Lost CPB data is a blow to our public service

Many things are being lost with the end of CPB, including the public access to important information that was used to provide some measure of standard accountability in public media as part of Community Service Grant (CSG) reporting. Perhaps this makes sense, as there are no more CSG funds to be distributed, and CPB is focusing on other things as they wind down with limited staff. Yet, given public media’s commitment to reporting, education and transparency, the sudden loss seems a little odd, especially when erasing data from national websites of record has been such a controversial topic this year. 

Why does this matter? 

Back in 2021, Public Media for All did an analysis comparing race and ethnicity data of public media employees to the US population as a whole. This work was possible, because of publicly available CSG reporting data on the CPB website. Our analysis showed that the people working in public media continued to be far less diverse than the communities that they aimed to serve. While this was hardly surprising, it was an important truth to quantify. That’s also why CPB required stations to provide this data in order to qualify for CSG funding. You manage what you measure. 

CSG reporting was far from perfect. CPB oversight was limited, there were no clear goals and no consequences for failure to improve. Still, it provided some transparency, required some management, and therefore created some accountability for stations to employ people, who reflected their communities and the diverse array of human experience in this country. That kind of staffing is essential for a core part of our mission: serving America in part by intentionally  creating content by and for historically marginalized communities.The standardized, publicly accessible data collected longitudinally allowed for easy and deep dive analysis going back many years. Now that CSG funding is gone and with it all demographic reporting requirements, our ability to track our progress as a network towards the dynamic, fair, complex and varied service that the public deserves is in jeopardy. 

Local Accountability

There are many reasons why individual stations should continue to commit to collecting and reporting this data. 

• When done well, annual employee engagement surveys continue to be a vital source for information to increase staff satisfaction, retention and productivity. Including demographic questions in these surveys is easy, and allows for deeper, more nuanced analysis. 

• Regularly reporting these survey results to a governing or community board should be standard practice, and will proactively engage them as station leaders and supporters.

• Many funders request this kind of data as part of their grant application process, so it’s good to have recent numbers readily on hand. 

• Stations can include this data on their website as an act of good faith transparency to their communities. 

Yet, individual stations acting on the honor system, or just best practices, will not give us an easily accessible view of the system as a whole. 

A Lesson from Newsrooms

We do not have to look far to see why national level data is important, and also hard to collect. For decades the journalism industry ran the Newsroom Employment Diversity Survey, but lack of support and declining voluntary participation led to its pause in 2020. Without incentives like funding, it was hard for newsrooms to prioritize this kind of reporting work. However, declining participation does not mean that this industry-wide data analysis isn’t still vital. That’s why the American Press Institute is working to preserve the historical data, and revive the survey with funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Funding Implications

Mission and funding go hand in hand. Functionally, they cannot be separated. We need funds to work towards our mission, and a strong mission is necessary to inspire giving. Alex Curley from Semipublic has been leading efforts to save CSG data. Most recently in a piece this week for Current, and also on Substack, he has highlighted how CPB’s reporting has been critical in determining which stations were most at risk from defunding, and where funders could make the most impact. Improving public service must be measured in relation to budgets, investments measured by impact. As public media organizations chart a path forward, it will be critical for them to have national revenue and demographic benchmarks to inform their strategies.

Take Action

Semipublic and State of Local News Project at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism have requested this data from CPB, and have since been joined by Free Press and Current. Similar to the American Press Institute, they are pledging to keep historical data publicly accessible, and explore options to continue collecting data from across the public media system. They are actively seeking public media leaders and organizations to join in this request of CPB before it’s too late. Reach out to them at contact [at] semipublic.co.

CPB is not subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, but we can collectively urge them to keep their commitments to public accountability and system-wide data sharing until their end. You can contact CPB via phone, email or direct mail and let them know that you support Semipublic’s records request. 

Finally, we can prepare. If CPB declines to help keep this vital data source publicly available, then other public media organizations and funders should work together to save it. Historical reporting can be salvaged from Internet archives, and we can collectively commit to continuing to gather, report and share this information that is a record of our value, impact and service to everyone in America. 

Public Media for All will continue to track this issue and highlight efforts to ensure that national level data about diversity and revenue in public media is kept accurate and accessible. Stations need these benchmarks to set goals towards our mission to serve all. Most importantly, everyone in this country deserves transparency and accountability from nonprofit media organizations that were founded to support public service, equitable access to education, unbiased reporting, the free exchange of ideas, and our democracy.

