National Public Radio (NPR) show All Things Considered aired a report Monday concerning how NPR is doing after the elimination of United Sates government funding. The overall assessment came in roughly as “Things are going alright.”
David Folkenflik reported in the segment that NPR is suffering from an eight million dollars shortfall, amounting to a little under three percent of its annual budget. To help deal with the financial situation, Folkenflik explained, the plan at NPR involves “offering buyouts to approximately 300 employees, mostly within newsgathering desks in the newsroom” with the goal of carrying out up to 30 buyouts total.
While regrettable for an organization desiring to sustain its activities and even grow, such reductions in jobs do happen at plenty of other organizations. Folkenflik’s report says there are 425 NPR newsroom employees. The up to 30 buyouts thus come to well less than a ten percent reduction. Consider, in contrast, formerly quickly ascendant media organization The Daily Wire that is undergoing a “death spiral” including successive rounds of surprise layoffs.
Interestingly, Folkenflik’s report notes that there was a ten percent cut in staff at NPR in 2023. That was a couple years before US government funding was cut. According to the report, the earlier job cuts were due to “a deficit of about $32 million as corporate underwriters peeled away in anticipation of a recession that never really played out.”
Interestingly, NPR is flush with money for some other expenditures. Folkenflik reported:
Paradoxically, just prior to the announcement of these cost-cutting measures, NPR received a pair of private gifts totaling $113 million — representing the network’s second- and third-largest in its 56-year history. Most of that money, however, is dedicated to technological innovation.
How is NPR ambling along despite the elimination of US government funding? First, it already received most its funding from private donors and sponsors. Second, with the removal of US government funding, NPR and its affiliated stations worked on increasing and expanding this private funding to make up for lost US government funding.
Indeed, NPR and its affiliated stations have lately emphasized their loss of US government funding in their effort to receive more private contributions. For example, consider that, in the process of accessing Folkenflik’s report and other reports at the NPR website, a short fundraising pitch pops up imploring that “Federal funding has been eliminated, and now the NPR Network relies more on your financial support.”
The elimination of US government funding for NPR has been a win-win. Taxpayers are relieved from subsidizing the media organization. Meanwhile, NPR has managed to follow a relatively easy path to continue its operations sans the previous US government support.
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