Episode description:

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation, and the media with Eric Schurenberg, longtime journalist and media executive, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media.

Two weeks ago, as we recorded this episode, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting closed its doors. As you no doubt know, Congress this summer voted to claw back money it had already approved to support the Corporation’s work. That work included, among other things, the distribution of federal funding to local public broadcasters, so the voiding of Congress’ promise leaves local stations to fend for themselves. Today’s guest stands at the center of this wrenching transition for public media. She’s Jennifer Ferro, the president of KCRW—Los Angeles’s flagship NPR affiliate—and the chair of National Public Radio’s board of directors.

Jennifer and Eric talk about how KCRW is reinventing itself for a generation that doesn’t own a radio, about the threats to public journalism that go beyond funding—from TikTok to political polarization—and why she believes her real competition isn’t commercial news but the erosion of trust in professional journalism itself.

We also discuss the accusations of political bias at NPR, the lawsuit between NPR and CPB, and what’s at stake when Americans live in separate, sealed information bubbles…

 

Transcript

 

Eric Schurenberg (00:01.421)
Jennifer Farrow, welcome to In Reality.

Jennifer Ferro (00:04.302)
Thank you, I’m so happy to be here.

 

Eric Schurenberg (00:06.825)
It is great to have you. Now you are the president of KCRW, the flagship NPR affiliate in Southern California. For the sake of our audience, could you just describe what that job actually means? you making programming decisions or running the P &L or do you leave the programming decisions to an editorial team? What’s the job?

Jennifer Ferro (00:29.536)
Yeah, so I mean, my, I, you know, because I’m a larger entity, I don’t have to make all the programming decisions. I have staff for that. Mine is really setting strategy and I call myself kind of the chief revenue officer. So I’m just constantly raising resources for KCRW, whether that’s, you know, through finding board members, making partnerships, connections, raising actual dollars, spreading the word of KCRW to people. So that’s.

That’s my job. get that kind of easy, the easy part of the job.

Eric Schurenberg (01:01.203)
yeah. Having been in a similar position at Inc and Fast Company, I know how easy it is. Let’s talk about the menu at KCRW. The programming is a mix of shows that are unique to your station. And some of them are great that I love. were just talking about the podcast, Question Everything. But there’s also

Morning Becomes Eclectic, a music show, left, right, and center, a sort of opinion and political show, as well as sort of the familiar national public radio stalwarts like This American Life. Kind of state the mission, would you, for KCRW? Why, what makes you unique and why it matters?

Jennifer Ferro (01:55.854)
So I think what makes KCRW particularly unique is this mix of things that represent kind of the spirit of Los Angeles. So we’re very heavily invested in music programming and it’s contemporary, you know, kind of music that a lot of our DJs are music supervisors for film and TV and commercials and things like that. So they’re really out there finding artists that are gonna break and become really, you know, part of the culture and

And then, you know, we do, we’re known for doing food programming and live events and, you know, program, just really talking to people about what they’re interested in, what kind of drives them in Los Angeles and in LA, because we’re, you know, such a big city from so, and there’s so many people from so many different places, international and national information is just as important as local information. So we’re really just,

You know, we want to be relevant and part of the zeitgeist of Angelino’s in Southern Californians. And so we have these programs, like we have this food show that’s also really popular and been around for a long time. really it’s also an Instagram community and a robust newsletter and live event source. there’s, you know, we kind of look at things holistically and it’s really our goal is to build

communities of people around shared interests and values.

Eric Schurenberg (03:30.521)
So radio, public radio may be too small a term now to describe everything that KCRW envelopes. We’ll get back to that in a bit. Also, there’s a connection to Santa Monica University. What is that?

Jennifer Ferro (03:46.681)
So Santa Monica Community College is a licensee holder and you know, back in the late 40s, know, or maybe earlier than that, the FCC was handing out licenses on this thing that nobody knew about called the FM band and they gave them to a lot of universities. And so the college, which is a community college and not a university, raised their hand many, you know, a very, very long time ago and they used it.

as a radio workshop, they called it a college radio workshop. That’s where CRW comes from in KCRW. And they trained returning World War II vets on all kinds of broadcast technology.

