Photo by Jenni Doering Perseverance at the Public Media Conference You might have heard that public media is going through a hard time. (Perhaps the understatement of the century.) Congress rolled back $1.1 billion of funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) this July. Shortly after, CPB, which brought us everything from Arthur to Nova to The World, announced it would be shutting down. Federal funding for public media is no more.

Station managers are having to lay off colleagues and cut programming. They’re turning off transmitters overnight. And some stations, like WPSU in Pennsylvania, appear to be headed for outright closure. In rural areas, public radio is often the primary and sometimes the only source of local journalism. If these stations disappear, who will keep residents informed about the news that impacts their lives? How will voters understand vital issues at play in elections? Our already-fragile democracy may not survive the disappearance of public media.

So, as I headed to this year’s big public radio conference in Salt Lake City in August, a part of me wondered if the mood would be muted, even grim. Something akin to an emergency room where all heroic life-saving efforts had failed. I worried my energy and enthusiasm for this beleaguered field would be sapped. I imagined having to steel myself to find the will to keep producing content.

To my relief and delight, I found the complete opposite.

The people who make public radio possible are hardly throwing in the towel. Instead, they’re eager to innovate, experiment with new ways of reaching audiences, and deepen connections with local listeners. They’re determined to make lemonade out of this very sour situation.

In his keynote, Ira Glass of This American Life reminded us that despite the funding cuts, it’s an “enormously energizing moment to be on the radio and doing journalism” at a time when “this country is wrenching itself through such seismic changes. To be able to witness that and to capture it and to have the privilege to go out with microphones and people will talk to you about it … I just feel, like, what could be more interesting?”

Also, these producers and program directors are just a wonderfully warm, genuine bunch. This was my first time attending the content conference run by PMCC, the Public Media Content Collective. I finally had the chance to meet program directors from the stations that air Living on Earth – Jonathan Blakley of WYPR in Baltimore, Cheryl Snyder of KTOO in Alaska, Tristan Clum of KUNM in Albuquerque, and Michael Marsolek of Montana Public Radio to name a few. It felt like a family reunion — without any of the drama.

As you know, public radio creators love to entertain as well as inform, and the conference featured among other things an energetic live taping at a local brewery of the history and pop culture gameshow “Who What When,” from South Carolina Public Radio.

And to top it all off with some wild joy and delight, BirdNote® partnered with a local bird expert to bring in magnificent Eurasian eagle owls, who swooped down the hotel ballroom… and a cockatoo named Gidget who moonlights as a hairstylist!        Much of the fighting spirit among everyone at the conference comes from you, the listeners who showed up spectacularly during recent emergency pledge drives. You all are why we keep making the best radio we can. We yak on the air about this a lot, I know, but you are essential to keeping public radio alive. By pitching in with your hard-earned dollars, but also, and more importantly, by being a part of this community.

All that said, I don’t want to minimize the difficult months ahead for our public radio colleagues across the country. Even the groundswell of listener support, and the Public Media Bridge Fund effort from major philanthropies, are not enough to make up the lost funding. Public media creators will need to channel all the strength and resolve we can to get through the coming months. With the stakes so high — democracy itself is on the line — we must. And we will! Jenni Doering Managing Producer Photo courtesy of Jenni Doering