This Monday, my former coworkers at CapRadio broke a story revealing previous station general manager Jun Reina is suspected of receiving nearly $500,000 in payments without documentation.

And while the transactions orchestrated by former CapRadio leadership are negligent at a level uncommon in public radio, the station’s financial woes highlight broader problems across NPR member stations (and even in many non-public radio nonprofit newsrooms). For one: Workers aren’t hearing about their station’s finances and, even with unions, have little recourse to push back against the opacity. 

In the past year, WESA, WNYC, LAist, CapRadio, WBUR, KQED, WBEZ, WAMU, Colorado Public Radio — all stations in sizable metro areas, nearly all with a union — have all laid off staff due to revenue struggles. WNYC is facing its second round of layoffs in less than a year.

A former newsroom employee at WNYC, who shared their experiences on the condition of anonymity due to potential retaliation, described “whiplash.” 

“The board authorized a round of bonuses to the newsroom employees for one year, and that was unexpected and wonderful,” the employee said. “And then the following year, the entire studio podcast division, almost all of them were laid off. You never feel like you can predict what’s going to happen the following year.” 

Yet executive salaries are rarely the first place stations look to ensure they can recoup advertising losses. For example, WBEZ’s 2023 tax filing showed its former CEO earning nearly 19% more in his $633,310 compensation package than the year prior.

Reina, the former CapRadio general manager, is still a CEO of a Bay Area nonprofit.

“The leadership that keeps messing up, they keep staying on in these high-paid roles, and even if they leave, they just get hired as another, you know, chief whatever at some other place, and it feels like they just fail upwards,” the former WNYC employee observed of public media as a whole.

Station leadership taking meager cuts to their salaries — or accepting raises — while offering buyouts and cutting departments is not emblematic of a public media for all.

Read the full commentary on The Objective.If you have a public media experience you’d like to share for future reporting, email [email protected] or reply to this email. 

—James Salanga

Journalists send letter to U.S. Secretary of State urging arms embargo on Israel: News outlets including Truthout and In These Times, along with over 100 journalists, urged Anthony Blinken to “show unwavering support for free and independent media by supporting an arms embargo against Israel.” By providing weapons to Israel, letter-signers write, “the State Department is abetting Israel’s violent suppression of journalism.” Read the letter on the Courage Foundation website.

The Defender’s Handbook, a guide to creating a community-centric, digital-first media organization, launches: The six-section guide, created by Kansas City Defender editor Ryan Sorrell, is primarily crafted for Black media workers, and is also aimed at “any media worker dedicated to using narrative and media for liberation.” The six-section handbook covers critical engagement with abolitionist reporting, digital-first newsroom strategies, building community, centering youth and workers as organizers, the history of radical Black media, and actionable guides. Read the handbook in the Kansas City Defender and its introduction in RJI.

The 51st meets crowdfunding goal of $250,000: The worker-led local newsroom, covering D.C., announced on August 14 that it met its one-month goal to raise enough runway to sustain its operations for several months, with seven workers paid part-time. The 51st aims to begin publishing early this fall, and to hire a steering committee of community members to guide its coverage. The newsroom will begin publishing as a weekly newsletter. Read the newsroom’s announcement on X and a Q&A with co-founders in The Objective.

Crooked Media Workers Union announces new contract: After over a year of negotiating and a walkout last week, the union, which represents workers at an array of podcasts like “Pod Save America”, ratified its first contract on Aug. 14. Crooked Media’s minimum starting salary now starts at $80,000, workers will have a minimum of 49 guaranteed paid days off and 20 weeks of paid parental leave, a minimum of 13 weeks of severance, and more. Read the union’s explanatory thread on X.

Why is it so hard to find information about the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic? With Nassau County passing a mask ban despite surging U.S. levels of Covid, October Krausch covers the increasing lack of accessibility of Covid information: “The policy and response have changed, without any real relationship to changes in the illness and how it affects people.” Reduced Covid data collection, growing inaccessibility of the tools Americans were told they had to navigate the pandemic, and reimposed expectations to work while sick are among the reasons it’s hard to act on information that does exist, Krausch writes. Read the story in Truthout.

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