Latest news with #Isgitt
Boston Globe
a day ago
- Business
- Boston Globe
The race to rescue PBS and NPR stations
'We believe it's crucial to have a concerted, coordinated effort to make sure that the stations that most critically need these funds right now have a pathway to get them,' said Maribel Pérez Wadsworth, president and CEO of the Knight Foundation, which is among the major backers of the fund. Advertisement The money is not aimed at PBS and NPR, well-funded national organizations that will survive without government support. Instead, the Knight Foundation and others are focused on the scores of public radio and TV stations that have historically received more than 30 percent of their support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a taxpayer-backed company that announced it would shut down because of the funding cuts. Many of those stations are in rural areas, like remote regions of Alaska and Kansas, where residents don't have access to alternate sources of news and information. Advertisement The Knight Foundation is committing $10 million to the fund, which aims to disburse the money before the end of the year. Together with Knight, the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Schmidt Family Foundation, Pivotal Ventures, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have already committed nearly $27 million for the effort, called the Public Media Bridge Fund. The MacArthur Foundation is also making a $10 million contribution unrelated to the fund to support public media. Public media executives and advocates quietly drew up contingency plans to salvage public media as the threat of funding cuts edged closer to reality. After President Trump was elected in November, Isgitt worked with Erik Langner, the CEO of a nonprofit called the Information Equity Initiative, to work on a strategy. Over the next seven months, Isgitt, whose firm is called Public Media Co., briefed the CEO of PBS, Paula Kerger, and the CEO of NPR, Katherine Maher, about the plan and began coordinating with foundations. Time is critical for TV and radio stations, many of which have already begun to lay off staff in anticipation of the funding cuts. Wadsworth, a former publisher of USA Today, has urged foundations to act with urgency — to 'move philanthropy at the speed of news,' she said. On July 20, Wadsworth called Isgitt to discuss the fund and how philanthropy might work together to help stations. She has since held virtual meetings to bring other philanthropists around to the idea. Advertisement 'I wanted them to understand what was at stake,' she said. The fund will be administered by Public Media Co., which will solicit applications from stations. Eligibility guidelines are still being worked out, but the fund would prioritize stations that received a large proportion of their budgets from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and those that are among the only sources of information in their communities. Langner will be the executive director of the fund. Wadsworth anticipates that many applicants will come from rural areas, where numerous stations have long relied on government funding to operate. One of the stations, KUCB in Unalaska, Alaska, relayed a tsunami warning to listeners even as the Senate was debating federal funding cuts last month, said Mollie Kabler, CEO of CoastAlaska, a nonprofit company that provides services to a consortium of Alaskan public radio stations. Kabler, who has already had to lay off an employee from her shoestring staff, is also trying to raise a $15 million emergency fund to help stations in Alaska survive the next year. She likened the funding cuts to a wildfire. 'The big trees are going to survive the fire,' Kabler said. 'It's the little trees that are going to be devastated and have to start over.' The smaller stations are already beginning to get some help from PBS and NPR, which are offering members a discount on dues payments. Kerger and Maher have already begun to brief members on the bridge fund. Wadsworth said philanthropy could not provide a substitute for the federal funding in the long term. A broad overhaul of the public radio system is needed, Isgitt said, and many stations will need to merge or pool their resources to save costs. Advertisement Isgitt said roughly $100 million would be needed over the next two years to avoid widespread closures. He predicted that if those stations did close, other buyers could swoop in to acquire the stations' valuable broadcast spectrum and eliminate local news and emergency services. 'We'll do the best we can with the resources available to us to secure as much local service as possible,' Isgitt said. 'But if we aren't able to raise the money, we can't fill all the gaps.' This article originally appeared in .
