
The Fight for the Future of NPR - mathattack
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/04/the_fight_for_the_future_of_npr_can_public_radio_survive_the_podcast_revolution.html
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a2tech
Maybe I'm an old and out of touch, but I love NPR. I like that I can get well
researched, calmly presented news at any time of the day by flipping to my
local station. Podcasts just don't do it for me-I prefer music in the
background while I'm working, and npr/music when I'm driving.

~~~
vdnkh
I've been listening to NPR for ~2 hours each day during my commutes for about
2 years. While I really like it, they're not unbiased like they may have you
believe. They don't always up and say it, but their most common tactic is
bringing on an 'expert', who pontificates about X while the host nods in
agreement and says how smart they are. Listen closely when talking about
Israel, Bernie/Hillary (I couldn't stomach the 15 minute puff piece on her
yesterday), and digital privacy (David Greene got called a government shill by
Darrel Issa on-air). I still listen to it but occasionally I have to put it on
mute for a segment or two.

~~~
vectorpush
> _While I really like it, they 're not unbiased like they may have you
> believe. _

I've never really heard NPR hosts/reporters claim it to be a bastion of
unbiased journalism. In fact, I don't think any news organization really
claims to be unbiased except Fox News (and that isn't a judging statement, I
say that based only on their "Fair and Balanced " tag line).

I think NPR does make a fairly honest effort to avoid bias, and they're also
receptive to accusations of bias; it's not uncommon to hear callers on various
programs call in to say that they think the coverage of a certain topic is one
sided or myopic, and in most cases the host allows the caller to speak their
mind and let the criticism air for all to consider. I'd also add that NPR is
not monolithic and the programming schedule of a given station is usually
composed of sources from various studios around the country as well as local
content for the region.

Still, the bias cannot be denied, and I'd love to get a recommendation
regarding a less biased or more reliable source of news programming (even if
that means I'll have to stream a non-local station).

~~~
unethical_ban
My local station goes on during the pledge drives about how NPR brings an
unbiased, facts-based view of the world. the station definitely promotes it,
and I believe the org thinks it, too.

Certain programs are expected to have less bias than others, IMO. Panel shows
like Diane Rehm, On Point and Fresh Air aren't necessarily meant to be
completely unopinionated, while things like All Things Considered and Morning
Edition (and perhaps Here and Now) are expected to bring a balanced
perspective. They don't always succeed.

~~~
steveax
Yes, but there is another form of bias which is guest selection. NPR guests on
shows like Morning Edition are overwhelmingly mainstream establishment voices
(often from think tanks like Heritage and Cato). I'd prefer a wider range of
voices over some faux unopinionated notion.

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matt_morgan
This quote--

"...the median age of NPR’s radio audience has steadily climbed from roughly
45 years old two decades ago to 54 last year—and one it would need to reach in
order to guarantee its survival."

I've been in nonprofits since 1993. My wife has been in different nonprofits
since 1998. My friends are mostly in nonprofits. Every single one I'm aware of
--with the possible exception of NYPL--has dealt/is dealing with an aging
constituent base. Every interview I go on, they want to know what I can do to
help them reach, court, and convert young people.

Not to diminish NPR's problem ... that's a pretty fast aging rate compared to
some others I've seen. But clearly there is something going on here that's
bigger than NPR.

~~~
Agustus
What have been some of the strategies suggested. There is a definite desire
from the younger age groups to do something, but non-profits I have worked
with or know are experiencing the same issue as you are seeing.

A professor of mine declared that he would donate to NPR when he had money, is
it a case where the loan debts from the students is sapping the monies that
used to go to the non-profits?

~~~
matt_morgan
The general approach is "meet them where they are." I.e., throw parties with
free-ish drinks, publish to & engage on social media, bring art to public
spaces, etc.

There's often a "storytelling" kind of aspect too--take our artworks and stop
being so fussy about them, tell a story that relates, etc. I haven't really
seen that work in big numbers. E.g., The Metropolitan Museum of Art does tons
of online storytelling, that gets small fractions of the traffic that goes to
the Timeline of Art History and the Collections search and the online
Exhibition components.

A couple other responses here mention a) millenials are struggling
financially, and b) we're an aging population and the old man, he's got all
the money. I think both are true. Lots of museums have experimented with low-
cost memberships (Brooklyn Museum was a pioneer). But you can donate tiny
amounts of money to NPR. Maybe it's a question of really meaning it when you
say "every little bit counts."

