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Executive Summary

America’s local newspapers are in steep decline, creating a deficit in local news. In affected communities, civic life is receding, social cohesion is declining, misinformation is increasing, and governmental accountability is weakening.

The question our study sought to answer is whether local public radio stations can substantially help meet the deficit in communities’ information needs resulting from the decline of the newspaper. To address the question, a lengthy online survey of National Public Radio’s member stations was conducted. The survey was sent to 242 stations. Replies were received from 215 stations, for a response rate of 89 percent.

The study’s main findings and recommendations are the following:

1. Most local public radio stations serve communities where the quality and quantity of local news and public affairs information is inadequate to the communities’ information needs.
2. In terms of news coverage and audience reach, most local stations are positioned to be a leading news source for their community, a positioning that would be strengthened if they were to receive substantial new funding.
3. The biggest obstacle to a more prominent information role for most local stations is their understaffed newsrooms; they lack the news gathering capacity to be a substantial source of daily news and public affairs information.
4. The problem of under-capacity is most acute in communities that are most in need of quality information; these locations also tend to be “hard places” in the sense that there is less community support for public radio.
5. To position themselves to better serve their communities’ information needs, local public radio stations must accelerate their digital transformation; excessive reliance on over-the-air content limits stations’ audience reach as well as the depth and breadth of their news and public affairs coverage.
6. 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; this problem is particularly acute in the communities most affected by the decline of the local newspaper.
7. In addition to appeals to longstanding funders of local public radio, including governments and foundations, there’s an urgent need for a national fundraising campaign directed at major private donors who have not previously helped underwrite local public radio.
8. Virtually every local public radio station has a need for substantial new funding, but such funding should disproportionately be allocated to well-positioned stations in communities where the decline of the local newspaper has created a severe deficit in local news and public affairs information.

Introduction

Local News as Common Bond

The weakening of local news is by now a familiar story. As digital change drove down local newspaper circulation and advertising revenue, cutbacks in news staff began, then deepened. Some dailies have shut down while others have shrunk their page count or delivery days. Digital subscriptions have risen but digital ads generate far less revenue than print ads.

Since 2000, more than 200 local dailies and thousands of local weeklies have closed with more on the way. Meanwhile, the number of employees at daily papers has dropped from roughly 75,000 to 30,000.¹

Responses to the decline have ranged from encouraging digital startups to luring billionaires to become owners of local dailies. But the number of interested billionaires is limited, and most digital startups have struggled to generate substantial revenue and audience.² Foundations have joined in, but their contributions compensate for only a small fraction of the loss. Local papers now take in less than $10 billion annually in advertising and circulation revenue compared to nearly $50 billion two decades ago.³

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. 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.

In these communities:

• Civic engagement has declined;⁴
• Social cohesion has weakened;⁵
• Awareness of local affairs has declined;⁶
• Party polarization has increased;⁷
• Voting rates have declined;⁸
• Local officials have become less responsive.⁹

As the Knight Foundation’s Eric Newton noted, local news gives people the information they “need to run their communities and their lives.”¹⁰ Without that information, there is a breakdown in residents’ ability to work through their problems, hold officials accountable, participate in civic and political life, and relate to one another and their community.¹¹ Without access to the information that binds a community, it stops acting like a community.

Why Not Local Public Radio?

Largely overlooked in the effort to save local news are the nation’s local public radio stations. The reasons are somewhat understandable. Radio is an older medium that itself has suffered audience decline. It also operates in a crowded space. Unlike a local daily, which largely has the print market to itself, local public radio stations face competition from other stations. Perhaps the belief that public radio is pitched to the interests of those of higher income and education has also kept it largely out of the conversation.¹²

Nevertheless, there are reasons why local public radio should be part of the conversation. The news media have a trust problem. They were one of the nation’s most trusted institutions in the 1970s but now are one of the least trusted.¹³ Trust in public broadcasting has declined but it ranks above that of other major U.S. news outlets.¹⁴ Moreover, public radio communicates through a medium where production costs are relatively low – not as low as that of a digital startup but far less than that of a hard-copy newspaper or television station. As well, the signals of local public radio stations reach 98 percent of American homes including those in “news deserts”—places that today no longer have a daily paper.¹⁵ In addition, the audience for local public radio has been more resilient to loss than that of other traditional news outlets¹⁶ and, unlike other local media, the number of local journalists in public media has increased in recent years.¹⁷ Finally, local public radio is no longer just “radio.” It has expanded into the digital space and has the potential to expand further.

