Public defenders: Alumni in news are undeterred as Congress claws back funding

Going-to-the-Sun Road is known for its natural beauty, its sweeping views of Glacier National Park, its white-knuckled masses of tourists travailing its winding roads.

It is not known for cellular service.

So, when Kirk Siegler was driving the road while on assignment in the park, he turned the dial to the local NPR station to see what he’d missed while being away from coverage.

“I tuned in to the top of the hour newscast and got it loud and clear,” said Siegler (Jour’00), a correspondent for NPR News. “There have been a lot of investments in towers and infrastructure by local public radio stations in recent years—especially here in the West, where the topography is so challenging—to ensure information gets out during disasters, as well as basic news services.

“In some of the more rural areas, you don’t have 5G and may not have reliable broadband, but you do have public radio.”

Last week, Congress signed off on Donald Trump’s $9 billion rescission package, which claws back more than $1 billion in previously approved funding for public broadcasters. For Siegler and other alumni of the College of Communication, Media, Design and Information, that’s meant a major shift in an industry where seismic shocks are becoming the norm.

“It’s not the most stable business generally, so when we hear about funding cuts, it’s hard not to start worrying about layoffs and that sort of thing,” said Siegler, who has done notable work covering climate disaster, wildfires and public land in the West. “But the directive has been to keep our heads down and keep doing the journalism, which hopefully will speak for itself.”

An outsized rural impact

The cuts won’t be the end of NPR and PBS, both of which receive only a small amount of funding from the federal Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Where it will hurt are at the rural and smaller stations that won’t be able to afford to pay NPR and PBS for the programs they produce.

It’s why professionals like Neal Scarbrough (Jour’84) are trying to pivot and provide additional value to those smaller stations. Scarbrough is vice president and general manager of Marketplace, a publicly funded media outlet that licenses its business and economics coverage to stations around the country. He has an editorial background, but his day-to-day focus is on innovation.

“The strength of Marketplace is we’ve maintained our audience, even as radio listenership is dipping,” he said. “In this moment of economic turmoil, we do have relevance for our listeners, who are seeking answers to questions on tariffs, trade wars, the markets and so on. But we have to demonstrate our value every day—while paid syndication helps our partner stations save money, we don’t have the luxury to think that way.”

Scarbrough hasn’t been shy about exploring digital alternatives to radio—including podcasts, which have been hit or miss—but he sees a chance to add value by offering digital content to partner stations, instead of just sharing radio programming and keeping other news on Marketplace’s own platforms.

As he put it, “the longer we’re restricted to radio, the quicker we’ll decline.”

‘It’s not that simple’

For rural editors, publishers and station managers, innovation is a challenge, said Patrick Ferrucci, chair of the journalism department at CMDI and a researcher who studies the funding model of rural newsrooms.

“You’re mostly talking about family-owned newspapers that haven’t really changed their approach in a hundred years,” said Ferrucci, who’s mostly worked with newspapers in Kansas and Nebraska. “It’s easy to say, just innovate, but it’s not that simple.”

He said rural journalism needs to diversify its funding structures—away from solely focused on advertising—and change its community engagement practices. He’s also advised on using open-source technology, instead of costly platforms, and using their presses to take on commercial printing work.

“Rural journalism has always done a really good job of being part of a community, unlike a New York Times or Boston Globe,” he said. “We don’t want to change that emphasis on community-based storytelling, but we’ve seen some success with things like membership models and events that make the newspaper a public space.”

Those connections to the communities he covers are important to Siegler, who is based in Boise, Idaho. He’s happiest while melting shoe leather in the nation’s under-represented rural communities, asking people—especially those who’ve never been interviewed—about topics like federal funding cuts.

Those sources have usually never met a reporter, “and so I’m always asked, ‘Why would you want to come all the way out here to talk to me? I’m not that interesting,’” he said. “But they usually are.”

His work in climate reporting showcases the importance of local perspectives on national issues, and demonstrates what’s at stake for rural stations priced out of NPR’s journalism. Siegler has covered everything from raging wildfires, to access to the Colorado River, to development projects in Arizona’s fast-growing Maricopa County.

“If there aren’t reporters covering city hall, holding politicians and developers accountable, then people don’t see it in the news and change doesn’t happen,” he said.

Both Siegler and Scarbrough said there are other ways to make a living. But neither sounded ready to give up the fight.

“One thing about journalists is, we always believe we can win,” Scarbrough said. “This is not the time to fall on our sword, but to raise our sword and cut a new path. Rather than say, woe is us, we lost our funding, we need to see this as a moment to redefine what public media is in a way that continues to help our audience make sense of the world around them.”