California’s NPR and PBS Stations Will Cut Staff and Programs After Funding Slashed
‘No One in Public Media Is Safe’: KQED Layoffs Underscore Peril of Federal Defunding
KQED to Slash Workforce by 15%, Cutting Dozens of Jobs in Latest Round of Layoffs
As Trump Targets NPR and PBS Funding, Small Local Stations Brace for Fallout
San Francisco Mayoral Candidates Clash as Breed Faces Attacks From Farrell, Lurie
How This Bay Area Conductor’s Mexican Roots Propelled Him to the Symphony
KQED's Approach to DEI Challenges in America's Evolving Political Landscape
KQED Cuts 34 Positions Amid Budget Shortfall
Here’s Why KQED Is Latest Public Media Outlet to Face Layoffs
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"slug": "californias-npr-and-pbs-stations-will-cut-staff-and-programs-after-funding-slashed",
"title": "California’s NPR and PBS Stations Will Cut Staff and Programs After Funding Slashed",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/\">CalMatters\u003c/a>. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/subscribe-to-calmatters/\">Sign up\u003c/a> for their newsletters.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dozens of California public broadcasting stations will lose millions of dollars in funding after \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101910095/how-trumps-massive-wide-ranging-budget-bill-could-affect-you\">Republicans in Congress voted\u003c/a> to strip them of federal funding, cutting off a vital lifeline in rural communities and limiting access to local news programming in an era of hyperpartisan national media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While California broadcasters are assuring audiences that they plan to keep their signals running, they also warn that cost-saving changes are inevitable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Radio and television stations of all \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12038576/trump-targets-npr-pbs-funding-small-local-stations-brace-fallout\">sizes across the Golden State\u003c/a> say that to survive, they’ll likely be forced to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12048660/no-one-in-public-media-is-safe-kqed-layoffs-underscore-peril-of-federal-defunding\">lay off staff and cut programming\u003c/a> unless they’re able to make up the losses through fundraising. Their leaders warn that the cuts will disproportionately harm locally produced programs — the most expensive to create but among their most popular content — that inform millions of listeners and viewers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Republicans have long wanted to cut funding for public broadcasting, arguing such services should be funded by private donors, not taxpayers. Their efforts prevailed when Congress last week finalized President Donald Trump’s request to rescind $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides grants to National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting Service, their affiliates and other independent public media creators. All nine of California’s Republican members of Congress \u003ca href=\"https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2025203?Page=2\">voted in favor\u003c/a> of the funding cuts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10952138\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 700px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/05/259A0551_t700-1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10952138\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/05/259A0551_t700-1.jpg\" alt=\"From left to right: Duf Sundheim, Kamala Harris, Loretta Sanchez, Ron Unz, Tom Del Beccaro at a debate at KPBS in San Diego, May 10, 2016.\" width=\"700\" height=\"466\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/05/259A0551_t700-1.jpg 700w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/05/259A0551_t700-1-400x266.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">From left to right: Duf Sundheim, Kamala Harris, Loretta Sanchez, Ron Unz and Tom Del Beccaro at a debate at KPBS in San Diego, May 10, 2016. \u003ccite>(Milan Kovacevic/KPBS)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Now, \u003ca href=\"https://cpb.org/aboutcpb/financials/funding/2024/ca\">roughly 35 stations\u003c/a> from San Diego to Hoopa in Humboldt County have lost critical funding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While many public broadcasters remain hopeful that they’ll find ways to endure, all agree the rescission undermines the egalitarian mission of public media — to create a nationwide network that provides access to quality information, stories and music for local communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That has been our superpower,” said Joe Moore, president and general manager of KVPR Valley Public Radio in Fresno. His station lost about 7% of its budget — or $175,000 — from the CPB.[aside postID=news_12038576 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/GettyImages-2206434879-1020x680.jpg']“\u003cem>The New York Times\u003c/em> doesn’t have the type of investment in Alaska or in North Dakota — or on tribal reservations, bringing local news from these communities — that public radio does.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smaller stations whose budgets relied heavily on federal dollars to make ends meet are the most at risk of closure. In Eureka, the community-owned PBS affiliate KEET-TV stands to lose $847,000 — nearly half of its operating budget — due to the defunding of CPB. To survive, all of its funding will need to come from community support, since the station has no institutional backer such as a local college or school district.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>David Gordon, KEET’s general manager and executive director, says that as much as he hopes the station will stay afloat even at reduced capacity, he won’t make the same bold proclamation that, “We’re not going anywhere,” like some stations have.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can’t guarantee that KEET will be here once the dust settles from this defunding move,” Gordon said. He emphasized that he was speaking for himself and not on behalf of his station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I hope it is, and I think there’s a good chance that it’ll survive in some form. But absolutely will it? I don’t know if I can say that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nearby, Mendocino-based NPR member station KZYX was forced to lay off its news director after losing 25% of its operating budget — or $174,000 — from the CPB. That means news will include fewer in-depth stories, such as interviews with city council members or county supervisors, said Andre de Channes, KZYX’s general manager and director of operations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There isn’t the time to source out those kinds of things,” he said. “So the news gets more like a headline news.”[aside postID=news_12048660 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240522-KQEDheadquarters-10-BL_qut-1020x680.jpg']The station serves roughly 130,000 listeners, including in Mendocino County and part of Lake County. When de Channes first learned about the CPB cuts, he immediately worried about fire safety, since listeners who live in off-the-grid rural areas without access to internet or cell service rely on KZYX for emergency information.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those potentially lifesaving emergency alerts became a rallying cry for public media providers and their allies as they begged Congress to preserve funding for their stations, especially those in remote, rural areas that also tend to be Republican. Frank Lanzone, the longtime general manager of the NPR-affiliated KCBX in San Luis Obispo, said his station has sometimes been the only on-air source providing emergency information during severe weather events.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s been several times in very bad storms when we’re the only station on the air in our area because of either power outages or people’s generators ran out of propane,” said Lanzone, who has worked in public radio for more than 50 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KCBX, which serves about 45,000 listeners from Santa Barbara to Monterey, will lose $240,000 in funding from CPB, about 13% of its operating budget.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s going to hurt the stations and the people that listen to them who need it the most,” Lanzone said. “The most vulnerable, the ones out in the middle of nowhere.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Local programs are most at risk\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Both radio and television station leaders emphasized that local programming — shows that are created and produced in-house rather than purchased from another producer — will be first on the chopping block. To produce locally focused public television programming, stations must invest additional time, money and work on top of the membership dues they pay to be affiliated with PBS, which unlocks a large catalogue of programming that they can air at no additional cost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For PBS viewers in the Inland Empire, that likely means the loss of popular local programs such as \u003cem>Inland Edition\u003c/em>, an Emmy-winning weekly half-hour public affairs show, and \u003cem>Learn With Me\u003c/em>, an award-winning bilingual English-Spanish children’s show, both of which are produced in house by affiliate KVCR.\u003cbr>\n[aside postID=news_12038583 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/20240411_PressDemocratFile_GC-4_qed-1020x680.jpg']“The local stuff that’s so important to people is probably the stuff that’ll go away,” said Connie Leyva, executive director of KVCR and a former Democratic state senator. The station stands to lose about $550,000 in annual CPB funding, about 6% of its budget.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She emphasized that the station also wanted to preserve its journalism staff — two full-time reporters and one part-time — who have recently focused on federal immigration raids taking place across the region.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we’re not here, the Inland Empire is just hearing about what’s happening in Los Angeles,” Leyva said. “We want to know what’s happening in our backyard, what’s happening at the schools around us, what’s happening at the Home Depots around us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Large stations and independents suffer too\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>While larger radio stations such as KQED in San Francisco are better equipped than their smaller counterparts to withstand the blow to their budgets, they too will lose massive chunks of funding that currently fund journalist positions and popular shows. Tony Marcano, who runs a statewide partnership network of 14 public radio stations and CalMatters known as the California Newsroom, said the loss of public funding will require even more collaboration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Smaller stations are likely to be more affected, but that doesn’t mean that the large stations are out of the woods,” Marcano said. “There’ll be pain.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED, one of the country’s most listened-to public radio stations and the largest in California, laid off 45 employees earlier this month and lost 10 more from early retirement offers. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12048122/kqed-to-slash-workforce-by-15-cutting-dozens-of-jobs-in-latest-round-of-layoffs\">15% reduction\u003c/a> came on the eve of Congress passing the budget cuts and is KQED’s third round of layoffs in just five years. Though the station stressed that the cuts were due to longstanding financial challenges, KQED now stands to lose close to $8 million, or about 8% of its revenue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>LAist, the Los Angeles area’s largest NPR affiliate, \u003ca href=\"https://laist.com/news/laist-cuts-staff-by-5-percent\">laid off eight people\u003c/a> earlier this year and has slashed 61 positions since 2023. It will lose $1.7 million in federal funding, about 4% of its budget.[aside postID=news_12048504 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/250717-BontaForum-04-BL_qed.jpg']The consequences go beyond newsroom staff and programming. The federal government funds repairs to transmission infrastructure and played a role in helping negotiate artist royalty fees on behalf of local stations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Radio Bilingüe, a Central Valley-based organization that is one of the largest Spanish-language radio outlets and broadcasts throughout the U.S. and Mexico, was in the final stages of negotiations for a $1.1 million grant from the CPB to improve its transmission equipment, which hasn’t been updated since the 1980s. But the funding rollback means it will have to find the money elsewhere, said Hugo Morales, the group’s co-executive director and founder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re talking about transmitters that are 40 years old,” Morales said. “At some point, it’s going to give out, and we’re going to have to find somewhere else to raise the money for that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Morales also made the difficult decision earlier this year to cancel the construction of three additional stations across Arizona and New Mexico that would have primarily served rural communities and farm workers who don’t have access to broadband. The organization and its stations will lose $300,000 in annual CPB grants, roughly 7.5% of its yearly budget.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the COVID-19 pandemic, Radio Bilingüe shared vital information about testing centers, vaccine availability and how to sign up for social services in Spanish and Indigenous languages such as Mixteco and Triqui.[aside postID=forum_2010101910095 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/43/2025/05/GettyImages-2216492432-big-beautiful-bill-1020x574.jpg']The loss of CPB funding will also jeopardize independent documentary filmmakers supported by the San Francisco-based ITVS, which Congress created in 1990 as an independent service with a mandate to increase diversity and innovation in public media. It received roughly 86% of its budget, $19 million, from federal grants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ITVS leaders say the group has partnered with hundreds of independent filmmakers to co-produce more than 900 feature documentaries distributed to PBS stations nationwide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Public media is a space for all Americans,” said Carrie Lozano, the organization’s president and CEO. “These films are not partisan. They are, generally speaking, films that touch everybody’s lives. They are there in service of the public.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In anticipation of the cuts, the organization laid off 13 employees in June, or roughly 20% of its staff. Lozano expects roughly 10 films to lose out on funding this year — a big cut from the 20 to 40 feature and short documentaries that ITVS typically funds every year. While the organization is determined to stay afloat, Lozano worries the loss of federal investment will prevent important stories from being told and create a domino effect on the rest of the ecosystem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s no question that this is a huge blow to the field,” Lozano said, “and to everything that surrounds it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2025/07/pbs-npr-budget-cuts/\">originally published on CalMatters\u003c/a> and was republished under the \u003ca href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/\">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives\u003c/a> license.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/\">CalMatters\u003c/a>. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/subscribe-to-calmatters/\">Sign up\u003c/a> for their newsletters.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dozens of California public broadcasting stations will lose millions of dollars in funding after \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101910095/how-trumps-massive-wide-ranging-budget-bill-could-affect-you\">Republicans in Congress voted\u003c/a> to strip them of federal funding, cutting off a vital lifeline in rural communities and limiting access to local news programming in an era of hyperpartisan national media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While California broadcasters are assuring audiences that they plan to keep their signals running, they also warn that cost-saving changes are inevitable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Radio and television stations of all \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12038576/trump-targets-npr-pbs-funding-small-local-stations-brace-fallout\">sizes across the Golden State\u003c/a> say that to survive, they’ll likely be forced to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12048660/no-one-in-public-media-is-safe-kqed-layoffs-underscore-peril-of-federal-defunding\">lay off staff and cut programming\u003c/a> unless they’re able to make up the losses through fundraising. Their leaders warn that the cuts will disproportionately harm locally produced programs — the most expensive to create but among their most popular content — that inform millions of listeners and viewers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Republicans have long wanted to cut funding for public broadcasting, arguing such services should be funded by private donors, not taxpayers. Their efforts prevailed when Congress last week finalized President Donald Trump’s request to rescind $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides grants to National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting Service, their affiliates and other independent public media creators. All nine of California’s Republican members of Congress \u003ca href=\"https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2025203?Page=2\">voted in favor\u003c/a> of the funding cuts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10952138\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 700px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/05/259A0551_t700-1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10952138\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/05/259A0551_t700-1.jpg\" alt=\"From left to right: Duf Sundheim, Kamala Harris, Loretta Sanchez, Ron Unz, Tom Del Beccaro at a debate at KPBS in San Diego, May 10, 2016.\" width=\"700\" height=\"466\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/05/259A0551_t700-1.jpg 700w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/05/259A0551_t700-1-400x266.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">From left to right: Duf Sundheim, Kamala Harris, Loretta Sanchez, Ron Unz and Tom Del Beccaro at a debate at KPBS in San Diego, May 10, 2016. \u003ccite>(Milan Kovacevic/KPBS)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Now, \u003ca href=\"https://cpb.org/aboutcpb/financials/funding/2024/ca\">roughly 35 stations\u003c/a> from San Diego to Hoopa in Humboldt County have lost critical funding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While many public broadcasters remain hopeful that they’ll find ways to endure, all agree the rescission undermines the egalitarian mission of public media — to create a nationwide network that provides access to quality information, stories and music for local communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That has been our superpower,” said Joe Moore, president and general manager of KVPR Valley Public Radio in Fresno. His station lost about 7% of its budget — or $175,000 — from the CPB.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“\u003cem>The New York Times\u003c/em> doesn’t have the type of investment in Alaska or in North Dakota — or on tribal reservations, bringing local news from these communities — that public radio does.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smaller stations whose budgets relied heavily on federal dollars to make ends meet are the most at risk of closure. In Eureka, the community-owned PBS affiliate KEET-TV stands to lose $847,000 — nearly half of its operating budget — due to the defunding of CPB. To survive, all of its funding will need to come from community support, since the station has no institutional backer such as a local college or school district.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>David Gordon, KEET’s general manager and executive director, says that as much as he hopes the station will stay afloat even at reduced capacity, he won’t make the same bold proclamation that, “We’re not going anywhere,” like some stations have.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can’t guarantee that KEET will be here once the dust settles from this defunding move,” Gordon said. He emphasized that he was speaking for himself and not on behalf of his station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I hope it is, and I think there’s a good chance that it’ll survive in some form. But absolutely will it? I don’t know if I can say that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nearby, Mendocino-based NPR member station KZYX was forced to lay off its news director after losing 25% of its operating budget — or $174,000 — from the CPB. That means news will include fewer in-depth stories, such as interviews with city council members or county supervisors, said Andre de Channes, KZYX’s general manager and director of operations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There isn’t the time to source out those kinds of things,” he said. “So the news gets more like a headline news.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The station serves roughly 130,000 listeners, including in Mendocino County and part of Lake County. When de Channes first learned about the CPB cuts, he immediately worried about fire safety, since listeners who live in off-the-grid rural areas without access to internet or cell service rely on KZYX for emergency information.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those potentially lifesaving emergency alerts became a rallying cry for public media providers and their allies as they begged Congress to preserve funding for their stations, especially those in remote, rural areas that also tend to be Republican. Frank Lanzone, the longtime general manager of the NPR-affiliated KCBX in San Luis Obispo, said his station has sometimes been the only on-air source providing emergency information during severe weather events.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s been several times in very bad storms when we’re the only station on the air in our area because of either power outages or people’s generators ran out of propane,” said Lanzone, who has worked in public radio for more than 50 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KCBX, which serves about 45,000 listeners from Santa Barbara to Monterey, will lose $240,000 in funding from CPB, about 13% of its operating budget.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s going to hurt the stations and the people that listen to them who need it the most,” Lanzone said. “The most vulnerable, the ones out in the middle of nowhere.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Local programs are most at risk\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Both radio and television station leaders emphasized that local programming — shows that are created and produced in-house rather than purchased from another producer — will be first on the chopping block. To produce locally focused public television programming, stations must invest additional time, money and work on top of the membership dues they pay to be affiliated with PBS, which unlocks a large catalogue of programming that they can air at no additional cost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For PBS viewers in the Inland Empire, that likely means the loss of popular local programs such as \u003cem>Inland Edition\u003c/em>, an Emmy-winning weekly half-hour public affairs show, and \u003cem>Learn With Me\u003c/em>, an award-winning bilingual English-Spanish children’s show, both of which are produced in house by affiliate KVCR.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“The local stuff that’s so important to people is probably the stuff that’ll go away,” said Connie Leyva, executive director of KVCR and a former Democratic state senator. The station stands to lose about $550,000 in annual CPB funding, about 6% of its budget.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She emphasized that the station also wanted to preserve its journalism staff — two full-time reporters and one part-time — who have recently focused on federal immigration raids taking place across the region.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we’re not here, the Inland Empire is just hearing about what’s happening in Los Angeles,” Leyva said. “We want to know what’s happening in our backyard, what’s happening at the schools around us, what’s happening at the Home Depots around us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Large stations and independents suffer too\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>While larger radio stations such as KQED in San Francisco are better equipped than their smaller counterparts to withstand the blow to their budgets, they too will lose massive chunks of funding that currently fund journalist positions and popular shows. Tony Marcano, who runs a statewide partnership network of 14 public radio stations and CalMatters known as the California Newsroom, said the loss of public funding will require even more collaboration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Smaller stations are likely to be more affected, but that doesn’t mean that the large stations are out of the woods,” Marcano said. “There’ll be pain.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED, one of the country’s most listened-to public radio stations and the largest in California, laid off 45 employees earlier this month and lost 10 more from early retirement offers. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12048122/kqed-to-slash-workforce-by-15-cutting-dozens-of-jobs-in-latest-round-of-layoffs\">15% reduction\u003c/a> came on the eve of Congress passing the budget cuts and is KQED’s third round of layoffs in just five years. Though the station stressed that the cuts were due to longstanding financial challenges, KQED now stands to lose close to $8 million, or about 8% of its revenue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>LAist, the Los Angeles area’s largest NPR affiliate, \u003ca href=\"https://laist.com/news/laist-cuts-staff-by-5-percent\">laid off eight people\u003c/a> earlier this year and has slashed 61 positions since 2023. It will lose $1.7 million in federal funding, about 4% of its budget.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The consequences go beyond newsroom staff and programming. The federal government funds repairs to transmission infrastructure and played a role in helping negotiate artist royalty fees on behalf of local stations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Radio Bilingüe, a Central Valley-based organization that is one of the largest Spanish-language radio outlets and broadcasts throughout the U.S. and Mexico, was in the final stages of negotiations for a $1.1 million grant from the CPB to improve its transmission equipment, which hasn’t been updated since the 1980s. But the funding rollback means it will have to find the money elsewhere, said Hugo Morales, the group’s co-executive director and founder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re talking about transmitters that are 40 years old,” Morales said. “At some point, it’s going to give out, and we’re going to have to find somewhere else to raise the money for that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Morales also made the difficult decision earlier this year to cancel the construction of three additional stations across Arizona and New Mexico that would have primarily served rural communities and farm workers who don’t have access to broadband. The organization and its stations will lose $300,000 in annual CPB grants, roughly 7.5% of its yearly budget.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the COVID-19 pandemic, Radio Bilingüe shared vital information about testing centers, vaccine availability and how to sign up for social services in Spanish and Indigenous languages such as Mixteco and Triqui.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The loss of CPB funding will also jeopardize independent documentary filmmakers supported by the San Francisco-based ITVS, which Congress created in 1990 as an independent service with a mandate to increase diversity and innovation in public media. It received roughly 86% of its budget, $19 million, from federal grants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ITVS leaders say the group has partnered with hundreds of independent filmmakers to co-produce more than 900 feature documentaries distributed to PBS stations nationwide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Public media is a space for all Americans,” said Carrie Lozano, the organization’s president and CEO. “These films are not partisan. They are, generally speaking, films that touch everybody’s lives. They are there in service of the public.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In anticipation of the cuts, the organization laid off 13 employees in June, or roughly 20% of its staff. Lozano expects roughly 10 films to lose out on funding this year — a big cut from the 20 to 40 feature and short documentaries that ITVS typically funds every year. While the organization is determined to stay afloat, Lozano worries the loss of federal investment will prevent important stories from being told and create a domino effect on the rest of the ecosystem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s no question that this is a huge blow to the field,” Lozano said, “and to everything that surrounds it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2025/07/pbs-npr-budget-cuts/\">originally published on CalMatters\u003c/a> and was republished under the \u003ca href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/\">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives\u003c/a> license.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "no-one-in-public-media-is-safe-kqed-layoffs-underscore-peril-of-federal-defunding",
