The Top 5 NPR Public Editor newsletters for 2024

This year, the NPR Public Editor's Office inbox received over 3,000 questions, comments and concerns about how NPR does its journalism. Over the past 12 months, we've learned that you, the audience, are deeply invested in constantly improving NPR's storytelling.

Carlos Carmonamedina for NPR Public Editor /

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Though we can't answer every question, in every installment we attempted to do three things:

• Describe the journalistic purpose of what NPR hoped to achieve with the story in question.
• Examine the execution.
• Analyze whether the purpose and the execution were worthy pursuits. 

At your direction, we tackled a wide range of topics including the Israel-Hamas war, who can be a corporate sponsor, and how NPR covered the presidential candidates.

As we looked back over the entire year, we noticed that our most-consumed newsletters were those where we were most critical. Often those involved politics, which was a frequent subject this year. Below, we've compiled a list of our Top 5 most-read newsletters of the year.

Thank you for engaging with us in 2024. We believe that public media should be accountable to you, the public. We couldn't do this work without your smart questions and insights. We look forward to responding to your letters and observations in 2025. You can email us here, or reach out on Instagram or Threads and Facebook as well. Until then, we hope the remainder of your holiday season offers some rest and joy.

With gratitude,

Kelly, Amaris and Nicole

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Illustration by Carlos Carmonamedina

A note on how we compiled this list …

Our data provides us with two possible measurements that we could have used to determine our Top 5 newsletters of the year: open rate (the percentage of our entire subscriber list who opened the newsletter) and raw number of opens (the actual number of subscribers who opened the newsletter).

We opted to go with the actual number of opens to determine our list. We did this because we thought the amount of opens most accurately reflected the number of our audience members who engaged with our newsletters.

#1 — When the facts are right, but the story is wrong

In early October, we examined an NPR digital story about accusations that National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry had uttered a racial slur during an appearance on The Megyn Kelly Show. An audience member wrote in to object to the story. Many observers, including NPR's own media correspondent, David Folkenflik, concluded after watching the tape that no slur was intended. Instead, it was a verbal fumble.

Through our reporting we learned that the headline and story were modified after publication. We spoke with several NPR staffers and Lowry himself. We concluded that NPR should have more quickly noted post-publication changes. Read more here.

#2 — Which candidate gets more air?

We heard from numerous audience members who objected to how frequently they heard then-former President Donald Trump in NPR stories. Some listeners complained that they did not hear Vice President Kamala Harris with the same frequency. One audience member asked, "Why do you not give equal time to the Harris campaign?"

We conducted our own study. With the help of NPR's Research, Archives & Data Strategy department, we selected a 14-day stretch when we would expect to find an equal number of stories that featured the voices of Harris and Trump. We searched the magazine shows, Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Weekend Edition Saturday and Weekend Edition Sunday, and built spreadsheets. We also met with Eric Marrapodi, vice president for news programming, to ask about news judgment and airing the voices of the then-presidential candidates on NPR. We were surprised to find that Harris was getting slightly more airtime, in the two weeks of coverage that we analyzed. Check out what we concluded here.

#3 — Polls can't predict the next president

NPR was disciplined about avoiding stories centered on political polls this year. But one of the only stories based on polls garnered several objections. NPR senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro told us that his Oct. 16 article was a rare exception for NPR. He told us that he relied on polls for this analysis to demonstrate how small changes could affect the electoral map.

An audience member told us she had to work way too hard to find the methodology behind the polls mentioned in the story, and she wasn't too happy about it. In this newsletter, we spoke with Montanaro to learn why he did the story in the first place, and we broke down what would have made it a little more accessible to listeners. Read our analysis here.

#4 — Ageism in the news

In March, it seemed like the media couldn't leave one topic alone: the age of President Joe Biden. The topic of ageism in reporting became an issue, and NPR listeners had several questions about how NPR made decisions when it came to reporting on the impacts of aging. The truth is, journalistic guidelines about when and how age issues should be reported are murky at best. And NPR's reporting that included age, whether it was about Biden, another politician or a different topic entirely, were inconsistent.

We analyzed a good deal of NPR political reporting, as well as some other stories that addressed age. The final column was of great interest to readers, as it appeared in the Top 5 for open rate and actual email opens. You can read more about what we concluded here.

#5 — Sanewashing

NPR audience members filled our inbox with questions about the way NPR presented quotes from then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. Some accused the news outlet of sanewashing or making Trump sound more logical and reasonable than he really is. Others wanted to know why NPR used such a calm approach when quoting some of Trump's more rambling or incoherent speeches and policy positions.

We did our own investigation into the idea of sanewashing to figure out if NPR was guilty of this when it came to reporting on Trump. We also talked with several of the editors and reporters on the Washington Desk, including Muthoni Muturi, executive producer of The NPR Politics Podcast, and a longtime media educator to better understand how they approached covering and quoting Trump. Read more here.

The Office of the Public Editor is a team. Reporters Amaris Castillo and Nicole Slaughter Graham and copy editor Merrill Perlman make this newsletter possible. Illustrations are by Carlos Carmonamedina. We are still reading all of your messages on Facebook, Instagram, Threads and from our inbox. As always, keep them coming.

Kelly McBride
NPR Public Editor
Chair, Craig Newmark Center for Ethics & Leadership at the Poynter Institute

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