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cgm616
I am "Lara" in this article's sense, and I love NPR. Being able to listen for
any amount of time and still get news that I haven't heard before is nice. At
the same time most of the segments I hear are interesting, heartwarming, or
really sad. Nothing on NPR seems outdated, but maybe that's simply because
I've grown up with it.

~~~
chrisrhoden
It's important to separate NPR from Public Radio. NPR, for most people, is
Morning Edition and All Things Considered. A very significant amount of the
schedule on most public radio stations is not NPR. Market research that this
article references seems to suggest that the audience for NPR's broadcast
material is aging.

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ausjke
Is there any real neutral/unbiased radio or TV these days? NPR is not that
"bad" but I feel I need listen to multiple radios/TVs these days to make a
sane decision, I guess that is just the way it is now, i.e, everybody has to
be kind of a news report him/herself but damn we're all short on time.

~~~
humanrebar
> Is there any real neutral/unbiased radio or TV these days?

Is that even possible? News stations that try to do this end up covering
politics like horse races, avoiding actually investigating the substance of
claims.

Take slavery in the U.S. in the early 19th century. How would an unbiased
person cover the controversy? "Calhoun said this and that in support of
slavery. His poll numbers are up in South Carolina." Is that unbiased? Do we
even want that? In my view, dispassionately summarizing some facts is itself
taking a stance on the issue, one of dispassion.

My current theory is that we just need to be diligent about getting many
perspectives on issues and current events, assuming everything is biased in
one way or another.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Doesn't that end up with artificially polarizing issues? To make them sound as
interesting as possible. This is so common in fact, that we often talk about
'seeing the other side' of an issue, as if issues are naturally polarized. Its
worked itself into our language!

Larry Niven had an imaginary race in his books called the Motie. They had
three arms, two for manipulation and one strong one for holding things.

He had them talk of issues as "On one hand, X. On another hand, Y. But on the
Gripping Hand, Z!"

~~~
humanrebar
> Doesn't that end up with artificially polarizing issues?

If you only get two sources of news, it probably seems like there are only two
sides of the issue, if that's what you mean.

But it should be really obvious by the primary races in the U.S., if nothing
else, that there's more going on than that. Ideally I would catch some
perspectives from _at least_ a news source sympathetic to each.

It's pretty apparent to me that there are giant shortfalls here given how
surprising the Trump candidacy in particular has been. Lots of stories
guessing what Trump voters actually do and think as if they're writing
xenoantropology pieces or something. I say that as someone who doesn't really
understand his appeal, to be clear.

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tallanvor
All Things Considered and Fresh Air are daily things for me, although I listen
to the podcasts since I'm not in the US. Planet Money, Wait Wait, This
American Life, and Ask Me Another are also regular shows I listen to. I've
also been listening to KCRW's Left, Right & Center, and they're part of the
NPR network, though I don't know who ends up funding that show.

Sometimes I wish All Things Considered had more details on some of the
stories, but if all their stories were longer, I would start picking and
choosing what I listen to and not get as much variety.

~~~
chrisrhoden
All Things Considered, Fresh Air, and Wait Wait are all traditional NPR
broadcast programs, but since you're not listening via broadcast, your
listening behavior is covered here, and it's important to understand why (I'll
get into that in a bit).

The rest of the shows are either strictly podcasts (Planet Money), not NPR
produced (This American Life, Left Right & Center) or built specifically to
fight this trend (Ask Me Another).

The reason why the way you listen matters is because NPR gets its money from
broadcast stations. Every time they do something that has a whiff of asking
listeners to donate directly to them, there is a backlash from the stations
they are bound by contract to serve. If you listen via podcast and you don't
donate to your local public radio station, there's no very good way for NPR to
get paid for that listening. Ads exist, but they generally do not support this
type of programming entirely and NPR has a complicated relationship with them
anyway.

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arca_vorago
Journalism is in an extremely sad state of affairs as a whole, and that
includes the radio stations such as NPR and BBC. If they want to survive, they
need to be less about being stenographers for power and outlets for operation
mockingbird style propaganda, and instead actually do something hard hitting.

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scott_s
I listen to a lot of NPR, but the longform shows (This American Life, Serial,
Planet Money, Freakanomics, Radiolab), and always in podcast form. I don't
want to listen to my news - I listen to a decent number of podcasts, and I
want to be able to choose what I listen to based on momentary whims. That
means that the content had better be relatively timeless, which rules out pure
news shows that are made of 4 minute segments.

Maybe this doesn't bode well for the flagship NRP programs, but I don't want
to listen to my daily news. I want to read it - I read the NY Times daily. The
speed at which I can get an understanding of the daily news is so much faster
when reading than listening. When I listen, I want a single story or concept
in depth.

~~~
chrisrhoden
Of the programs you listed, only Planet Money is an NPR program. The
distinction is very, very important in the context of this article. This
American Life, an independent entity which also produces Serial, is decidedly
NOT impacted by the shift mentioned in the article, and WNYC (which produces
Radiolab and Freakanomics Radio) is producing this on-demand content in part
to combat the demographic shifts of their broadcast audience.