"title": "‘No One in Public Media Is Safe’: KQED Layoffs Underscore Peril of Federal Defunding",
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"headTitle": "‘No One in Public Media Is Safe’: KQED Layoffs Underscore Peril of Federal Defunding | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>On the heels of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12048122/kqed-to-slash-workforce-by-15-cutting-dozens-of-jobs-in-latest-round-of-layoffs\">major layoffs at KQED\u003c/a>, Congress moved to claw back over a billion dollars in federal funding for public media, heightening financial uncertainty for some 1,500 radio and television stations across the country, including one of the system’s biggest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the dominant narrative around the Corporation for Public Broadcasting cuts has centered on the existential danger for small, rural stations, KQED’s precarious situation suggests the consequences could ripple far wider.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This [layoffs] announcement makes it clear that no one in public media is safe,” said Rodney Benson, a media professor at New York University. “The threat to public media funding affects even the largest and strongest outlets.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED \u003ca href=\"https://radioinsight.com/headlines/303978/june-2025-5-29-6-25-nielsen-audio-ppm-ratings-day-1-kqed-fm-sets-new-high-rock-rises-in-los-angeles/\">posted record-high radio ratings\u003c/a> last month and has grown its digital and podcast audiences, but that hasn’t translated to financial stability. Earlier this week, the organization announced it would slash 15% of its staff, citing lower-than-expected revenue growth and economic volatility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The loss of federal dollars will only deepen those challenges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is the most difficult, distressing moment in the nearly 60-year history of public broadcasting, in the 71-year history of KQED,” the organization’s President and CEO, Michael Isip, said \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101910637/congress-votes-to-defund-public-media\">Friday morning on the program Forum\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11987158\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11987158\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1500\" height=\"999\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-1.jpg 1500w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-1-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-1-160x107.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An exterior view of KQED’s headquarters in San Francisco. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jason O'Rear)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The rescissions package that the House sent to President Donald Trump’s desk late Thursday guts $1.1 billion in federal funding for public media that Congress previously approved, zeroing out that money for the next two years. CPB distributes the federal money to NPR, PBS and its member stations, which were expecting their next payments in the fall. Those will no longer come.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The immediate response to this particular round of cuts will be that we are likely to see many stations … go dark,” NPR CEO Katherine Maher said Friday on Morning Edition. “These are stations that serve rural communities. They are stations that receive, in the case of Alaska, up to 70% of their budget in federal funds. And we’re talking small budgets. We’re talking $500,000, $600,000.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED, meanwhile, receives close to $8 million a year in CPB funding, representing about 7% to 8% of its \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/community-report#financials\">annual revenue\u003c/a>. Like many large stations in major markets across the country, KQED’s budget includes significant revenue from donors and corporate sponsors, lessening its dependence on federal funding.[aside postID=news_12048122 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/240522-KQEDheadquarters-12-BL_qed.jpg']“We’re going to move forward, we have no choice but to,” Isip said. “We have a responsibility. Our community expects it from us, and we’ll find a way to preserve independent, noncommercial, public media.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But how the station will do that isn’t yet clear. Isip said KQED would tap reserves to cover fiscal years 2026 and 2027 and seek out new revenue sources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are going to be communities who are losing local news and information, so what can KQED do to fill those gaps around the state?” Isip said, noting that the outlet remains one of the largest nonprofit newsrooms in the country. “We have the privilege and the resources to be able to think about how we can support the rest of the state.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That mission could draw in new philanthropic support, Isip said, and there is still a chance that Congress restores some funding in its upcoming regular budget process for next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, station leaders have not ruled out the possibility of further cuts in a future without federal funding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While conservative legislators have targeted public media funding for decades, the scale of the current campaign is unprecedented, said Mike Janssen, an editor at the industry publication \u003cem>Current\u003c/em>. “The number of attacks and the different directions they’re coming from all at once is what’s different,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11987160\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11987160\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1500\" height=\"1102\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-3.jpg 1500w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-3-800x588.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-3-1020x749.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-3-160x118.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The interior of KQED’s newsroom at its San Francisco headquarters. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jason O'Rear)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The political push to defund public media includes not just the CPB rescission and \u003ca href=\"https://cpb.org/pressroom/CPB-Statement-Response-President-Trump-s-Proposed-Rescissions-Package-and-Budget\">elimination of funding in Trump’s proposed 2026 budget\u003c/a>, but also an executive order he signed in May to cut federal funding for NPR and PBS. The Department of Education also \u003ca href=\"https://cpb.org/pressroom/CPB-Statement-US-Department-Education-Terminating-Ready-Learn-Grant\">ended its Ready to Learn grant\u003c/a>, which has funded educational TV programs, and the FCC opened an investigation into underwriting practices at public stations, including KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These challenges arrive as public media organizations are already navigating a turbulent landscape of declining radio and TV audiences, weakening underwriting revenue from corporate sponsors, and a podcast market that has proved difficult to monetize.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a perfect storm,” said Janssen, who’s covered public media for more than two decades. “Traditional funding models are kind of falling apart, and there’s this big need to expand on digital platforms for new audiences, and those two things just aren’t a good combination.”[aside postID=news_12038576 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/GettyImages-2206434879-1020x680.jpg']He pointed to other large public media outlets like \u003ca href=\"https://current.org/2024/07/laist-cuts-28-positions-with-buyouts-layoffs/\">LAist in Los Angeles\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://current.org/2025/06/gbh-layoffs-hit-45-staffers-less-than-a-month-after-world-cuts/\">WGBH in Boston\u003c/a> that have made similar investments in innovation and also faced cuts. Since March 2023, \u003cem>Current\u003c/em> has tracked roughly 654 layoffs in public media and 73 buyout offers accepted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Janssen and other experts are hard pressed to point to a model that’s working. Optimism about partnerships between local newspapers and public media stations has tempered after Chicago Public Media’s acquisition of the \u003cem>Chicago Sun-Times\u003c/em> failed \u003ca href=\"https://current.org/2025/03/chicago-public-media-avoids-layoffs-as-35-employees-accept-buyouts/\">to fend off reductions there\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have to keep growing audience, but how do you do that in a lean way where you can also absorb the shock of what’s going on with underwriting and audience?” Janssen said. “It’s a very hard line to walk.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nik Usher, associate professor of communication studies at the University of San Diego, said medium-sized outlets like KQED are in a particularly difficult situation. They’re too small to compete with major national outlets, but big enough to pour resources into making their own programs, rather than relying primarily on content made by NPR or other national producers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This “Goldilocks problem,” Usher said, means they’re “not too big and not too small. Just the right size to be screwed by the way that the attention economy works right now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11987159\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11987159\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1500\" height=\"1000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-2.jpg 1500w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-2-160x107.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The interior of KQED’s lobby at its headquarters in San Francisco. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jason O'Rear)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While these stations may get a relatively small portion of their overall funding from the federal government, losing it could hurt other revenue sources, such as shows that outlets like KQED produce and sell to other stations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Cuts make it harder to do good work, and then that good work is less compelling and fewer people want to purchase it to rebroadcast,” Usher said. “It’s kind of got a potential to spiral.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Victor Pickard, a media policy scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, said the crisis at KQED underscores a larger reckoning with the country’s anemic support for public media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve always impoverished our public media,” he said. “It’s a bit of a misnomer to call it public; it’s much more of a hybrid dependent on private capital.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In most Western European countries, public media is \u003ca href=\"https://www.internetvoices.org/sites/default/files/resources/public-media-and-political-independence.pdf\">funded at about $100 per capita\u003c/a> annually, according to a report from NYU’s Benson and a colleague. \u003ca href=\"https://cpb.org/sites/default/files/reports/revenue/2020PublicBroadcastingRevenue.pdf\">In the United States, it receives\u003c/a> about $1.50 per capita in federal funding each year, and around $3 per capita in total public support, including state and local dollars. With private funding from corporations, foundations and individual donors factored in, the figure is still under $10 per capita.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11987200\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11987200\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/KQED_Expansion_web_3_1000x600.jpg.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/KQED_Expansion_web_3_1000x600.jpg.png 1000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/KQED_Expansion_web_3_1000x600.jpg-800x480.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/KQED_Expansion_web_3_1000x600.jpg-160x96.png 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">KQED’s renovated headquarters in San Francisco. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Jason O'Rear)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As a result of public media’s shaky government funding, Pickard said it now faces many of the same financial pressures as commercial outlets — shrinking ad revenue, market-driven content decisions, and the need to chase audiences with deep pockets. But that’s exactly what public media was meant to resist: a system that only serves those who can pay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we are going to guarantee that all members of society have access to a baseline level of news and information — not just wealthy audiences but everyone, not just people who live in cities, but people living in the hinterlands as well — then we need a public media system,” he said.[aside postID=news_12038583 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/20240411_PressDemocratFile_GC-4_qed-1020x680.jpg']As stations look to make up for the loss of federal support, they’ll also find private funding sources facing their own challenges. Corporate sponsors are likely to be tested by economic uncertainty and the FCC’s investigation into underwriting practices. And foundations are seeing heightened demand for grants as wider government support for nonprofits evaporates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We just think that these are signals that it’s going to be more challenging moving forward,” KQED’s Isip said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State-level funding, meanwhile, doesn’t come close to replacing the hole left by CPB cuts. According to a \u003ca href=\"https://current.org/state-funding-guide/\">tracker compiled by \u003cem>Current\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, 36 states provide some level of direct funding to broadcasters, but in most of those states, funding remained flat or decreased between the last two budget cycles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California does not directly fund public broadcasters as part of its state budget. In May, officials announced a partnership between the state and private donors, including Google, to distribute money for local news coverage, but it’s not clear whether public media stations will be eligible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Benson cautioned that public media shouldn’t abandon hope for federal funding, for now, he said the path forward is paved with private dollars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The future is public media that is more fully in the nonprofit model,” he said in an email. “If anyone can make it work, stations like KQED can, but I would imagine that at least in the near term, budgets will be tight and these will not be the last layoffs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was reported and written by KQED reporter \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/vrancano\">Vanessa Rancaño\u003c/a> and edited by KQED senior editor \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/jservantez\">Jared Servantez\u003c/a>, who contributed additional reporting. Under KQED’s standard practices for reporting on itself, no member of KQED management or its news executives reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>On the heels of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12048122/kqed-to-slash-workforce-by-15-cutting-dozens-of-jobs-in-latest-round-of-layoffs\">major layoffs at KQED\u003c/a>, Congress moved to claw back over a billion dollars in federal funding for public media, heightening financial uncertainty for some 1,500 radio and television stations across the country, including one of the system’s biggest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the dominant narrative around the Corporation for Public Broadcasting cuts has centered on the existential danger for small, rural stations, KQED’s precarious situation suggests the consequences could ripple far wider.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This [layoffs] announcement makes it clear that no one in public media is safe,” said Rodney Benson, a media professor at New York University. “The threat to public media funding affects even the largest and strongest outlets.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED \u003ca href=\"https://radioinsight.com/headlines/303978/june-2025-5-29-6-25-nielsen-audio-ppm-ratings-day-1-kqed-fm-sets-new-high-rock-rises-in-los-angeles/\">posted record-high radio ratings\u003c/a> last month and has grown its digital and podcast audiences, but that hasn’t translated to financial stability. Earlier this week, the organization announced it would slash 15% of its staff, citing lower-than-expected revenue growth and economic volatility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The loss of federal dollars will only deepen those challenges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is the most difficult, distressing moment in the nearly 60-year history of public broadcasting, in the 71-year history of KQED,” the organization’s President and CEO, Michael Isip, said \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101910637/congress-votes-to-defund-public-media\">Friday morning on the program Forum\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11987158\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11987158\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1500\" height=\"999\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-1.jpg 1500w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-1-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-1-160x107.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An exterior view of KQED’s headquarters in San Francisco. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jason O'Rear)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The rescissions package that the House sent to President Donald Trump’s desk late Thursday guts $1.1 billion in federal funding for public media that Congress previously approved, zeroing out that money for the next two years. CPB distributes the federal money to NPR, PBS and its member stations, which were expecting their next payments in the fall. Those will no longer come.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The immediate response to this particular round of cuts will be that we are likely to see many stations … go dark,” NPR CEO Katherine Maher said Friday on Morning Edition. “These are stations that serve rural communities. They are stations that receive, in the case of Alaska, up to 70% of their budget in federal funds. And we’re talking small budgets. We’re talking $500,000, $600,000.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED, meanwhile, receives close to $8 million a year in CPB funding, representing about 7% to 8% of its \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/community-report#financials\">annual revenue\u003c/a>. Like many large stations in major markets across the country, KQED’s budget includes significant revenue from donors and corporate sponsors, lessening its dependence on federal funding.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“We’re going to move forward, we have no choice but to,” Isip said. “We have a responsibility. Our community expects it from us, and we’ll find a way to preserve independent, noncommercial, public media.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But how the station will do that isn’t yet clear. Isip said KQED would tap reserves to cover fiscal years 2026 and 2027 and seek out new revenue sources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are going to be communities who are losing local news and information, so what can KQED do to fill those gaps around the state?” Isip said, noting that the outlet remains one of the largest nonprofit newsrooms in the country. “We have the privilege and the resources to be able to think about how we can support the rest of the state.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That mission could draw in new philanthropic support, Isip said, and there is still a chance that Congress restores some funding in its upcoming regular budget process for next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, station leaders have not ruled out the possibility of further cuts in a future without federal funding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While conservative legislators have targeted public media funding for decades, the scale of the current campaign is unprecedented, said Mike Janssen, an editor at the industry publication \u003cem>Current\u003c/em>. “The number of attacks and the different directions they’re coming from all at once is what’s different,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11987160\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11987160\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1500\" height=\"1102\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-3.jpg 1500w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-3-800x588.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-3-1020x749.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-3-160x118.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The interior of KQED’s newsroom at its San Francisco headquarters. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jason O'Rear)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The political push to defund public media includes not just the CPB rescission and \u003ca href=\"https://cpb.org/pressroom/CPB-Statement-Response-President-Trump-s-Proposed-Rescissions-Package-and-Budget\">elimination of funding in Trump’s proposed 2026 budget\u003c/a>, but also an executive order he signed in May to cut federal funding for NPR and PBS. The Department of Education also \u003ca href=\"https://cpb.org/pressroom/CPB-Statement-US-Department-Education-Terminating-Ready-Learn-Grant\">ended its Ready to Learn grant\u003c/a>, which has funded educational TV programs, and the FCC opened an investigation into underwriting practices at public stations, including KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These challenges arrive as public media organizations are already navigating a turbulent landscape of declining radio and TV audiences, weakening underwriting revenue from corporate sponsors, and a podcast market that has proved difficult to monetize.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a perfect storm,” said Janssen, who’s covered public media for more than two decades. “Traditional funding models are kind of falling apart, and there’s this big need to expand on digital platforms for new audiences, and those two things just aren’t a good combination.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>He pointed to other large public media outlets like \u003ca href=\"https://current.org/2024/07/laist-cuts-28-positions-with-buyouts-layoffs/\">LAist in Los Angeles\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://current.org/2025/06/gbh-layoffs-hit-45-staffers-less-than-a-month-after-world-cuts/\">WGBH in Boston\u003c/a> that have made similar investments in innovation and also faced cuts. Since March 2023, \u003cem>Current\u003c/em> has tracked roughly 654 layoffs in public media and 73 buyout offers accepted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Janssen and other experts are hard pressed to point to a model that’s working. Optimism about partnerships between local newspapers and public media stations has tempered after Chicago Public Media’s acquisition of the \u003cem>Chicago Sun-Times\u003c/em> failed \u003ca href=\"https://current.org/2025/03/chicago-public-media-avoids-layoffs-as-35-employees-accept-buyouts/\">to fend off reductions there\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have to keep growing audience, but how do you do that in a lean way where you can also absorb the shock of what’s going on with underwriting and audience?” Janssen said. “It’s a very hard line to walk.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nik Usher, associate professor of communication studies at the University of San Diego, said medium-sized outlets like KQED are in a particularly difficult situation. They’re too small to compete with major national outlets, but big enough to pour resources into making their own programs, rather than relying primarily on content made by NPR or other national producers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This “Goldilocks problem,” Usher said, means they’re “not too big and not too small. Just the right size to be screwed by the way that the attention economy works right now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11987159\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11987159\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1500\" height=\"1000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-2.jpg 1500w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/kqed-hq-2-160x107.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The interior of KQED’s lobby at its headquarters in San Francisco. