In a note to Content division staff, acting Chief Content Officer, SVP and Editor in Chief, Edith Chapin announced the following update:
All,
I'm writing today to share that I have requested and received support from Katherine, the Board, and external funders for a plan that will further enhance and strengthen our editorial operations as a unified Content division.
NPR creates great journalism, and a lot of it, across more platforms than ever before. With all of our editorial staff now together under one division, we're also a larger team than ever. We need new structures that enable us to see across the entirety of our journalism and think about our overall coverage strategically. We encourage audiences to evaluate our coverage based on the full depth and breadth of our content — particularly our approach to covering complex and ongoing stories — and we need to ensure that we too are looking at our coverage as a whole.
Some of our next steps will be straightforward enhancements of existing processes, while others will introduce new workflows to better match best practices for a journalism operation of our size and reach.
We'll hold a series of Content staff meetings this week where I and other members of the Content leadership team will be able to walk through our plan for editorial enhancements and take questions. In the meantime, I want to share the key elements of this plan:
We will also add one additional Training role to increase support across all aspects of this plan. We'll start by posting 8 of these positions and look to fill all 11 in the near term given the 24/7 schedule of our operations.
These roles and initiatives are interconnected and work as a package. They support all members of the Content division, regardless of what platform they work on or where a story is published. They are effective, cost-effective, and doable. Our ambitious independent journalism requires them.
Some will ask if this is a reaction to recent media discourse about NPR. Clearly we have a lot of eyes on our house right now. I am proud of our journalism and I will continue to defend our work with full force. Defending our work includes being ever-willing to take a hard look at our structures and content mix with an eye toward what we might do to further strengthen them. I swung for the fences and asked for resources I've long wished we had, and I'm pleased with the support we've received.
This will not only benefit NPR, but also our Network. Adding a content strategy analysis function will directly support our new Quarterly Network Editorial Meetings with resourced data that can be built over time to better serve Network needs. With a larger Standards & Practices team, we will increase our coverage across shifts and provide needed bandwidth to also more regularly appear on station webinars and create public-facing materials that make our Ethics Handbook and editorial guidance more accessible and engaging for our audiences. "The Backstop" process will enhance editorial support for station content produced for NPR. All of these measures will enhance the content that Member stations pay us for and support their ability to answer audience questions about how we evaluate and curate our overall coverage mix.
As we execute on our strategic vision for the years ahead — to deeply understand the audiences we have and those we do not yet reach so that we can attract, inform, and engage a rapidly changing America — we need processes that support acting on what we learn from audience research. We need to adapt the way we work to ensure that the journalism we create in any one part of the organization is seen in the context of all the content we create. We need to ensure that all our work meets the highest standards, and that we are thoughtful about the body of work we make together, including incorporating the audience research we have available.
I look forward to discussing this plan with you in greater detail in the days and weeks ahead. We have three Content all-hands meetings scheduled this week to accommodate different schedules and those meetings will be entirely focused on this plan. You can also always reach me or any other members of my leadership team directly.
As always, thank you all for the work that you do.
Edith
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