Thoughts on NPR’s Navel-Gazing About Reporting On Its Audience Growth
As a regular listener of National Public Radio, this article caught my attention: Alicia Shepard, NPR’s ombudsman, has a piece about whether or not the network should have reported on its own audience growth last week. An excerpt from Shepard’s column:
I heard from a few folks inside NPR who felt uncomfortable with the self-promotion, followed by bad news that some said sounded like an appeal for money — especially during pledge week at some stations.
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“I cannot imagine The Washington Post or The New York Times printing a story about their increased circulation,” emailed a staffer, who asked that their name not be used. “The business about our $8 million shortfall–was that a veiled plea for donations?”
To me, this is a symptom of many journalists’ staunch reluctance to do any kind of self-promotion. While that mindset stems from a noble motive — “a journalist is supposed to be reporting the story, not be the story” — I think many in the press have carried it to such lengths that it’s become detrimental.
I first wrote about my thoughts on this almost a year ago, in reaction to the way most Pulitzer-winning newspapers failed to bring attention to the news of their award. Basically, I think journalists should be as proactive in highlighting the good news about themselves as they are in reporting the bad news. The media have a bad reputation as it is, and it won’t help anything if they refuse to tell their audience when they’ve done something good.
As for the NPR staffer’s comment about the report about the network’s shortfall sounding like a veiled plea for money, my reaction is: 1). It’s overreacting, and 2). even if it were a plea for money, what’s wrong with that? In fact, why veil it at all? I mean, NPR depends on listener contributions anyway. The network literally does beg its listeners for money. If you are going to hi-jack 10 minutes each half hour for several weeks each year to tell your listeners how valuable you are and why they should send money, it seems rather silly to worry about whether a two-minute report that actually contains news might send the same message. If the subject was the New York Times or some other media outlet, would the staffer be concerned about the report being a veiled plea for people to subscribe to the NYT? If this was something NPR would have reported on about another media outlet, then I see nothing wrong with it.
NPR's audience is news, especially when its growth has been so dramatic at the same time that commercial radio audience is not growing. It's news when their is great audience growth given the content of NPR stories, including their depth, context, perspective and the fact that they are labeled by partisans as representative of only one side of the great cultural division that supposedly exists in this country. It is news because it employs 18 foreign bureaus for its news operations at a time when commercial media have eliminated theirs altogether. It is news because it indicates that many more Americans find the need for analytical news that speaks to intelligent discussion of serious issues as commercial media becomes even more entertainment-dominant, and in its crudest form, derisive, hateful and divisive under the guise of news and information. And it is news when, given the above, NPR is financially threatened by the same lack of resources for its operations that its listenersdonors are experiencing in their own lives during these difficult financial times. Its audience needs to know that, and hopefully respond accordingly.
Hi Dwight. Thanks for the comment. You hit on a lot of good reasons why the audience growth was news and should be reported. It's been my experience that journalists are a lot more at ease with reporting on themselves or their organizations if it involves bad news but much more reluctant to report the good. It comes from the desire to show that they're impartial, even toward themselves. But I think that often reaches levels of over-compensating, as this case illustrates.