NPR News announced Wednesday that it is canceling two daily radio programs — Day to Day and News and Notes — as part of a broader effort by the company to close a projected budget shortfall of $23 million for its current fiscal year. Overall, NPR will cut 7 percent of its work force and slash expenses further around the company.

The story adds:

Day to Day was designed as a midday complement to mainstays Morning Edition and All Things Considered, while News and Notes, a successor to The Tavis Smiley Show, was intended to draw more African-American listeners. Beyond the two shows, another 12 journalists will lose their jobs throughout NPR News.

Companywide, NPR is laying off 64 people and eliminating 21 other positions that are currently vacant. NPR News will still have more than 800 employees on staff, including about 300 journalists. . . .

Interest payments from an endowment created from the bequest of the late Joan Kroc, which have typically paid out about $10 million a year to NPR, were wiped out by the sharp downturn in the financial markets. However, NPR’s board authorized the company to draw down $15 million from the company’s operating reserves, most of which also came from the Kroc gift.

In interviews, company officials said they decided to try to make big, specific cuts to mitigate their effect on NPR’s ability to gather and report the news.

Update: Here is more from the Washington Post and here from The New York Times.

Free .TV show from Ustream

Also the forum set up by Bill Densmore of the Media Giraffe project, had several interesting presentations on topics such as teaching journalism literacy, the AP and copyright, social networking tools and teaching citizen journalism. If you have time, they are all worth downloading.

I’ve been watching ProPublica. I think ProPublica is a great development in this area. But I am saddened by something that Paul Steiger told me a while back, that he was deluged with applications from people who would have been theoretically working at some of the nation’s greatest news organizations on investigative reporting that they would have been doing, but now either were out of jobs or were insecure enough in their own jobs to think that ProPublica, even with its three years of funding secured, was a better bet for them.

That, I think, reflects about what the real climate is in this country for this kind of expensive, vitally important kind of news. 

Here is more from Paul Steiger, editor-in-chief of ProPublica and former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal:

…our budget is $10 million a year. But we do have in 25 journalists the largest single team of investigative reporters in the United States.

That’s not very much money and that’s Jones’ point, who says it is time for find a more viable model. Foundations are not enough. They have limited funding, don’t have the long-term resources and will fund start-ups, but lose interest and move onto other things.

Why can’t that viable model be everyday citizen support? My Representative Journalism project is fully built on the premise that audience will pay, if you give them something of value. I mean I hardly have any hair left and I still pay well over a $100 a year to get haircuts. Nothing is free. Why should the news be free?

Each day we read of another news organization making cuts. Eventually, the pool of quality news will shrink to almost nothing. That’s when I am convinced those of us in the public who love news will step forward to start paying the price. Yes, pay attention to the foundations for start-up money, that’s how the Harnisch Family Foundation is helping Rep J, but really start thinking how we can we mobilize the public. Just look at Barack Obama’s campaign, he has proven that by turning to the vast funding power of the public, hundreds of millions can be raised. Raising a $1 million in a day is not unheard of, Moveon.org has also shown its amazing power to do the same.

So where is the campaign to raise money for real news. We have some nascent efforts, like David Cohn’s Spot.us and Hal Plotkin’s Reelchanges.org, but they are slight whispers. Let’s do a scream out — let’s show the world what life would be like without news. Let’s borrow the techniques of the politicians and advocacy groups. Let’s be the advocates for reinventing a higher quality, even more ethical journalism. We can do it, but, to borrow a phrase, we just have to believe in change.

In addition, we are now aiming to have a Representative Journalist start on the ground at Locally Grown  in Northfield, Minnesota to test if a community, starved for in-depth news, will rally around a reporter proving high value news and eventually begin to underwrite that journalist. We’ll be providing more news on that front very soon. It is an experiment that will work best if there are Rep Js everywhere.

That’s why I am emailing, on the phone and buttonholing everyone who will talk to me in PBS land. The time is ripe. There is a void in national TV news; it’s mostly a bunch of wrongheaded, loudmouthed pundits yelling at each other. I believe there is a contingent of people all across America willing to pay out-of-pocket for really compelling news and information in print, audio and video. National Public Radio has filled the audio piece. Everyone is looking for a new print model, probably the hardest to fill because it has no strong nonprofit tradition. However, Ruth Ann Harnisch was good enough to provide funding  via the Harnisch Family Foundation so we can give the print piece a test in Northfield.

The video side is ripe for the picking. PBS has the national fundraising apparatus, the video expertise and the physical infrastructure. New technologies have lowered the costs. What I am trying to find out is if PBS has the will. Right now I have a proposal filled with assumptions which I am circulating one contact at a time.

PBS should start now to test those assumptions. However, someone in that vast bureaucracy has to be willing to take the lead. I am determined to find that person. In the last few weeks, I have talked to a couple of dozen people who understand PBS. When I tell them PBS can become a News Powerhouse, they look at me as if I have lost a few marbles. But by the time I walk them through the whole concept from production to funding, they think, maybe, just maybe, I am on to something

As this unfolds, I will reveal more. If you are PBS person, especially one with some power, contact me. I will reveal all. I an enjoying this because I feel certain somewhere the connection will be made and soon enough PBS will become a News Powerhouse. Remember, you read it here first.    

Here is what host Bill Densmore of the Media Giraffe Project writes:

What motivates people to launch a local online news community — a “placeblog” and what are their challenges, their successes, the opportunities, vision and passion which accompany this work? Twelve citizen-journalists — “placebloggers” — gathered on Friday, June 6, 2008, for a one-hour conversation at Minnesota Public Radio. Listen to the auto stream of their conversation here. Or download an MP3 podcast for offline listening. Moderated by Bill Densmore, director of the Media Giraffe Project at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

I did not intend to say that the MinnPost business model is grim. I believe that the for-profit model for high quality regional journalism is grim. That’s why MinnPost has adopted a not-for-profit model — about which I am very optimistic.  

If you want community foundation funding for local journalism projects, Newton says do your homework. Look at this Knight Foundation site and look specifically at the survey Knight did with community foundations. Then go pay your foundation a visit.

I only want to go to panels and read articles that search for, and have suggestions for, providing new ways of ensuring that we will have high quality, ethically sound journalism in the future. I want it to be better than what we have now and had in the past.

For example, in the article the author Eric Alterman laments that with the fall of newspaper journalism we will have:

…the loss of a single national narrative and agreed-upon set of “facts” by which to conduct our politics.  

My question is who has agreed upon the set of “facts” to which Alterman alludes. White, middle class, educated me probably, but what about all the poor and disenfranchised ethnic minorities that make up this country?  Do they agree with that single national narrative? Did they get to participate in how it was written? I would argue, given that the newsrooms  writing the narrative are still overwhelmingly white and certainly 100 percent well educated and middle to upper class, that a single national narrative might not be such a great idea in a pluaristic society.

We might be better off, when we find a way to pay for it –and I am trying to find a way with my Representative Journalism concept — to have many people writing from across the spectrum from many places as we collectively try to find a national narrative that belongs to all of us.

“I feel like we’re pointing the way toward what news organizations of the future are likely to look like and do. If I’m right, we’ll be Chicago’s dominant news organization in 10 years. If I’m wrong, we won’t be around.”