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Whither goes NPR

In October of last year, I held up National Public Radio as a media organisation of tomorrow, a non-profit “… hybrid of old and new media,” which offers all of its content free of charge on the Internet. I pointed out that NPR, which “acts as a hub for over 800 local radio stations in the US” has begun to thrive and expand even as media companies across the spectrum are downsizing. I said that, in the future, “…news companies would do well to follow NPR’s lead, embracing Web 2.0 applications while accepting a non-profit model of production and growth.”

I may have spoken too soon. All Things Considered ran a story on 6 March saying that one of the main proponents of NPR’s embrace of online media, CEO Ken Stern, was leaving the network after 10 years. The next day, it was revealed that Stern was being forced out by NPR’s board of directors. Why?

Stern has declined to comment, and members of the NPR board praised Stern and uttered platitudes about management style, work flow and leadership. But word is that the conflict revolved around the implementation of new media, and concerns from some of NPR’s affiliate stations that such would siphon audiences away from traditional radio to online broadcasts.

NPR has often, in the past, come across as a backwater of the media landscape, a place where poor liberals (in the American sense) produce excellent journalism for little money. Initiatives by Stern, his predecessor Kevin Klose, the interim CEO Dennis Haarsager and others have been radically altering that perception, and have sent whispers scurrying through the debate about new media and media organizations in the future. Said the Washington Post’s Paul Farhi…

“Under Klose and Stern, NPR grew rapidly, enjoying perhaps the most successful decade of its existence. Weekly audiences for such NPR shows as Morning Edition and All Things Considered doubled to 26 million. Revenue grew from $65 million to $200 million, and its workforce doubled to about 800 employees.”

Continued The Post, NPR’s website “attracts 8 million monthly visitors,” and it is the “world’s largest producer of podcasts.” Stern’s ouster came just a few days after the announcement of a new, $40 million headquarters north of the Capitol in DC, to be completed in 2012. Pretty good digs for a former media backwater.

There was even speculation (and I stress that word) from PaidContent.org, via CBS News’ website, that “Stern wanted to get NPR into TV and cable in a big way…”

TV? Cable? What! What? NPR is radio, isn’t it?

Well…no. NPR isn’t just radio, because radio isn’t really radio, at least as we’ve come to know it, any more than TV is TV, or movies are movies, or telephony is telephones. These, and many other media, are facing marginalisation – perhaps extinction - in their native forms, as they become increasingly available on the internet. Such may be the concern of many local NPR affiliates, whose transmission antennae cost a lot of money, and whose annual dues pay a large portion of NPR’s operating budget.

The matter was discussed on yet another NPR program, On the Media, in a conversation between Bob Garfield and Karen Everhart, senior editor of the public broadcasting newspaper Current. Garfield referred to Stern’s efforts to “drag public broadcasting kicking and screaming into the digital age,” and that this, accompanied with Stern’s “tough stance in union negotiations” led to his having made some enemies with member-stations. Everhart answered,

“…stations recognize the challenge that they have but they don’t trust current NPR management to help them navigate it…. …there’s a real split right now over this idea that NPR needs to become a multimedia organisation, or whether it needs to really focus on its core service of delivering really solid radio journalism.”

Jeff Jarvis was a bit snarkier. Referring to “protectionism” of local NPR affiliates…

“Well guess, what, local yokels, hate to tell you this but… You’re screwed! ...There is no need for you as a distribution arm anymore. Unless you add valuable local content and service to the mix, you might as well tear down the tower now….Getting rid of [Ken] Stern et al won’t get rid of reality.”

Remain Comm’s Phil Wilson expanded upon the “local yokel” analogy…

“…if all of the public radio listeners…head to the internet for their news, information, book chat, and Bach…then Hooterville Public Radio has a stick (antenna) that they have invested in that suddenly becomes worth a whole lot less. Number of listeners and revenue derived from them is what stick value is all about.”

It’s just fun, isn’t it? All this talk of “yokels” (country people, for the European audience) and “Hooterville Public Radio” (Hooterville is a fictional town in the classic American TV show Petticoat Junction, which parodied “yokels”) and the speculation that the NPR crisis is all about media traditionalists who want to protect – hence protectionist – their own little slice of the media pie.

Except that NPR’s hasn’t confirmed that Stern’s ouster was related to digital media at all. In a comment on Jeff Jarvis’s post about NPR, Interim CEO Haarsager, himself, called Jarvis’ scenario “dead wrong,” and denied the first part of the Washington Post story mentioned above. Haarsager’s take on things can be seen on his blog, Technology 360 in a memo published by Observed.

Regardless, it would be a shame if NPR’s affiliates dumped Stern simply because they’re worried about protecting their local share of audiences. Half the time, when I tune in to NPR, it’s WNCW in North Carolina, or Vermont Public Radio. Why? I used to listen to the former while working at a plastics factory in South Carolina, where I grew up, and I listened to the latter while living in Vermont for seven years. The localities continued to draw me, even if they’re on the Internet, because NPR’s flagship programs sound better with station breaks and local broadcasting that appeal to my experiences and identity, and because you simply cannot get that from NPR.org.

We are facing the steady demonetization of media, period. Everything convergent media touches is going to lose tracts of formerly “for-profit” enterprise. In the decades to come, as “convergence culture” expands beyond media (and more on that in the coming weeks), we’ll see this trend across vast swaths of the economy and the body-politic. Today’s market economy is tomorrow’s technocracy, and technocracy isn’t nearly as expensive.

The events surrounding Ken Stern’s departure from NPR, whether exaggerated or not, are salient because they address the concerns of those whose livelihoods are perceived to be at stake. Those who work in media, but ignore media convergence – even for something as essential as “really solid radio journalism” – are going to lose out to those who do. Similarly, those who embrace new technology but ignore what Wired Magazine’s Chris Anderson recently termed the “Taxonomy of Free,”and attempt to protect entrenched industry and methods, (read “the stick,” or antenna), will find it increasingly difficult – not even to compete – but even to cooperate.

For more information on the departure of Ken Stern from NPR, and the ongoing discussion, check out Gravity Medium’s list of NPR/Ken Stern articles.

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Photos from FlickR users “mj*laflaca”, “jdlasica” and “toddmundt” respectively. Second photo is Ken Stern.

Tags: ken stern, media company, national prublic radio, npr, online media, web 2.0,

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