NPR’s CEO, Vivian Schiller, left NYTimes.com to join public radio because she saw a void in local media that needed to be filled. In a Newsweek interview published this week as NPR.org is relaunched, she elaborated on her strategy to reposition public radio around not only its on-air home but also its digital and online platforms. With the challenges facing local media from big city dailies to local TV and radio news operations, communities risk a painful loss of critical information and sense of identity.
“The reason that I came to NPR and left other big national news organizations is because NPR has something those organizations don’t have,” Schiller told Newsweek. “In all of public radio, there are 8,000 people spread around the country. They are in every community. [They have a] physical presence and a presence in the hearts of minds of the audience in those communities.”
While NPR is under her watch, Schiller intends to give the local stations the home base, tools, resources and encouragement to do what they do best on the local level. As newspapers like the LA Times shut down their investigative journalism units, she wants to see more “accountability journalism” in local communities. Local public radio will be a leader on the air and in online and digital media if she has her way.
Schiller also commented on the need to change old media business models in times of economic and technological change. Her viewpoint is taking for-profit newspapers and recasting them as nonprofit institutions won’t solve anything. As she said, it still takes money to run a nonprofit media company.
Rick Ducey is the managing director for BIA/Kelsey. He is an expert in digital media innovations, competitive strategies, new product development and new business models, including digital ecosystem collaboration strategies.
Ducey oversees the firm's consulting, research and advisory services areas. He is also the program director for BIA/Kelsey's Video Local Media advisory service. This program provides coverage and analysis of how online, mobile and broadcast video technologies, competition, shifting consumer demographics and media usage trends are driving changes in the media ecosystem and SMBs and other advertisers can be successful in the new environment. Ducey assists clients with their business planning and revenue models, strategic research, market assessment, and designing and implementing digital strategies. He is also a cofounder of SpectraRep, one of BIA�s companies, which sells a patent-pending IP-based alerting system that he co-invented.
Prior to joining BIA in 2000, Ducey was senior vice president of NAB's Research and Information Group. In this position, he was in charge of the association�s new technology assessment, audience and policy research, strategic planning and information systems, including all Internet operations, and he also developed publications and seminars.
Before joining NAB in 1983, Ducey was a faculty member in the Department of Telecommunication at Michigan State University where he taught and did research in the areas of emerging telecommunication technologies and strategic market research. He also served on the graduate management faculties of George Mason University and George Washington University in telecommunications management and the University of Maryland, where he taught strategic market management and research methodologies. Ducey was selected as the Spring 2011 Shapiro Fellow at George Washington University where he teaches entrepreneurship in new media. He has published a number of research articles and papers in these areas and serves on editorial boards of leading scholarly journals in the communications field. He has also worked at radio stations WSOQ-AM/WEZG-FM and Upstate Cablevision in North Syracuse, New York.
Ducey received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University, M.S. from Syracuse University and B.A. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
The idea of subsidizing news coverage is not a new one, and it remains intriguing. In the 1990s, The John and Mary Markle Foundation kicked off the concept, subsidizing news-oriented programming on CNN (and I believe, some other channels) that wouldn’t normally be covered by advertising.
I worked with them on several initiatives, including an election-oriented game.
That remains a good model — perhaps better than simply subsidizing a failed commercial institution.