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jason O'Rear)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While these stations may get a relatively small portion of their overall funding from the federal government, losing it could hurt other revenue sources, such as shows that outlets like KQED produce and sell to other stations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Cuts make it harder to do good work, and then that good work is less compelling and fewer people want to purchase it to rebroadcast,” Usher said. “It’s kind of got a potential to spiral.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Victor Pickard, a media policy scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, said the crisis at KQED underscores a larger reckoning with the country’s anemic support for public media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve always impoverished our public media,” he said. “It’s a bit of a misnomer to call it public; it’s much more of a hybrid dependent on private capital.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In most Western European countries, public media is \u003ca href=\"https://www.internetvoices.org/sites/default/files/resources/public-media-and-political-independence.pdf\">funded at about $100 per capita\u003c/a> annually, according to a report from NYU’s Benson and a colleague. \u003ca href=\"https://cpb.org/sites/default/files/reports/revenue/2020PublicBroadcastingRevenue.pdf\">In the United States, it receives\u003c/a> about $1.50 per capita in federal funding each year, and around $3 per capita in total public support, including state and local dollars. With private funding from corporations, foundations and individual donors factored in, the figure is still under $10 per capita.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11987200\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11987200\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/KQED_Expansion_web_3_1000x600.jpg.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/KQED_Expansion_web_3_1000x600.jpg.png 1000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/KQED_Expansion_web_3_1000x600.jpg-800x480.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/KQED_Expansion_web_3_1000x600.jpg-160x96.png 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">KQED’s renovated headquarters in San Francisco. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Jason O'Rear)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As a result of public media’s shaky government funding, Pickard said it now faces many of the same financial pressures as commercial outlets — shrinking ad revenue, market-driven content decisions, and the need to chase audiences with deep pockets. But that’s exactly what public media was meant to resist: a system that only serves those who can pay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we are going to guarantee that all members of society have access to a baseline level of news and information — not just wealthy audiences but everyone, not just people who live in cities, but people living in the hinterlands as well — then we need a public media system,” he said.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>As stations look to make up for the loss of federal support, they’ll also find private funding sources facing their own challenges. Corporate sponsors are likely to be tested by economic uncertainty and the FCC’s investigation into underwriting practices. And foundations are seeing heightened demand for grants as wider government support for nonprofits evaporates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We just think that these are signals that it’s going to be more challenging moving forward,” KQED’s Isip said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State-level funding, meanwhile, doesn’t come close to replacing the hole left by CPB cuts. According to a \u003ca href=\"https://current.org/state-funding-guide/\">tracker compiled by \u003cem>Current\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, 36 states provide some level of direct funding to broadcasters, but in most of those states, funding remained flat or decreased between the last two budget cycles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California does not directly fund public broadcasters as part of its state budget. In May, officials announced a partnership between the state and private donors, including Google, to distribute money for local news coverage, but it’s not clear whether public media stations will be eligible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Benson cautioned that public media shouldn’t abandon hope for federal funding, for now, he said the path forward is paved with private dollars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The future is public media that is more fully in the nonprofit model,” he said in an email. “If anyone can make it work, stations like KQED can, but I would imagine that at least in the near term, budgets will be tight and these will not be the last layoffs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was reported and written by KQED reporter \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/vrancano\">Vanessa Rancaño\u003c/a> and edited by KQED senior editor \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/jservantez\">Jared Servantez\u003c/a>, who contributed additional reporting. Under KQED’s standard practices for reporting on itself, no member of KQED management or its news executives reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "kqed-to-slash-workforce-by-15-cutting-dozens-of-jobs-in-latest-round-of-layoffs",
"title": "KQED to Slash Workforce by 15%, Cutting Dozens of Jobs in Latest Round of Layoffs",
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"headTitle": "KQED to Slash Workforce by 15%, Cutting Dozens of Jobs in Latest Round of Layoffs | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Updated at 6:15 p.m.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED announced Tuesday it’s laying off 45 people and losing 12 more who took voluntary departure offers, marking a 15% reduction in staff as the organization faces a significant budget shortfall and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12048108/will-congress-cut-funds-to-npr-pbs-and-foreign-aid-this-week\">mounting financial uncertainty\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s the third round of layoffs in five years for one of the most-listened-to public radio stations in the country and comes as federal funding for public media is under threat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cuts impact every level of the organization, from top executives to custodial staff, but content-producing departments account for nearly three-quarters of them. KQED is disbanding its digital video team and slashing its education department, which produces media literacy curriculum, as part of a plan to sharpen its focus on local news and community events.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In these uncertain times, the prudent, responsible thing to do is address what we have control over and to stabilize the organization so we can better navigate whatever challenges and uncertainty comes our way,” President and CEO Michael Isip said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED is operating at a $12 million deficit in the current fiscal year. The reductions are expected to bring down the shortfall by about 90% going into next year, Isip said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to paring back its staff, the nonprofit said it will stop contributing to employees’ retirement accounts and freeze salary increases beginning this fall. The current plan is to restart both next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leaders with the unions representing many of KQED’s workers said the company will have to negotiate before freezing pay for union members.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), which represents radio, digital news and podcast employees, said in a statement that the union is “committed to protecting the rights of our members in accordance with our collective bargaining agreements and ensuring that those impacted are treated fairly and equitably.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11987511\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11987511\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240522-KQEDheadquarters-10-BL_qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240522-KQEDheadquarters-10-BL_qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240522-KQEDheadquarters-10-BL_qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240522-KQEDheadquarters-10-BL_qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240522-KQEDheadquarters-10-BL_qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240522-KQEDheadquarters-10-BL_qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A KQED sign in the lobby of the organization’s headquarters in San Francisco. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The cuts whittle KQED’s workforce to 312, down from 369 full-time employees. An additional 10 vacant positions will go unfilled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Four senior leaders are among those leaving the company, including Chief Operations and Administrative Officer Maria Miller and Chief Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Officer Eric Abrams. Isip said they were “mutual agreements that this was a good time for them to transition,” and he added that Abrams’ departure was not a response to pressure from the Trump administration to roll back DEI initiatives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Petrice Gaskin, KQED’s director of mid-level giving who worked with Abrams as co-chair of the organization’s DEI council, lamented the optics of losing him in this climate. “At the same time, we acknowledge that this is a tough time period for everyone,” she said, “we’re really fighting for survival here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She credited Abrams with building a healthier culture at KQED, in part by making space to navigate difficult conversations. “KQED as a whole, people want to be nice and kind, but sometimes being nice gets in the way of addressing difficult topics that have to be unpacked that aren’t nice,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Devastating’ cuts to some teams\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>KQED’s education department is among those hardest hit; it’s losing eight of its 13 regular members. “It’s pretty devastating. The folks who we are losing … every single one of them has contributed to the success of our work in pretty significant ways,” said Michelle Parker, executive director of education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cuts mean listeners won’t hear as many young voices on the airwaves, and staff won’t see clusters of teens around the studio each year during \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/youthtakeover\">Youth Takeover\u003c/a> week, as the station is ending the eight-year-old tradition of giving swaths of airtime over to local youth once a year. The department will still help young people produce and publish media through the Youth Media Challenge showcase.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are still committed to youth voice, and we will still continue to do it in the best ways we can with the resources we have for as long as we are allowed to do that,” Parker said.[aside postID=news_11987176 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/KQED_Expansion_web_3_1000x600.jpg.png']The small remaining team will provide fewer educator workshops and less curriculum development than in the past, but it will keep professional development courses for K–12 teachers available through the \u003ca href=\"https://teach.kqed.org/\">KQED Teach platform\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In dissolving its digital video team, the organization is focusing its online video offerings on expanding the audiences of existing shows and podcasts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are really rethinking digital video,” Editor in Chief Ethan Toven-Lindsey said. “In terms of our local and news growth, it made sense for [the team] to be disbanded and to not have this separate, standalone unit, but to be integrated into different units.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The station’s call-in radio show, Forum, already \u003ca href=\"https://video.kqed.org/show/kqedforum/\">produces videos\u003c/a> that stream on KQED’s website and YouTube, while its Political Breakdown podcast team is considering making its own video content. “That’s the map,” Toven-Lindsey said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The digital video team’s work had centered on the often \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pressroom/11550/kqed-receives-seven-northern-california-emmy-awards\">Emmy-lauded\u003c/a> Deep Look and other resource-intensive programs. Now, just two members of the 13-person team will remain at KQED, with one of them reporting to newsroom leadership. A scaled-back version of Deep Look will live on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Separate from the reductions, Chief Content Officer \u003ca href=\"https://wpln.org/post/nashville-public-radio-names-holly-kernan-of-kqed-as-president-and-ceo/\">Holly Kernan left last month to become CEO of Nashville Public Radio\u003c/a>. Rather than replace her, Isip named Toven-Lindsey editor in chief, a new position.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s an indication that KQED’s future sustainability, our future strategy, our future growth — the backbone is local news,” Toven-Lindsey said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Six of the staff cuts will come from the newsroom, including four layoffs and two people who took voluntary departure offers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sarah Augusta, who took the buyout offer after six years with KQED’s fundraising team, said she “decided to make a total right angle career switch” and open an independent bookstore in Martinez this fall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While she said her team, which works with some of the organization’s largest donors, at times felt under-resourced, she added that “this place also attracts some of the most fascinating, interesting, creative people I’ve ever worked with.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A volatile financial picture\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The station has been running a board-approved deficit since 2022. Based on revenue projections at the time, leadership expected to get back in the black by fiscal year 2027, according to a KQED spokesperson. The timeline banked on revenue growth of 2.4% a year, but it’s only grown 1.3%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Board chair Jennifer Cabalquinto said the broader economic situation has thrown those projections out the window. “The volatility is very real, and that’s really impacted the revenue sources,” she said, noting that the threat of losing federal funding compounds the picture. “It’s a double whammy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Trump administration is working on multiple fronts to gut federal support for public media. \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/07/15/g-s1-77572/npr-pbs-funding-rescission-congress\">The Senate faces a Friday deadline\u003c/a> to decide whether to claw back $1.1 billion appropriated for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a move already approved by the House of Representatives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/community-report#financials\">KQED received $7.6 million from CPB\u003c/a>. If that’s pulled, Cabalquinto said the organization would likely rely on cash reserves in the short term.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, NPR and PBS are suing Trump to block \u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/ending-taxpayer-subsidization-of-biased-media/\">an executive order\u003c/a> that aims to cut off their federal funding, and the Federal Communications Commission is investigating the underwriting practices of local member stations — a move that Isip said has had “a chilling effect” among some corporate sponsors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED’s financial troubles stem from the organization’s growth in recent years, driven by multimillion-dollar investments, and sluggish revenue growth can no longer support its size. But they are also indicative of the existential challenges bearing down on the nation’s public media system and news industry writ large.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New economic headwinds are contributing to a longstanding struggle to find financial footing in a digital environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It wasn’t just one thing that’s causing this deficit, it’s multiple investments in growing our service,” Isip said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Between 2013 and 2018, the nonprofit added 60 employees, mostly focused on digital services, according to Isip. During that period, the education department nearly tripled in size, he said, and the station added journalists, building among the largest nonprofit newsrooms in the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We had to do that,” Isip said. “Broadcast audiences are declining. If we didn’t expand into new areas, that would threaten our future and our relevancy to our audiences moving forward.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The growth was made possible in part by $45 million in one-time money from \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/campaign21\">a fundraising campaign\u003c/a> that also bankrolled a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pressroom/11576/kqed-plan-for-opening\">$94 million building renovation\u003c/a>, and station leaders were betting that expanding services would boost the station’s audience, bringing an uptick in ongoing revenue to follow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That has been the case,” Isip said. “But our financial support has not grown at the same rate as our expense growth.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carrie Biggs-Adams, president of NABET Local 51, which represents the company’s radio and television engineers, among many other employees, voiced concerns about leaders’ management of KQED’s assets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s just stunning to have this happen in a place that had so much money a few years ago,” she said. Four NABET members are being laid off, according to Biggs-Adams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the past eight years, KQED’s revenue has grown by 3.2%, while expenses have risen 4.7%, Isip said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He blamed a number of factors, including the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. While individual donations from community members are strong — the May pledge drive brought in an annualized total of about $1.9 million, and the February drive brought in $2.3 million, the biggest since 2018 — corporate sponsorship and underwriting have “softened,” Isip said. Funding from foundations and grants is about flat, he added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11987509/kqed-cuts-34-positions-amid-budget-shortfall\">the company eliminated 34 positions\u003c/a> amid other cuts, with leadership again citing rising costs and flagging expenses. In 2020, it \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11832855/kqed-announces-layoffs-blames-coronavirus-pandemic-for-budget-shortfall\">laid off 20 employees\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was reported and written by KQED reporter Vanessa Rancaño and edited by KQED’s Jared Servantez. Under KQED’s standard practices for reporting on itself, no member of KQED management or its news executives reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Updated at 6:15 p.m.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED announced Tuesday it’s laying off 45 people and losing 12 more who took voluntary departure offers, marking a 15% reduction in staff as the organization faces a significant budget shortfall and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12048108/will-congress-cut-funds-to-npr-pbs-and-foreign-aid-this-week\">mounting financial uncertainty\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s the third round of layoffs in five years for one of the most-listened-to public radio stations in the country and comes as federal funding for public media is under threat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cuts impact every level of the organization, from top executives to custodial staff, but content-producing departments account for nearly three-quarters of them. KQED is disbanding its digital video team and slashing its education department, which produces media literacy curriculum, as part of a plan to sharpen its focus on local news and community events.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In these uncertain times, the prudent, responsible thing to do is address what we have control over and to stabilize the organization so we can better navigate whatever challenges and uncertainty comes our way,” President and CEO Michael Isip said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED is operating at a $12 million deficit in the current fiscal year. The reductions are expected to bring down the shortfall by about 90% going into next year, Isip said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to paring back its staff, the nonprofit said it will stop contributing to employees’ retirement accounts and freeze salary increases beginning this fall. The current plan is to restart both next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leaders with the unions representing many of KQED’s workers said the company will have to negotiate before freezing pay for union members.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), which represents radio, digital news and podcast employees, said in a statement that the union is “committed to protecting the rights of our members in accordance with our collective bargaining agreements and ensuring that those impacted are treated fairly and equitably.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11987511\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11987511\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240522-KQEDheadquarters-10-BL_qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240522-KQEDheadquarters-10-BL_qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240522-KQEDheadquarters-10-BL_qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240522-KQEDheadquarters-10-BL_qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240522-KQEDheadquarters-10-BL_qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240522-KQEDheadquarters-10-BL_qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A KQED sign in the lobby of the organization’s headquarters in San Francisco. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The cuts whittle KQED’s workforce to 312, down from 369 full-time employees. An additional 10 vacant positions will go unfilled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Four senior leaders are among those leaving the company, including Chief Operations and Administrative Officer Maria Miller and Chief Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Officer Eric Abrams. Isip said they were “mutual agreements that this was a good time for them to transition,” and he added that Abrams’ departure was not a response to pressure from the Trump administration to roll back DEI initiatives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Petrice Gaskin, KQED’s director of mid-level giving who worked with Abrams as co-chair of the organization’s DEI council, lamented the optics of losing him in this climate. “At the same time, we acknowledge that this is a tough time period for everyone,” she said, “we’re really fighting for survival here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She credited Abrams with building a healthier culture at KQED, in part by making space to navigate difficult conversations. “KQED as a whole, people want to be nice and kind, but sometimes being nice gets in the way of addressing difficult topics that have to be unpacked that aren’t nice,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Devastating’ cuts to some teams\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>KQED’s education department is among those hardest hit; it’s losing eight of its 13 regular members. “It’s pretty devastating. The folks who we are losing … every single one of them has contributed to the success of our work in pretty significant ways,” said Michelle Parker, executive director of education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cuts mean listeners won’t hear as many young voices on the airwaves, and staff won’t see clusters of teens around the studio each year during \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/youthtakeover\">Youth Takeover\u003c/a> week, as the station is ending the eight-year-old tradition of giving swaths of airtime over to local youth once a year. The department will still help young people produce and publish media through the Youth Media Challenge showcase.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are still committed to youth voice, and we will still continue to do it in the best ways we can with the resources we have for as long as we are allowed to do that,” Parker said.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The small remaining team will provide fewer educator workshops and less curriculum development than in the past, but it will keep professional development courses for K–12 teachers available through the \u003ca href=\"https://teach.kqed.org/\">KQED Teach platform\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In dissolving its digital video team, the organization is focusing its online video offerings on expanding the audiences of existing shows and podcasts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are really rethinking digital video,” Editor in Chief Ethan Toven-Lindsey said. “In terms of our local and news growth, it made sense for [the team] to be disbanded and to not have this separate, standalone unit, but to be integrated into different units.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The station’s call-in radio show, Forum, already \u003ca href=\"https://video.kqed.org/show/kqedforum/\">produces videos\u003c/a> that stream on KQED’s website and YouTube, while its Political Breakdown podcast team is considering making its own video content. “That’s the map,” Toven-Lindsey said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The digital video team’s work had centered on the often \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pressroom/11550/kqed-receives-seven-northern-california-emmy-awards\">Emmy-lauded\u003c/a> Deep Look and other resource-intensive programs. Now, just two members of the 13-person team will remain at KQED, with one of them reporting to newsroom leadership. A scaled-back version of Deep Look will live on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Separate from the reductions, Chief Content Officer \u003ca href=\"https://wpln.org/post/nashville-public-radio-names-holly-kernan-of-kqed-as-president-and-ceo/\">Holly Kernan left last month to become CEO of Nashville Public Radio\u003c/a>. Rather than replace her, Isip named Toven-Lindsey editor in chief, a new position.