6th Annual Day of Action & Education

The Future is Now: visions and practices for a better public media

This is a pivotal moment in the trajectory of public media. The choices we make today will likely define the next chapter of our industry for decades to come. While there has perhaps never been more threats, there's also opportunities to dramatically improve our public service. Forward looking ideas that have been mused upon in previous years are no longer hypothetical, but a real imperative. The future is now. Join Public Media for All for our 6th annual Day of Action & Education webinar. We'll have leaders from a range of organizations and backgrounds share their visions for a better public media and the practices they're putting in place now to get us there.

Thanks to Greater Public for their continued production support.

2026 PMFA Award

We are excited to announce that we’re currently accepting nominations for the annual Public Media for All Award. This honor recognizes public media champions who have had a transformative impact at their station or organization. 

Do you know someone who has made major improvements internally to workplace culture and policies? Or, perhaps someone who's helped reach new, and historically marginalized communities with content that truly serves them? Please take a moment to nominate them. Celebrating the commitment to this work is vital for sustainability and encourages staff, who are often under-recognized for their accomplishments.

PMFA will present its award during the annual Day of Action and Education on January 8th, 2026.

 Nominees meeting the following criteria will be considered:

• Works in public media in the United States in any role.

• Makes outstanding contributions to enhancing internal culture and/or external public service.

• Demonstrates history of excellence and advancement of public media.

• Self-nominations welcome.

Looking for inspiration? Meet last year’s award winner, Doug Mitchell.

Please complete this form by November 21st, 2025. If you have any questions contact us at contact@publicmediaforall.com.

Meet the PMFA Award Winner

Doug Mitchell

Founder/Director,
Next Generation Radio

First off, congrats on winning the Public Media for All Award! That’s such a well-deserved recognition. Let’s kick things off with your journey in public media. How did you get started, and what led you to focus on expanding public media for be for everyone?

Thank you! I was very surprised by my selection.

I've been around for a very long time. My first day at NPR was in 1987. TWO buildings ago.

I was hired by the then-Morning Edition EP, who was from North Dakota and supported by the ME host from Kentucky. I'm from Oklahoma. I was the morning host and a reporter at the NPR station where I went to school. My parents were listeners and donors. I wanted to work at NPR. So, I packed up and moved to DC. I applied, nagged them for nine months, and got hired.

I had long wondered why NPR didn't share how it does what it does, producing such rich, textured, journalistically focused radio. So, in looking back, my focus, either directly or indirectly, has been on opening a door that seemed closed. I decided to open it. At the time, it was like you needed a secret code or handshake, and only people who went to specific colleges or had certain connections knew what it was. Early on, I thought there had to be a way to correct this system, so I just started.

As a professional in public media, how have your personal experiences shaped the way you approach your work?

You have to start with some guiding principles.

Example: I've always been a “producer." That means you need to know how to do a little bit of everything and successfully work with many kinds of people with different and sometimes opposing styles.

Broadly, I'm not an engineer, but you end up "engineering" your way through many work and life complexities. And being a Black male from a rural and small-ish college town, I've always felt outnumbered. I certainly was while growing up. Fortunately, I was raised not to think of that as a disadvantage but to commit to bringing a perspective to a conversation, and that conversation should turn into an action. My late dad would remind me, “Don’t listen to what people say, watch what they do. Act accordingly.”

Finally, my thinking is not for everyone, and I must remember that. I stay connected to many of the people I grew up with. They are different from me. Some are very different. These relational bonds go a long way in informing my work. I've attended all but one of my high school reunions. My brother, sister, and their families are still in my home state. My transparency and openness to conversation bring down the temperature and raise engagement. It doesn't always work, but I must keep trying.

You’ve clearly made a huge impact in expanding access and opening doors in public media. Can you share some of the key actions or initiatives you’ve led that have really made an impact over the years?

Well, is it clear? ☺️

I wrote this for Nieman Lab in July of 2020, during the depths of the pandemic, almost five years ago. That headline was not mine, by the way.

In that article, I wrote metaphorically about the Next Gen program being seen as "the supply store." Most inquiries are transactional: "Can you help us find people for these openings? Thanks." So much more goes into what we do than keeping people on a proverbial shelf ready to be chosen. However, I have understood the finances, systems, and behaviors embedded in public media for a long time. The Next Gen program is a laboratory where we get to experiment many times over and challenge the thinking about what training and professional development truly mean, who gets an opportunity, and, after a project ends, how we continue to provide support. It's that last part that has been the most relevant: keeping our community engaged, interested, and forward-thinking. As my longtime friend and colleague Robert Hernandez of the University of Southern California says, “working horizontally, not vertically.”

