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NPR is a non-profit that offers all of it's reporting for free. (Their income mostly comes from donors.) Their a bit of a special case since they're happy to lo

• bitJericho 10y ago
  That's the thing. I don't think they're losing money on the online offerings. I think people pay by becoming donors and then use the online offerings.
  • 1wheel 10y ago
    Most of their donors are older and primarily use the radio.
    • bitJericho 10y ago
      Most, but not all.
• snowwrestler 10y ago
  NPR is actually in a scary position. Yes most of their money comes from donors, but they are not direct donations. Most of the donations go to the individual radio stations, who then pay NPR for their content. This means that NPR cannot go around their stations directly to their audience. They simply don't have the infrastructure and resources to raise an equivalent amount of donations directly. And as a matter of preference they don't want to hurt the local stations. They like the local stations. It puts major restrictions on their product strategy. Everything they do has to have a way to tie back to a local station, and drive donations to local stations. If they just send everyone to NPR.org, they will go out of business. In this respect, the NYTimes is in a better position for digital. They directly own all their reader and customer relationships, so they have more freedom to innovate.