All Media Considered
Web news, songs, podcasts--National Public Radio is riding more than the radio waves
Martin Kurcias 1971 has been with National Public Radio since 1978, when, as a disc jockey in Washington, D.C., he heard about a six-year-old organization that was looking for audio engineers. The radio network was expanding, adding Morning Edition in 1979 to join its evening news broadcast All Things Considered. "I learned on the job," Kurcias recalls. "The most interesting work was getting out in the field and recording things, as well as 'driving' the shows, which is basically producing the show live, sitting in the chair in front of the console and pushing all the buttons." A live show has "a bit of an edge," he says.
Is NPR vulnerable--financially and politically--because of its dependence on public funding? Most of our funding comes from the member stations, who in turn get it from their listeners during pledge drives. We get a fairly small percentage of funding from the American taxpayer. Also, in 2003 Joan Kroc, the widow of McDonald's founder Ray Kroc, left NPR $235 million as an endowment. Some of that money is getting into the programming stream. Radio has always been much cheaper to produce than television, and that's one of our strengths. It makes us more mobile and flexible.
What about foundation grants? If they're targeted for specific projects, doesn't that limit your journalistic freedom? It's not so restrictive that we're being told what we can say or do. Sure, you could make the argument that our coverage is driven by what we can find money for. If you're writing a grant, you ask for money for a specific purpose. That's the way the game is played. You get enough grants, you can cover everything.
Are new media like the Web bringing changes to NPR? One overarching thing is a shift from radio to multimedia. When the Internet came along, we started producing a Web site. Then we created an Internet music show called All Songs Considered, which began because we always got a lot of mail from people asking about the little song blips that ran between news pieces. All Songs Considered became a big hit. Now it also covers live concerts and does live Web streaming. We recently got a grant from the Knight Foundation to enroll a bunch of people from NPR in their multi-media training. There's all this social media, there's Web streaming, podcasts, blogs. It takes everything we do on the radio a couple of steps further. It used to be that All Things Considered came on at 4:00 in the afternoon, and if you weren't listening you missed the show. But now, with the Internet, you can listen to the show whenever you choose. This on-demand programming is one of the things NPR is trying to address.
Do you think Americans get the news they deserve? Do journalists have a moral obligation to go beyond the public demand for, say, celebrities and gossip? I don't know if I would go so far as to call it a moral obligation. I think that there's room for everything. You have your journalists who want to cover Britney Spears or Oprah or Roseanne--that's all well and good, that's one kind of journalism. But journalists are sometimes referred to as the fourth estate, and part of your obligation in that role is to keep the public informed of things that they need to know about. I think journalists have an obligation to be fair and balanced and accurate. One of the roles of journalism is to be a check on government, to make sure that things see the light of day, and that the public is informed and can make informed decisions.
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