What do you think are the biggest challenges public media faces right now when it comes to expanding access and inclusion? And how can we, as an industry, push back or continue to move forward?

*See my answer to question #1.*

During the pandemic, the Next Gen leadership team changed how we find and accept reporting cohorts. We’ve eliminated nearly every long-held prerequisite. An applicant doesn't need to go to a journalism school, doesn't need to have a college degree, doesn't need to fit within an age range (that's discriminatory, anyway), doesn't need to be fully abled or sighted, etc. It took too long to get there, but we did.

The pandemic got me to think about EXclusion as well as inclusion. Who are we as a program, unintentionally leaving out? Why are we doing that? How do we fix it? Can we adjust our thinking? How are we intentional and consistent about our actions?

Change can be small and significant.

As I said, I'm from Oklahoma. There are 39 federally recognized tribes there. My former public radio station has TWO Indigenous reporters covering the state now. Next Gen has directly collaborated with Indigenous journalists because all newsrooms should.

We've partnered successfully with the Gulf States Newsroom and have a long history of doing projects with the Texas Newsroom. Here is a map one of our mentors created showing the locations of our projects since 2013.

Today, I see stations getting out of onerous and aggressively politicized oversight by colleges and universities that hold their licenses. That needs to continue. It will likely result in fewer stations and in what are commonly called "news deserts." I hope we can avoid a survival-of-the-fittest scenario.

More constructively, some stations have held onto their intern programs, and I was so happy to read that NPR is resurrecting its intern program. I was involved in it for many years when I was on staff. Today, I hope those deciding future intern cohorts remain open to who gets in and who doesn't, or we'll not evolve as I think newsrooms and the news business should evolve, now more than ever.

Looking back at your career and everything you’ve accomplished, what’s the moment or achievement you’re most proud of, especially when considering the changing landscape around diversity in the workplace?

In the early 2000s, I was at the NAHJ conference in New York City. Our reporters interviewed Maria Hinojosa, host of Latino USA. I can’t remember the exact question, but I do remember the answer: “You start with supporting the people that you already have.”

I'm not going to create a listicle of do’s and don’ts. Clues are sprinkled throughout this article. But that response from Maria is a small part of our foundation.

Since 2013, the Next Gen Radio program now has 510 alums. We've completed 91 audio-focused digital media sprints. Yes, 91! Our alumni group is around 80 percent people who identify as women and 65 to 70 percent BIPOC. We have seven alumni working for NPR News. At one time, there were 10.

I keep a color-coded spreadsheet of where everyone is and what they are doing. It is highly time-consuming and also very necessary. I’m an entrepreneur at heart, so I think of those results as a “proof of concept” where our alumni are our MVP (Most Viable Product). Sponsors want to know where their money is going, and data can be a great friend.

Our mission has evolved. The five-day projects used to be the only focus. But once we're done with one of our sprints, I want our folks to feel like they belong to something. It is not an exclusive club. It’s a collection of people who are different from one another but want the same things: A skill set to shine a light on hidden areas and narratives and ideas, one that uses a Story Corps approach to journalism. We are a welcoming community where everyone can be who they are and is assumed to be bright, energetic, creative, invested, and respected regardless of their current standing.

We tell our alums, don't disappear. Stay engaged. You never know when the next opportunity will appear and someone in our community can be of great help.

5min Rest Break with PMFA

By popular demand, we’re making the rest break from our 5th Annual Day of Action & Education available as a standalone video that you can bookmark and revisit anytime you’d like. At just over 5 minutes long, it’s easy to fit into your day.

Thanks to Tamberly Ferguson for leading this us in this essential rest practice!

Now more than ever, it’s important to take care, stay clam, and keep focused on the things that make public media special, like our humanity. Public Media for All often uses this gut check when making decisions: are we acting from a place of fear or excitement? When we act from a place of fear, we give power to negative, outside influences, and prioritize them over our intuition about how we put our values into action to achieve our mission.

In order to do this gut check well, to really listen to ourselves and clearly evaluate all factors, we must be calm and rested. Slowing down and taking time to assess how to act from a place of excitement allows us to be proactive, instead of reactive, and have an abundance mindset, instead of a scarcity mindset. It’s also a kinder, more sustainable way to treat ourselves and our bodies.