In a previous post, I was showing slides I used for a conference presentation.
The conference was for programmers in public radio and the panel was asking whether public radio journalists could "step up" to meet the hopes of many who see pub-media as a surviving hope for local news across the United States.
My argument is that, yes, indeed we are growing public radio newsrooms but the pace is slow... and we'll need to get creative and entrepreneurial to speed it up.
Here's one problem: spending on local news. Over half the stations that are NPR members have 3 or fewer full-time news people. We're doing better than commercial radio but that just isn't saying much. The chart below shows the bulk of stations spend below $250K a year on local news.
Still, if you add it all up, our public radio system is investing roughly $120-million a year in local news and public affairs. Most of that spending is on salaries -- and, of course, most of the spending is being done by the largest stations.
What comes from those dollars and those newsroom staffs?
An estimated 100-thousand hours of local news and public affairs content each year!
The chart below shows that most stations produce about an hour a day or less of local news. In many cases, that's just right. In some cases, it could be higher (but let's remember that quality is more important the quantity). No one particularly wants gobs and gobs of local news unless perhaps you live in a major metro area AND you get the quality content you demand. But in most cases, the mix of local to national is kept proportional to interest and resources.
In a survey I conducted in 2010 (for PRNDI with help from Ken Mills and Steve Martin), I found a healthy share of stations had increased their local news programming in the previous year....
... and a healthy share planned to increase their local news programming in the upcoming year (2011)...
To better understand what local newsrooms are actually producing, we asked about various categories of local news. The following chart makes clear that daily newscasts are the most common staple... fueled with daily spot and feature reports. A solid core of stations do the serious news stuff -- series, specials, documentaries -- and a fair number cover breaking news, though that had rarely been the forte of public media in the past.
(Note: the chart labels got upcut... where it says "daily" and "weekly" and "monthly," refers to talk shows. You can see, for example, that daily talk shows are on a quarter of all stations.)
The last section of the presentation focused on innovation. We look at how local newsroom are adapting to online news, other digital tools, and the use of partnerships to extend and leverage the local public media journalism.
In the graph below, we found from a job study (used by permission from CPB), that a majority of the public media news workforce includes online platforms in their radio or TV work. Overall, almost two-thirds of public media journalists had multi-platform responsibilities. Very few, however, had online only responsibilities.
The following series of pie charts show the frequency of digital tool deployment by public radio stations. Green is high usage. Red is no usage. (Light green is some use. Light orange is rare use.) Scroll down and see how the red pie wedges grow in size as the technology grows in complexity.
Finally, many observers agree that public radio is going to need to broaden beyond its radio limits if it wants to serve more constituencies with its valuable content. This means exploring partnerships in the broader media ecology. Stations are familiar with some partnerships -- with regional radio networks, for example, or working with the NPR news desk and bureau chief -- but they are less accustomed to partnering with bloggers, local websites, nonprofit groups and other media (except newspapers, there's a fair bit of that going on). The chart below compares the average frequency of partnerships by stations on a four-point scale (4=very frequent, 3=frequent, 2=infrequent, 1=rarely).
The picture that emerges from these data is a system that is moving in the right direction, vis a vis growing local news and modernizing systems. Yet, it is a very large field and a relatively small share of the players are playing at an advanced level.
More to come on the advantages of scale. Stay tuned.
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