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s an indication that KQED’s future sustainability, our future strategy, our future growth — the backbone is local news,” Toven-Lindsey said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Six of the staff cuts will come from the newsroom, including four layoffs and two people who took voluntary departure offers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sarah Augusta, who took the buyout offer after six years with KQED’s fundraising team, said she “decided to make a total right angle career switch” and open an independent bookstore in Martinez this fall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While she said her team, which works with some of the organization’s largest donors, at times felt under-resourced, she added that “this place also attracts some of the most fascinating, interesting, creative people I’ve ever worked with.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A volatile financial picture\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The station has been running a board-approved deficit since 2022. Based on revenue projections at the time, leadership expected to get back in the black by fiscal year 2027, according to a KQED spokesperson. The timeline banked on revenue growth of 2.4% a year, but it’s only grown 1.3%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Board chair Jennifer Cabalquinto said the broader economic situation has thrown those projections out the window. “The volatility is very real, and that’s really impacted the revenue sources,” she said, noting that the threat of losing federal funding compounds the picture. “It’s a double whammy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Trump administration is working on multiple fronts to gut federal support for public media. \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/07/15/g-s1-77572/npr-pbs-funding-rescission-congress\">The Senate faces a Friday deadline\u003c/a> to decide whether to claw back $1.1 billion appropriated for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a move already approved by the House of Representatives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/community-report#financials\">KQED received $7.6 million from CPB\u003c/a>. If that’s pulled, Cabalquinto said the organization would likely rely on cash reserves in the short term.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, NPR and PBS are suing Trump to block \u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/ending-taxpayer-subsidization-of-biased-media/\">an executive order\u003c/a> that aims to cut off their federal funding, and the Federal Communications Commission is investigating the underwriting practices of local member stations — a move that Isip said has had “a chilling effect” among some corporate sponsors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED’s financial troubles stem from the organization’s growth in recent years, driven by multimillion-dollar investments, and sluggish revenue growth can no longer support its size. But they are also indicative of the existential challenges bearing down on the nation’s public media system and news industry writ large.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New economic headwinds are contributing to a longstanding struggle to find financial footing in a digital environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It wasn’t just one thing that’s causing this deficit, it’s multiple investments in growing our service,” Isip said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Between 2013 and 2018, the nonprofit added 60 employees, mostly focused on digital services, according to Isip. During that period, the education department nearly tripled in size, he said, and the station added journalists, building among the largest nonprofit newsrooms in the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We had to do that,” Isip said. “Broadcast audiences are declining. If we didn’t expand into new areas, that would threaten our future and our relevancy to our audiences moving forward.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The growth was made possible in part by $45 million in one-time money from \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/campaign21\">a fundraising campaign\u003c/a> that also bankrolled a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pressroom/11576/kqed-plan-for-opening\">$94 million building renovation\u003c/a>, and station leaders were betting that expanding services would boost the station’s audience, bringing an uptick in ongoing revenue to follow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That has been the case,” Isip said. “But our financial support has not grown at the same rate as our expense growth.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carrie Biggs-Adams, president of NABET Local 51, which represents the company’s radio and television engineers, among many other employees, voiced concerns about leaders’ management of KQED’s assets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s just stunning to have this happen in a place that had so much money a few years ago,” she said. Four NABET members are being laid off, according to Biggs-Adams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the past eight years, KQED’s revenue has grown by 3.2%, while expenses have risen 4.7%, Isip said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He blamed a number of factors, including the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. While individual donations from community members are strong — the May pledge drive brought in an annualized total of about $1.9 million, and the February drive brought in $2.3 million, the biggest since 2018 — corporate sponsorship and underwriting have “softened,” Isip said. Funding from foundations and grants is about flat, he added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11987509/kqed-cuts-34-positions-amid-budget-shortfall\">the company eliminated 34 positions\u003c/a> amid other cuts, with leadership again citing rising costs and flagging expenses. In 2020, it \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11832855/kqed-announces-layoffs-blames-coronavirus-pandemic-for-budget-shortfall\">laid off 20 employees\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was reported and written by KQED reporter Vanessa Rancaño and edited by KQED’s Jared Servantez. Under KQED’s standard practices for reporting on itself, no member of KQED management or its news executives reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "trump-targets-npr-pbs-funding-small-local-stations-brace-fallout",
"title": "As Trump Targets NPR and PBS Funding, Small Local Stations Brace for Fallout",
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"headTitle": "As Trump Targets NPR and PBS Funding, Small Local Stations Brace for Fallout | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>Northern California public radio stations and journalism organizations are raising the alarm after President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday night aiming to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12038524/trump-targets-public-media-orders-end-to-federal-funding-for-npr-and-pbs\">cut off federal funding for NPR and PBS\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/ending-taxpayer-subsidization-of-biased-media/\">order\u003c/a> directs the board of the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting and all federal agencies to withhold money for the nation’s primary public broadcasters, saying that government funding for the news services is “corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the order does not call on CPB to halt funding for local member stations such as KQED, Trump has signaled his desire to ask Congress to rescind nearly all funding for CPB, which distributes funds to more than 1,500 locally owned stations across the country in addition to NPR and PBS. The loss of such funding could put local, rural news outlets in jeopardy and interfere with emergency and disaster alert systems that rely on broadcast partners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At small stations like KZYX in Mendocino County, CPB money makes up about a quarter of the budget, leaving them especially vulnerable to federal funding cuts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are tiny,” said Dina Polkinghorne, the interim general manager of KZYX. “There’s threadbare staff, threadbare operational funds, and a 25% [cut] to our revenues — it’s beyond devastating. There’s nothing to cut to make up for it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CPB leadership asserted that Trump’s executive order overstepped his authority, and both NPR and PBS have \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/05/02/nx-s1-5384790/trump-orders-end-to-federal-funding-for-npr-and-pbs\">vowed to challenge it\u003c/a>, leaving the actual effect of the order still unclear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12038527\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1898px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12038527\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/GettyImages-180967643_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1898\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/GettyImages-180967643_qed.jpg 1898w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/GettyImages-180967643_qed-800x562.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/GettyImages-180967643_qed-1020x716.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/GettyImages-180967643_qed-160x112.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/GettyImages-180967643_qed-1536x1079.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1898px) 100vw, 1898px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The headquarters for National Public Radio, or NPR, are seen in Washington, DC, September 17, 2013. The USD 201 million building, which opened in 2013, serves as the headquarters of the media organization that creates and distributes news, information and music programming to 975 independent radio stations throughout the US, reaching 26 million listeners each week. \u003ccite>(Saul Loeb /AFP via Getty Image)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Still, if federal funding were to dry up for small local stations, they might be unable to keep up operations, threatening to exacerbate the growing problem of “news deserts” in rural areas across California and the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED also receives CPB funding, which made up 7.6% of the organization’s 2024 budget, but smaller stations like KAZU in Monterey County and KZYX collected 13% and 22% of their revenue in 2023 from CPB, respectively, according to financial statements.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The backbone of our local democracy is smaller news outlets, local news outlets, particularly in far-flung parts of California, rural parts of California, suburban parts of California, where large outlets don’t necessarily have as much reach,” said Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, the president of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California chapter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All the research points to the fact that … more bribery, more scandal emerges from local government, state government, government in general, when you don’t have a robust press playing a check on them,” he continued.[aside postID=news_12038481 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250501-MAYDAYRALLYSF-14-BL-KQED-1020x680.jpg']Polkinghorne said Mendocino residents rely on KZYX to get news in isolated parts of the sprawling Northern California county, where there isn’t a dedicated public television station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have people who call us, they don’t decide what to wear that day until they hear our weather report in the morning,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trump has repeatedly accused NPR and PBS of left-wing bias, spurring a tense \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12033078/watch-live-npr-pbs-heads-answer-lawmakers-allegations-of-bias\">congressional hearing\u003c/a> in March during which Republicans criticized the organizations’ CEOs over their news coverage. NPR CEO Katherine Maher was also asked about posts she made on social media criticizing Trump during the 2020 election, before she was the head of the organization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trump’s executive order not only targets direct CPB funding of NPR and PBS; it also instructs CPB to ensure local stations do not use any federal funds to pay the national networks. Under their current agreements, member stations contribute fees to NPR and PBS in exchange for access to their programming, like \u003cem>Morning Edition \u003c/em>and \u003cem>All Things Considered\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maher said that programming provided by NPR, which gets about 2% of its budget from the federal government through direct and indirect means, generates about 25% of local stations’ content and 50% of their listenership. Every $1 NPR receives in federal funding makes sevenfold in revenue from local sources, according to her statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The local-national partnership between NPR and its Member stations is essential to maintaining the viability and strength of a nationwide public media network,” it reads.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, KQED said that it was disappointed by the executive action and concerned about the far-reaching impacts it could have.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12034660\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12034660\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/IMG_1404.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/IMG_1404.jpeg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/IMG_1404-800x533.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/IMG_1404-1020x680.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/IMG_1404-160x107.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/IMG_1404-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/IMG_1404-1920x1280.jpeg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A demonstrator dresses as the Statue of Liberty during a protest against Elon Musk and Donald Trump in Oakland on April 5, 2025. \u003ccite>(Aryk Copley for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The order is at odds with the opinions of Americans who feel that public media is a worthy use of federal funds,” spokesperson Peter Cavagnaro said. “If executed, the order would impact the emergency alert system which helps keep our country safe; impair access to free educational programming and resources for our youngest and most vulnerable children; and would erode public media’s ability to tell the stories of the people, places and history that are the fabric of our local communities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KALW, another San Francisco-based station, called the order dangerous and shortsighted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our station provides essential services to the Bay Area and beyond — from trusted journalism to music and cultural programming, to training the next generation of media makers,” executive director James Kass said in a statement. “Without federal support and a thriving NPR, we cannot continue this critical work — and our democracy is weaker for it.”[aside postID=forum_2010101909136 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/43/2025/03/GettyImages-2199675544-1-1020x574.jpg']CPB said Friday that because it is not a federal executive agency, the president does not have the right to dictate how it spends money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government,” CEO Patricia Harrison said in a statement, citing the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which forbade government officials and departments from directing, supervising or controlling CPB or its grantees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CPB is already suing the Trump administration over its attempt to fire three of its five board members earlier this week, which the corporation said is unlawful since it is not a government agency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the rescission package is still on the table, and stations like KZYX in Mendocino are looking even further ahead — considering the possibility that they might lose federal support in Congress’ next biennial budget and have to forgo CPB funds completely in the next four years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re going to work on a placeholder that assumes everything’s fine, if you will, and then behind the scenes, so to speak, we’ll be working on scenarios that address the 25% cut,” Polkinghorne said of preparing the station’s budget for the next fiscal year, which begins in July. “We have just begun that process, and it’s a conversation nobody wants to have, but starting with meetings next week, that’s on the table.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was reported and written by KQED reporter \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/kdebenedetti\">Katie DeBenedetti\u003c/a> and edited by KQED Senior Editor \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/jservantez\">Jared Servantez\u003c/a>. Under KQED’s standard practices for reporting on itself, no member of KQED management or its news executives reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "President Trump’s executive order aims to cut off federal funding for NPR and PBS, but smaller member stations could be the most at risk if money dries up.",
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"title": "As Trump Targets NPR and PBS Funding, Small Local Stations Brace for Fallout | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Northern California public radio stations and journalism organizations are raising the alarm after President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday night aiming to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12038524/trump-targets-public-media-orders-end-to-federal-funding-for-npr-and-pbs\">cut off federal funding for NPR and PBS\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/ending-taxpayer-subsidization-of-biased-media/\">order\u003c/a> directs the board of the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting and all federal agencies to withhold money for the nation’s primary public broadcasters, saying that government funding for the news services is “corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the order does not call on CPB to halt funding for local member stations such as KQED, Trump has signaled his desire to ask Congress to rescind nearly all funding for CPB, which distributes funds to more than 1,500 locally owned stations across the country in addition to NPR and PBS. The loss of such funding could put local, rural news outlets in jeopardy and interfere with emergency and disaster alert systems that rely on broadcast partners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At small stations like KZYX in Mendocino County, CPB money makes up about a quarter of the budget, leaving them especially vulnerable to federal funding cuts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are tiny,” said Dina Polkinghorne, the interim general manager of KZYX. “There’s threadbare staff, threadbare operational funds, and a 25% [cut] to our revenues — it’s beyond devastating. There’s nothing to cut to make up for it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CPB leadership asserted that Trump’s executive order overstepped his authority, and both NPR and PBS have \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/05/02/nx-s1-5384790/trump-orders-end-to-federal-funding-for-npr-and-pbs\">vowed to challenge it\u003c/a>, leaving the actual effect of the order still unclear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12038527\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1898px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12038527\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/GettyImages-180967643_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1898\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/GettyImages-180967643_qed.jpg 1898w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/GettyImages-180967643_qed-800x562.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/GettyImages-180967643_qed-1020x716.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/GettyImages-180967643_qed-160x112.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/GettyImages-180967643_qed-1536x1079.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1898px) 100vw, 1898px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The headquarters for National Public Radio, or NPR, are seen in Washington, DC, September 17, 2013. The USD 201 million building, which opened in 2013, serves as the headquarters of the media organization that creates and distributes news, information and music programming to 975 independent radio stations throughout the US, reaching 26 million listeners each week. \u003ccite>(Saul Loeb /AFP via Getty Image)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Still, if federal funding were to dry up for small local stations, they might be unable to keep up operations, threatening to exacerbate the growing problem of “news deserts” in rural areas across California and the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED also receives CPB funding, which made up 7.6% of the organization’s 2024 budget, but smaller stations like KAZU in Monterey County and KZYX collected 13% and 22% of their revenue in 2023 from CPB, respectively, according to financial statements.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The backbone of our local democracy is smaller news outlets, local news outlets, particularly in far-flung parts of California, rural parts of California, suburban parts of California, where large outlets don’t necessarily have as much reach,” said Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, the president of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California chapter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All the research points to the fact that … more bribery, more scandal emerges from local government, state government, government in general, when you don’t have a robust press playing a check on them,” he continued.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Polkinghorne said Mendocino residents rely on KZYX to get news in isolated parts of the sprawling Northern California county, where there isn’t a dedicated public television station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have people who call us, they don’t decide what to wear that day until they hear our weather report in the morning,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trump has repeatedly accused NPR and PBS of left-wing bias, spurring a tense \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12033078/watch-live-npr-pbs-heads-answer-lawmakers-allegations-of-bias\">congressional hearing\u003c/a> in March during which Republicans criticized the organizations’ CEOs over their news coverage. NPR CEO Katherine Maher was also asked about posts she made on social media criticizing Trump during the 2020 election, before she was the head of the organization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trump’s executive order not only targets direct CPB funding of NPR and PBS; it also instructs CPB to ensure local stations do not use any federal funds to pay the national networks. Under their current agreements, member stations contribute fees to NPR and PBS in exchange for access to their programming, like \u003cem>Morning Edition \u003c/em>and \u003cem>All Things Considered\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maher said that programming provided by NPR, which gets about 2% of its budget from the federal government through direct and indirect means, generates about 25% of local stations’ content and 50% of their listenership. Every $1 NPR receives in federal funding makes sevenfold in revenue from local sources, according to her statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The local-national partnership between NPR and its Member stations is essential to maintaining the viability and strength of a nationwide public media network,” it reads.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, KQED said that it was disappointed by the executive action and concerned about the far-reaching impacts it could have.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12034660\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12034660\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/IMG_1404.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/IMG_1404.jpeg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/IMG_1404-800x533.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/IMG_1404-1020x680.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/IMG_1404-160x107.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/IMG_1404-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/IMG_1404-1920x1280.jpeg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A demonstrator dresses as the Statue of Liberty during a protest against Elon Musk and Donald Trump in Oakland on April 5, 2025. \u003ccite>(Aryk Copley for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The order is at odds with the opinions of Americans who feel that public media is a worthy use of federal funds,” spokesperson Peter Cavagnaro said. “If executed, the order would impact the emergency alert system which helps keep our country safe; impair access to free educational programming and resources for our youngest and most vulnerable children; and would erode public media’s ability to tell the stories of the people, places and history that are the fabric of our local communities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KALW, another San Francisco-based station, called the order dangerous and shortsighted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our station provides essential services to the Bay Area and beyond — from trusted journalism to music and cultural programming, to training the next generation of media makers,” executive director James Kass said in a statement. “Without federal support and a thriving NPR, we cannot continue this critical work — and our democracy is weaker for it.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>CPB said Friday that because it is not a federal executive agency, the president does not have the right to dictate how it spends money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government,” CEO Patricia Harrison said in a statement, citing the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which forbade government officials and departments from directing, supervising or controlling CPB or its grantees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CPB is already suing the Trump administration over its attempt to fire three of its five board members earlier this week, which the corporation said is unlawful since it is not a government agency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the rescission package is still on the table, and stations like KZYX in Mendocino are looking even further ahead — considering the possibility that they might lose federal support in Congress’ next biennial budget and have to forgo CPB funds completely in the next four years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re going to work on a placeholder that assumes everything’s fine, if you will, and then behind the scenes, so to speak, we’ll be working on scenarios that address the 25% cut,” Polkinghorne said of preparing the station’s budget for the next fiscal year, which begins in July. “We have just begun that process, and it’s a conversation nobody wants to have, but starting with meetings next week, that’s on the table.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was reported and written by KQED reporter \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/kdebenedetti\">Katie DeBenedetti\u003c/a> and edited by KQED Senior Editor \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/jservantez\">Jared Servantez\u003c/a>. Under KQED’s standard practices for reporting on itself, no member of KQED management or its news executives reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "san-francisco-mayoral-candidates-clash-as-breed-faces-attacks-from-farrell-lurie",
