`Extraordinary' $200m bequest stuns, elates NPR staff

"We're here on an extraordinary day for public radio," NPR president Kevin Klose declared at a news conference announcing a bequest of more than $200 million from the estate of recently deceased philanthropist Joan Kroc, a devotee of NPR and its San Diego member station KPBS-FM.

"Most of it will not be spent. It is to be saved," Klose said. "Most of this money is going to the NPR endowment, used to build a revenue stream to help address some of the issues in front of us."

NPR officials said roughly $175 million of the gift is earmarked for the endowment -- now about $35 million in gifts and pledges -- to generate an additional $10 million annually toward its operating budget, which this year is $104 million. While not ready to discuss the specifics of a wish list yesterday, the officials suggested that the new money could be spent on everything from improving Internet technology to adding editorial resources to increasing efforts to broaden NPR's audience.

While still digesting the implications of Kroc's gift, which NPR says is the largest ever given to an American cultural institution, local public broadcasting executives expressed a strong sense of relief that NPR may have acquired a fiscal security blanket.

"I know public radio is not an endowment-fueled institution," said Jane Christo, general manager of Boston member station WBUR-FM. "The most important thing for me is that this actually gives NPR stability and kind of protects it from the ups and downs of the economy."

"This is badly needed by the public radio system," said WGBH president Henry Becton Jr., noting that it comes at a time "when corporate giving, government support . . . and foundation support has all been down."

At the news conference, US Representative Earl Blumenauer, the Oregon Democrat who chairs the Congressional Public Broadcasting Caucus, lauded NPR for filling "a critical need at a time when so much electronic journalism is hard-edged ideological or bland. . . . The closest we have to a true national voice . . . comes from public broadcasting."

In many ways, the 33-year-old NPR is an amazing success story, having grown to about 700 employees and more than 750 stations. NPR says only about 1 percent of its budget comes from federal funds. Half comes from station payments, about 25 percent from foundation grants, and the other quarter from corporate underwriters. The home of such programs as "All Things Considered," "Morning Edition," and "Talk of the Nation," and news reporting with a distinctive global focus, NPR says its audience has grown by more than 60 percent, to around 22 million listeners a week, in the past five years.

At the same time that it has enhanced its clout and prestige, NPR has become an increasing target for those -- particularly conservatives -- who take issue with its coverage. A recent column by L. Brent Bozell III, president of the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog, declared that "National Public Radio is properly understood, even by the media, as radio by and for liberals, not the general public."

NPR has also become public enemy number one for some supporters of Israel who accuse it of biased coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Asked for her reaction to the Kroc gift, Andrea Levin, executive director of the Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, said, "It's a reminder [that] the demographics of NPR are a very elite, wealthy audience. Does the government need to be involved in this?"

The issue of taxpayer funding for public broadcasting has occasionally emerged as a hot-button issue on Capitol Hill. A reporter at yesterday's news conference asked whether the government might now cut off funds to a suddenly flush NPR.

"As it relates to Congress, I think we've turned that corner," Blumenauer responded. "I am not worried this is a signal to reduce or step back."

But the hot topic for speculation was how NPR might use its newfound financial resources. One observer thought it would be tempted to beef up international reporting, while another expressed the hope that it would strengthen cultural programming. Mike Janssen, a staff member of Current, the biweekly newspaper that covers public broadcasting, joked that in his office, "we were kicking around the idea of a public radio theme park."

"It was a huge windfall," he added. "Just unimaginable."