NPR's mission is to provide essential news, information and life-saving services to the American public in partnership with our Member stations — and remain unwavering in our editorial integrity and independence.
The promise of public media is that we will offer reliable and freely available coverage of stories of national and global interest, while also serving the need for local stories that address the issues affecting our day-to-day lives. We must tell the stories of our country with respect, reflecting the spirit, innovation, and artistic ability that characterizes our great nation. We must also successfully fill a need in a competitive media environment, earning the public's trust and delivering on excellence.
Since I've joined NPR, I've heard from many people around the country that we can still do more to meet this objective. Although NPR is free and accessible to nearly 100% of the nation, there are many more Americans we must reach and serve.
Our audiences have grown in the past year. But we know that there are Americans who feel as though their perspectives are not well reflected. As public media, we have a mission and mandate to serve the entire nation. We can only achieve this when we are successful reflecting the political, economic, and social differences reflected in today's American experience.
During the past year NPR has taken a number of steps to expand and strengthen our coverage in service to all Americans. We committed to greater collaboration with, and feedback from, our 246 Member organizations across the country. We also invested in our news operations, adding more editorial capacity to all NPR-produced shows, news desks, and platforms, to better support our 600 people across 17 national and 14 international bureaus.
- In May 2024, we established regular quarterly meetings with our nearly 200 newsrooms across the country. This is a consistent and regular forum for local newsroom leaders to discuss editorial planning and decision-making with NPR's editorial leadership, while informing NPR of relevant news needs and emerging issues across the nation.
- We also established a regular newsroom retrospective. Every month we look back at our coverage of challenging issues to improve and learn for the future. In the past year, these discussions have addressed topics such as coverage of pro-Palestinian campus protests and religion.
- In the fall, NPR received a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to invest in a new layer of editorial review, enabling us to put more eyes on every piece of reporting. We hired nine new senior editors for 24/7 coverage of news production. Seven of these editors form our new editorial review team, ensuring every NPR story has a second editor before it is published. We also hired two content strategy analysts to assess our coverage of different issues by volume, topic, and platform. These investments have enabled us to examine the full depth and breadth of the more than 2,000 pieces of original reporting and programming we produce every month.
- We've established regular off-the-record "editorial briefings" with leaders from across business and politics. These meetings are an opportunity for our editorial leaders to hear from leading voices across the political spectrum. We ask these guests to join us for an interview on air, so our audiences can also hear from their perspectives.
- We reinstated NPR's internship program. Interns have historically played a vital role in NPR's daily operations. We look forward to this class bringing fresh voices and ideas from across the nation to NPR as we recruit from schools that reflect a broad range of candidate backgrounds.
We've conducted audience research, asking Americans directly what they want out of public radio. We've heard informative and often moving perspectives from listeners and non-listeners alike. We know that people need and appreciate challenging journalism on difficult issues — but they also are looking for more stories about joy, connection and wonder. Americans everywhere want to feel welcome and reflected in public media, connected to one another and well-informed about our country.
NPR's mission is to serve the entirety of the American public. We are committed to this mission, to our Member organizations, and to our responsibility of earning the trust and consideration of audiences across the nation.
—Katherine Maher, President and CEO of NPR
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