A skeptic might concede these points but say that local public radio will never have the audience reach and coverage depth of local newspapers at their peak. That’s true, but market monopolies like those once enjoyed by the local newspaper and the three broadcast networks are a thing of the past. In today’s fragmented media environment, the information needs of local communities will be met, if they are to be met at all, by less comprehensive outlets.

The question, then, is whether local public radio can substantially help fill the gap in communities’ information needs created by the decline of the newspaper. The question requires two considerations:

1. Do local public radio stations have the capacity to provide reasonably comprehensive news coverage of the communities they serve? Do they have the news staff needed to meet that requirement? And if not, what level of investment could put them in that position?
2. Do local public radio stations have the capacity to reach enough members of their local community to make a substantial contribution to its information needs? And if not, what would be needed to substantially expand their audience reach?

Any such assessment must account for differences in communities’ information needs. The problem created by the decline of the newspaper is most acute in communities with the largest information deficit—places where local news is poor in terms of its quantity and quality. What is public radio’s potential in these locations, some of which are “news deserts”?

The Study’s Focus and Method

This study examines local public radio stations in the context of the communities in which they operate. It explores the information “health” of these locations and the local public radio station’s position in terms of its news coverage and audience reach. The study then assesses, from the perspective of local stations, the projected impact of substantial new funding on their coverage and reach, and what uses they would make of the funding. It then “tests” their assessments, asking whether local stations recognize the obstacles to expanding their footprint in their community, particularly in what can be called “hard places”—those where local stations face the largest obstacles. The report concludes with an assessment of what could be done to position local stations to substantially increase their contribution to the information needs of local communities.

The evidence for this study comes from a survey of the NPR “member stations” that NPR uses for its own periodic surveys.¹⁸ There are roughly 250 such stations, which operate more than 1,000 station signals nationwide.¹⁹ For our survey, we omitted the station in Guam and contacted only one station in cases where the same administrative and reporting staff manage more than one member station. That reduced the number of stations that we contacted to 242. Of these, 215 responded. The response rate was 89 percent, which is exceptional for a lengthy online survey. (The survey questionnaire is provided in Appendix B.)

Of our respondents, 57 percent actively managed the station, typically carrying the title of president, CEO, executive director, general manager, or station manager;²⁰ 38 percent were the news director or an equivalent title, such as content director;²¹ and 5 percent held a different position.²² Of the responding stations, 57 percent were university licensees, 28 percent were community licensees, 6 percent were government licensees, and 9 percent were otherwise licensed. Roughly half (53 percent) of the responding stations described their primary service area as “local, including the surrounding area,” whereas the other half (47 percent) described it as “regional.”

Some stations in our survey have semi-autonomous affiliated stations, which are not part of the survey. The programming of WBUR in Boston, for example, is also carried on WBUH (located in Brewster, Massachusetts) and WBUA (located in Tisbury, Massachusetts). In such cases, the respondent was asked to answer questions solely in the context of the major station, which in this case would be Boston’s WBUR.

Local Public Radio Station’s Position In The Community

The Local News Environment in Which Stations Operate

The decline in local news was apparent to our respondents (see Figure 1). When asked about the news trend in their communities, a mere 3 percent said that the quality and quantity of local news had improved and only 8 percent judged it to have stayed the same. The others perceived a decline in news quality and quantity with half describing the decline as “significant.”

When asked, excluding their station, what they perceived to be the state of news and public affairs coverage in their community, only one in twenty (5 percent) said their locality had a “rich news environment,” described as one with “high-quality news outlets that invest heavily in local reporting” (see Figure 2). A third (34 percent) called their local news environment “adequate,” described as one with “news outlets that regularly conduct substantial local reporting.”

The other respondents had a more pessimistic assessment. Slightly more than half (53 percent) of respondents called their local news environment “inadequate,” meaning that it had “some quality local reporting” but that it was “generally lacking in quantity and consistency.” And 8 percent of respondents perceived their locality to be a “news desert”—one nearly devoid of good local reporting.

For the rest of this report, local news environments will be grouped into two categories. The term “strong news environment” will be used to describe localities that respondents judged as having either an “adequate” or “rich” news environment while “weak news environment” will describe those judged as “inadequate” or as “a news desert.”

