Listening to NPR with my dad on the weekends growing up in Tulsa was my favorite thing on the planet and basically the reason I wanted to become a journalist.

Listening to NPR with my dad on the weekends growing up in Tulsa was my favorite thing on the planet and basically the reason I wanted to become a journalist. But like everything else in digital disruption that seeks to “make the world a better place,” there are unintended consequences. NPR’s immense success with podcasting could come at the expense of local public radio affiliates around the country. They pay great sums of your donated dollars to NPR (and American Public Media and Public Radio International and BBC, etc — NPR is sort of the Kleenex of public radio in the United States) for the rights to shows a whole lot of Americans still listen to the ol’ fashioned way in their cars or at work over the air. Eventually we’ll listen to only streamed or internet-based content, I’m assuming. So the question is what happens to the affiliates most people are far less familiar with than the NPR brand? (“I heard it on NPR.” You technically heard it on KQED, or KUT, or WGBH, or whatever.) One suggestion for their future is to take advantage of the strong community trust and ties many of them enjoy and beef up local coverage where newspapers are fading away. Stream the content and broadcast it over the air. Share resources between stations like several have done in Texas for the morning program Texas Standard. There are numerous stations in other states doing this or attempting to do it. And of course, be savvy with social, and even consider experimenting with targeted ads and paid (or donated) search. Support these efforts, or better yet, join them. Digital affords an enormous amount of local potential with a relatively small team and budget where newspapers traditionally faced gargantuan printing and operational costs.