NPR News Chief: A Priority Is ‘Owning The Audio Space’

Nancy Barnes

NPR news chief Nancy Barnes told public radio program directors Wednesday that the network is making its priority “audio first” amid growing competition from commercial media, reports The Current.

“We need to be thinking five years ahead in owning the audio space, because a lot of organizations have seen that there is a big, growing audience here,” Barnes said during a session at the Public Radio Program Directors Association conference. “… Commercial radio has seen that there’s a lot of revenue here, and they’re all crowding our lane.”

Barnes said that prioritizing audio “doesn’t mean that we’re not going to want to have a really robust website” but that “owning the audio space right now is most important.” That includes podcasts, on-demand news, bolstering NPR’s radio shows and making sure NPR is on smart speakers and other emerging audio platforms, she said.

Barnes also said a newsroom reorganization that she announced this month is part of an “ongoing … evolution of our coverage.”

Barnes has previously said that she wants NPR to produce more investigative and original reporting. She again emphasized that priority. “Some days, we’re covering all the news that’s breaking and not uncovering a lot of news,” she said.

“We follow the national agenda a little more often than I’m comfortable with,” she said. “And what I’d really like to do over time is break more original stories, have more distinct coverage lines that you might not find at the New York Times and the Washington Post, and set the national conversation with our coverage — that means with both national stories and local stories.”