 

Gaps in Local News Coverage

What do stations see as the major gaps in local reporting? To address this question, we asked respondents to evaluate the adequacy of their community’s local news for 16 coverage topics.

Table 1a shows the eight topics that respondents saw as having the strongest coverage. Except for public health, which presumably ranked high because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the topics are what can loosely be called the staples of local public affairs reporting—government, business, crime, the economy, and schools. As can be seen, even for these topics, respondents did not have a particularly high opinion of the coverage. Indeed, respondents were somewhat more likely on average—28 percent to 22 percent—to say that local coverage of these topics was “inadequate” rather than “adequate.”

Table 1b shows the eight coverage topics that respondents judged the weakest. They are what can loosely be called local social issues, including race, labor conditions, child welfare, and poverty. Large numbers of respondents in each case judged the local coverage to be “inadequate.” Poverty coverage was at the bottom, with 75 percent of respondents describing it as “inadequate” and a mere 4 percent saying it was “adequate”—a 71 percentage-point difference.

The quality of the coverage for every topic was judged to be significantly lower in communities with weak news environments. Local government coverage, for example, averaged 1.41 for respondents from stations in strong news environments and 0.81 for those in weak ones. Across all 16 coverage topics, the average was 1.06 for respondents from stations in strong news environments as compared with 0.49 in weak ones.

In general, the survey indicates that the decline in local news is most acute on topics where news outlets were not all that strong in the first place. Respondents’ assessments also support the view that local news has broadly declined in its quality and quantity. Even the topics deemed as having the best coverage were not rated highly.

Stations’ Coverage and Reach

Local public radio stations operate in a competitive environment. Unlike the local newspapers in the pre-broadcast era, local stations contend with other outlets for residents’ attention. Moreover, local public radio stations vary in their capacity. Some have substantial newsrooms while others have a thin reporting staff.

Where did respondents place their stations in the mix of local news outlets? To address this issue, we posed two questions. One asked the respondents to describe their station’s local position “in terms of the comprehensiveness of its local news and public affairs coverage.” The other asked them to place it in “terms of audience size.”

As can be seen in Figure 3, more than half of the respondents considered their station to be a leading local outlet in terms of news coverage with one in eight – 13 percent—claiming it to be “the leading outlet.” Nearly all respondents judged their station to be at least an important local outlet. Only 7 percent described it as “relatively unimportant.”

When it comes to audience reach, respondents were only slightly less likely to see their station as a vital part of the local news system. Although few respondents placed their station at the very top locally in terms of audience reach, only 6 percent said it was “relatively unimportant.”

A station’s contribution to a community’s information needs rests on both the quality of its coverage and the scope of its audience. Only 3 percent of respondents identified their station as both “the leading outlet” locally in terms of news coverage and “the leading outlet” locally in terms of audience reach. When a lower standard is applied—whether respondents claimed their station was “a leading” or “the leading” outlet in both news coverage and audience size—half (51 percent) of the local stations met the standard.

It might be assumed that a station’s position in the community would depend on the overall strength of the area’s news outlets. That is, in communities with weak competitors, the local public radio station could be expected to be a more significant outlet than in communities with strong competitors. That expectation was not met (see Table 2). Respondents in weak news environments were marginally less likely to see their station as a leading outlet. An explanation for this finding will be discussed later in the context of what can be called “hard places”—the communities where local public radio stations have had the most difficulty establishing their station as a substantial source of local news.

The Constituencies of Local Public Radio

How large is the footprint of public radio stations in their local areas? To assess that question, we asked respondents about their stations’ constituencies.

The listening audience remains the core constituency of local public radio stations. Respondents reported a median of 90,000 cumulative weekly listeners with roughly a tenth claiming 300,000 or more such listeners and a fourth claiming 30,000 or fewer.

Small donors have always been a relatively small proportion of those who consume local public radio, which is reflected in our findings. The median number of small donors per year, as reported by respondents, was 5,000. Less than 10 percent of the respondents reported that their station had 50,000 or more donors per year.