~~~
scott_s
That is an important distinction to make, and I'm surprised they did not make
that distinction in the article. If I'm confused by it, I suspect many people
are.

~~~
farski
There article says, word for word, "NPR is not involved in the making of This
American Life...Nor did NPR create Serial"

~~~
scott_s
Also fair - I must have skimmed over the intro.

~~~
farski
And the next 11 paragraphs? Which part of the article did you actually read?

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Semiapies
"[S]eriously, NPR does matter unless you want to live in a world with ONLY 30
minutes of vocal fry on the value and meaning of Mold (which is GREAT) and
not, also, let’s say ... news of a terror attack in Belgium."

It's difficult to concisely unpack and dissect everything wrong with this
line. To put the tunnel vision of it in context, ponder the _tiny_ minority of
people who heard about the Belgium attack on NPR first, or even from them at
all.

You can't posture in defense of NPR on the basis of a service that people can
get anywhere else, and in the case of young listeners, _are_ getting almost
everywhere else. (Not even in-depth news - if you want that, you'll read
something. Something younger people appear to do more of.)

~~~
scott_s
I also found the "vocal fry" comment unnecessary - it's basically a way of
saying "voice of a young person", since that's just how some young people
talk. Kinda ironically, my source for this is an NPR program, This American
Life: [https://jenmacdonald.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/vocal-fry-
on-t...](https://jenmacdonald.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/vocal-fry-on-this-
american-life/)

(Well, a blog that mentions the program, but I figured people are more likely
to read the conclusions from this blogger than listen to the whole segment.
The irony is _thick_ in this comment.)

~~~
extra88
This American Life is not an NPR program, it never has been. Not all public
radio comes from NPR.

~~~
scott_s
This American Life is produced by WBEZ Chicago, which is an NPR affiliate. It
airs on stations other than WBEZ. To me, that makes it "an NPR program".

~~~
ghaff
Yes, a lot of people use "NPR" as shorthand to mean all programming that is
associated with public radio stations in some way (often because they don't
know that there _is_ a distinction). But that doesn't make it correct--
especially when the distinction is quite relevant as in the context of this
article.

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pistle
Ack. A jittery gif amongst the content. Had to cut out at that point. NPR
stations could adapt to the digital shift in content distrubution without a
painful disengagement from existing contracts. It just needs the incentive to
go through the process.

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rurban
So when this guy is asking to reform "All Things Considered" and "Fresh Air"
to attract a more younger audience all alarm bells have to ring. The goal is
to attract an intelligent audience, not the young audience everyone else is
tracking.

His next idea will be to move "This American Life" to a bad slot. Don't listen
to him.

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ryan606
I love NPR, but I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't support my local station
financially. We were subscribers up until the flap with Juan Williams, who I
continue to believe was wrongly terminated from NPR.

NPR's news reporting and insight is as good as any broadcast network, even if
they're a bit left.

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surge
I listen to some podcasts and get some NPR news through Alexa daily. This is
actually my preferred method for getting the news, although I don't donate or
hear the campaign drives, but a donate/subscribe button on Amazon for the feed
could help that.

I also consider them about as biased a Fox News, even if there position is a
bit more "calm" or reasonable, they're still heavily biased towards incumbent
democrats like Clinton over say Sanders. I'm aware of the bias though and just
ignore them for political based news. I care more about world events coverage.

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nickhalfasleep
NPR has the same problem any large segmented bureaucracy has, the inability to
pivot. They have killed upstart, personalized shows filled with really
creative, talented young voices appease the old local radio stations.

This isn't new, in 2007 there was the Bryant Park Project:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryant_Park_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryant_Park_Project)

And much of the talent there is now elsewhere and leaving NPR. Podcasts are
going to eat NPR's young audience if they are not careful.

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6stringmerc
As long as they can keep cranking out amazing pieces like saving turtles by
using tiny turtle bridges, then I'm all for their existence.

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1132089...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113208985)

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fluxquanta
My local NPR affiliate (ncpr.org) is, by far, the best local news source
available to me, and I give to them twice per year. Beyond the 5 minute NPR
news breaks, however, I'm not too concerned with the national coverage.

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steveax
Pretty good article, but gah! This trend of putting animated gifs into long
read articles has to die. How are readers expected to concentrate when there's
a gratuitous dancing picture next to the copy?

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xufi
I love NPR especially with the programs they co author with the BBC World
Service but I also love their programs like Fresh Air and I especially love On
Point. There are just no other programs like them.

~~~
dublinben
>I especially love On Point

As mentioned in the article, On Point is an independent (non-NPR) production
by a local station, in this case WBUR-Boston.

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pklausler
I love NPR and I donate to the local affiliate station but I read it more then
I listen due to the horrible vocal fry of many NPR reporters, which causes my
own throat to tighten up painfully in sympathy.

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Zooper
There's another term for public media: state media.

