Has Facebook F**ked Public Media?

The social media giant has swiped listeners and launched publishing. As public radio’s numbers sink, rising to meet the challenge of Facebook may be a life or death matter for non-commercial media.

Over lunch, a friend tells me about her favorite program on the radio station I work for, and how finding it online means she doesn’t really listen anymore. She loves the station and still pledges, but online is just on demand. Of course, she’s in the demographic my station needs most.

If you work in public media, chances are you’ve had an identical conversation before, on several occasions.

The Pew Research Center and Corporation for Public Broadcasting are a public media data journalist’s favorite tag team. Their latest headlines tell another familiar story.

On June 1, Pew issued troubling details about news consumption, the same day Current reported on CPB’s conclusions on a public radio downturn, the first in five years.

Shocking? Maybe not, but they mirror what stations are hearing.

Across the United States, public radio saw a two percent loss in donors from 2013. Given most radio stations in CPB’s survey had annual budgets of less than $2 million per year, such a stat is cringeworthy. More than two-thirds of them saw no increase in major giving, which virtually guarantees depressed fortunes. While they’re not micro-budget LPFMs (low-power FM radio stations), this pressure means precious little financial wiggle room. CPB reports staff cutbacks are the latest result.

In addition, NPR reports its live streaming listening has taken a six percent dip. Partly sunny outlooks for podcasting are positive, but streaming’s fade is notable nonetheless.

Ask and there is a lot of blame to go around, from the disposable incomes people used to have, depending on the city and industry it relies on, to commercial media’s splintering to pledge drive fatigue.

Public media, to its credit, is making a boatload of adjustments to its digital strategy. Beautiful, responsive websites give listeners the story, plus extras. Android, iOS, Windows Phone and even Blackberry apps nudge your device with that comforting vibration. Twitter chats and video streams via Meerkat and Periscope, and a splash of Instagram and Snapchat are a few ways public media is experimenting with new tools.

Yet no one has solved the riddle of challenging Facebook’s dominance. Public media’s and journalism’s longevity rely on adequately addressing that puzzle.

Facebook is today your parents’ platform, also the website of friended high school crushes and college frenemies. However, the Pew Research Center’s findings on Facebook, especially its new report, point to it as a go-to destination for listeners when news happens. Its publishing platform indicates Facebook knows this all too well, and wants to keep everyone on its website and not on those of public media.

Are we really surprised Facebook is killing us? With its ability to aggregate context as public radio used to have the corner on, Facebook is Lakshmi Singh for people who want just the hot take. Really, some days, that’s all of us.

Consider what people love about public media. For the average listener, it’s the personal story, the historical anecdote, the informed voice. With a dash of metrics wizardry, Facebook is undercutting us there. I can find 20 thinkpieces from across the spectrum on Caitlyn Jenner, 20 more in-depth reports on Rand Paul, the National Security Agency and Congressional debates, and a whole bunch more on music that’s so public radio it’s not on public radio. I don’t need to run up my data plan with NPR One when I can get links, embedded audio and full stories right on Facebook.

This ability to find so much provocative analysis and interviews isn’t just me. I don’t think I know that many smart people. Apparently, such is the case for a big percentage of potential listeners too, because 61 percent of those 18–33 years of age (“Millennials”) and 51 percent of those aged 34–49 (“Generation X”) rely on Facebook for political news on any given week. News awareness related to public media saw some challenges, with neither group saying they relied on public radio nearly as much.

Are they aware of stuff like NPR? Yes. However, just because I am aware of Spam doesn’t mean I eat it. Similarly, potential listeners like being aware of public media. Saying you know NPR still carries a cachet of intelligence for those familiar with it. Yet like my friend, they’re not listening nearly as often.

Facebook’s algorithms massage the news situation and build trust with the audience. For public media, that’s not great news. In the presidential election season — which feels like it’s already begun with the announcements of Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders and a host of others — that’s only going to get worse for public media. For the radio stations in the smaller budget frame, those remarked on by CPB’s report, Facebook’s ascendance in 2016 could be their downfall.

To be clear, Facebook is a tantalizing tool for those who seek news. Competing with it feels impossible. Adapting to it means allowing infrastructure rot to some degree, where our focus becomes content for Facebook’s website rather than outreach to communities in our neighborhoods. Instead, public media needs to rethink its own long-term plans, while pushing Facebook for more.

A few departures:

How we look at membership to stations in the new economy must change. Melody Joy Kramer has raised an idea that is critical for public media to consider: how can membership involve different models, such as service, as a gateway to engage new audiences? While this is not a new concept — community radio stations, notably Pacifica, have been offering memberships for volunteerism for years — she makes a compelling case for stations that would not otherwise consider such a thing. It’s not tackling the Facebook problem, indeed. However, re-imagining membership represents creative thinking to improve public media fundraising.

Public media needs to call on Facebook for long-term and system-wide charitable giving. Facebook’s rival Google is making vast investments in infrastructure. There is very little to stop Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook from backing institutions, such as funding public media initiatives, supporting work by African-American, Latino and Native American radio stations served through the National Federation of Community Broadcasters (on whose board I serve), or just deploying its people through in-kind donations around the country to serve public media through growing its technology. While non-profit news is the journalism buzzword that’s losing its luster, public media has a history of doing such reporting on the most ubiquitous of platforms, radio and television. At the end of the day, Facebook loves public media. Our news stories feed Facebook timelines around the world. Now the company just needs to give public media a hand.

Public radio must respond to the changing demographics of America. CPB points out public radio is 79 percent white. There were more African-American chemists in 2012 (9.9 percent of the total workforce) than there are African-Americans in public media at this moment (nine percent), according to a Forbes study. [PDF] I’m not putting down chemistry or Black folks in the field, or saying there’s an apples-to-apples industry comparison. I am nevertheless suggesting diversity means diverse ideas, skillsets and innovations. Public media improves with a variety of voices and cultural experiences. That only seven percent in public media are Latino despite a decade or more of Hispanic growth is inexcusable. Removed from politics, defensiveness and so on, this is a matter of shifts in the country, and it’s time to grow.

Public media should welcome STEM students into its workflow. Hand in hand with diversity and membership is creating opportunities to connect with young people, giving them a way to help, and making the public media outlet an incubator for visionary efforts. Facebook and the tech startup realm have scooped up scores of talented tech workers, engineers, data specialists and others. Yet schools all over the globe are training up the next-next generation (i.e. those young people even younger than the ones right now) in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. From high schools and colleges that offer STEM credit for community service to reaching out to local technology non-profits, this sort of engagement can create real dividends, including new members and even newer approaches to timeworn public media challenges.

Thinking of a post-Facebook journalism world. No one ever thought Friendster and MySpace would die at far as the public’s consciousness was concerned. Everyone said you’d be crazy to bet against Yahoo! not so many years back. And though it seems clear Facebook learned from their mistakes and is doing a lot right, public media needs to find the line of being where existing and potential listeners are and creating its own daring experiences. Public media’s best and brightest should pretend there’s not a Facebook for 10 minutes and consider what we’d do differently, and ask why we’re not doing so this instant. If it’s possible, why not?

Facebook has succeeded so far in supplanting public media in the minds of those who might seem to need it most. Given how thoroughly it resonates with the audience regardless of age or gender, that tenacious public radio spirit and out-of-the-box thinking are going to come in handy in the years to come. That is, if public media, particularly small outlets on the bubble, can last that long.