Eric Schurenberg (04:33.677)
That is a very interesting bit of history. I also, I had a radio program for a while on personal finance that was done out of USC. I guess there is just throughout public radio these educational university connections. I, I always wondered what that was. That’s really interesting. Now, Jennifer, in your abundant spare time, you’re also chairman of the board.

of national public radio. So what does that job entail? And could you, for the sake of the listeners, kind of explain the relationship between NPR and affiliate like KCRW?

Jennifer Ferro (05:15.476)
Yeah. I mean, it’s, you know, perfect public radio. It’s complicated. So it’s a federated system and we, public radio is a federated system. NPR started out as primarily a program producer. And so they created a membership model. So we were all members and kind of helped build NPR into what it is today. And we pay dues and those include programming, but they also include, you know,

representation on the Hill, which of course maybe isn’t needed now, and other kinds of things that are more system related. So program distribution through satellite services, NPR runs that on our behalf. And so it’s a slightly different than just buying programming from NPR. So we are member directors. when the board is made up of its owners and half of its owners are the

or half of the board is the owners and then form of members like me at KCRW. And then we have a number of, we changed the bylaws over the years and added in a number of public directors, which has been extremely valuable to have insight into, you know, the greater media world and commercial world. So that’s the board. it’s, the member directors are voted on by the membership. The public directors are appointed.

And also voted on, but it’s really more of a, it’s a different process. Anyway, that together makes up this board. So it’s 24 people and you know what it’s like trying to get, you know, five people informed and kind of rowing in the same direction. And so when you have 24, it’s quite, quite a big deal. And I often, when we’re putting the agendas together for our board meetings, people are like, I’m giving this 15 minutes. And I’m like, look, if every person around the room talks for two minutes.

That’s an hour. like, let’s be realistic here, you know, about what, about our timing. So anyway, yeah, it’s in, some have called it Herb and Katz, but I think with our new CEO, who you actually know, I know Eric, Catherine Manner, she is quite a strategic force. And this board is really galvanized behind her to kind of look for our future and what, that’s going to be going forward.

Eric Schurenberg (07:28.601)
Yes, that’s a bar.

Eric Schurenberg (07:40.109)
Well, I think it’s impossible to have this conversation without looking ahead to the future, which has suddenly changed. As everybody knows, Congress rescinded more than a billion dollars that had previously allocated for public broadcasting, and that closed down the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributed those funds as of yesterday.

I mean, let’s look at the future. What does that mean for KCRW in particular and for public broadcasting in general?

Jennifer Ferro (08:13.28)
Yeah, think, you know, it’s interesting. There’s, I always just say, like, the federal funding thing has always been an issue. I mean, at least in my time since Newt Gingrich days of when, you know, he wanted to defund public broadcasting. So it’s always been this kind of threat out there when the Trump administration was, it was clear they were coming into power. It was like, OK, this is going to be over.

But I think at the same time, the other threat to public broadcasting is just the way media is today and how people consume it today. Because people just, and especially if you talk to anyone under 30, they don’t even know what a radio is. Nobody has cable anymore for public television. So those were the threats that I have been most concerned about. And I’m like, that’s the bigger threat. And the thing is, when you…

We fund ourselves probably, I mean, for KZRT, it’s half of our budget, but for others, it can be more from our listeners who donate to support us. And so it makes you really look at really hyper serving that group of people, which is great. But it also kind of keeps you a little bit less anxious about what all these other people who you don’t reach are doing when it comes to media.

And I think when you look at how like you’ve got substack and podcasts and this kind of disaggregation of media off of a radio dial or a set of television stations, that’s the biggest threat to public media, frankly, because the trust for public media is so high. Like when we look at surveys,

For people who know what it is, they’re just like, it’s just really at the top. No matter what this particular administration or opponents might say, it is a very trusted source. And I think a lot of that comes from the work that we all do in our communities. That isn’t just about national politics, which is a very polarizing topic. It’s about all these other things that people are like, wow, I didn’t know about those issues and you were the ones to do it and I trust that you have our best interests at heart.

