Word: npr
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...last-minute $9.1 million loan agreement with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting salvaged the network's immediate crisis, but NPR's future seems uncertain at best. The loan, together with $2.2 million pledged in a recent three-day fundraiser (the first ever for NPR) and additional funds from local member stations, will go a long way to meeting immediate debts, but won't necessarily restore funding for programming, or restore workers who have been laidoff...
Since January, NPR has fired close to 150 employees and cut back most of its arts programming. And many fear that even the shows that have survived in name may lose its spirit of quality that made them popular. Both the daily news shows have lost both funding and employees staffers agree that the quality has dropped, particularly during the height of uncertainty about the station's future last month. One stringer tells of a producer who gets angry when he brings in story ideas, because the station can't afford to buy them. Other stringers have stopped submitting pieces...
...staff, who nevertheless are bearing the brunt of the cutbacks. Never a flush organization, NPR can withstand some painful fiscal austerity, but the blows this crisis have dealt to the energy and enthusiasm that made the station what it has become, will be harder to repair. One former employee describes "a sense of real doom that NPR will never be the same again. That an era is over." The overwhelming listener support pledged in the fundraiser delivered a badly needed shot in the arm to the staff, but many are still disillusioned and angered by the events of the past...
Complaints that management has been insensitive to employees and concern over the quality of programming are new and highly destructive troubles for NPR. When these worries (perhaps more common in commercial endeavors) haunt a network that has flourished on cooperation and high quality, it doesn't leave a hell...
This is not a eulogy for NPR. The network continues to produce two outstanding news shows with one of the most talented staffs in the business. What's more, the listener support that poured in during the three-day fundraiser attests to the fact that people do recognize quality when they hear it. (Close to home, Boston public radio station WBUR raised $255,000, by far the largest amount given by any station...