Sending Out an S.O.S.

EVEN AFTER the flurry of news stories over the past several months tracking the financial perils of the federally funded public radio network. NPR is hardly a household word. Yet the ranks of the uninitiated had been shrinking and, or most, to know NPR was it love it.

Most knew the station for its two daily news programs, "Morning Edition" and nightly "All Things Considered." These shows are an unorthodox mix of straight "hard news," features, interviews and commentary often humorous. They, along with extensive arts programming and other news shows, developed a devoted following, listenership swelled to 9 million and the mention of National Public Radio drew fewer blank states.

But as the station added programs and personnel, costs swelled as well. By itself, this might not have posed a serious problem. Unfortunately, just as NPR was gearing up to take the airwaves by storm, a certain Californian was readying himself for a personal assault on the nation's capital and almost everything in it. In the midst of its expansion. NPR found its funding slashed, with deeper cuts planned for coming years.

Though tugged in two directions, the network did not tear at once. Then president Frank Mankiewicz announced an ambitious state of money making ventures to make the organization self-sufficient, vowing to enter any profession except the oldest one" to establish fiscal independence. But these projects required initial outlays NPR could ill afford as Dave Stockman and company were flailing away with budget axes.

Trouble came this spring in a traumatic series of events that uncovered crippling deficits (first estimated at 2 million now at 9.1 million), deposed Mankiewicz and other top management officials, and threw the network into eleventh-hour loan negotiations with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to meet the payroll. While the past several months have shed light on the internal problems of NPR, they have also offered some telling commentary on the fate of a public enterprise in a commercial nation.

If the plight of NPR has captured public sympathy at a time when unemployment and business failures are words of the day, it is because the network has stood for something all too rare in the commercial media quality. That meant broadcasting the SALT talks in their entirety, or Cyrus Vance's Harvard Commencement address--not events a lot of people wanted to hear, but something a few listeners wanted to hear very badly, and would have been unable to had NPR not broadcast them. That's not the kind of programming decision that shoves a network into the black.

IT WASN'T a problem I particularly worried about until last summer when I worked as an intern at NPR. But witnessing firsthand the devotion that made the network what it is has made its current difficulties all the more distressing. It was a place of tremendous energy and enthusiasm. On every level, reporters, producers, technicians, people seemed to take a real pride in their work. Staying after hours to make a piece that much better was par for the course. Once a stopover for would-be commercial journalists, NPR had become state-of-the-art radio and a place people wanted to stick around. As a veteran reporter phrased it, "the big difference was that NPR was a place people really believed in," going on to add that many of the employees passed up better paying jobs for a chance to work at the network.

And the day before a payroll deadline threatened to close down NPR. "Morning Edition" executive producer Jay Kernis told The Washington Post "My people leave told me they're coming in Friday even if they don't get paid. They're coming in to work if they aren't locked out."

A last-minute $9.1 million loan agreement with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting salvaged the network's immediate crisis, but NPR's future seems uncertain at best. The loan, together with $2.2 million pledged in a recent three-day fundraiser (the first ever for NPR) and additional funds from local member stations, will go a long way to meeting immediate debts, but won't necessarily restore funding for programming, or restore workers who have been laidoff.

Since January, NPR has fired close to 150 employees and cut back most of its arts programming. And many fear that even the shows that have survived in name may lose its spirit of quality that made them popular. Both the daily news shows have lost both funding and employees staffers agree that the quality has dropped, particularly during the height of uncertainty about the station's future last month. One stringer tells of a producer who gets angry when he brings in story ideas, because the station can't afford to buy them. Other stringers have stopped submitting pieces because the network still owes them backpay. Where NPR once made extensive use of its satellite system to transmit live pieces from Argentina or the Middle East, the news shows are doing more pieces from Washington to save money. Many believe the network should not channel all funds toward paying off the debt, but rather direct the funds to ensure that the quality of the programs survive. "The programs are not to blame for what happened."

Nor is the staff, who nevertheless are bearing the brunt of the cutbacks. Never a flush organization, NPR can withstand some painful fiscal austerity, but the blows this crisis have dealt to the energy and enthusiasm that made the station what it has become, will be harder to repair. One former employee describes "a sense of real doom that NPR will never be the same again. That an era is over." The overwhelming listener support pledged in the fundraiser delivered a badly needed shot in the arm to the staff, but many are still disillusioned and angered by the events of the past months. "You cannot go into an organization, fire one-third of the workforce, drive up to the guardrail of bank ruptcy, and pretend that nothing has happened," news correspondent William Drummond said recently. Drummond, who last month left NPR to teach journalism at the University of California, urged other employees to follow suit and find jobs elsewhere.

Complaints that management has been insensitive to employees and concern over the quality of programming are new and highly destructive troubles for NPR. When these worries (perhaps more common in commercial endeavors) haunt a network that has flourished on cooperation and high quality, it doesn't leave a hell of a lot to go on.

This is not a eulogy for NPR. The network continues to produce two outstanding news shows with one of the most talented staffs in the business. What's more, the listener support that poured in during the three-day fundraiser attests to the fact that people do recognize quality when they hear it. (Close to home, Boston public radio station WBUR raised $255,000, by far the largest amount given by any station.)

National Public Radio should be as fiscally responsible as any organization but, if this spring is any indication, undue financial pressure can only reap disaster. National Public Radio does an exceptional job of what it knows how to do: produce news and arts programs. The network proved less adopt as a business enterprise. The two functions, it would seem, are contradictory almost by definition (at least judging by the bulk of commercial radio). Free enterprise has fostered a lot of developments, but artistic quality has never been one of them. It's why artists found patrons, why scholars seek tenure, and probably why the federal government funded NPR in the first place.