Jennifer Ferro (10:32.928)
I think that is the bigger threat is just, you know, when you look at how people consume media and if they are getting whatever news that they happen to interface with off of TikTok, and then you learn that, well, a lot of these news folks are being supported by packs from various different parties. And again, you could say, look, I’m doing this ethically. And yes, they give me money, but they don’t tell me what to say. That is just something that

is a factor that didn’t used to be a factor. And I think that public media, public radio needs to be in those spaces more than ever because it’s like as an alternative, meaning like you can listen to this person who’s supported by a pack and gets talking points from a pack who may or may not use them. But a public radio, none of that business happens at public radio. So you can always trust it. And I think that’s the big charge that I’m most focused on.

Eric Schurenberg (11:32.153)
So that question of trust and maintaining that level of trust.

Jennifer Ferro (11:32.705)
at KCRW.

Jennifer Ferro (11:38.762)
And also like pushing that into the spaces where people are and they’re interfacing with things that are very untrustworthy.

Eric Schurenberg (11:43.513)
Yes. All right. So being on the platforms where people are going to get the information that you have to provide, the clearly there’s a kind of convergence in media. So as you just mentioned, KCRW also does live events, which and and podcasts as we were just discussing, has a website where it’s

where you can access the kind of programming you do not over broadcast spectrum, but over the internet. There is a real convergence. You’re competing for people’s attention with dance videos on TikTok and Substack, as you mentioned. I guess the question is, where do you go? Where are the initiatives, I guess, that you’re focusing now on at CRW?

for moving into those spaces where people are. At the same time, I guess people still identify, and probably there are many people in your customer base who still get information over the radio.

Jennifer Ferro (12:57.11)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s the thing. It’s like the classic dilemma of anyone doing a legacy, you know, legacy media. It’s like the most loyal audience is listening to the radio or streaming us in a linear way. And so they’re spending the most time with us. They give us the most dollars or they’re most likely to give dollars. They’re most likely to participate in everything that we do.

But at the same time, what we’re trying to do, and we’re using social media a lot to do this. We used to use social media to kind of tell people about the radio. And then we realized, no, people are consuming all their content on that platform. So now we’re doing storytelling and specific to each particular platform. We’re also building out substacks. another, like, this is the kind of broadcasting versus narrowcasting. Like now we are in a world of narrowcasting.

podcasts are narrow, everything is just like, tell me what you’re interested in and I’ll find you the media for it or it will find you. And I think a lot of us have a very much broadcasting mentality. We’re for everybody and we’re gonna speak in a particular way that allows everybody to be able to gain something from this. But what we’re doing is like, we realize that, know, public radio tends to have a problem getting people under 45.

to really participate or to listen or to connect. And so we realized that we have all these kind of backseat babies, kids who grew up in the backseat of their parents’ car, back when there were radios and back when people did that stuff and they listened to public radio, they know us, they grew up on public television, and now they have children. And they want their children to, they wanna be active with their children and do things that are, you know, kind of have the same values as public radio, that satisfy curiosity.

have a global perspective, open your mind to new things, music, food, et cetera. And are a little cool too. Like that’s, we know that we have that brand at KCRW. And so what we decided to do is, you know, start out on Substack with a kids focused newsletter. So a newsletter for parents, we know they’re in the millennial elder millennial phase. We know they have kids, we’re looking at people, kids from like, you know, zero to 11 and we’re

Jennifer Ferro (15:20.942)
compiling information about what they can do with their kids around LA. That’s interesting and intriguing, but that’s also kind of satisfying to them as parents, as people. And we’re looking at, again, that super narrow, defined community, starting to build it out on the newsletter side. And then we’ve got events as well. Like our problem always is, like, oh, let’s start.

an event series, but we always have a capacity problem because we get to this place where it’s like, there’s too many people. Now you got to get double the venue, all the costs, blah, blah, blah. And we were just like, we’re doing this all wrong. we’re, we’re shifting it around. Anyway, that’s just one example. And I think the other thing is the podcast that you referenced question everything. That is a nationally focused podcast. It’s about journalism and it’s very specific. And we knew the audience for it would be journalists and people totally interested in journalism issues.

And Brian Reed, the host, just dives right into that particular community in that niche. And the stories that he’s telling are really resonant. Now, would those make the same amount of sense in the broadcast model on the radio? Probably not, right? There’s just a lot of people would be like, this is boring. don’t want to talk about journalism like this. But we know that with a podcast, can find…

the people most interested in that topic and who have the most to kind of interact with around that. So that’s our strategy is starting to just turn our programming focus towards identifying the niches where we think that we have something valuable to add and then being in that area.