Local stations have been expanding their digital footprint, which is apparent in our survey. As reported by our respondents, the median number of unique monthly website visitors was 40,000 whereas the median number of social media followers was 14,000, although here again there was wide variation. A fifth of respondents claimed that their station had 200,000 or more unique monthly website visitors, whereas nearly a third said it had 20,000 or fewer. The difference was more pronounced for social media followers—nearly half of respondents claimed their station had 10,000 or fewer followers while only an eighth claimed 100,000 or more.

Podcast listeners are a relatively new public radio constituency, and three-fifths of respondents said their station did not produce podcasts. Of those that did, the median number of monthly listeners was 7,500 with more than half claiming 5,000 or fewer listeners and a seventh claiming 100,000 or more listeners.

Newsletters are also a relatively new offering of local stations, and a fourth of respondents said their station did not have a newsletter. Of those that did, the median was 5,000 recipients with a mere twentieth reporting 50,000 or more recipients. Finally, two-fifths of respondents said that their station stages local events, often featuring speakers on topics of interest to the local community. Among these stations, the median yearly attendance was 500 people with only a sixth of these stations saying they had hosted 5,000 or more people.

On key indicators, stations in strong news environments are better positioned than those in weak news environments. Stations in strong news environments, for example, averaged 151,085 cumulative weekly listeners and 20,101 yearly small donors compared with 117,548 listeners and 11,521 donors for those in weak news environments.

Digital Change and Audience Reach

Public radio’s on-the-air audience has been slowly declining due to the popularity of audio alternatives like podcasts and news audiences’ increased preference for online content.²³

The distribution and consumption of news have changed fundamentally, and NPR has long urged its member stations to expand their digital efforts. How substantial has their response been? To address this question, we asked respondents to indicate the priority their station has assigned to “digital transformation.” Three out of five (59 percent) respondents said it had been a “high” or “very high” priority. Most respondents also claimed that it has had a “moderate” or “substantial” impact on the size of their total audience, their fundraising, and the quality and quantity of their news coverage (see Table 3). Of these, audience size was seen as the area in which digital transformation has had the largest impact. Fundraising was seen as the area that has benefited the least. Fundraising was, in fact, the only area in which more respondents said that there had been “little or no impact” than said there had been a “substantial impact.”

Respondents were also asked what percentage of their total audience was attributable to their station’s digital offerings. The average was roughly 25 percent but there was wide variation with a fourth of respondents attributing 10 percent or less of their station’s audience to digital while a fourth reported 30 percent or more.

Stations in strong news environments were more likely to have embraced digital transformation than those in weak news environments, but the differences were concentrated at the extremes. In the strong news areas, 7 percent of respondents said digital transformation had been a “low” or “very low” priority for their station while 32 percent said it was a “very high” priority. The corresponding numbers in the weak areas were 14 percent and 21 percent.

The Difference Additional Funding Would Make, As Seen By Local Public Radio Stations

Station Budgets

Most local public radio stations have small annual budgets relative to local newspapers or TV stations. They also can get by with less. Radio production is less expensive than newspaper publication or television production. Among the stations represented in our survey, the average overall budget as reported by respondents was $5,300,000, although some had annual budgets exceeding $20 million. We also asked respondents to estimate the amount of the annual budget dedicated to news and public affairs. The average was roughly $1,725,000, which is a significantly smaller amount than that of the average local daily newspaper.²⁴

Stations with small budgets have an additional disadvantage when it comes to funding news and public affairs programming. There are costs associated with simply getting a station on the air and doing the fundraising necessary to keep it on the air. Such costs necessarily come first. Among the bottom half of stations in terms of budget size, only 22 percent of the total budget on average was dedicated to the production of news and public affairs. Among the top half, the figure was 35 percent.

Expanding Capacity through New Funding

For local public radio stations to play a more substantial role in filling the information deficit created by the decline of local newspapers, they would need significantly more funding.

When asked if they would accept such funding on the condition that it be used to expand local news and public affairs coverage, 86 percent expressed interest, with 7 of every 8 of them expressing strong interest. Ten percent said it was unlikely that their station would accept the funding while 4 percent said they were not sure. Nearly all of these have a music format. A format change would undermine their “brand.”

For stations with an interest in new funding, we asked respondents to project the funding’s impact. What effect did they think it would have on their station’s position in the local news environment in terms of the quality of coverage? In terms of audience size? Their responses can be seen in Figure 4.