"title": "San Francisco Mayoral Candidates Clash as Breed Faces Attacks From Farrell, Lurie",
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"headTitle": "San Francisco Mayoral Candidates Clash as Breed Faces Attacks From Farrell, Lurie | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>Opposing visions of what San Francisco is — and what it can be — clashed on stage as the city’s five leading mayoral candidates offered stark differences on Thursday night at KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sold-out debate was the largest — and likely the last — major debate of the election cycle. Incumbent Mayor London Breed, who has drawn criticism from her opponents for dropping out of two recent debates, stood in the center of the stage wearing an aquamarine pantsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She faced an onslaught on her record, primarily from former Mayor Mark Farrell and Daniel Lurie. With 46 days until Election Day, the gloves were off as soon as the debate — moderated by Marisa Lagos and Scott Shafer of KQED and Joe Garofoli of the \u003cem>San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/em> — began.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s nice to see Mayor Breed finally at a debate after she’s been ducking them for the past two weeks,” Farrell said. “It is clear, Mayor Breed, you’re going to be here tonight telling the audience in San Francisco that everything’s just fine.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lurie, a nonprofit founder and Levi Strauss heir, didn’t spare anyone on the stage, including Supervisors Aaron Peskin and Ahsha Safaí.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12005588\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12005588\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-09-KQED_POOL-KQED_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-09-KQED_POOL-KQED_.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-09-KQED_POOL-KQED_-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-09-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-09-KQED_POOL-KQED_-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-09-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-09-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">San Francisco mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie speaks during a debate at KQED in San Francisco on Sept. 19, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The definition of insanity is electing the same people over and over again and expecting a different result,” Lurie said. “They’ve built up this corrupt system, then they exploit it. Then they have the audacity, like they did tonight, to tell you they’re the only ones that can fix it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The stakes couldn’t be higher for the city. San Francisco continues to experience a sluggish post-pandemic economic recovery. Overdose rates remain at an epidemic level, driven by fentanyl and meth. The lack of new affordable housing has exacerbated the housing crisis. The “doom loop” chatter remains pervasive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was barely time for policy positions on improving the city’s laundry list of problems because the candidates were focused on landing zingers on Breed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She landed plenty of her own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Daniel Lurie is probably one of the most dangerous people on the stage, so we definitely should be scared,” Breed said. “He has absolutely zero experience. He hasn’t even been employed for the past five years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12005587\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12005587\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-08-KQED_POOL-KQED_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-08-KQED_POOL-KQED_.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-08-KQED_POOL-KQED_-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-08-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-08-KQED_POOL-KQED_-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-08-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-08-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">San Francisco Mayor London Breed speaks during a mayoral debate at KQED in San Francisco on Sept. 19, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>She was also dismissive of Farrell, who slammed her for not doing enough to combat crime, even as \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11996211/san-francisco-crime-is-down-significantly-but-its-not-clear-trend-will-last\">police data shows crime in the city was considerably down in the first half of 2024\u003c/a>. In August, the San Francisco Police Officers Association \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12001603/san-francisco-police-union-backs-breed-for-mayor-as-deputy-sheriffs-go-for-farrell\">endorsed\u003c/a> Breed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know why we’re still listening to Mark Farrell talk about what he’s done — the same thing over and over again,” Breed said. “The fact is, crime is at its lowest level in 10 years. My budget is $200 million higher than his budget when [Farrell] served as temporary mayor. I have provided the police officers with the support and the 21st-century technology that they need to do their jobs, which is why crime is down in the first place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_12005315 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/240612-SFMayoralDebate-22-BL_qed-1020x680.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And the Police Officers Association endorsed me only.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In recent years, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11959861/sf-official-pleads-not-guilty-to-bribery-misappropriation-of-funds-charges\">sweeping investigations\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11923588/disgraced-former-sf-public-works-chief-mohammed-nuru-sentenced-to-7-years-for-bribery-scheme\">arrests and convictions\u003c/a> of public officials for corruption have scandalized City Hall. Earlier this month, a scandal surrounding the Dream Keeper initiative, the ambitious social equity program Breed \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11862094/sf-mayor-breed-unveils-plan-for-reinvesting-120-million-from-police-into-black-communities\">launched in 2021\u003c/a> to steer funds to community organizations supporting the city’s Black community, was revealed. Last week, Sheryl Davis, the former director of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, resigned following \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12004687/mayor-breed-taps-new-sf-human-rights-director-as-misspending-scrutiny-intensifies\">reports of potential misspending of public money\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I have held myself accountable,” Breed said. “I immediately asked for and received her resignation. And even before this probe started, we had already paused funding.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Safaí wasn’t buying it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Corruption has imbued this administration since Day 1,” said Safai, who proposed an ordinance in 2023 that would have forced nonprofits to file paperwork with the city administrator’s office to show they are in good standing with the state. “I have led a charge to do mandatory audits and bring accountability, and this mayor did not support that measure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12005585\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12005585\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-06-KQED_POOL-KQED_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-06-KQED_POOL-KQED_.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-06-KQED_POOL-KQED_-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-06-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-06-KQED_POOL-KQED_-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-06-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-06-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">San Francisco mayoral candidate Ahsha Safaí speaks during a mayoral debate at KQED in San Francisco on Sept. 19, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Farrell stayed on the offensive for the entire hourlong debate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s no mayor that is overseeing a steeper decline in our city’s history than London Breed,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“First of all, unlike some of my opponents on this stage, I actually have a job, No. 1,” Breed fired back. “No. 2, to be very clear, crime is lower than it’s been in over a decade.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She continued: “My results speak for themselves. We are seeing the city bounce back, and he is trying to take our city backwards.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12005582\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12005582\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-03-KQED_POOL-KQED_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-03-KQED_POOL-KQED_.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-03-KQED_POOL-KQED_-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-03-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-03-KQED_POOL-KQED_-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-03-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-03-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Former San Francisco mayor Mark Farrell speaks during a mayoral debate at KQED in San Francisco on Sept. 19, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Farrell claimed that neighborhoods are being held hostage by drug dealing and homelessness. If elected, he’s said he’d declare a fentanyl state of emergency, similar to what Lurie has proposed. His vision to redevelop downtown includes a focus on new housing. He rejected claims that he would shy away from development in his own district, the Marina.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I believe we need to build housing in every single neighborhood,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Peskin, who wants to expand rent control across the city, said he has never voted against affordable housing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we need to reject the narrative of the real estate speculators and developers,” he said. “I have voted to approve more housing at all income levels all over this city than every candidate on this stage combined, over 100,000 units. But I did that by working with neighborhoods, not against neighborhoods in my own district.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 4,300 people registered to watch the debate online to see the candidates run through their talking points.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The reason that we have an affordability crisis is because of these City Hall insiders creating a byzantine, bureaucratic and corrupt permitting process,” Lurie said. “Can you take four more years of it?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Opposing visions of what San Francisco is — and what it can be — clashed on stage as the city’s five leading mayoral candidates offered stark differences on Thursday night at KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sold-out debate was the largest — and likely the last — major debate of the election cycle. Incumbent Mayor London Breed, who has drawn criticism from her opponents for dropping out of two recent debates, stood in the center of the stage wearing an aquamarine pantsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She faced an onslaught on her record, primarily from former Mayor Mark Farrell and Daniel Lurie. With 46 days until Election Day, the gloves were off as soon as the debate — moderated by Marisa Lagos and Scott Shafer of KQED and Joe Garofoli of the \u003cem>San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/em> — began.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s nice to see Mayor Breed finally at a debate after she’s been ducking them for the past two weeks,” Farrell said. “It is clear, Mayor Breed, you’re going to be here tonight telling the audience in San Francisco that everything’s just fine.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lurie, a nonprofit founder and Levi Strauss heir, didn’t spare anyone on the stage, including Supervisors Aaron Peskin and Ahsha Safaí.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12005588\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12005588\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-09-KQED_POOL-KQED_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-09-KQED_POOL-KQED_.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-09-KQED_POOL-KQED_-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-09-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-09-KQED_POOL-KQED_-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-09-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-09-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">San Francisco mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie speaks during a debate at KQED in San Francisco on Sept. 19, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The definition of insanity is electing the same people over and over again and expecting a different result,” Lurie said. “They’ve built up this corrupt system, then they exploit it. Then they have the audacity, like they did tonight, to tell you they’re the only ones that can fix it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The stakes couldn’t be higher for the city. San Francisco continues to experience a sluggish post-pandemic economic recovery. Overdose rates remain at an epidemic level, driven by fentanyl and meth. The lack of new affordable housing has exacerbated the housing crisis. The “doom loop” chatter remains pervasive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was barely time for policy positions on improving the city’s laundry list of problems because the candidates were focused on landing zingers on Breed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She landed plenty of her own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Daniel Lurie is probably one of the most dangerous people on the stage, so we definitely should be scared,” Breed said. “He has absolutely zero experience. He hasn’t even been employed for the past five years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12005587\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12005587\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-08-KQED_POOL-KQED_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-08-KQED_POOL-KQED_.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-08-KQED_POOL-KQED_-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-08-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-08-KQED_POOL-KQED_-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-08-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-08-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">San Francisco Mayor London Breed speaks during a mayoral debate at KQED in San Francisco on Sept. 19, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>She was also dismissive of Farrell, who slammed her for not doing enough to combat crime, even as \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11996211/san-francisco-crime-is-down-significantly-but-its-not-clear-trend-will-last\">police data shows crime in the city was considerably down in the first half of 2024\u003c/a>. In August, the San Francisco Police Officers Association \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12001603/san-francisco-police-union-backs-breed-for-mayor-as-deputy-sheriffs-go-for-farrell\">endorsed\u003c/a> Breed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know why we’re still listening to Mark Farrell talk about what he’s done — the same thing over and over again,” Breed said. “The fact is, crime is at its lowest level in 10 years. My budget is $200 million higher than his budget when [Farrell] served as temporary mayor. I have provided the police officers with the support and the 21st-century technology that they need to do their jobs, which is why crime is down in the first place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And the Police Officers Association endorsed me only.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In recent years, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11959861/sf-official-pleads-not-guilty-to-bribery-misappropriation-of-funds-charges\">sweeping investigations\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11923588/disgraced-former-sf-public-works-chief-mohammed-nuru-sentenced-to-7-years-for-bribery-scheme\">arrests and convictions\u003c/a> of public officials for corruption have scandalized City Hall. Earlier this month, a scandal surrounding the Dream Keeper initiative, the ambitious social equity program Breed \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11862094/sf-mayor-breed-unveils-plan-for-reinvesting-120-million-from-police-into-black-communities\">launched in 2021\u003c/a> to steer funds to community organizations supporting the city’s Black community, was revealed. Last week, Sheryl Davis, the former director of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, resigned following \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12004687/mayor-breed-taps-new-sf-human-rights-director-as-misspending-scrutiny-intensifies\">reports of potential misspending of public money\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I have held myself accountable,” Breed said. “I immediately asked for and received her resignation. And even before this probe started, we had already paused funding.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Safaí wasn’t buying it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Corruption has imbued this administration since Day 1,” said Safai, who proposed an ordinance in 2023 that would have forced nonprofits to file paperwork with the city administrator’s office to show they are in good standing with the state. “I have led a charge to do mandatory audits and bring accountability, and this mayor did not support that measure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12005585\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12005585\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-06-KQED_POOL-KQED_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-06-KQED_POOL-KQED_.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-06-KQED_POOL-KQED_-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-06-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-06-KQED_POOL-KQED_-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-06-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-06-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">San Francisco mayoral candidate Ahsha Safaí speaks during a mayoral debate at KQED in San Francisco on Sept. 19, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Farrell stayed on the offensive for the entire hourlong debate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s no mayor that is overseeing a steeper decline in our city’s history than London Breed,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“First of all, unlike some of my opponents on this stage, I actually have a job, No. 1,” Breed fired back. “No. 2, to be very clear, crime is lower than it’s been in over a decade.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She continued: “My results speak for themselves. We are seeing the city bounce back, and he is trying to take our city backwards.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12005582\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12005582\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-03-KQED_POOL-KQED_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-03-KQED_POOL-KQED_.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-03-KQED_POOL-KQED_-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-03-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-03-KQED_POOL-KQED_-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-03-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240919-SF-MAYORAL-DEBATE-BL-03-KQED_POOL-KQED_-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Former San Francisco mayor Mark Farrell speaks during a mayoral debate at KQED in San Francisco on Sept. 19, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Farrell claimed that neighborhoods are being held hostage by drug dealing and homelessness. If elected, he’s said he’d declare a fentanyl state of emergency, similar to what Lurie has proposed. His vision to redevelop downtown includes a focus on new housing. He rejected claims that he would shy away from development in his own district, the Marina.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I believe we need to build housing in every single neighborhood,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Peskin, who wants to expand rent control across the city, said he has never voted against affordable housing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we need to reject the narrative of the real estate speculators and developers,” he said. “I have voted to approve more housing at all income levels all over this city than every candidate on this stage combined, over 100,000 units. But I did that by working with neighborhoods, not against neighborhoods in my own district.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 4,300 people registered to watch the debate online to see the candidates run through their talking points.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The reason that we have an affordability crisis is because of these City Hall insiders creating a byzantine, bureaucratic and corrupt permitting process,” Lurie said. “Can you take four more years of it?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Twenty-two years ago this month, Donato Cabrera felt like he hit a low point. Instead of conducting orchestras, he was selling CDs at the Metropolitan Opera gift shop in New York City.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He was in his early 30s with a bachelor’s degree and two advanced degrees, each focused on musical performance. Working in a music store was fine when he was a teenager living in Reno. It was not OK when he had expensive rent in Manhattan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cabrera, now 54, has served as music and artistic director of the California Symphony since 2013. Previously, he held conducting roles with the San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, among many other places. But back in 2002, he wasn’t sure how he was going to exit the gift shop and get back to performing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One day, a former graduate school classmate was visiting New York and happened to stop by the gift shop. She said she knew of a job that would be perfect for him with Music Academy of the West, a summer festival in Santa Barbara that was hiring an assistant conductor. He applied and landed the job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While in Santa Barbara, he built a friendship with someone who worked for the San Francisco Opera, which had a job opening for an associate conductor. He landed that role and, in 2005, moved to San Francisco, where he has built an impressive resume. He’s led orchestras for symphonies, operas, ballets and music festivals throughout the United States and Latin America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a recent interview, Cabrera talked about his career, how he incorporates his heritage into what has been a traditionally white space and the California Symphony’s 2024–25 season that begins Sept. 21.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Making a living from art, especially in a specialized field like classical music, is challenging and one Cabrera, who was born in Pasadena and was raised in Las Vegas and Reno, didn’t know was a possibility for him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was during visits to his paternal grandmother’s house in East L.A. that sparked his love of music. After family meals, she would sit down at her piano and play Mexican waltzes and military marches from memory. She learned to play that music by ear from her father, a musician who traveled all over Mexico performing traditional music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cabrera was around 8 years old when, on the drive home from one of those visits, he told his parents he wanted to learn piano. His maternal grandmother bought him one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was really those two folks, both of my grandmothers — one with the musical inspiration, the cultural information that she shared with us — and the other grandmother, through financial assistance, who pushed me forward into this very strange career of being a conductor,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cabrera’s story illustrates how culture is transmitted from one generation to the next, but not just by way of exposure or osmosis, as we often think. How many of us have purposely drowned out our parents’ music for more modern, cooler options?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, Cabrera sought to embody music the way his grandmother did. Culture isn’t just meant to be consumed. It should also be internalized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After finishing high school, he enrolled at the University of Nevada, Reno, with plans to become a high school music director. He thought learning to conduct an orchestra would help him become a better teacher, so he volunteered to lead the university’s student orchestra. The director gave him a chance since it was a small school, but a more prestigious program would have left the task to graduate students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cabrera’s professors at UNR pushed him to go to grad school to become a professional conductor. He earned a master’s degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Mentors from that school told him he needed to go to New York City, which led him to the conducting program at the Manhattan School of Music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can’t tell you how thankful I am for these mentors of mine who encouraged me to shoot for the stars when I thought I was happy enough with where I was heading,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While in grad school, he recalled questioning whether he belonged in the world of classical music, an environment that felt elitist and rooted solely in European traditions. The idea that Latines don’t have a connection to orchestral music is false, Cabrera said. Mexican composers were creating operas in the early 1700s. Most major Latin American cities have a symphony, something Cabrera knows firsthand because he’s conducted in Mexico and Chile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What always kept me going was my love and passion for the music,” he said. “It was up to me to get over my preconceptions of my surroundings and my preconceptions of the people around me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12002635\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1331px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12002635\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/CABRERA_CALIFORNIASYMPH1_BYLINDSAYHALE-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1331\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/CABRERA_CALIFORNIASYMPH1_BYLINDSAYHALE-KQED.jpg 1331w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/CABRERA_CALIFORNIASYMPH1_BYLINDSAYHALE-KQED-800x1202.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/CABRERA_CALIFORNIASYMPH1_BYLINDSAYHALE-KQED-1020x1533.