Eric Schurenberg (17:00.855)
Well, that makes a lot of sense. It also illustrates the tension that is present throughout media in this environment. It’s the tension between the institution and its reputation and the level of trust. You referred to that before as something that is a real asset for public media. And at the same time, people want to have a parasocial relationship with a particular deliverer of news or information or opinion.

The two are sort of in tension. You want people to recognize Brian Reed, since we talked about him, as someone who has the imprimatur of a trusted institution like KCRW. you also want people to be loyal to him in particular. How do you manage that kind of tension?

Jennifer Ferro (17:53.165)
Yeah, so we have just, we are giving up on, not giving up, we’re leaning into that. Because the truth is, in fundraising, people give money to people. People always say that, people give to people. And what that means is that there’s institutions that could ask you for money, but if I’m asking you, Eric, and you’re like, you know what, I really believe in what you’re doing. I think you have a good cause. I’m gonna give money to you because I care about you. I mean, that’s really…

We are humans, we react to humans. You know, I think the odd thing that we’ve done is tried to create these institutions and expected people to build loyalty around institutions. So we’re really trying to lean into those personalities. And I think for KCRW, one of our unique contributions to public media is that we have always been more personality focused rather than more of like, we are the reporters.

Eric Schurenberg (18:36.121)
Hmm.

Jennifer Ferro (18:49.39)
telling you the story with a person whose voice could be replaced at any time. mean, we’ve got, you know, hosts that have got well-known followings and they should be trusted. We trust them and they’re trustworthy because they’re experts in their particular field. So yeah, I think, you know, this is the time to lean into that. And if we can be the scaffolding under which someone like Brian Reed can find the support to be able to do his excellent work.

and it benefits KCRW and Bryan, then we’re all in support of that.

Eric Schurenberg (19:23.169)
Okay, all right, well that makes sense. And also, you could note in the surveys back this up is that a broadcaster or a local broadcaster, whether it’s television or radio, tends to be already, even before the days of streaming a podcast, personality focused. And that there was a lot of trust even then that was invested in the personality. This is the person you invite into your living room or

to sit next to you figuratively in the car as you’re driving. And that requires a lot of trust and engenders a lot of trust if it works out. NPR and sort of by association, KCRW kind of was thrust into the political divide. Congress justified pulling back that money by claiming that NPR was biased against conservative points of view and

to back up that claim, they could point to an essay by among others that former NPR editor, Yuri Berliner, claimed that the newsroom was indeed politically biased. And from an outsider’s point of view, here is someone who’s on the inside who took a certain amount of risk to make this claim and therefore that seems on the face of it to be credible. Is there…

Whether there’s any merit to that complaint or not, the perception is definitely there. It’s had serious financial effects on the public media ecosystem. What do do about it at KCRW when people confront you with that claim?

Jennifer Ferro (21:10.798)
Yeah, and I think first of all, I just want to push back a little bit on, you know, that that is certainly that’s out in the zeitgeist, but the people who rely on public media every day, which is like 50 million people a week, certainly do not think that it is biased. So I do think that we should level set a little bit. I mean, there are people who

And honestly, I mean, think we can look at studies when you look at media in general, news. I mean, 2016 became a very huge divisive year where it became like, if you are this political party, these are the news sources you listen to or consume. And if you are this other one, these are those. It’s really quite dramatic when you see what happened in the world.

or not in the world, in the world of media in the United States. The notion of being biased though, I think is something that public media cares a lot about, NPR cares a lot about. And in fact, at NPR, they did install a series of editorial stop gaps that really, I think, kind of got to more of the issue that might be producing some of that feeling.

Eric Schurenberg (22:09.881)
Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Ferro (22:36.876)
So while each particular story may not be biased, I think it was, you know, a collection of the how many stories are on this particular topic versus this topic. So now they have a system to be able to look at that and analyze it in a, in a analytical way to, make good decisions and good choices. But, you know, I think it’s, it’s really unfortunate to, to use those claims.

against a media source who at its core cares about that subject as opposed to other media sources that are quite popular who have no regard for that at all. So again, I think accountability is critical. And again, it’s what makes you trust a news source is if they were willing to accept criticism and then address it in some way. And I feel like NPR has done a good job at that.

