A year after Congress upended the funding model that sustained public broadcasting for decades, the industry is being asked what comes next. A new national initiative wants community voices, not Washington, to help define public media’s purpose and design.
The Poynter Institute and Public Media Company will lead a community-driven process resulting in a full set of recommendations on public media’s purpose, definition, and design principles by early 2027. The work builds on research described as the most comprehensive analysis available of how American communities want media to serve them.
In April, Radio Ink reported that Public Media Company had already begun responding to the funding disruption with a Sustainability Program aimed at building replicable, scalable models to strengthen public media stations’ long-term financial resilience. The Future of Public Media Initiative will convene civic leaders, public media station leaders and staff, nonprofit media organizations, and concerned citizens to answer key questions about the field’s future and build a shared framework for what comes next.
Poynter Institute Vice President of Teaching and Organizational Strategy Sitara Nieves said, “We’re living in an era of enormous change, where technology has connected us in new ways — but also has often isolated us from each other and from reliable information.”
Public Media Company CEO Tim Isgitt said, “This is an opportunity to think expansively about a reimagined public media system that can serve the needs of our country and our communities into the future. Our goal is to establish a clear framework for a robust public media system that helps connect communities and provide trusted information and inspiration to all Americans for free.”
Nieves said the initiative aims “to drive a recommendation for where a public media system could go and what it could look like – how it might serve the real needs of communities in this country at scale.”
