Modest Proposals for Fixing NPR

Needed: a new deal with Congress, and with member stations

Welcome to Second Rough Draft, a newsletter about journalism in our time, how it (often its business) is evolving, and the challenges it faces.

April was a cruel month for NPR. A longtime journalist there took a hard shot at its coverage from the right, and at least one former colleague took one from the left. The new CEO, who comes to NPR with youth, vigor and lots of nonprofit experience, but essentially none in journalism, faced criticism from within and without. And, of course, all of this happened in the context of serious business challenges, both for NPR News centrally and for member stations across the country.

My own view is that NPR’s most serious problems are not the falloff in advertising (which NPR loftily prefers to call “sponsorship”) or even the declines in commuting and terrestrial radio, the podcast business bust or lessening tolerance for “pledge weeks”—although all of those difficulties are very real. Rather, I think, and have thought for awhile, that NPR’s business model and structure are broken, and need to be substantially transformed. This week, I want to suggest a rough outline of how that might be done.

I am not a Berliner (fan)

Before we get to that, however, just a few thoughts on the debate over NPR News coverage. I read producer Uri Berliner’s critique with interest when it was published, and found it initially perhaps plausible in its broad assertions, but then very weak in the supporting evidence presented, and thus ultimately unconvincing. To briefly take up its three prime examples:

• Berliner errs in adopting what has become a Trumpist trope about Russian collusion with the 2016 Trump campaign. The Mueller report, contrary to Berliner, found that such collusion did exist, but that this did not result in indictable offenses. It’s worth remembering that both Michael Flynn and Roger Stone ended up convicted of felonies based in lying about colluding with the Russians and their affiliates, while both Trump’s one-time campaign manager and deputy campaign manager were convicted of bank and tax fraud relating to their work on behalf of Russian interests.

• On the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, which it is now quite clear are themselves unclear, there was a significant and widespread press failure in prematurely closing the case. But there was nothing unusual about the way NPR did so.

• Finally, on the Hunter Biden laptop, I think we can now confidently say that Hunter Biden is likely a petty criminal, but that there is no evidence at all that those crimes implicate his father. If that is so, any more attention to the matter in the days just before the 2020 election, which would presumably have focused on the father and not the son, would have likely misled and confused voters, and might have ended up alongside the Anthony Weiner/Huma Abedin email flap of 2016 as an historic example of press failure to adequately guard against being caught up in a phony “October surprise.”

Enough of that. Back to NPR itself.

in need of repair

My own critique of NPR News during the last eight years is not that it has tilted too far in one direction or another, but that on the central issue of Trump and Trumpism it has been too timid. Yes, it has covered the news, often quite well, but it has been remarkable, at least to me, how few of the important stories originated at NPR, which, up through 2016, was one of the leading investigative news operations in the country.

Divorce the Congress

I have worried that the timidity has its roots in not wanting to offend a Congress at least one House of which has been in Republican hands for six of those eight years.

This brings me to the first part of my modest proposal for reforming NPR. Its new CEO should ask the Congress, beginning with the 2026 fiscal year, to end all appropriations that end up being granted by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to NPR News, while continuing those that go to member stations. She could even do this when she reports next week for the ritual hazing of cultural institution leaders now in vogue in the House of Representatives.

With a year-and-change to prepare for FY26, I think such a plan would have great advantages all around. NPR News would lose about 1% of its revenues, which I am confident it could more than make up in appeals for new private support. The House GOP could claim a significant win, while maintaining backing for the stations in local communities, especially smaller and more rural ones, that even most of its members know is strongly in the interest of those communities. In the longer run, such a shift might well even permit materially larger appropriations to benefit the stations, as the debate becomes depoliticized.

But that’s not all, as they say on late night TV ads.

NPR also needs to re-negotiate its relationship with the member stations, who ultimately control its Board. (This is somewhat analogous to how the governance of the Associated Press needs to evolve, as I discussed last month.) In particular, NPR News needs to be given the freedom to raise money directly from listeners and digital readers, rather than solely through member stations. (As a collateral benefit, such a step could spur its long-delayed full digital transition.) In exchange, member stations will want and need some revenue-sharing guarantees, and perhaps in practice (and even by law) more freedom to run programming from other providers.

Lock them in a room

Such a negotiation will be fraught, but it is overdue, as many people in the public radio ecosystem have long known. Funders, at both the national and local level, should insist that the conversation not only begin soon, but be carried through to a successful conclusion. Indeed, a coalition of large national funders would do well to not only convene the negotiation, but effectively lock the players in a room— by threatening to withhold funding from them all— until they get it done.

If NPR News were liberated from any dependence on the Congress, and if it were given access to direct listener and reader revenue, I believe it would be simultaneously reinvigorated and made more responsive to those who benefit from its work. At the same time, its member stations across the country-- from the bigger ones in major metropolitan areas to the smaller ones that in many places provide the only serious local news in their areas-- could be encouraged to become more local. This would likely make their output more compelling, and free them to play an even larger role in addressing the local news crisis, which we all know is the most serious problem in our business.

Those would be significant accomplishments, more than justifying the big steps necessary to make them possible.

Second Rough Draft will be off next week. See you soon.