The most successful hybrid of old and new media comes from the last place you’d expect. How NPR’s digital smarts, nonprofit structure, and good old-fashioned shoe leather just might save the news.

Here is a key passage about the state of NPR:

In one of the great under-told media success stories of the past decade, NPR has emerged not as the bespectacled schoolmarm of our imagination but as a massive news machine poised for what Dick Meyer, editorial director for digital media, half-jokingly calls “world domination.” NPR’s listenership has nearly doubled since 1999, even as newspaper circulation dropped off a cliff. Its programming now reaches 26.4 million listeners weekly — far more than USA Today’s 2.3 million daily circ or Fox News’ 2.8 million prime-time audience. When newspapers were closing bureaus, NPR was opening them, and now runs 38 around the world, better than CNN. It has 860 member stations — “boots on the ground in every town” that no newspaper or TV network can claim. It has moved boldly into new media as well: 14 million monthly podcast downloads, 8 million Web visitors, NPR Mobile, an open platform, a social network, even crowdsourcing. And although the nonprofit has been hit by the downturn like everyone else, its multiple revenue streams look far healthier long term than the ad-driven model of commercial media.

The whole article is worth a read.

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.

“The Giant Pool of Money,” produced in May 2008, is a fantastic piece of radio journalism that puts the financial crisis into terms we can all understand. Here is their most recent follow-up: “Another Frightening Show about the Economy.”

Here are some of the subheads on the advice given by Blumberg in a Steve Myers interview at the Poynter Institute:

• Start with a question that no one has asked in quite the same way.
• Use your ignorance and your status as an outsider to your benefit.
• Use the specialty press and the blogs.

Blumberg expands on the blogs:

“I could never have done this story without blogs,” he said. One of his favorites was called Calculated Risk. The blogs, experts and specialty press all spoke a language that was unfamiliar to him, but once he delved in, he started to understand what they were talking about.

• Look for people who aren’t experts.
• Make the story concrete.
• Ask people to tell their stories, ask about key moments, and get out of the way.

People pay directly for journalism they want. $ 2 million. Would there be 20,000 listeners across the nation willing to pay $100 each annually for the Bryant Park Project? Divide that by 50 states that comes out to 400 per state. Presumably there are that many folks in each state who are not regular contributors who would be willing to pay for this new programming. Of course, too often the folks at local stations want to protect turf at the expense of expanding their turf. BPP is turf expansion for a healthy NPR future.

Another approach: Would there be 1,600 people in each state willing to pay $25 a year. You want to get young folks hooked into the news habit, this might be an avenue. 

However, here is a better idea, why doesn’t the New York Times buy into the program and have it as a joint operation between the Times and NPR. Both would benefit by engaging a young, smart demographic they will need in the future to survive.

Unfortunately, I am not in their demographic group and often asked my wife, is this what youth wants or is this what old staid folks at NPR think youth wants. The fact that both my wife and I enjoy it might be a clue.

Nonetheless, here is what bothered me. In fact, I wondered if it were a typo in the Times:

It’s an expensive failure — the first-year budget was more than $2 million —

So $2 million is an expensive experiment, when for example, I have heard in its heyday  the New York Times spent $300 million a year for its newsroom. ProPublica is investing $10 million per year for a multi-year investigative journalism project. I am sorry folks $2 million when CEOs make a couple of hundred million a year, is not very much to pull a plug on an experiment which needed time to grow.

For a one year project, it was extremely good. And pulling the plug on new programming with promise for future audiences will be the way for NPR to become totally irrelevant in the future. Having all those new voices, a new tone and a high quality presentation was extremely refreshing and killing it off after just one year is, in one listener’s opinion, a foolish move.