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/CABRERA_CALIFORNIASYMPH1_BYLINDSAYHALE-KQED-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/CABRERA_CALIFORNIASYMPH1_BYLINDSAYHALE-KQED-1022x1536.jpg 1022w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1331px) 100vw, 1331px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Donato Cabrera, a Mexican-American conductor, serves as the artistic and music director of the California Symphony. \u003ccite>(Lindsay Hale / Courtesy of Donato Cabrera )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>People might think that the bulk of what a conductor does is stand in front of the orchestra and wave their arms. That’s actually about 1% of the job, Cabrera said. Most of his work involves preparation, organization and planning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m really engaged in all aspects of what a nonprofit performing arts organization does,” he said. “As a music director, I choose all of the repertoire, all of the soloists. Each season has a narrative. The flow of the music that’s being performed, programmed over the course of many years — that’s on my shoulders.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Walnut Creek-based California Symphony will start the season with a program highlighting Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, a masterpiece that was the composer’s final completed symphony. The rest of the season, which includes a total of five concerts and runs through June, will showcase the last works of Johannes Brahms, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cabrera spearheaded an effort to translate the California Symphony’s website into Spanish, bringing a measurable increase in Latine attendance. The symphony found that Latinos made up about 7% of households that attended performances from 2017 to 2024, almost doubling attendance during the seven years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His goal, he said, is for anyone who walks into a performance to immediately feel welcome and have more knowledge and understanding of the music when they leave.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So many people when they go to a concert, they want to hear what they know. They want to sing along to all the songs,” he said. “(Orchestral) music is for everyone, not just for people that grow up with it in their home or people of a certain strata. It’s there for everyone to enjoy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was reported for K Onda KQED, a monthly newsletter focused on the Bay Area’s Latinx community. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/newsletters/k-onda\">Click here to subscribe\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Twenty-two years ago this month, Donato Cabrera felt like he hit a low point. Instead of conducting orchestras, he was selling CDs at the Metropolitan Opera gift shop in New York City.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He was in his early 30s with a bachelor’s degree and two advanced degrees, each focused on musical performance. Working in a music store was fine when he was a teenager living in Reno. It was not OK when he had expensive rent in Manhattan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cabrera, now 54, has served as music and artistic director of the California Symphony since 2013. Previously, he held conducting roles with the San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, among many other places. But back in 2002, he wasn’t sure how he was going to exit the gift shop and get back to performing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One day, a former graduate school classmate was visiting New York and happened to stop by the gift shop. She said she knew of a job that would be perfect for him with Music Academy of the West, a summer festival in Santa Barbara that was hiring an assistant conductor. He applied and landed the job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While in Santa Barbara, he built a friendship with someone who worked for the San Francisco Opera, which had a job opening for an associate conductor. He landed that role and, in 2005, moved to San Francisco, where he has built an impressive resume. He’s led orchestras for symphonies, operas, ballets and music festivals throughout the United States and Latin America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a recent interview, Cabrera talked about his career, how he incorporates his heritage into what has been a traditionally white space and the California Symphony’s 2024–25 season that begins Sept. 21.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Making a living from art, especially in a specialized field like classical music, is challenging and one Cabrera, who was born in Pasadena and was raised in Las Vegas and Reno, didn’t know was a possibility for him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was during visits to his paternal grandmother’s house in East L.A. that sparked his love of music. After family meals, she would sit down at her piano and play Mexican waltzes and military marches from memory. She learned to play that music by ear from her father, a musician who traveled all over Mexico performing traditional music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cabrera was around 8 years old when, on the drive home from one of those visits, he told his parents he wanted to learn piano. His maternal grandmother bought him one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was really those two folks, both of my grandmothers — one with the musical inspiration, the cultural information that she shared with us — and the other grandmother, through financial assistance, who pushed me forward into this very strange career of being a conductor,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cabrera’s story illustrates how culture is transmitted from one generation to the next, but not just by way of exposure or osmosis, as we often think. How many of us have purposely drowned out our parents’ music for more modern, cooler options?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, Cabrera sought to embody music the way his grandmother did. Culture isn’t just meant to be consumed. It should also be internalized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After finishing high school, he enrolled at the University of Nevada, Reno, with plans to become a high school music director. He thought learning to conduct an orchestra would help him become a better teacher, so he volunteered to lead the university’s student orchestra. The director gave him a chance since it was a small school, but a more prestigious program would have left the task to graduate students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cabrera’s professors at UNR pushed him to go to grad school to become a professional conductor. He earned a master’s degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Mentors from that school told him he needed to go to New York City, which led him to the conducting program at the Manhattan School of Music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can’t tell you how thankful I am for these mentors of mine who encouraged me to shoot for the stars when I thought I was happy enough with where I was heading,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While in grad school, he recalled questioning whether he belonged in the world of classical music, an environment that felt elitist and rooted solely in European traditions. The idea that Latines don’t have a connection to orchestral music is false, Cabrera said. Mexican composers were creating operas in the early 1700s. Most major Latin American cities have a symphony, something Cabrera knows firsthand because he’s conducted in Mexico and Chile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What always kept me going was my love and passion for the music,” he said. “It was up to me to get over my preconceptions of my surroundings and my preconceptions of the people around me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12002635\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1331px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12002635\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/CABRERA_CALIFORNIASYMPH1_BYLINDSAYHALE-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1331\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/CABRERA_CALIFORNIASYMPH1_BYLINDSAYHALE-KQED.jpg 1331w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/CABRERA_CALIFORNIASYMPH1_BYLINDSAYHALE-KQED-800x1202.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/CABRERA_CALIFORNIASYMPH1_BYLINDSAYHALE-KQED-1020x1533.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/CABRERA_CALIFORNIASYMPH1_BYLINDSAYHALE-KQED-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/CABRERA_CALIFORNIASYMPH1_BYLINDSAYHALE-KQED-1022x1536.jpg 1022w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1331px) 100vw, 1331px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Donato Cabrera, a Mexican-American conductor, serves as the artistic and music director of the California Symphony. \u003ccite>(Lindsay Hale / Courtesy of Donato Cabrera )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>People might think that the bulk of what a conductor does is stand in front of the orchestra and wave their arms. That’s actually about 1% of the job, Cabrera said. Most of his work involves preparation, organization and planning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m really engaged in all aspects of what a nonprofit performing arts organization does,” he said. “As a music director, I choose all of the repertoire, all of the soloists. Each season has a narrative. The flow of the music that’s being performed, programmed over the course of many years — that’s on my shoulders.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Walnut Creek-based California Symphony will start the season with a program highlighting Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, a masterpiece that was the composer’s final completed symphony. The rest of the season, which includes a total of five concerts and runs through June, will showcase the last works of Johannes Brahms, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cabrera spearheaded an effort to translate the California Symphony’s website into Spanish, bringing a measurable increase in Latine attendance. The symphony found that Latinos made up about 7% of households that attended performances from 2017 to 2024, almost doubling attendance during the seven years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His goal, he said, is for anyone who walks into a performance to immediately feel welcome and have more knowledge and understanding of the music when they leave.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So many people when they go to a concert, they want to hear what they know. They want to sing along to all the songs,” he said. “(Orchestral) music is for everyone, not just for people that grow up with it in their home or people of a certain strata. It’s there for everyone to enjoy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was reported for K Onda KQED, a monthly newsletter focused on the Bay Area’s Latinx community. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/newsletters/k-onda\">Click here to subscribe\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>The murder of George Floyd four years ago sparked a racial awakening for some Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Four years later, the momentum to address systemic racism, demanded by the people who marched in protest against police violence, has evaporated. Initiatives to create more inclusive organizations are being canceled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The business community, long averse to political risks or controversies, backed away from DEI programs over the past two years in the wake of widespread attacks from lawmakers, high-profile rich guys and conservative activists like former Trump aide Stephen Miller,” \u003cem>Axios\u003c/em> \u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/2024/04/02/dei-backlash-diversity?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top\">reported\u003c/a> in April.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s an attack on equity,” Eric Abrams, KQED’s chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer, told me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was only a matter of time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was only a few years ago that conservatives attacked Critical Race Theory, the academic framework that recognizes racism is embedded in institutions, laws and policies, impacting everything from health care to education to employment opportunities. The theory is that racism is more than individual bias and prejudice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In June 2023, the conservative U.S. Supreme Court effectively ended race-conscious admission programs at colleges and universities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Diversity, equity and inclusion — DEI — was on my mind on Juneteenth, a day that commemorates the emancipation of enslaved people in Texas more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order that freed Black people, went into effect. DEI has been around for decades with origins in the civil rights movement. In the 1960s and 1970s, many companies began deploying diversity training until the practice cooled during President Ronald Reagan’s administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After Floyd’s death, there was a renewed demand for policies to address the exclusion of historically marginalized groups. When done appropriately, DEI includes hiring practices, pay inequity, poor retention rates among marginalized groups and anti-discrimination training, among other things. The backlash of the brief era has been swift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DEI initiatives have been bombarded on college campuses, corporate boardrooms and state legislatures. In an effort to suppress history, books focused on the experiences of non-white people have been banned. Rich, powerful men have claimed that DEI is “\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1742653436393406618\">another word for racism\u003c/a>” and “\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/BillAckman/status/1742441534627184760\">inherently a racist and illegal movement\u003c/a>.” A politician, whose wealth is in question because of mounting \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/trump-fraud-carroll-fines-82d423b8e7a7f9a32470729c5f4410e5\">legal debts\u003c/a>, has \u003ca href=\"https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/05/01/donald-trump-anti-white-racism-dei/73528246007/\">vowed\u003c/a> to end anti-white racism. To hear the privileged talk, DEI is \u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/2024/04/01/trump-reverse-racism-civil-rights?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top\">worse than the N-word\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Is DEI bound for the garbage at KQED, an organization intentionally focused on public service? Earlier this week, I sat down with Abrams and Candace Rucker, KQED’s DEI program manager, to begin a conversation about the challenges of their work — and what the DEI backlash means for KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Charlamagne tha God, a Black radio and TV host, pilloried DEI initiatives as a PR stunt on \u003cem>The Daily Show\u003c/em>. Naturally, his appearance was celebrated on \u003cem>Fox News\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was talking about corporate DEI initiatives that were created after George Floyd that were more symbolism over substance,” he \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/11/magazine/charlamagne-tha-god-interview.html\">told\u003c/a> \u003cem>The New York Times\u003c/em> last month. “I’m talking about the corporations who do things like putting a Simone Biles poster in the break room and saying something like, ‘We’re head over heels for diversity here.’ I’m not talking about DEI over all, and it’s so interesting to me because I love what the right-wing media does.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11991198\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11991198\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240414-WHERE-DOES-DEI-STAND-MD-06_qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240414-WHERE-DOES-DEI-STAND-MD-06_qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240414-WHERE-DOES-DEI-STAND-MD-06_qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240414-WHERE-DOES-DEI-STAND-MD-06_qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240414-WHERE-DOES-DEI-STAND-MD-06_qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240414-WHERE-DOES-DEI-STAND-MD-06_qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">KQED’s Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer Eric Abrams on April 15, 2024.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Abrams chuckled when I mentioned the episode.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we talk about performative corporate DEI initiatives, there’s a lot of this stuff that is, I think, inherently performative,” he said. “But there’s nothing performative about talking to journalists about their internal unconscious bias. There’s nothing performative about talking to our other colleagues or our HR team on how we can improve our hiring processes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How did inclusivity become a wedge in America?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel like the picture that DEI gets is that it’s anti-white and it’s only for marginalized groups or racially-minoritized people. It’s not, though,” Rucker said. “That’s one of the flaws of the DEI industry. When it was getting started and when it started gaining traction, we did not market it correctly. We are all for the marginalized groups and racially-minoritized people, which we should be, but we left out everybody else.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to a 2023 \u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/05/17/diversity-equity-and-inclusion-in-the-workplace/\">report\u003c/a> by Pew Research Center, about two-thirds or more of Black, Asian and Hispanic workers say that focusing on DEI at work is a good thing. Less than half of white workers, roughly 47%, feel the same. The gap widens when broken down generationally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2023, NBC \u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/diversity-roles-disappear-three-years-george-floyd-protests-inspired-rcna72026\">reported\u003c/a> DEI roles increased by 55% after Floyd’s murder. The roles have disappeared, signaling that efforts to make companies more inclusive weren’t supported by the companies. Maybe it’s because the rapid DEI expansion didn’t invite what people perceive as the opposite of DEI — cisgender, heterosexual white men — to the table.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To learn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we don’t include him in the conversation, how the hell is he going to be a good ally?” Rucker said. “How is he going to know what he can do to support everybody else — to unlearn the things that he’s previously learned and relearn from different perspectives? He’s not going to know how to do that if we don’t include him in the conversation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Abrams said: “Ultimately, what we’d like to create here is space where we can have these difficult conversations in a civil, non-attacking, ‘Yeah, you disagree with me on this issue, but let’s go to lunch [anyway]’ versus, ‘You disagree with me on this issue, you’re evil, we can never speak again’.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I will continue having periodic conversations with Abrams and Rucker, because I believe in diversity, equity and inclusion — mixed with a healthy dose of curiosity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are focused on making things equitable for everybody,” Rucker told me. “We’re focused on people — \u003cem>all\u003c/em> of the people. Including everybody in the conversation and fostering that curiosity. If you constantly talk about curiosity and practice it in front of people, people are going to catch on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That would be epic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The murder of George Floyd four years ago sparked a racial awakening for some Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Four years later, the momentum to address systemic racism, demanded by the people who marched in protest against police violence, has evaporated. Initiatives to create more inclusive organizations are being canceled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The business community, long averse to political risks or controversies, backed away from DEI programs over the past two years in the wake of widespread attacks from lawmakers, high-profile rich guys and conservative activists like former Trump aide Stephen Miller,” \u003cem>Axios\u003c/em> \u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/2024/04/02/dei-backlash-diversity?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top\">reported\u003c/a> in April.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s an attack on equity,” Eric Abrams, KQED’s chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer, told me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was only a matter of time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was only a few years ago that conservatives attacked Critical Race Theory, the academic framework that recognizes racism is embedded in institutions, laws and policies, impacting everything from health care to education to employment opportunities. The theory is that racism is more than individual bias and prejudice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In June 2023, the conservative U.S. Supreme Court effectively ended race-conscious admission programs at colleges and universities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Diversity, equity and inclusion — DEI — was on my mind on Juneteenth, a day that commemorates the emancipation of enslaved people in Texas more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order that freed Black people, went into effect. DEI has been around for decades with origins in the civil rights movement. In the 1960s and 1970s, many companies began deploying diversity training until the practice cooled during President Ronald Reagan’s administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After Floyd’s death, there was a renewed demand for policies to address the exclusion of historically marginalized groups. When done appropriately, DEI includes hiring practices, pay inequity, poor retention rates among marginalized groups and anti-discrimination training, among other things. The backlash of the brief era has been swift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DEI initiatives have been bombarded on college campuses, corporate boardrooms and state legislatures. In an effort to suppress history, books focused on the experiences of non-white people have been banned. Rich, powerful men have claimed that DEI is “\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1742653436393406618\">another word for racism\u003c/a>” and “\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/BillAckman/status/1742441534627184760\">inherently a racist and illegal movement\u003c/a>.” A politician, whose wealth is in question because of mounting \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/trump-fraud-carroll-fines-82d423b8e7a7f9a32470729c5f4410e5\">legal debts\u003c/a>, has \u003ca href=\"https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/05/01/donald-trump-anti-white-racism-dei/73528246007/\">vowed\u003c/a> to end anti-white racism. To hear the privileged talk, DEI is \u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/2024/04/01/trump-reverse-racism-civil-rights?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top\">worse than the N-word\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Is DEI bound for the garbage at KQED, an organization intentionally focused on public service? Earlier this week, I sat down with Abrams and Candace Rucker, KQED’s DEI program manager, to begin a conversation about the challenges of their work — and what the DEI backlash means for KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Charlamagne tha God, a Black radio and TV host, pilloried DEI initiatives as a PR stunt on \u003cem>The Daily Show\u003c/em>. Naturally, his appearance was celebrated on \u003cem>Fox News\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was talking about corporate DEI initiatives that were created after George Floyd that were more symbolism over substance,” he \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/11/magazine/charlamagne-tha-god-interview.html\">told\u003c/a> \u003cem>The New York Times\u003c/em> last month. “I’m talking about the corporations who do things like putting a Simone Biles poster in the break room and saying something like, ‘We’re head over heels for diversity here.’ I’m not talking about DEI over all, and it’s so interesting to me because I love what the right-wing media does.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11991198\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11991198\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240414-WHERE-DOES-DEI-STAND-MD-06_qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240414-WHERE-DOES-DEI-STAND-MD-06_qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240414-WHERE-DOES-DEI-STAND-MD-06_qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240414-WHERE-DOES-DEI-STAND-MD-06_qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240414-WHERE-DOES-DEI-STAND-MD-06_qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240414-WHERE-DOES-DEI-STAND-MD-06_qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">KQED’s Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer Eric Abrams on April 15, 2024.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Abrams chuckled when I mentioned the episode.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we talk about performative corporate DEI initiatives, there’s a lot of this stuff that is, I think, inherently performative,” he said. “But there’s nothing performative about talking to journalists about their internal unconscious bias. There’s nothing performative about talking to our other colleagues or our HR team on how we can improve our hiring processes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How did inclusivity become a wedge in America?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel like the picture that DEI gets is that it’s anti-white and it’s only for marginalized groups or racially-minoritized people. It’s not, though,” Rucker said. “That’s one of the flaws of the DEI industry. When it was getting started and when it started gaining traction, we did not market it correctly. We are all for the marginalized groups and racially-minoritized people, which we should be, but we left out everybody else.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to a 2023 \u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/05/17/diversity-equity-and-inclusion-in-the-workplace/\">report\u003c/a> by Pew Research Center, about two-thirds or more of Black, Asian and Hispanic workers say that focusing on DEI at work is a good thing. Less than half of white workers, roughly 47%, feel the same. The gap widens when broken down generationally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2023, NBC \u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/diversity-roles-disappear-three-years-george-floyd-protests-inspired-rcna72026\">reported\u003c/a> DEI roles increased by 55% after Floyd’s murder. The roles have disappeared, signaling that efforts to make companies more inclusive weren’t supported by the companies. Maybe it’s because the rapid DEI expansion didn’t invite what people perceive as the opposite of DEI — cisgender, heterosexual white men — to the table.