It seems to be a mix of donor capture and lack of relevance at the national level.
Local NPR affiliates produce locally relevant content, but national level NPR has no actual differentiator. The forces them to be much more heavily dependent on their donors (who have clearly chosen a specific side) and also means they aren't top of the list to get breaking news (no Congress member is going to spend 1-2 hours interviewing at NPR when they can have multiple interviews with nationally prominent news sources).
This seems to have caused a vicious cycle for NPR as they need to keep their donors and listeners happy, but at the expense of the long term feasibility of the product.
Furthermore, podcasts are a major portion of national NPR's "bundle", and the podcasting industry is extremely democratized/commodified now.
> and also means they aren't top of the list to get breaking news (no Congress member is going to spend 1-2 hours interviewing at NPR when they can have multiple interviews with nationally prominent news sources).
This has been a problem with NPR forever though, at least since the late '90s. Donor capture and the podcast market are probably bigger reasons.
I think it's institutional capture by a group, coastal liberal elite progressive woke, whatever you want to call them, and they have their own subculture and viewpoint that are disconnected from the majority of Americans. You have similar things happening in a lot of other news agencies too.
Local NPR affiliates produce locally relevant content, but national level NPR has no actual differentiator. The forces them to be much more heavily dependent on their donors (who have clearly chosen a specific side) and also means they aren't top of the list to get breaking news (no Congress member is going to spend 1-2 hours interviewing at NPR when they can have multiple interviews with nationally prominent news sources).
This seems to have caused a vicious cycle for NPR as they need to keep their donors and listeners happy, but at the expense of the long term feasibility of the product.
Furthermore, podcasts are a major portion of national NPR's "bundle", and the podcasting industry is extremely democratized/commodified now.