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
The scramble to keep public media afloat
With local public media stations on the brink of collapse following President Donald Trump's successful push to strip federal funding, one group announced plans Tuesday to raise tens of millions of dollars in a bid to keep local newsrooms alive. The Public Media Bridge Fund hopes to raise $100 million over the next two years to support local news organizations at risk of closure, the organization said, following congressional approval to rescind more than $1 billion in federal funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. CPB — the independently-run, congressionally-funded nonprofit — announced this month it would shut down. Advocates and public media executives have warned that the funding cuts and subsequent closure of CPB will devastate rural communities that rely on local stations, with rural stations less able to weather the slashed federal funding compared to urban and suburban stations with larger donor bases. 'The people who are paying the price are local communities, in an era where local community connection is being eroded and local news is in crisis,' Tim Isgitt, CEO of Public Media Company — a nonprofit public media consulting firm that launched the bridge fund — told POLITICO. 'These members of Congress voted to kill what, in many communities, is their only source of local news and information and they did it eyes wide open.' Conservatives in Congress have long sought to eliminate federal funding for public media, and scored a major victory with Trump's rescissions package. In May, Trump issued an executive order looking to restrict all funding for NPR and PBS. CPB, PBS and NPR challenged the order. But Congress, which appropriated more than $500 million to CPB annually, codified the president's move in this year's Rescissions Act. 'I don't want to sugarcoat this, but the loss of CPB funding to local rural communities is devastating,' said Isgitt. 'We're doing what we can to do what Congress failed to do: protecting stations.' Isgitt expects things to worsen in November, when CPB normally doled out funding to affiliates. Newsrooms that depended on at least 30 percent of funding from CPB are now at risk of going dark, he said. 'From Mississippi to Idaho, local public media organizations are run by people who live in their communities, governed by people who live in their communities and reporting on community issues,' said Isgitt. The loss of CPB funding, he added, will 'have ripple effects across the system.' 'This is a highly interconnected and, in some ways, interdependent system. So when a significant portion of local organizations start to fail, it's going to have an impact on other distressed local organizations that are also losing money. And I don't know where those dominoes stop.' For this fall alone, Isgitt said, the fund is hoping to raise $50 million — but in order to sustain endangered newsrooms for the next two years, they'll need a minimum of $100 million, he added. So far, philanthropic organizations including the Knight Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation have committed $26.5 million to the Public Media Bridge Fund. While Isgitt said there is no official list designating which newsrooms will receive a disbursement, he said the Fund is compiling additional data to determine the most at-risk stations. Isgitt said he remains hopeful, though he admits reaching the full $100 million goal will be difficult. 'There is a recognition from philanthropy across the board right now that there's a need and there's an opportunity to keep the system from collapsing,' said Isgitt. 'However, philanthropy is being asked to fill a lot of gaps right now, and I don't know how sustainable that is overtime.' Solve the daily Crossword
Politico
a day ago
- Politics
- Politico
The scramble to keep public media afloat
'The people who are paying the price are local communities, in an era where local community connection is being eroded and local news is in crisis,' Tim Isgitt, CEO of Public Media Company — a nonprofit public media consulting firm that launched the bridge fund — told POLITICO. 'These members of Congress voted to kill what, in many communities, is their only source of local news and information and they did it eyes wide open.' Conservatives in Congress have long sought to eliminate federal funding for public media, and scored a major victory with Trump's rescissions package. In May, Trump issued an executive order looking to restrict all funding for NPR and PBS. CPB, PBS and NPR challenged the order. But Congress, which appropriated more than $500 million to CPB annually, codified the president's move in this year's Rescissions Act. 'I don't want to sugarcoat this, but the loss of CPB funding to local rural communities is devastating,' said Isgitt. 'We're doing what we can to do what Congress failed to do: protecting stations.' Isgitt expects things to worsen in November, when CPB normally doled out funding to affiliates. Newsrooms that depended on at least 30 percent of funding from CPB are now at risk of going dark, he said. 'From Mississippi to Idaho, local public media organizations are run by people who live in their communities, governed by people who live in their communities and reporting on community issues,' said Isgitt. The loss of CPB funding, he added, will 'have ripple effects across the system.'