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To learn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we don’t include him in the conversation, how the hell is he going to be a good ally?” Rucker said. “How is he going to know what he can do to support everybody else — to unlearn the things that he’s previously learned and relearn from different perspectives? He’s not going to know how to do that if we don’t include him in the conversation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Abrams said: “Ultimately, what we’d like to create here is space where we can have these difficult conversations in a civil, non-attacking, ‘Yeah, you disagree with me on this issue, but let’s go to lunch [anyway]’ versus, ‘You disagree with me on this issue, you’re evil, we can never speak again’.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I will continue having periodic conversations with Abrams and Rucker, because I believe in diversity, equity and inclusion — mixed with a healthy dose of curiosity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are focused on making things equitable for everybody,” Rucker told me. “We’re focused on people — \u003cem>all\u003c/em> of the people. Including everybody in the conversation and fostering that curiosity. If you constantly talk about curiosity and practice it in front of people, people are going to catch on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That would be epic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Updated, 2:25 p.m. Thursday\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED, one of the nation’s largest public media organizations, announced Thursday it’s laying off 19 people as part of an 8% overall reduction in staff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>President and CEO Michael Isip said the company is eliminating 34 positions. In addition to the employees being laid off, 11 accepted an early retirement or voluntary departure offer and four vacant positions will not be filled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Isip also said KQED would sunset its arts and culture podcast, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/rightnowish\">\u003cem>Rightnowish\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. Other budget reductions include eliminating on-air television pledge drives beginning in October.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The staff cuts were organization-wide, Isip said, impacting television and radio broadcasting operations, membership, live events, audience intelligence, corporate sponsorship development, human resources, digital video and podcasts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our top objective was to protect our public service,” Isip said. “Then we looked at the impact on operations, and then we wanted to minimize the scale of any layoffs that we needed to make for staff.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Altogether, Isip said the budget reductions are expected to save the company $4.5 million in annual expenses. KQED is running an $8 million deficit in fiscal year 2024, which ends September 30.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The station’s most recent on-air pledge drive generated $500,000 more than its $1.1 million target. However, Isip said that alone wasn’t sufficient to reverse the trajectory of sustained expenses outpacing projected revenues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The budget cuts would enable the media outlet to “rightsize” its deficit, Isip said. He said the company anticipates reaching a balanced budget by fiscal 2027.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Really, what we’re focused on is the next couple of years,” he said. “We found permanent savings. … and based on our revenue projections, the deficit should continue to decrease over the next three years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the many cuts announced was a decision to shift KQED’s television master control to a centralized hub service called CentralCast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The union representing KQED master control employees who face layoffs, the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, is challenging that move as a violation of its contract.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The transfer of this work done by our engineering members for well over six decades would decimate our engineering bargaining unit,” Carrie Biggs-Adams, president of NABET Local 51, \u003ca href=\"https://files.constantcontact.com/3ab100a1201/0cd39cfa-f46f-4dc0-9724-b466932037dc.pdf\">wrote in a letter (PDF)\u003c/a> to KQED management earlier this week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Molly Lacob, KQED’s deputy general counsel, said the company is “aware of their challenge, and we look forward to working with them on a resolution.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Representatives for the other employee union at KQED — the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists — did not return a request for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_11987176,news_11832855 label='Related Coverage']Peter Cavagnaro, a KQED spokesperson, said nine of the employees to be laid off have worked for the organization for fewer than six years. The other 10 had worked for the company for seven or more years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/jrodriguez\">Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez\u003c/a>, a politics reporter at KQED and board president of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California chapter, confirmed Wednesday that he was one of the 11 employees who accepted a buyout, which he said was an opportunity to reflect on his 12-year tenure in journalism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Different people have different levels of stamina for [the job],” he said. “The pace has gotten me to the point where I just needed a little time to rest, and that might mean a month or two. That might mean a year. Who knows?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fitzgerald Rodriguez first became engaged in journalism in middle school when he was named co-editor of the school paper, the Penguin Press. His father had recently died, and he said he was struggling in school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But seeing a purpose behind learning, seeing a purpose behind writing, seeing a purpose behind meeting people in your community really gave me a purpose in school,” Fitzgerald Rodriguez said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Rightnowish\u003c/em> host \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/ogpenn\">Pendarvis Harshaw\u003c/a> said he will continue to work for KQED within its arts department. At least one other member of the show’s three-person team will be laid off. The show’s last episode will be on July 18.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The podcast has won several awards, including the 2021 Black Podcast Award for \u003ca href=\"https://blackpodawards.com/our-nominees-and-winners/category-winners/our-best-filmtv-podcast-award-winners/\">Best Film and Television Podcast and\u003c/a> the 2020 Black Podcast Award for \u003ca href=\"https://blackpodawards.com/our-nominees-and-winners/category-winners/our-best-culture-podcast-award-winners/#:~:text=2020%20Winner%20Best%20Culture%20Podcast,the%20place%20we%20call%20home.\">Best Culture Podcast\u003c/a>, and in 2023, it was \u003ca href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kqed_kqed-is-proud-to-announce-that-two-of-our-activity-7113219820174643200-HQ1q/?trk=public_profile_like_view\">named a finalist\u003c/a> in the 2nd Annual Signal Awards’ Individual Episodes category.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harshaw began the show in 2019, transforming what was then a photo series on Twitter into a radio show, which later morphed into a podcast. Last fall, he and the team launched a special series, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13934874/hyphy-kids-got-trauma\">\u003cem>Hyphy Kids Got Trauma\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, an introspective examination of a Bay Area youth culture that swelled into a national hip-hop phenomenon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said it prompted people to interact with KQED, and by extension, public media, in ways they hadn’t previously.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People really engaged with me and said that they felt seen and heard about the pain that they experienced during the hyphy movement,” Harshaw said. “We talk about diversifying public media. That is part of it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=arts_13934874]But Harshaw said the deep reporting that went into the series wasn’t always possible to sustain with a weekly show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s not easy to convince people — young folks of color, young Black folks — to listen to your public media station,” Harshaw said. “It’s difficult to bring people into a place where they feel like they’ve been told not to go for so long.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jen Chien, KQED’s director of podcasts, said the show’s audience numbers have seen “an overall downward trend.” The decision to end it is “not a judgment on the quality of the show, or of the capacity or talents of the team that makes it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s about making strategic decisions during a time of financial distress,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When asked whether canceling \u003cem>Rightnowish\u003c/em> reflected a retreat from KQED’s commitment to representing diverse voices, Isip defended the decision. He pointed to the company’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pressroom/12194/kqed-acquires-the-snap-judgment-and-spooked-podcasts\">$1.9 million acquisition last year\u003c/a> of \u003ca href=\"https://snapjudgment.org/\">\u003cem>Snap Judgment\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, which produces the podcasts \u003cem>Snap Judgment\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Spooked\u003c/em>, as evidence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The reality is, we’re investing in productions that will drive audience and growth,” Isip said, “and [Rightnowish] wasn’t hitting our goals.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an effort to drive digital growth, Isip said the company recently launched the KQED Studios Fund, a $10 million initiative to grow podcasts and online video production that will focus on “stories and programs rooted in the Bay Area.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As KQED looks for ways to monetize its digital content, Isip said the local news outlet is entering “uncharted territory.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re still serving our broadcast audiences, which gives us some financial stability, and that gives us a time to experiment and expand into these digital platforms,” Isip said. “It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition for us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other budget cuts include automating overnight radio master control, reducing the maximum amount of paid time off employees can build up and shrinking daytime security staffing by one officer. The company will also not renew its leases for its satellite office and signage in downtown San José, a decision Isip said would not impact the outlet’s South Bay news coverage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The budget reductions come as the station has completed a major \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/campaign21/463/c21-new-horizons\">$140 million expansion, which \u003c/a>included a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pressroom/11576/kqed-plan-for-opening\">$94 million renovation of its headquarters\u003c/a> in San Francisco and a $45 million investment in its programming and services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s the second round of layoffs within four years. The public media nonprofit \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11832855/kqed-announces-layoffs-blames-coronavirus-pandemic-for-budget-shortfall\">laid off 20 employees in 2020\u003c/a> amid a decline in corporate sponsorship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED’s staff cuts announced Thursday were the latest to hit public media outlets across the country. On Wednesday, GBH in Boston \u003ca href=\"https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2024-05-22/gbh-cuts-staff-and-programming\">announced it would lay off 31 employees\u003c/a>. That follows similar news from \u003ca href=\"https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-public-media-lays-off-14-staffers/451b3f28-338c-45bc-98c2-742a7106ecf2\">WBEZ in Chicago\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://current.org/2024/03/american-public-media-restructures-apm-studios-eliminates-positions/\">American Public Media\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/04/24/wbur-cuts-buyouts-layoffs-jobs-boston-media\">WBUR\u003c/a> in Boston, \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2024-05-09/laist-layoffs-buyouts-scpr\">KPCC\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2024-01-10/kcrw-greater-la-podcast-ending-steve-chiotakis-buyouts-staffing\">KCRW\u003c/a> in Southern California and \u003ca href=\"https://www.cpr.org/2024/03/11/colorado-public-radios-ceo-explains-why-the-company-is-laying-off-15-people/\">Colorado Public Radio\u003c/a>, among \u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/02/23/wamu-layoffs-dcist-shutdown/\">others\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was reported and written by KQED senior editor Erin Baldassari and edited by KQED’s Dan Brekke. Under KQED’s standard practices for reporting on itself, no member of KQED management or its news executives reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Updated, 2:25 p.m. Thursday\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED, one of the nation’s largest public media organizations, announced Thursday it’s laying off 19 people as part of an 8% overall reduction in staff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>President and CEO Michael Isip said the company is eliminating 34 positions. In addition to the employees being laid off, 11 accepted an early retirement or voluntary departure offer and four vacant positions will not be filled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Isip also said KQED would sunset its arts and culture podcast, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/rightnowish\">\u003cem>Rightnowish\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. Other budget reductions include eliminating on-air television pledge drives beginning in October.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The staff cuts were organization-wide, Isip said, impacting television and radio broadcasting operations, membership, live events, audience intelligence, corporate sponsorship development, human resources, digital video and podcasts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our top objective was to protect our public service,” Isip said. “Then we looked at the impact on operations, and then we wanted to minimize the scale of any layoffs that we needed to make for staff.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Altogether, Isip said the budget reductions are expected to save the company $4.5 million in annual expenses. KQED is running an $8 million deficit in fiscal year 2024, which ends September 30.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The station’s most recent on-air pledge drive generated $500,000 more than its $1.1 million target. However, Isip said that alone wasn’t sufficient to reverse the trajectory of sustained expenses outpacing projected revenues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The budget cuts would enable the media outlet to “rightsize” its deficit, Isip said. He said the company anticipates reaching a balanced budget by fiscal 2027.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Really, what we’re focused on is the next couple of years,” he said. “We found permanent savings. … and based on our revenue projections, the deficit should continue to decrease over the next three years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the many cuts announced was a decision to shift KQED’s television master control to a centralized hub service called CentralCast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The union representing KQED master control employees who face layoffs, the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, is challenging that move as a violation of its contract.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The transfer of this work done by our engineering members for well over six decades would decimate our engineering bargaining unit,” Carrie Biggs-Adams, president of NABET Local 51, \u003ca href=\"https://files.constantcontact.com/3ab100a1201/0cd39cfa-f46f-4dc0-9724-b466932037dc.pdf\">wrote in a letter (PDF)\u003c/a> to KQED management earlier this week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Molly Lacob, KQED’s deputy general counsel, said the company is “aware of their challenge, and we look forward to working with them on a resolution.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Representatives for the other employee union at KQED — the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists — did not return a request for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Peter Cavagnaro, a KQED spokesperson, said nine of the employees to be laid off have worked for the organization for fewer than six years. The other 10 had worked for the company for seven or more years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/jrodriguez\">Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez\u003c/a>, a politics reporter at KQED and board president of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California chapter, confirmed Wednesday that he was one of the 11 employees who accepted a buyout, which he said was an opportunity to reflect on his 12-year tenure in journalism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Different people have different levels of stamina for [the job],” he said. “The pace has gotten me to the point where I just needed a little time to rest, and that might mean a month or two. That might mean a year. Who knows?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fitzgerald Rodriguez first became engaged in journalism in middle school when he was named co-editor of the school paper, the Penguin Press. His father had recently died, and he said he was struggling in school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But seeing a purpose behind learning, seeing a purpose behind writing, seeing a purpose behind meeting people in your community really gave me a purpose in school,” Fitzgerald Rodriguez said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Rightnowish\u003c/em> host \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/ogpenn\">Pendarvis Harshaw\u003c/a> said he will continue to work for KQED within its arts department. At least one other member of the show’s three-person team will be laid off. The show’s last episode will be on July 18.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The podcast has won several awards, including the 2021 Black Podcast Award for \u003ca href=\"https://blackpodawards.com/our-nominees-and-winners/category-winners/our-best-filmtv-podcast-award-winners/\">Best Film and Television Podcast and\u003c/a> the 2020 Black Podcast Award for \u003ca href=\"https://blackpodawards.com/our-nominees-and-winners/category-winners/our-best-culture-podcast-award-winners/#:~:text=2020%20Winner%20Best%20Culture%20Podcast,the%20place%20we%20call%20home.\">Best Culture Podcast\u003c/a>, and in 2023, it was \u003ca href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kqed_kqed-is-proud-to-announce-that-two-of-our-activity-7113219820174643200-HQ1q/?trk=public_profile_like_view\">named a finalist\u003c/a> in the 2nd Annual Signal Awards’ Individual Episodes category.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harshaw began the show in 2019, transforming what was then a photo series on Twitter into a radio show, which later morphed into a podcast. Last fall, he and the team launched a special series, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13934874/hyphy-kids-got-trauma\">\u003cem>Hyphy Kids Got Trauma\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, an introspective examination of a Bay Area youth culture that swelled into a national hip-hop phenomenon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said it prompted people to interact with KQED, and by extension, public media, in ways they hadn’t previously.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People really engaged with me and said that they felt seen and heard about the pain that they experienced during the hyphy movement,” Harshaw said. “We talk about diversifying public media. That is part of it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>But Harshaw said the deep reporting that went into the series wasn’t always possible to sustain with a weekly show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s not easy to convince people — young folks of color, young Black folks — to listen to your public media station,” Harshaw said. “It’s difficult to bring people into a place where they feel like they’ve been told not to go for so long.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jen Chien, KQED’s director of podcasts, said the show’s audience numbers have seen “an overall downward trend.” The decision to end it is “not a judgment on the quality of the show, or of the capacity or talents of the team that makes it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s about making strategic decisions during a time of financial distress,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When asked whether canceling \u003cem>Rightnowish\u003c/em> reflected a retreat from KQED’s commitment to representing diverse voices, Isip defended the decision. He pointed to the company’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pressroom/12194/kqed-acquires-the-snap-judgment-and-spooked-podcasts\">$1.9 million acquisition last year\u003c/a> of \u003ca href=\"https://snapjudgment.org/\">\u003cem>Snap Judgment\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, which produces the podcasts \u003cem>Snap Judgment\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Spooked\u003c/em>, as evidence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The reality is, we’re investing in productions that will drive audience and growth,” Isip said, “and [Rightnowish] wasn’t hitting our goals.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an effort to drive digital growth, Isip said the company recently launched the KQED Studios Fund, a $10 million initiative to grow podcasts and online video production that will focus on “stories and programs rooted in the Bay Area.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As KQED looks for ways to monetize its digital content, Isip said the local news outlet is entering “uncharted territory.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re still serving our broadcast audiences, which gives us some financial stability, and that gives us a time to experiment and expand into these digital platforms,” Isip said. “It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition for us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other budget cuts include automating overnight radio master control, reducing the maximum amount of paid time off employees can build up and shrinking daytime security staffing by one officer. The company will also not renew its leases for its satellite office and signage in downtown San José, a decision Isip said would not impact the outlet’s South Bay news coverage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The budget reductions come as the station has completed a major \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/campaign21/463/c21-new-horizons\">$140 million expansion, which \u003c/a>included a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pressroom/11576/kqed-plan-for-opening\">$94 million renovation of its headquarters\u003c/a> in San Francisco and a $45 million investment in its programming and services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s the second round of layoffs within four years. The public media nonprofit \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11832855/kqed-announces-layoffs-blames-coronavirus-pandemic-for-budget-shortfall\">laid off 20 employees in 2020\u003c/a> amid a decline in corporate sponsorship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED’s staff cuts announced Thursday were the latest to hit public media outlets across the country. On Wednesday, GBH in Boston \u003ca href=\"https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2024-05-22/gbh-cuts-staff-and-programming\">announced it would lay off 31 employees\u003c/a>. That follows similar news from \u003ca href=\"https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-public-media-lays-off-14-staffers/451b3f28-338c-45bc-98c2-742a7106ecf2\">WBEZ in Chicago\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://current.org/2024/03/american-public-media-restructures-apm-studios-eliminates-positions/\">American Public Media\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/04/24/wbur-cuts-buyouts-layoffs-jobs-boston-media\">WBUR\u003c/a> in Boston, \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2024-05-09/laist-layoffs-buyouts-scpr\">KPCC\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2024-01-10/kcrw-greater-la-podcast-ending-steve-chiotakis-buyouts-staffing\">KCRW\u003c/a> in Southern California and \u003ca href=\"https://www.cpr.org/2024/03/11/colorado-public-radios-ceo-explains-why-the-company-is-laying-off-15-people/\">Colorado Public Radio\u003c/a>, among \u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/02/23/wamu-layoffs-dcist-shutdown/\">others\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was reported and written by KQED senior editor Erin Baldassari and edited by KQED’s Dan Brekke. Under KQED’s standard practices for reporting on itself, no member of KQED management or its news executives reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Updated 5:15 p.m. Tuesday\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This week, KQED is expected to announce it will lay off as many as 25 employees as part of its \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11832855/kqed-announces-layoffs-blames-coronavirus-pandemic-for-budget-shortfall\">second round of staff cuts\u003c/a> within four years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The layoffs follow voluntary departure offers that at least nine employees accepted and will be coupled with yet-to-be-announced reductions in discretionary spending and services, according to KQED President and CEO Michael Isip.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Simply put, the cuts are the result of rapidly rising costs, especially in the area of salaries and benefits, at the same time that revenue from individuals, corporate sponsors and other sources has declined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s painful,” he said. “The people of KQED are what make this organization so special. And when you lose colleagues, it not only impacts your day-to-day work, but it impacts overall morale.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED says it currently employs 387 people, including 15 on limited-term contracts. Counting temporary workers and interns, the total is 525.