Eric Schurenberg (23:35.449)
Yeah, I would just to jump in and point out that the accusations of bias or sort of perceptions of bias and also I would say kind of real bias often tends not to be that reporters are making stuff up. It tends to be around the selection of news. What stories are we going to cover?

And then we cover them faithfully and factually, but it can give you an idea of what the world is just by the sort of the selection of stories that you think that your editors think are news. But I would say that you, I totally agree with you and I think you make an awfully good point, Jennifer, is that the standards by which you ought to judge a news source as to whether it’s trustworthy or not,

have a lot to do with the process and not the content. Does the news source admit mistakes? Does it take feedback from its audience and change its processes to conform to the highest standards of journalism? I think whatever you think about NPR’s story selection, it would be hard to argue that it did not adhere to pretty high standards.

One of the things that strikes me in your description of what the mission is for KCRW is the focus on community. And that is very similar to what I hear from newsrooms that are affiliated with local newspapers or today increasingly new digital local newsrooms. And in fact, in a few locations like prominently Chicago,

local newspaper newsrooms and public radio newsrooms have merged. Do you see this as, and also for our part of our earlier conversation talked about kind of the blurring of distinctions between the different platforms that a community newsroom can utilize in delivering its message. Do you see this kind of merger as the future?

Jennifer Ferro (26:01.145)
possibly. I think, you know, the thing that, where, so again, this is about kind of shoring up institutions, the institution of a newspaper, which, you know, we spend a lot of time talking about news, about headlines, about news and information. But really when you think about what the newspaper represented to us back when we used to have them.

They were accessible and had a lot of information for people that had no interest in the news. They either read the sports pages, they read the classifieds to look for jobs, they looked at movie listings, they found restaurant recommendations. There were things that kind of represented and reflected the community that they lived in. And depending on how big the paper was, or I mean, the city was, you would…

you could potentially see yourself in the paper. You know, there’s like, it was our bake sale for our church and there’s me with my cake, you know? So there was something really kind of holistic about the newspaper. And so when we are in this place now where all of that has been disaggregated and broken apart, you kind of leave what we call, you know, news media or newspapers with almost

Eric Schurenberg (27:08.121)
Yeah.

Jennifer Ferro (27:30.338)
the least visited part of the paper. And that’s the news part. Even though it’s important and people would skim headlines and that’s what people do now. If they look at them at all, right? They, I heard so-and-so. Someone said this happened. So I just, don’t know if going forward an institution can survive on just news.

I think that the only way forward is to build direct relationships. And that is what we’re focused on at KCRW. So when we say community, which is a very overused word and it’s like, what does that mean? And in fact, I was talking to some people in the faith community clergy of like, what do you consider community? What makes something feel like a community? Is it same time every week?

something that happens, is it the same people? Like what makes that sticky and valuable? And so when I think about like what that newspaper represented, and it’s important to have all those other things because they support one of the more important parts of the news and media and journalism is to be the watchdog. And it’s like, we know that even if people don’t read it, the fact that it’s there and that it exists is

is the accountability that we need for lots of parts of our lives. So, you know, I think we just need to have that kind of holistic community. And so when I talk about direct relationships, what I mean is that we’re in this world where not just two or three companies have the direct relationships with every human being in the globe. We don’t necessarily have them as media.

And at KCRW, know, we have members so we can identify those people and we can have their email addresses and their phone numbers and their names. But there’s a lot of people who consume what we do and we’ll never have them or we can see that they follow us on Instagram, but we can’t get them out of Instagram. our focus is really in our live event strategy, our newsletter and substrack strategy is to find identifiable parts of our audience and then start to really be in this two-way conversation of like,

Jennifer Ferro (29:51.341)
What are the kinds of things that, how do you live your life? What do you need? And let us determine what you might think is great by knowing who you are kind of thing. So anyway, that’s what I think is the way forward. Now that’s incremental, it’s not scale, but I don’t know what other method you have against these giant, giant companies that have all this data on all of us.

Eric Schurenberg (30:05.011)
These are.

