Even if "every news outlet and broadcast media outlet losing audience rapidly", the criticism wasn't about NPR losing audience in general, but about NPR losing audience from a particular side predominantly.
It needs to be repeated that broadcast media is experiencing a bloodbath right now across all areas of the political spectrum. And according to publicly available data, the downwards trend is far more extreme for right-leaning publications[1]. So, pandering to right-leaning audiences is not the winning market strategy at the moment either. It's a lose-lose situation.
Can NPR go too woke? Sure, anything is possible. And maybe they have on radio–I wouldn't know. It certainly doesn't seem to be that way from their website though.
That article needs to be interpreted with caution.
Firstly, as they say themselves, their data is misleading because it's comparing with Feb 2020 which was the start of the COVID crisis. Of course news outlets are going to have less traffic in Feb 2024 vs Feb 2020. And although they start by saying there's a bloodbath specifically in right-wing publications, later they admit their dataset yields huge drops also for left-wing publications as well e.g. Slate and The Washington Post are both down ~40%.
Secondly, when they do a quick reality check by asking the owners of one of the sites whether the number for his site is true (a 90% drop!), he tells them it's "laughably inaccurate", feedback they then just ignore rather than trying to work out why there's disagreement.
And although the authors assert that the drop is worse on the right, they don't really show that with data.
They also point out that (assuming they effect they're talking about really does exist) it's probably driven by Facebook and Google manipulating their news feeds to suppress conservative news, not an actual drop in organic demand.
So I think the article can't lead to many conclusions about market strategy other than don't trust Facebook or Google, which everyone on the right knew already.
ok, i think we should be skeptical of this piece of data and require this much rigor before we believe the assertion, but then let’s also require the same from the other direction. we don’t have academic peer reviewed papers on why npr is losing listeners either.
either we allow speculation and trust individual anecdotes or we don’t.
all i see is that yes, media across all political spectrums are seeing downturns. the rest of the speculation is just copium by people who believe they know more than insiders who have decades of experience and institutional knowledge.
>we don’t have academic peer reviewed papers on why npr is losing listeners either.
No, but we don't need any for the main complaint of the "veteran editor": not that NPR loses listeners period, but that it specifically loses listeners from one side of the political spectrum much more.
So it's not about "why listeners leave?" as much as "why the listenership got as skewed?". For the latter question, "because there has been an increased liberal and Dem partisan and viewpoint bias" can both be factually verified, and seems like an adequate answer.
Also, whether the reason for the convervative sites readership drop is Facebook cutting news links in general, or views being banned/not promoted from Facebook and co for "fact checking" reasons or plainly for not aligning with the narrative, I don't think the same mechanism wouldn't explain NPR's case. The editor making the criticism wasn't focused specifically on the website, and I doubt it depended as much on Facebook in the first place.
I don't need a peer reviewed paper to observe a drop in traffic reported by Comscore. That can be taken at face value in the absence of any opposing data in this industry. Editors at The Atlantic are well aware of the state of the marketplace and are very analytical. I used to work there. Beyond that, the conclusion just makes sense when considering the demographics. Why would a population of people who are less trusting of the media consume more media than another population that is more trusting? You can make your own judgment calls of course, but nothing presented here is a convincing rebuttal to people in the know.
For example, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/04/conserv...