Younger and more delusional
NPR is slashing staff to save $$.
NPR moved this week to cut 10% of its staff and stop production of a trio of acclaimed seasonal podcasts — Invisibilia, Louder Than a Riot and Rough Translation — as it seeks to close a yawning budget gap that stands in excess of $30 million.
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[Chief executive John] Lansing said the network sought to protect its core public service mission of journalism while preserving what he calls its “North Star.” Since joining NPR four years ago, Lansing has pushed to ensure the network has a bigger and broader audience base, rooted in younger and more diverse listeners, readers and consumers who will serve as the next generation of NPR supporters.
Hmmyes but that may have been its undoing, too. “Younger” listeners may have convinced NPR that gender ideology is the hot new thing as opposed to an embarrassing mistake.
I don’t listen to NPR, so I don’t know if they have some sort of donation system, but if they do, younger is almost always disastrous, It is the middle-aged to elderly who donate.
That’s exactly it, iknklast. They have a “pledge drive” model just like public television. The latest one just ended, and they came up quite short. Older individuals like me, who used to donate, now no longer will.
My understanding of the donation system is that the individual stations fundraise, and those stations pay programming fees to NPR. There are also some other sources of revenue.
They should probably chop “On the Media” as well… Used to be really great but now not so much I think…
When it comes to donors, I recall the adage “make new friends, but keep the old / one is silver, and the other gold”. I started donating to public radio in my 20s with what I could give, and still donate and support now that I’m in my 60s. Why? Because public radio still is doing good journalism in an age where that’s getting more rare.
I do agree though that public radio has uncritically embraced gender ideology and not allowed even a bit of a voice from those who are gender critical. I blame that in part on the tendency of journalism to prioritize personal narrative, which emphasizes personal stories, over studies that look at the overall picture using collected data from a population. So stories about trans individuals get a lot of play, while reporting on the lack of good studies about the efficacy of transgender medical care is given nothing more than citing what major medical orgs claim about it. Jesse Singal wept.
Oh, and On The Media lost it when they canned Bob Garfield.
It’s rather silly to court listeners among those who don’t listen to radio, but hey, you do you, boo.
Now that’s funny, right there.
I hate media–and LOATHE commercials–so I tend to listen to NPR, when I can stand it. Mostly classical for me.
I’ve donated three junk cars to the cause over the years.
BKiSA, I was thinking about the NZ equivalent of that (Fourth Estate and before that News Stand) which used to be presented by a professor in journalism (and ex-paratrooper and The Times journalist) Brian Priestly. He would have had stern and pithy words for the current standard of journalism. In 1988 when Fourth Estate was canned it was still getting audience numbers comparable to Miami Vice, which was sadly a major hit back then.
I do think our society is a whole lot dummer than it used to be. No one actually wants to think anymore.
I used to support the Guardian with donations (ones of significant size, too). No more.
This happened well after I stopped living in England, so my recollection may oversimplify the reality, but no matter. The department store chain Marks and Spencer used to be very successful, because they stocked the sort of clothes that middle-aged to older people liked (“where Mummy buys her clothes”). Then they decided to try to attract the younger generation by stocking with-it items. The result was that the younger generation didn’t go, because they still thought of it as the place where Mummy buys her clothes, and older people stopped going because they didn’t like all the trendy rubbish that was being offered.
One symptom of the financial problems that this misguided policy produced was that Marks and Spencer had to close most of their shops outside the UK. They had about six in France, including one in Marseilles that I liked going to because it stocked all the same stuff as in England, but was nowhere near as crowded. Then they closed all of them except the one in Paris, and although that survived a few years it has now closed as well.
I have to say that I no longer listen to it. Podcasts killed the radio star, in my case. I find that independent networks carry the most interesting ones, but for news and analysis I have been listening to the BBC’s “Newscast” and “Americast,” or the NYTimes’ “The Daily.”
But more often I listen for entertainment. Catching the news on the radio no longer has the same feeling of reliability. It seems like almost all media has a viewpoint and nobody any longer even pretends towards independent analysis of events.
I also used to listen to, and donate to, NPR, starting when I was fairly young. I don’t anymore. The breathless way they embraced identity politics and gender ideology left me turning it off every time I came into a room. How could I donate money to something that annoyed me so much? Not an ounce of serious consideration seemed left in their reporting, just cheerleading. It’s not terribly surprising to me that they find themselves in dire straits financially. It’s more surprising to me to learn that they had podcasts. I listen to a lot of podcasts these days. NPR podcasts? Why bother? I can go straight to the journalists. New Witch Trials episode today!
I’m surprised that NPR hasn’t done a story on how unfair it is to witches to compare JK Rowling to a witch. Or maybe they have; I wasn’t listening.
Our town is doing the same thing – trying to attract young people. That might seem to make sense, but there is very little reason for anyone younger than 50 to move to Hastings, NE. They’ve put up a couple of trendy restaurants that almost certainly won’t last (nothing lasts except fast food and a couple of local, rural style hamburger places). They are building some sort of entertainment complex where the mall used to be.
Meanwhile, young people leave because they want jobs in their field (Hastings does a good job of supporting those who are in agriculture or want to be cashiers) or because there is literally no dating scene in Hastings – and no place to take a date if you find one.
NPR has an article¹ about periods, and it doesn’t seem to have a single reference to women or girls.
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/23/1159147189/the-period-talk-you-never-got
¹ I read them far more than I listen. I prefer written to audio material in general.
Ugh, it’s annoying in general – sloppily written to be more “folksy” or down with the kids or whatever the hell they’re going for.