National Public Radio was one of the few American media organisations with good numbers to report in early 2009. Interest in the presidential election had helped push its audience to a record 21 million listeners a week, an increase of 9 per cent and an all-time high.
Vivian Schiller, NPR’s chief executive, put the rise down to a long-term steady trend upward rather than a one-off election bounce, and the organisation was by then being described as the most successful hybrid of old and new media in the United States. Schiller set out the strategy behind that position in her keynote at the NewsVision 2009 conference.
The pairing was what made the case interesting at the time. NPR was a broadcaster with a member-station structure and a public-radio funding base, expanding online while commercial newspaper groups were cutting, and the digital argument it made rested on the same assets as the on-air one.