Will NPR Save the News?

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

NPR's new staffers in digital media say they should be able to tamp down the conflict by goosing online fund-raising to support digital initiatives and supplement member-station dues. They're helped along by an audience that is perhaps more ready than most for the radical concept of paying for the content they consume. "One can't help but look at the success the Obama campaign had in direct engagement with the base that they were trying to mobilize and in fund-raising," says Wilson, the head of digital media. "They were not just making a direct appeal but creating an ecosystem and a culture that encouraged steady low-level giving." Meyer agrees, "When we had to announce layoffs and cuts in December, there were comments on some of our stories: 'How can we help? Where's the give button?' There's a sense that the organization is leaving money on the table. People would like to contribute more to this service that they adore and depend on."

Of course, if anyone knew how to support quality journalism exclusively online, the media business wouldn't be hemorrhaging jobs. Currently, digital underwriting on NPR.org makes up 12% of total corporate-sponsorship revenue, a figure that's growing but has a long way to go before it matches the power of the on-air appeal.

Last fall, NPR folded a youth-skewed news show called The Bryant Park Project, which had found an audience online but for which stations were reluctant to pay. Besides, even if NPR.org somehow became a fund-raising powerhouse, it would still have to work out a revenue- and content-sharing scheme to please reluctant station managers like Seymour. This is where having 860 stations becomes more of a block than a boon. "The business aspect of online, no one wants to pay too much attention to," says Seymour, "because the promise is so enticing and seductive and overwhelming that we're all like groupies. But the fact is, no one has come up with a feasible business plan, and that's a major concern. So how do you sustain this gorgeous blonde? How do you keep her in furs?"

Before it can become the king of all media, NPR has to weather this downturn like everybody else. All sources of funding, from corporate underwriting to foundation grants, dipped last year, causing a projected $23 million budget shortfall for fiscal 2009. NPR cut staff by 7% and canceled two shows (News and Notes and Day to Day), both out of NPR West, the L.A. production outpost opened to great fanfare just a few years ago. It's NPR's worst budget crunch since the early 1980s, although it now has a protected endowment and was able to draw on up to $15 million in reserves to make up the shortfall.

Yet execs and reporters alike are confident that because audiences have stayed strong, and because NPR doesn't depend primarily on advertising, it will make it through this down cycle and come out even healthier. "One of the things that struck me as a newcomer is the strong sense of optimism that still pervades the organization," says digital media GM Wilson. "It stands in quite stark contrast to the atmosphere you encounter in newsrooms these days. There is still a very strong passion around the mission, what we're able to do on a day-to-day basis. And that may be fairly unique."

As a result, someday soon we may be looking at a world where public radio emerges as the main local-news source in many communities coast to coast. In Minneapolis, where the Star-Tribune is in bankruptcy, for example, the population may be about to get a lot less of columnist Chip Scoggins on the Vikings and a lot more of Garrison Keillor musing about Powdermilk Biscuits. It's worth asking what might be lost in the transition. NPR's audience may be surprisingly balanced among liberals, conservatives, and moderates, but it's overwhelmingly college-educated and affluent. "I think people like to listen to us because at the end of the day it makes them feel a little smarter," says Weiss. So will NPR have to bone up on the wildcat offense, or will the rest of America learn to love WTO coverage from Singapore?

Either way, to cement NPR's success in this climate, Schiller must bring to bear all of her considerable skill and charm to get people to hit that give button. "It's tough," she says. "I don't want to sugarcoat it. However, this is an opportunity to make our case, which is that NPR is one of the most, if not the most, vital news and information organizations. I certainly plan to pitch that case to our listeners who give to local stations, to foundations, to corporations, internally to our constituents, to anyone who will listen. And I believe it to be true."