Will NPR Save the News?

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

It's a bit of a mystery how NPR managed to grow its audience so dramatically even as other news outlets suffered. Brand-new CEO Schiller has one of the most popular theories. On her ninth day of work, her office is still full of congratulatory flower arrangements -- the perfect setting for her rosy take on the source of NPR's true strength: the human element. When her appointment was announced, she explains, she got more than a thousand emails from family, friends, and old coworkers, and each had a personal anecdote about a local station or drive-time ritual. "I've worked in a lot of big media companies now," she says. "I mean, this is my fifth [The New York Times, Discovery Channel, CNN, TBS], and I've never seen such a connection between the institution and the audience members. The power of that is extraordinary. The journalism and the credibility -- that's the obvious stuff. It's the personal connection that's the secret sauce."

That intimate, knowing voice in your ear is just one of several characteristics of public radio that adapt shockingly well to a world of information overload. Another is its lower cost, which is helped by the near-absence of a star system or marketing budget. ("There are TV news anchors whose salary is three times the budget of Morning Edition," says veteran VP for news Ellen Weiss.) Then there's convenience. NPR board chair and Harvard Business School professor Howard Stevenson says, "As commutes lengthen, the importance of drive-time radio has grown. People don't have 15 minutes to sit at home and read the newspaper, but you can get accurate, in-depth reporting as you sit in traffic," or make dinner, or clean out the garage. It's a screen-free complement to online browsing.

At least as important as those factors -- or so journalists would like to believe -- is NPR's commitment to doing better work. Former CEO Ken Stern and Kevin Klose, president of NPR from 1998 to 2008, are both credited with shelving musty classical music programming to beef up the news operation. That evolution began with Tiananmen Square in 1989, the Gulf War in 1990, and the debut of cable news as a competitor, says Weiss. When she started 27 years ago, "it wasn't really a primary news organization," she recalls. "We used to say we'll do a story a day late and call it 'analysis.' Now we get up earlier in the morning." That means key news managers now come in at 7 a.m., and there's a 24-hour staff for flagship Morning Edition.

Combine the personal touch with the patience to do serious explanatory journalism, and you get one of NPR's major editorial triumphs of the past year: "The Giant Pool of Money," an hour-long episode of This American Life about the financial crisis first broadcast in May 2008. The show was the first-ever coproduction between NPR and TAL (Ira Glass & Co. are produced by WBEZ in Chicago and Public Radio International, an independent production company). NPR business reporter Adam Davidson and TAL producer Alex Blumberg coaxed global economists into breaking down terms such as derivatives, tranches, short selling, and credit swaps. They used vivid narrative and humor to bring these stultifying concepts to life. You hear from guys like Glen Pizzolorusso, who spent his days approving "liar loans" and his nights at Marquee with Christina Aguilera. Throughout, Blumberg and Davidson's frank dismay at the chicanery comes through.

To hear Davidson tell it, the economic crisis demands public-radio-style journalism. "I don't think this is a good story for newspapers, to be honest with you. Because it's an emotional story, it's a shocking story. We're used to all the people who formed the architecture of our economic infrastructure having the voice of God -- like Alan Greenspan. They're the experts and they understand the world and they're going to explain it. And business journalists had that tone too. We're now in a world where anybody who tells you they know exactly what's going on, you can just dismiss them as a liar."

To continue to get that kind of programming out to as many consumers as possible, everyone from Schiller on down sees technology as the key. "We have to skate where the puck is going," she says (in what may be the first use of a hockey metaphor by an NPR CEO). Certainly "The Giant Pool of Money" demonstrated how easily a strong NPR show can be repurposed as multiple digital streams. It has been downloaded as a podcast more than half a million times and spawned a thrice-weekly NPR podcast and blog, Planet Money, which are getting 1 million downloads and 400,000 page views a month, respectively. But NPR's digital efforts are much broader. It was the first mainstream-media organization to enter podcasting and often has several programs in the iTunes top 10. An open platform introduced last year allows listeners to mix their own podcasts and otherwise play around with NPR content -- one fan built an NPR iPhone app. And NPR is putting all of its editorial employees -- every editor, producer, and reporter -- through multimedia training, with support from the Knight Foundation. Traffic on NPR.org grew 78% from 2007 to 2008.