In terms of the quality of their news coverage, fully half (51 percent) of the respondents said additional funding would make their station “the leading outlet” in their community (compared with the 13 percent who currently place their station in that position). An additional 41 percent said it would make their station “a leading outlet.”

When it comes to audience size, respondents were only slightly less optimistic. Forty percent said that additional funding would make their station “the leading outlet,” a nearly six-fold increase from the 7 percent who currently make that claim. An additional 52 percent claimed that the funding would make their station “a leading outlet.”

As indicated previously, a station’s contribution to a community’s information needs rests on both the quality of its coverage and the size of its audience. Earlier, when both aspects were looked at in the context of stations’ current position, only 3 percent of respondents identified their station as “the leading outlet” locally in terms of both news coverage and audience reach. When respondents projected the impact of new funding, the percentage jumped to 35 percent—a third of all stations. Moreover, a remarkable 84 percent of respondents claimed their station would become either “the top” or “a top” local outlet in terms of both quality coverage and audience size.

By this indicator, as can be seen in Table 4, the impact of new funding would be greatest for stations in weak news environments. Respondents in 40 percent of these communities claimed that the new funding would make their station “the leading outlet” in terms of both news quality and audience reach compared with 22 percent in strong news environments. Presumably, the difference reflects the level of local competition for the top spot. In many of the low-information communities, the local paper has closed or been hollowed out.

How Much New Funding Do Stations Think They Need?

How much new funding do local public radio stations believe they would need to achieve a more prominent position in their communities?

To address this question, we asked respondents to specify the percentage increase their station would require. The responses varied widely, as can be seen in Figure 5. One in eight indicated a 25 percent increase would be needed while three in eight said that a 50-75 percent increase would be required. Roughly a third said a doubling of their station’s budget would be needed while roughly one in six cited a tripling of the budget or more.

As would be expected, respondents from small-budget stations were more likely to say that their station would need to double or triple its budget. Stations with smaller budgets are located disproportionately in weak news environments, which helps explain their proportionally greater budgetary need. Whereas 30 percent of respondents from stations in strong news environments said their station would need a doubling or more of its budget, 55 percent of those in weak news environments claimed it would need that level of additional support.

What is the dollar amount behind these estimates? To get a rough idea, we took each station’s current budget and multiplied it by the percentage increase that it said it would need. The median annual amount per station was roughly $1,300,000.²⁵ Adding that amount to the current median annual news budget ($1,725,000) would raise the amount to roughly $3 million.

The overall price tag for expanding the coverage and reach of local public radio would be markedly lower if the funding was targeted at stations in the communities most in need. Stations with budgets exceeding $20 million are in media-rich places like Boston, New York, Washington, and Los Angeles, and many of the stations with budgets in the $10-20 million range are in cities where other news outlets provide reasonably solid local coverage. These larger stations would need the largest infusion of actual dollars to greatly strengthen their local position.

Can Local Stations Obtain Significant New Funding on Their Own?

Public radio is largely funded by local sources. Local stations receive some funding from non-local sources but are responsible for raising most of their funds. Can they attract significant new funding through their own efforts?

Table 5 shows the breakdown of stations’ current funding sources, as reported by the respondents. Listener (member) contributions constituted the largest source of funding, accounting on average for 39 percent of a station’s total budget. Corporate underwriting was second, constituting 20 percent on average. Large private gifts and local and national foundations each accounted for 5 percent or less. Funding from CPB and “other sources” each accounted for 15 percent of the funding on average. The “other sources” included, for example, the funding that colleges and communities provide their licensed stations.

We then asked respondents to assess whether their existing funding sources could reasonably provide “substantial new funding.” Their responses are shown in Table 6.

Local stations don’t expect much help from any level of government. The federal government is seen as a more likely source of substantial new funding than state or local government but only in relative terms. A mere 4 percent of respondents believed that it was “very likely” their station could obtain substantial new federal funding compared with 3 percent from state government and 1 percent from local government.

Nor did respondents see non-local entities as promising sources of new funding. Even in the case of non-local foundations, which ranked above non-local corporate underwriting and non-local major private donors as a potential funding source, only 10 percent of respondents saw them as a “very likely” source.

Stations were more optimistic about obtaining significant new funding from local sources, except in the case of local government. Half of the respondents (49 percent) thought it “very likely” that local major private gifts could be a source of substantial new funding. Small donor contributions (41 percent), local foundations (32 percent), and local corporate underwriting (29 percent) also ranked relatively high.