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Underlying the decision to shrink its workforce are factors unique to KQED and some common to public media outlets across the country. KQED’s layoff announcement follows similar news from \u003ca href=\"https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-public-media-lays-off-14-staffers/451b3f28-338c-45bc-98c2-742a7106ecf2\">WBEZ in Chicago\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://current.org/2024/03/american-public-media-restructures-apm-studios-eliminates-positions/\">American Public Media\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/04/24/wbur-cuts-buyouts-layoffs-jobs-boston-media\">WBUR\u003c/a> in Boston, \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2024-05-09/laist-layoffs-buyouts-scpr\">KPCC\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2024-01-10/kcrw-greater-la-podcast-ending-steve-chiotakis-buyouts-staffing\">KCRW\u003c/a> in Southern California and \u003ca href=\"https://www.cpr.org/2024/03/11/colorado-public-radios-ceo-explains-why-the-company-is-laying-off-15-people/\">Colorado Public Radio\u003c/a>, among \u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/02/23/wamu-layoffs-dcist-shutdown/\">others\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cuts stem, in part, from a bet about future revenue that KQED made in 2013, when it launched its \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/campaign21/463/c21-new-horizons\">Campaign 21\u003c/a> — a $140 million initiative that raised funds for a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pressroom/11576/kqed-plan-for-opening\">$94 million renovation\u003c/a> of its San Francisco headquarters and for a $45 million investment in digital production, distribution and local news and education services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Isip said the company has no debt associated with the renovation and that the building’s $1.5 million annual maintenance cost “is not a significant driver” of costs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much of the increase in expenses, Isip said, came from KQED adding 54 new positions funded by the campaign into its operating budget. That was done with the expectation that as content expanded, revenues would grow to cover the added spending.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED financial reports show that in the company’s 2014 fiscal year, revenue and expenses were virtually identical, each at about $67 million. Revenues rose by about 35% between 2014 and fiscal year 2023, the most recent year for which publicly accessible data is available. But expenses grew even faster during that period, jumping 50%. (KQED’s fiscal year runs from October 1 through September 30.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The idea at the time was: Grow service. Transform digital. It will grow our audience, and it will grow financial support,” Isip said. “Our revenue has been positive. … But that’s just not matching the expenses.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"KQED's Revenues and Expenses\" aria-label=\"Interactive line chart\" id=\"datawrapper-chart-nlJEv\" src=\"https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/nlJEv/2/\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"width: 0; min-width: 100% !important; border: none;\" height=\"520\" data-external=\"1\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company ended the past two fiscal years with deficits: nearly $3 million in 2022 and $10.5 million in 2023. Isip said KQED is anticipating a third year of deficits in 2024. This year’s initial budget forecasted the shortfall at around $6 million, but a review at midyear showed the gap had grown by another $2 million. Isip said that forced the company to pivot to permanent staff reductions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Unless we were to do something, the deficit would continue to grow,” he said. “We’ve been able to tap our reserves to fill the gap and give us a little bit of time, and that’s just not a sustainable approach.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At least one member of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians-Communications Workers of America (NABET-CWA) Local 51 Chapter accepted the buyout, chapter President Carrie Biggs-Adams said. As of last week, the union was negotiating on behalf of a second member, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other union representing KQED employees, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), declined to comment for this story, citing “the ongoing, sensitive nature of the conversations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Biggs-Adams blasted KQED’s leadership for recent programming decisions, including the elimination last year of the station’s only television news show, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11953890/kqed-newsroom-finale-saying-goodbye\">KQED Newsroom\u003c/a>. She characterized the move as short-sighted because, she said, television news is one area that has remained profitable for other stations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“KQED doesn’t know who they are,” Biggs-Adams said. “They really have lost, to my mind, their mission.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Isip defended the decision, saying viewership for the show had dropped to around 15,000 viewers a week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Honestly, nobody feels as bad about it as I do,” about cutting the show, he said, noting that he came to KQED as the executive producer of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pressroom/category/thisweekinnortherncalifornia\">This Week in Northern California\u003c/a>, the television news show that predated KQED Newsroom. “But the reality is … we need to make some choices. And when we make choices, we look to the audience and see where they’re going for their news and information. And more and more of them are shifting to digital platforms.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Local news outlets across the country are facing similar choices, said UC Berkeley School of Journalism Dean Geeta Anand. The news industry has been in flux for the past 40 years — first as a response to the emergence of the Internet and, more recently, as social media and artificial intelligence have entered the fray.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With changes in technology, so, too, have come “changes in how people consume journalism, changes in how the journalism industry gets its revenue, and also changes in how people are able to find and access journalism,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have to take risks and make your best bets on things,” Anand said. “Hindsight is 20/20, so maybe some decisions [KQED] made didn’t turn out to be the right ones, but we’re all just figuring out how to chart a course.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>National Public Radio, of which KQED is a member station, has seen its weekly listenership decline from 60 million in 2020 to 42 million in 2024 — a roughly 30% drop, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/business/media/npr-uri-berliner-diversity.html\">according to internal NPR data reported by the \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">KQED saw a similar reduction in weekly listeners, which fell from more than 734,000 in June 2021 to just over 546,000 last month — a 26% decline, according to Nielsen Audio,\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>which tracks broadcast and streaming listenership. The station’s market share was 7.1% last month, a decrease from the 8.7% share held in June 2021 but an increase from last May, when the share dropped to 4.5%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the changes in listening habits can be traced to the pandemic, said Mike Janssen, digital editor at Current, a trade publication that covers public broadcasting. When more people began working from home, fewer people commuted in their cars, where they typically listened to the radio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our routines changed, and a decline started in radio listening — not just for public radio but radio overall — that has not bounced back,” Janssen said. “There’s been a bit of a return, but it isn’t back to pre-2020 levels. And public radio is taking a brunt of this pretty badly, as well.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11832855/kqed-announces-layoffs-blames-coronavirus-pandemic-for-budget-shortfall\">KQED laid off 20 employees in 2020\u003c/a>, a roughly 5.5% reduction in staff, amid a steep decline in corporate sponsorship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fiscal year 2021, KQED received a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan of $8.2 million and saw revenues rebound as more listeners began tuning in for coverage of the presidential election, KQED spokesperson Peter Cavagnaro said. Fundraising revenue benefited from higher donations, and KQED ended the year with a $22 million budget surplus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We had nearly $60 million in contributions that year,” Cavagnaro said, “a number we have not since matched.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED membership peaked that same year at just over 250,000 before falling to 233,000 last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"KQED Membership\" aria-label=\"Stacked Bars\" id=\"datawrapper-chart-n5AEY\" src=\"https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/n5AEY/2/\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"width: 0; min-width: 100% !important; border: none;\" height=\"401\" data-external=\"1\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Historically, public radio stations have relied on their on-air pledge drives to fund operations. As listership declines, Janssen said, “Then what’s going to replace that?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everyone knows that they need to work harder to monetize digital platforms, but that’s a big lift,” Janssen said. “There aren’t easy answers about how to do that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2024/05/07/americans-changing-relationship-with-local-news/\">Pew Research Center survey\u003c/a> released earlier this month found that people’s consumption of local news has shifted online, with 48% of respondents reporting they accessed their local news online or through social media, up from 37% in 2018. Roughly 9% said they got their local news from a radio station, a number that was virtually unchanged from 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As consumption habits change, public radio stations are struggling to keep up, said Tim Eby, who was the general manager of St. Louis Public Radio until 2020 and \u003ca href=\"https://timjeby.substack.com/p/three-things-on-a-public-radio-major?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2\">continues to write\u003c/a> about trends in public media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of the problem, he said, is a tension between trying to reach new audiences while still maintaining public radio’s core listenership.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s one of the big challenges public radio is facing right now,” Eby said. “It is really creating some tension in terms of both the best way to reach audiences as well as the best way to operate from an efficiency standpoint.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label='Related Coverage' tag='layoffs']Isip said KQED is devoting increased resources to its digital efforts, including expanding the company’s product team, which is responsible for developing its website, apps and other digital services. But, he acknowledged that, like other public radio stations, KQED is still struggling to find ways to monetize its digital content or convert digital readers and social media viewers into paying members.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the Pew Research Center’s 2024 survey, just 15% of consumers said they paid for a local news outlet subscription in the past year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everyone’s just trying to figure out what the monetization approach will be, and we’re just in it right now,” Isip said. “We’re sort of in this transition from a declining but still profitable broadcast model to this emerging digital environment where we don’t really know what the potential is for financial support.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Story updated to include current number of KQED employees. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was reported and written by KQED senior editor Erin Baldassari and edited by KQED’s Dan Brekke, who contributed additional reporting. Under KQED’s standard practices for reporting on itself, no member of KQED management or its news executives reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Updated 5:15 p.m. Tuesday\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This week, KQED is expected to announce it will lay off as many as 25 employees as part of its \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11832855/kqed-announces-layoffs-blames-coronavirus-pandemic-for-budget-shortfall\">second round of staff cuts\u003c/a> within four years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The layoffs follow voluntary departure offers that at least nine employees accepted and will be coupled with yet-to-be-announced reductions in discretionary spending and services, according to KQED President and CEO Michael Isip.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Simply put, the cuts are the result of rapidly rising costs, especially in the area of salaries and benefits, at the same time that revenue from individuals, corporate sponsors and other sources has declined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s painful,” he said. “The people of KQED are what make this organization so special. And when you lose colleagues, it not only impacts your day-to-day work, but it impacts overall morale.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED says it currently employs 387 people, including 15 on limited-term contracts. Counting temporary workers and interns, the total is 525.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Underlying the decision to shrink its workforce are factors unique to KQED and some common to public media outlets across the country. KQED’s layoff announcement follows similar news from \u003ca href=\"https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-public-media-lays-off-14-staffers/451b3f28-338c-45bc-98c2-742a7106ecf2\">WBEZ in Chicago\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://current.org/2024/03/american-public-media-restructures-apm-studios-eliminates-positions/\">American Public Media\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/04/24/wbur-cuts-buyouts-layoffs-jobs-boston-media\">WBUR\u003c/a> in Boston, \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2024-05-09/laist-layoffs-buyouts-scpr\">KPCC\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2024-01-10/kcrw-greater-la-podcast-ending-steve-chiotakis-buyouts-staffing\">KCRW\u003c/a> in Southern California and \u003ca href=\"https://www.cpr.org/2024/03/11/colorado-public-radios-ceo-explains-why-the-company-is-laying-off-15-people/\">Colorado Public Radio\u003c/a>, among \u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/02/23/wamu-layoffs-dcist-shutdown/\">others\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cuts stem, in part, from a bet about future revenue that KQED made in 2013, when it launched its \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/campaign21/463/c21-new-horizons\">Campaign 21\u003c/a> — a $140 million initiative that raised funds for a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pressroom/11576/kqed-plan-for-opening\">$94 million renovation\u003c/a> of its San Francisco headquarters and for a $45 million investment in digital production, distribution and local news and education services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Isip said the company has no debt associated with the renovation and that the building’s $1.5 million annual maintenance cost “is not a significant driver” of costs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much of the increase in expenses, Isip said, came from KQED adding 54 new positions funded by the campaign into its operating budget. That was done with the expectation that as content expanded, revenues would grow to cover the added spending.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED financial reports show that in the company’s 2014 fiscal year, revenue and expenses were virtually identical, each at about $67 million. Revenues rose by about 35% between 2014 and fiscal year 2023, the most recent year for which publicly accessible data is available. But expenses grew even faster during that period, jumping 50%. (KQED’s fiscal year runs from October 1 through September 30.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The idea at the time was: Grow service. Transform digital. It will grow our audience, and it will grow financial support,” Isip said. “Our revenue has been positive. … But that’s just not matching the expenses.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"KQED's Revenues and Expenses\" aria-label=\"Interactive line chart\" id=\"datawrapper-chart-nlJEv\" src=\"https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/nlJEv/2/\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"width: 0; min-width: 100% !important; border: none;\" height=\"520\" data-external=\"1\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company ended the past two fiscal years with deficits: nearly $3 million in 2022 and $10.5 million in 2023. Isip said KQED is anticipating a third year of deficits in 2024. This year’s initial budget forecasted the shortfall at around $6 million, but a review at midyear showed the gap had grown by another $2 million. Isip said that forced the company to pivot to permanent staff reductions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Unless we were to do something, the deficit would continue to grow,” he said. “We’ve been able to tap our reserves to fill the gap and give us a little bit of time, and that’s just not a sustainable approach.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At least one member of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians-Communications Workers of America (NABET-CWA) Local 51 Chapter accepted the buyout, chapter President Carrie Biggs-Adams said. As of last week, the union was negotiating on behalf of a second member, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other union representing KQED employees, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), declined to comment for this story, citing “the ongoing, sensitive nature of the conversations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Biggs-Adams blasted KQED’s leadership for recent programming decisions, including the elimination last year of the station’s only television news show, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11953890/kqed-newsroom-finale-saying-goodbye\">KQED Newsroom\u003c/a>. She characterized the move as short-sighted because, she said, television news is one area that has remained profitable for other stations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“KQED doesn’t know who they are,” Biggs-Adams said. “They really have lost, to my mind, their mission.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Isip defended the decision, saying viewership for the show had dropped to around 15,000 viewers a week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Honestly, nobody feels as bad about it as I do,” about cutting the show, he said, noting that he came to KQED as the executive producer of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pressroom/category/thisweekinnortherncalifornia\">This Week in Northern California\u003c/a>, the television news show that predated KQED Newsroom. “But the reality is … we need to make some choices. And when we make choices, we look to the audience and see where they’re going for their news and information. And more and more of them are shifting to digital platforms.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Local news outlets across the country are facing similar choices, said UC Berkeley School of Journalism Dean Geeta Anand. The news industry has been in flux for the past 40 years — first as a response to the emergence of the Internet and, more recently, as social media and artificial intelligence have entered the fray.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With changes in technology, so, too, have come “changes in how people consume journalism, changes in how the journalism industry gets its revenue, and also changes in how people are able to find and access journalism,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have to take risks and make your best bets on things,” Anand said. “Hindsight is 20/20, so maybe some decisions [KQED] made didn’t turn out to be the right ones, but we’re all just figuring out how to chart a course.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>National Public Radio, of which KQED is a member station, has seen its weekly listenership decline from 60 million in 2020 to 42 million in 2024 — a roughly 30% drop, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/business/media/npr-uri-berliner-diversity.html\">according to internal NPR data reported by the \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">KQED saw a similar reduction in weekly listeners, which fell from more than 734,000 in June 2021 to just over 546,000 last month — a 26% decline, according to Nielsen Audio,\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>which tracks broadcast and streaming listenership. The station’s market share was 7.1% last month, a decrease from the 8.7% share held in June 2021 but an increase from last May, when the share dropped to 4.5%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the changes in listening habits can be traced to the pandemic, said Mike Janssen, digital editor at Current, a trade publication that covers public broadcasting. When more people began working from home, fewer people commuted in their cars, where they typically listened to the radio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our routines changed, and a decline started in radio listening — not just for public radio but radio overall — that has not bounced back,” Janssen said. “There’s been a bit of a return, but it isn’t back to pre-2020 levels. And public radio is taking a brunt of this pretty badly, as well.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11832855/kqed-announces-layoffs-blames-coronavirus-pandemic-for-budget-shortfall\">KQED laid off 20 employees in 2020\u003c/a>, a roughly 5.5% reduction in staff, amid a steep decline in corporate sponsorship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fiscal year 2021, KQED received a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan of $8.2 million and saw revenues rebound as more listeners began tuning in for coverage of the presidential election, KQED spokesperson Peter Cavagnaro said. Fundraising revenue benefited from higher donations, and KQED ended the year with a $22 million budget surplus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We had nearly $60 million in contributions that year,” Cavagnaro said, “a number we have not since matched.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED membership peaked that same year at just over 250,000 before falling to 233,000 last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"KQED Membership\" aria-label=\"Stacked Bars\" id=\"datawrapper-chart-n5AEY\" src=\"https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/n5AEY/2/\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"width: 0; min-width: 100% !important; border: none;\" height=\"401\" data-external=\"1\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Historically, public radio stations have relied on their on-air pledge drives to fund operations. As listership declines, Janssen said, “Then what’s going to replace that?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everyone knows that they need to work harder to monetize digital platforms, but that’s a big lift,” Janssen said. “There aren’t easy answers about how to do that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2024/05/07/americans-changing-relationship-with-local-news/\">Pew Research Center survey\u003c/a> released earlier this month found that people’s consumption of local news has shifted online, with 48% of respondents reporting they accessed their local news online or through social media, up from 37% in 2018. Roughly 9% said they got their local news from a radio station, a number that was virtually unchanged from 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As consumption habits change, public radio stations are struggling to keep up, said Tim Eby, who was the general manager of St. Louis Public Radio until 2020 and \u003ca href=\"https://timjeby.substack.com/p/three-things-on-a-public-radio-major?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2\">continues to write\u003c/a> about trends in public media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of the problem, he said, is a tension between trying to reach new audiences while still maintaining public radio’s core listenership.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s one of the big challenges public radio is facing right now,” Eby said. “It is really creating some tension in terms of both the best way to reach audiences as well as the best way to operate from an efficiency standpoint.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Isip said KQED is devoting increased resources to its digital efforts, including expanding the company’s product team, which is responsible for developing its website, apps and other digital services. But, he acknowledged that, like other public radio stations, KQED is still struggling to find ways to monetize its digital content or convert digital readers and social media viewers into paying members.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the Pew Research Center’s 2024 survey, just 15% of consumers said they paid for a local news outlet subscription in the past year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everyone’s just trying to figure out what the monetization approach will be, and we’re just in it right now,” Isip said. “We’re sort of in this transition from a declining but still profitable broadcast model to this emerging digital environment where we don’t really know what the potential is for financial support.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Story updated to include current number of KQED employees. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was reported and written by KQED senior editor Erin Baldassari and edited by KQED’s Dan Brekke, who contributed additional reporting. Under KQED’s standard practices for reporting on itself, no member of KQED management or its news executives reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
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"mindshift": {
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"order": 12
},
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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},
"perspectives": {
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"order": 14
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?mt=2",
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"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
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"order": 5
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
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"source": "Possible"
},
"link": "/radio/program/possible",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/730YpdUSNlMyPQwNnyjp4k"
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},
"pri-the-world": {
"id": "pri-the-world",
"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
"title": "Radiolab",
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