I used to listen daily. I used to donate. I used to volunteer to answer phones. I turned it off, stopped being a, “sustainer,” and would never volunteer to help fundraise anymore. I’m not alone. It’s become hard to listen. Lots of noise, very little signal. Wasn’t always so.
to put it another way, when i hear people like mr. berliner talk about media trust and activism ruling over facts, the dogwhistles are too shrill to hear the surface message of "npr isn't very good", which i think we can all agree with. i view it as one of the best options available, but honestly that puts it at "fine" for me because most are just dreck i am too used to this kind of thing being used as a shuttle for bigotry and polemics about people like me, and the response to the article has cemented that perception for me
well, looking at the statistics, there has been a dip in NPR's radio figures at least based on this back down to pre-trump levels -I've seen other stats on total platforms combined, so including podcasts, online video, etc, that pushes it up to 50 to 60 million weekly consumers. if you cut it to donating members ,i don't know how the statistics have changed because i can't find that data, but you could make an argument either way on whether subscribers would be more or less likely to abandon the station anecdotally, I'm not sure how to respond other than that my experience has not been the same as yours. i think given our past conversations on the subject that you probably have some insight as to why that is. i will say that my mother used to be an NPR donator but stopped because she felt they weren't left wing enough. i think the political and cultural war in america demands more partisanship than NPR can provide.
Did you read the article? Pretty sure he mentions the decline in listeners. It’s a very well written article from someone that genuinely loves NPR. It’s remarkable for that reason.
yes, of course - why else would I be here? he cites the same statistics (hosted on a different website) that i used.