However, if these potential sources of substantial news funding are available at the local level, why haven’t local stations already tapped into them? The proportion of public radio users contributing to their local station, for example, has been relatively steady over the years, suggesting that a substantially higher yield is unlikely.²⁶

Realistically, if local public radio stations are to substantially fill the gap in communities’ information needs resulting from the decline of the newspaper, the necessary funding would have to come in large measure from sources outside their communities and be raised by an entity or entities other than themselves.

Do Local Public Radio Stations Overestimate Their Potential?

A large infusion of funding would strengthen local public radio stations. But would it place them in the position they claim? Do they have a realistic view of their potential?

News Staffing

Even a partial answer to the question is inexact, but stations’ staffing provides a starting point. In asking respondents about the size of their station’s news staff, they were asked to include broadcast and digital reporters, editors, hosts, producers, and others who create local news/public affairs content in its various forms, as well as those who directly provide technical or other support to these individuals. In addition to full-time employees, we asked them to include part-time employees and any students, interns, or freelancers who contribute regularly.

Despite the generous definition of what constitutes a staff member, most stations have a small staff (Table 7). Sixty percent of respondents reported that their station had a news staff of 10 or fewer people, and nearly two-thirds of these reported a news staff of 5 people or fewer. Only 10 percent of respondents reported that their station had a news staff larger than 40 people.

On average, the stations in strong news environments had larger news staffs. They were twice as likely as stations in weak news environments to have a news staff of more than 20 people. Staff size correlated even more strongly with stations’ geographical locations. Only 5 percent of stations that serve largely rural areas had a news staff larger than 20 people compared with 49 percent of those in urban areas. Three-fourths of the stations in rural areas had 10 or fewer news staff with half having 5 or fewer.

Another indicator of capacity is whether a station has a reporter dedicated to covering local government. A fourth of respondents said their station had such a reporter while a third said it was a part-time assignment or one shared with a reporter from another news outlet. Two in every five said their station did not have anyone assigned to cover local government. The pattern was similar for state government coverage except that, instead of a dedicated reporter, respondents were more likely to say they shared a statehouse reporter with another news outlet or outlets.

News Production

To obtain a fuller picture of stations’ capacity, we asked respondents a set of questions about their station’s news production. One question asked respondents about the number of hours of locally produced news/public affairs programming that was aired on weekdays between 6 am and 7 pm. If the content was repeated during the day, respondents were asked to include it as part of the total hours. The average (median) across all stations was 2 hours. A third (32%) of respondents reported their station aired an hour or less of local content, whereas only about a fourth (27 percent) reported more than 3 hours and a mere seventh (14 percent) reported more than 5 hours.

Some of this content was in the form of local news inserts in NPR programming to be aired on the hour or half-hour during weekday daylight hours. Over 90 percent of respondents said that their station aired inserts hourly (45 percent) or at least several times (47 percent) during the day. Only 8 percent reported not airing such inserts. However, in terms of covering portions of NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered, or other such national programs with lengthy local news inserts, only a third (31 percent) of respondents indicated that their station did so.

Much of the locally produced content is in the form of talk shows rather than news reports. Two in five respondents (43 percent) indicated that their station produced one or more daily talk shows focused on “local community issues.” A fourth (26 percent) said their station did not produce such shows each day but did so at least once a week. A third (31 percent) of respondents said their station did not produce talk shows.

On each of these indicators, as would be expected, stations with a larger news staff produced more local content than did stations with a smaller staff. It was also the case that stations in strong news environments produced on average more local content than those in weak news environments.

The evidence indicates that public radio in most locations is not all that local. In the 13-hour period from 6 am to 7 pm on weekdays, only about 2 hours of locally produced news programming were carried on the average station, some of it in the form of talk shows and some of it as repeat programming. The large share of public-affairs content on local stations is produced by NPR, PRX, PRI, and other providers and centers on national and international affairs. To be sure, local newspapers also offer a mix of local, national, and international content. But they devote proportionately more attention to local news—roughly twice that of local public radio stations.²⁷

Allocating New Funding

If local public radio stations received substantial new funding, how would they use it? The question bears on the issue of local stations’ potential. Do their priorities align with what would be required for them to become significantly larger players in their communities?

