around the world by YouTube, SMS, Twitter, Flickr, and iPhone.

Yes, it's true: In one of the great under-told media success stories of the past decade, NPR has emerged not as the bespectacled schoolmarm of our imagination but as a massive news machine poised for what Dick Meyer, editorial director for digital media, half-jokingly calls "world domination." NPR's listenership has nearly doubled since 1999, even as newspaper circulation dropped off a cliff. Its programming now reaches 26.4 million listeners weekly -- far more than USA Today's 2.3 million daily circ or Fox News' 2.8 million prime-time audience. When newspapers were closing bureaus, NPR was opening them, and now runs 38 around the world, better than CNN. It has 860 member stations -- "boots on the ground in every town" that no newspaper or TV network can claim. It has moved boldly into new media as well: 14 million monthly podcast downloads, 8 million Web visitors, NPR Mobile, an open platform, a social network, even crowdsourcing. And although the nonprofit has been hit by the downturn like everyone else, its multiple revenue streams look far healthier long term than the ad-driven model of commercial media. (In 2003, Joan Kroc, widow of McDonald's founder Ray, gave a $200 million endowment to NPR, the largest gift ever to an American cultural institution. She must have gotten one hell of a tote bag.)

In one of the great undertold media success stories of the past decade, NPR has emerged as a massive news machine poised for what one exec half-jokingly calls "world domination."

In the past few months, a fresh crop of new executives and editors have arrived at NPR from the storm-tossed commercial media world. Meyer came from CBS; Kinsey Wilson landed from USA Today as general manager for digital media; and in January, Vivian Schiller joined from NYTimes.com as the new CEO. Their mission -- seizing even greater audience share -- is more aggressive than most for-profit operations' in this age of retrenchment. But with that ambition comes great responsibility. "Part of our desire to bring more NPR to more people is that, with the evisceration of commercial journalism, there's a dire need for it," Meyer says. "Major mainstream stories are increasingly going uncovered. And I think it might be the nonprofit journalism world that meets that huge market need, which is also a basic need of a democratic society and an information-based economy."