Looking Ahead

At NCPR we try to discourage the brass from coming to town by subjecting them to intense on-air grilling by our listeners. NPR's chief operating officer Ken Stern was our latest guinea pig in testing this strategem, just this morning. We have given similar treatment to NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin and NPR president Kevin Klose. They keep coming. Transparency seems to be a quality held in some regard at NPR. So thanks Ken, for your willingness to field from all comers on short notice and with good grace.

Next week NCPR staff will be attending a retreat guided by Rob Paterson, a Canadian media and community provacateur. Among our goals is to find ways to deepen NCPR's relationships with the communities we serve, and to increase the opportunities for two-way and many-way conversations among those communities. While some of the new technologies offer opportunities for us to achieve this, it is new ways of thinking about our role in the public conversation that will make the real difference. Pretend for a moment that it is 2020. What should NCPR be doing? How will the job and the toolbox change? Let us know what the future of public radio should look like.