NPR Gets $17-Million for Expanded Coverage and New Media Platform

Four foundations and three NPR trustees are giving a total of $17-million in grants to the national nonprofit broadcaster to expand its news coverage in three areas and to build a new platform aimed at tailoring its content to listeners’ preferences.

Much of the total—$9.9-million—is earmarked for the listening platform, which is still in the concept stage. NPR is envisioning that it will aggregate material from its national programming and from member stations and tailor it for individual listeners based on their location and their preferences.

And listeners won’t miss part of a program even if they don’t listen continuously. So, for example, if they’re listening at home on a tablet and then they walk out to their Internet-enabled car, the program will automatically pick up where it left off.

Anna Christopher Bross, an NPR spokeswoman, says: “What Pandora did for music, we’re hoping to do for spoken word and for news.”

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is giving $5.4-million for the new listening platform, with $2-million of that money going to NPR and $3.4-million to member stations. The platform is also being supported with $1.5-million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and $1-million from each of the three trustees and their spouses—Paul and Heather Haaga, William and Lia Poorvu, and Howard and Fredericka Stevenson..

Expanded News Coverage

With new two-year grants, the public radio organization will be beefing up three of its news units that cross local, state, and national borders and are the root of the world’s most significant challenges.

• The Gates foundation is giving $1.8-million for NPR’s education coverage and $3-million for the global-health and development news team.

• The Wallace Foundation is giving $1.5-million to the education team.

• The Ford Foundation is giving $750,000 to help continue Code Switch, a reporting team focused on race, ethnicity, and culture. The project was started in April with a $1.5-million grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is due to expire in August 2014.

The expanded reporting in education and global health and development will begin in the spring of 2014, NPR says.

The new support comes at a time when NPR is facing a projected $6-million budget deficit in the coming year due to a decline in corporate underwriting. It has given voluntary employee buyouts to 10 percent of its 840-member payroll.

“These grants do not erase that deficit by any means, because they’re funding discrete projects,” Ms. Bross says.