Eric Schurenberg (30:19.639)
Yes, you’re talking of course about the social media platforms that managed to steal an awful lot of the advertising dollars because they knew so much about their clients and could do just so much better job at targeting audiences for advertisers.

Jennifer, the conversations that you’re having that you just described are the conversations we had at Inc. and Fast Company all the time and that every media company is having now somehow or other, we lost our grip on who our most loyal customers are, or at least a certain amount of our customer base, perhaps not the most loyal. Let me ask about sort of the political environment and what has been, and

maybe stepping back to sort of first principles. So radio spectrum is a public good. It’s regulated by the FCC and the FCC chairman. Brendan Carr has, has declared that he’s against federal funding of public radio stations. And now he got his wish. He’s also open investigations in NPR about how it handles advertising. I wonder if that particular investigation is now moot.

since the funding has been rescinded.

Jennifer Ferro (31:45.355)
No, it’s not moot. I think this is the thing. mean, that, you know, the new Bible of politics is project 2025. And if you look, there is a chapter on not only defunding public broadcasting, but removing public broadcasters from their licenses. So that’s the next thing that we’re bracing for. And

And while, yes, I say so much of media is in all these other ways and the radio and the television are less important, those are the bedrock of our most valuable connections with people. if you think about, mean, the television spectrum is quite valuable. And so for public television, is a, if anyone’s interested in raising money for themselves or the treasury,

you know, getting their hands on that spectrum would be really, really valuable. Radio, slightly less valuable, but still the interest isn’t in making money. The interest is in destroying public media. And that is very clear. And I don’t feel like I’m partisan for saying that. It is written in their book. So you just got to read it. And I think that the mistake that probably a lot of us made was not taking them seriously about that, about their plans because

everything is lined up for them to do it. Now, that would be just devastating to public media in general, but it would be so, you know, it’s like when I think about what public radio does specifically, and we, you know, we talk about this a lot when we would go on the Hill, we would talk about this all the time, but these things are very true. When there are fires, floods,

earthquakes, natural disasters, public radio is there. There’s human beings on the ground. They live in the community. They know the people to go talk to talk to. And usually our technology works in all of those kinds of situations. So if the Internet goes down, the radio still works. And so, you know, when you take that spectrum away and if you were to sell it, the people who would buy our spectrum would be

Jennifer Ferro (34:06.964)
Often, I mean, what we’ve seen in the past is religious broadcasters that broadcast from a national place and they are fundraising machines and they do, I’m sure they do great work and they have great and loyal audiences, but they’re not focused on the local community. And I think that is something that I fear because technology moves forward and it’s so convenient and stuff like that until maybe a satellite gets knocked offline, you know, or.

an earthquake happens or a flood. When in North Carolina, when there was those devastating floods a year and a half ago, it was the public radio station that put, they would go around and put pieces of paper on poles, tune into this frequency on that thing in your car called a radio. And we will give you all the information and they broadcast it hourly. They broadcast all the public information. They broadcast it in Spanish.

Eric Schurenberg (34:57.113)
Thanks

Jennifer Ferro (35:04.684)
They were like, here’s where you get water, here’s where you get food. These things were essential to the community. And we could say, yeah, natural disasters don’t happen that often. But look, when they happen, you sure want to have someone who actually knows what they’re doing and live human bodies that are telling you how to help. So that part of that really disturbs me. I’m disturbed on the First Amendment part of the whole thing with the government controlling access from

viewpoints that they don’t particularly support. You know, here’s another thing, Eric, sorry to keep going on, but when we would go on the Hill, which was, you know, frequent, we would talk to a lot of, I would talk to a lot of people in our, in our delegation who are Republicans. And they were like, look, like private, I’m not going to say this publicly, but privately.

I really support public radio because you’re in my community. You provide all kinds of information. You give me a platform to speak unedited about what I’m doing in my district. You know, we, there’s a lot of value locally that just got really threatened by these congressional actions. So, you know, anyway, there’s fear and anxiety all around.

