News Deficit Affects Public Radio

Anyone with high hopes for the non-profit news organizations popping up around the nation should read a new and sobering report on the future of public radio stations, the non-profits with the longest and deepest experience with the world of philanthropy. 

The report, written by Thomas E. Patterson, a Harvard University professor who has studied and written extensively on the press, says public radio news operations, which are fund-raising trailblazers, still lack the financial muscle to be a “substantial source of daily news and public affairs information.”  

photo by Jacob Hodgson

“Local public radio stations do not have the ability to acquire on their own the substantial new funding required to greatly strengthen their capacity to provide quality news and public affairs coverage to their community,” Patterson said in the report. “This problem is particularly acute in the communities most affected by the decline of the local newspaper.”  

In the spirit of full disclosure, I know Tom Patterson. We met at Harvard when I received a fellowship at the Shorenstein Center on Media Politics and Public Policy, which published Patterson’s report. He’s an eminent scholar with impeccable credentials who has studied the problems of the media deeply. His report paints a dire future for local public radio unless someone identifies “new sources of funding for public radio stations in affected communities.” 

One of the many things I admire in Patterson’s report is his scrutiny of an under-reported dynamic: How the decline of local newspapers spawns deterioration in other media, such as public radio, which has the bandwidth to reach into ninety-eight percent of American communities. 

A prime example of the dynamic occurred during my tenure as managing editor of the Chicago Tribune. I usually listened to WBEZ, the local public radio station, and would often the work of Chicago Tribune reporters read without crediting the newspaper, leaving the impression that WBEZ reporters unearthed the stories. Although they wouldn’t admit it publicly, several WBEZ editors confessed to me that they relied too heavily on the newspapers, which had sizable staffs that covered the bread and butter of local news — courthouses, cop shops, city halls and statehouses. 

Now, Patterson’s report shows, that practice, which is not limited to public radio stations, has come back to haunt many stations. Since the year 2000, Patterson reports, more than 200 local daily newspapers and thousands of local weeklies have closed with more on the way. The number of employees at daily papers has plummeted from 75,000 to 30,000, and circulation and advertising revenue now totals $10 billion a year, down from $50 billion annually. The decline deprives local public radio news stations of needed content and creates gaps that the stations can’t fill because they lack the staff and money to do so.

“If the issue of declining newspapers was simply one of lost jobs, it would be an issue of concern on the level of the closing of a local factory,” Patterson says. “But the newspaper is more than just another local employer. For more than two centuries, local papers have provided residents a shared identity and purpose. Recent studies indicate that virtually every aspect of local civic life is at risk when the local paper shuts down, including a decline in civic engagement, lower voting rates, increased political polarization, and less responsive local officials. 

To assess whether public radio could compensate for the slack, Patterson surveyed 242 National Public Radio member stations across the country. He received replies from 215, or an unusually high response rate of eighty-nine percent.

The stations now face the same problem that plagues most news organizations — a lack of funding. “Public radio is largely funded by local sources,” the report says. On average the stations said about thirty-nine percent of their money comes from individual small donors, twenty percent from corporations, five percent from major private donors, five percent from local foundations, one percent from national foundations and about fifteen percent from the federal Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Other sources make up the remaining fifteen percent. That money doesn’t fund vigorous local reporting, though.

The average budget for the 215 stations surveyed by Patterson was $5.3 million, although some larger stations had budgets of more than $20 million. But the upfront costs of setting up and maintaining a news broadcast operation eats up most of the budget. Indeed, the news and public affairs spending averaged only $1.7 million, or about thirty-two percent of the average budget. Larger stations fare better than the smaller ones serving rural or underserved urban areas. 

The funding problems lead to small staffs operating with limited resources. “Staff size at nearly every station falls far short of that of even a moderate-sized daily newspaper,” Patterson says. “The Des Moines Register, for example, has a daily circulation of 35,000 copies and a fifty person newsroom — a staff larger than that of ninety-five percent of local public radio stations.” That statistic turned my head. I worked at The Des Moines Register in the 1970s, when it had a circulation of 240,000. Large stations in urban areas were twice as likely to have a staff of more than twenty persons. Three fourths of stations in rural areas had news staffs of ten or less with half having five or less. 

The local news coverage scenario if even worse. Only a fourth of the stations responding to the survey say they have a reporter dedicated to covering local government, while a third said it was a part time assignment. Some stations, like WBEZ ion Chicago, have combined their news operations with newspapers. But that often raises competing cultural issues. Most stations still operate on their own. “The evidence indicates that public radio in most locations is not all that local,” the report says. The average station produces only about two hours of locally produced news from six to seven am on weekdays. They get most of their content from national organizations such as NPR.

You can read all of Patterson’s report here. It details the challenges public radio faces in converting audiences to digital online news and the gloomy outlook for raising the funds they need to up their game from existing local donors. Moreover, it shows the dire situation the nation faces providing funds to cover local news. Unfortunately, the need for funds comes as American newspapers fold at the rate of two a week, and the number other non-profit local news start-ups is increasing, unleashing new competition for the same pool of limited dollars.   

Patterson says much of the funding needed for local news and public radio will have to come from major private donors who have the financial muscle to shoulder the burden of providing a vital service to communities around the nation. Local news is as fundamental to American democracy as the Founding Fathers, many of whom were journalists writing under pen names. 

“The nation has seen the largest accumulation of private wealth since the Gilded Age, much of it from opportunities created by the communications revolution. Many digital innovators and entrepreneurs have made private philanthropy a priority. Public radio has not been high on their list,” Patterson’s report says. “But as the adverse effects of the decline of the newspaper on communities’’ civic health become clearer and more widely known, they could turn to it.”  If history is a guide, fundraisers will need a big sot of adrenaline. 

—James O’Shea

James O’Shea is a longtime Chicago author and journalist who now lives in North Carolina. He is the author of several books and is the former editor of the Los Angeles Times and managing editor of the Chicago Tribune. Follow Jim’s Five W’s Substack here.