Local stations’ allocation preferences are shown in Table 8. What stands out is their emphasis on journalism capacity. The highest priority was hiring more reporters. Nearly 80 percent of respondents said reporting hires would receive a large spending increase. Expanding their capacity for enterprise journalism (67 percent) and investigative reporting (62 percent) was the next highest priority. Hiring more editors (49 percent) also ranked relatively high.

Expanding their station’s audience size was a lower spending priority for most respondents. Of the survey questions in this category, the top-ranked item was expanding the audience through new online/digital news offerings. Half of the respondents (52 percent) said this activity would be targeted for a large spending increase. Next on the priority list were podcasts (44 percent) and expanding the station’s social media presence (44 percent).

Stations’ tendency to favor journalism capacity over audience reach is evident in the average rankings. Whereas 52 percent of respondents on average said that their station would dedicate a “large increase” in spending to the typical journalism item, only 32 percent said the same of the typical audience-reach item.

A journalism-heavy strategy is an imperative for most local public radio stations. Their news staff is far too small for them to provide quality comprehensive local coverage on an ongoing basis, a problem made more acute by audiences’ interest in timely on-demand news. A journalism-heavy strategy is also necessary for local stations to retain and grow their audience. Without broad local coverage, public radio stations cannot expect to become the “go-to” source for local news in their communities.

Nevertheless, content alone will not give stations the local position they seek. Today’s media system is fragmented and hyper-competitive. Local stations compete with other outlets for people’s attention, which requires an outreach strategy. This imperative does not appear to loom large in the thinking at some stations.²⁸ In response to a survey question that asked about obstacles “to your station’s ability to attract a significantly larger audience,” respondents overwhelmingly cited content-based limitations—insufficient on-the-air and digital resources. Only about one in five cited market competitors – “other news outlets” or “radio talk show outlets”—as “a significant obstacle.” That assessment underestimates the competitive threat to public radio posed by talk shows²⁹ and other news outlets.³⁰

“Hard Places”—Why Many Of The Areas Most In Need Are The Biggest Challenge

The decline of local news is clearest in “news deserts”—those places where the daily paper has closed or been all but hollowed out. But they are not the only communities adversely affected by digital change. A larger number have seen major cuts in their newspaper’s local coverage.

These are “hard places” in terms of residents’ access to information about local affairs. Many of them are also “hard places” for local public radio stations to flourish.

Community Density and Wealth

Communities judged by our respondents to have a weak news environment were 10 percentage points more likely than those with a strong environment to be in a low-income area of the country. They were also 10 percentage points more likely to be in a predominately rural area.

Less affluent rural areas have been the locations hardest hit by the decline of local newspapers³¹ and pose a special challenge for public radio stations. The audience potential is smaller than in more urban areas, and the residents are less financially able to support local public radio. By every indicator of capacity, even when compared only with other stations in weak news environments, the stations in lower-income rural areas were disadvantaged. Their news staff, for example, was only half the size on average. Small donors provide another example. Whereas the stations in poorer rural areas had on average less than 3.000 contributing members yearly, the other stations in weak information environments had more than 8,000 such donors.

Red and Blue

Stations in areas with weak news environments were also more likely to be in locations that are predominantly Republican (see Figure 6). Whereas stations in a strong news environment are as likely to operate in a mostly Democratic area as in a mostly Republican area, stations in a weak news environment are nearly three times more likely to operate in a Republican area than a Democratic one.

Republican areas pose a special challenge for public radio stations. In recent decades, many Republicans have left public radio in favor of conservative and Christian talk radio stations.³² On virtually every indicator of capacity, stations in a weak news environment that was mostly Republican were disadvantaged. In terms of contributing members, for example, the average for such stations was less than 4,500 members compared with more than 10,000 for other stations operating in a weak news environment.

Where Stations in Hard Places Get Their Funding, and How They See Their Funding Prospects

A broader look at the challenge facing stations in “hard places” is gained by looking at stations’ funding models. Public radio depends heavily on member contributions. When examined as a percentage of the stations’ overall budgets, as reported by our respondents, the percentage was lower for stations in rural areas, stations in low-income areas, and stations in mostly Republican areas.³³ The proportion was also significantly lower in areas with large minority-group populations.³⁴ Such stations were more dependent on outside support. Funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), for example, was a substantially larger percentage on average of their station’s budget.