Eric Schurenberg (36:18.553)
Yeah, Jennifer, I sympathize. And I’ve heard that from many sources, that the conversations that many Republican representatives have in private are very different from the ones they have on public platforms. And that is really disheartening. There is, you know, in terms of the financial challenges that you face, you…

clearly are prepared to pivot on the way you handle platforms and the way you build relationships with your community. How has the threats to the First Amendment, to freedom of speech, the threats to your existence that are based on people’s view of whether the content is conservative enough, how has that changed the conversation within your newsroom and with other stations through NPR?

Jennifer Ferro (37:16.182)
Well, in some way, like now not having public funding and now really not having that audience to have to talk to, right? It’s like, in looking at what’s happening on a First Amendment level, we’re the ones that have to have the courage to speak up. And we are free. We’re free.

where first of all, we’re free to people, we’re accessible, but we’re now free to be able to speak the truth in ways that weren’t, even though we did it before, we don’t have to worry about the threat of defunding, it’s been defunded. So now our mandate has to be to have the courage to speak the truth. And I do think the courage is there. I’m not saying it wasn’t there, but there’s some kind of…

Eric Schurenberg (37:49.785)
Mm.

Jennifer Ferro (38:13.038)
freedom in a sense when you don’t have a particular audience to cater to. Now, when I say cater to, we got those funds for, they were called community service grants, and that’s exactly how we use those funds. It was to provide community service. It wasn’t to power the journalism that we were doing. So we’ll continue to do that, but I think it now puts public radio and NPR in a unique space.

Eric Schurenberg (38:26.649)
Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Ferro (38:42.572)
We are not looking to merge our massive company, know, corporate power is not looking to merge and might be affected by the government. We’re not, we’re not subject to funding. I mean, of course we have the FCC threat, but we now have to understand our role in society as it relates to the first amendment and continue to do what we do very proudly. And the thing that really is

a great backstop is these millions of people who support us and believe in what we do. And they’re not just far left Democrats. These are people who believe in this notion of having public radio. it’s like there’s public parks, public libraries, and public radio. that’s kind of the spirit of President Johnson when he signed

the Public Broadcasting Act in 1967, or was it 57? No, 67. So it’s still part of the ethos, you know? And I know that there’s a lot of people who believe in that in America. And again, being in the community and spaces where we are doing things from sponsoring health fairs to having a pie contest in Los Angeles to all these things that…

Eric Schurenberg (39:47.683)
So, excuse me.

Jennifer Ferro (40:08.76)
that our organizations do that build the trust, they make us kind of unassailable with our community. And that’s really important to have that. And I feel very proud of that.

Eric Schurenberg (40:20.781)
There is a lot of power in that and I hope that you can harness it. Looking out 10 years, what will KCRW look like? How will it be different from today?

Jennifer Ferro (40:33.898)
I think that KCRW will be a lot more, just less focused on the broadcast side, much more focused on discrete programming to specific audiences. Our focus and partnerships will continue to be with Southern Californian institutions, will continue to fund these excellent

national podcasts like question everything. We might be smaller, but I think we’ll be just a lot more. We’ll continue to be as relevant as we are today. It’s funny. I’ve been at KCRW for my entire adult life. Like I got a job as a volunteer while I was in college at UCLA. And then I ended up getting a job as the assistant to the general manager of KCRW.

And then, you know, ended up running the place. So, but what I remember from a lot of my career at KCRW was we were very small. We had a signal that didn’t get past Robertson Boulevard. We were, you know, we were just tiny. There was 35 to 40 people, but our impact was enormous because we were able to tell the stories of, that piqued the curiosity of the people who wanted

their curiosity peaked. we’re going to continue to be a power like that. don’t think being, know, scale is for people trying to make a ton of money. That’s not our concern. So it’s about relevance and impact. And we’re going to continue to be that. I see that in 10 years. I don’t know exactly what form that is, but I know that we will pivot when we’re supposed to pivot.

Eric Schurenberg (42:33.997)
Relevance and impact. think that’s a good place to leave it, Jennifer. Thank you so much for this conversation and thank you for what you’re doing with KCRW. I wish you all kinds of luck as you navigate what is definitely a landscape filled with landmines these days.

Jennifer Ferro (42:53.792)
Yeah, I appreciate Eric. appreciate meeting you and I appreciate this conversation so much. Thank you.

Eric Schurenberg (43:00.185)
Thank you.

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Created & produced by: Podcast Partners / Published: Oct 30 2025

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