Going into 2025, the NPR newsroom faces two significant challenges: Covering President Donald Trump’s administration and answering critics who accuse NPR of being too liberal.
NPR leaders often say the newsroom is too big to be small and too small to be big. As a national newsroom with roughly 635 journalists working on news and podcasts, NPR cannot claim that it is too small to cover all the important stories of the day. And yet, compared with The New York Times (1,700 journalists) or The Washington Post (1,000 journalists), NPR has far fewer staffers. As a result, NPR cannot saturate any one story with reporters the way very large newsrooms can.
For this second newsletter of 2025, we look at how NPR is reassigning reporting resources and revamping its story selection process to meet the reporting demands of the new year.
How are NPR’s reporting priorities changing in 2025?
NPR is redeploying reporting and editing resources to prepare to document the massive changes that President-elect Trump is promising, and to better meet the needs of the national audience, said Eva Rodriguez, NPR vice president and executive editor. Here is an overview of the changes that have been recently announced or are about to be implemented:
Covering immigration — NPR correspondent Ximena Bustillo will cover immigration policy from Washington, D.C. In addition, NPR will coordinate closely with member stations across the country to cover any mass deportations and other federal actions. “The best stories, the most important details, often the best context comes from those who are on the ground and know the communities and businesses who are most affected,” Rodriguez said.
Covering the federal bureaucracy — NPR’s voting team will expand its mandate and also cover changes to the federal workforce. Correspondent Hansi Lo Wang will cover the Commerce Department and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Correspondent Miles Parks will cover the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the U.S. Postal Service. Business desk correspondent Andrea Hsu will cover federal workers.
Covering blue-collar workers — Political correspondent Don Gonyea will cover unions and working-class voters from Detroit, where he is stationed. He has deep expertise in unions and will focus on how the political forces of the labor movement are realigning.
Covering religion and conservative culture — NPR expanded coverage of religion through a partnership with the Religion News Service, a nonprofit source of news on religion and spirituality. Additionally, the newsroom added an editor and a producer to work with religion correspondent Jason DeRose. Political correspondent Sarah McCammon will cover conservative culture and politics.
Moving senior editors to later shifts — During his first term, Trump and his staff often issued newsworthy executive orders outside of the traditional working day. “I think a lot of us in the media, not just at NPR, were caught flat-footed,” Rodriguez said of the first Trump term. “We don’t want that to happen again.” A deputy managing editor and a congressional editor will work afternoon-evening shifts. Senior editors will also always be assigned to work on the weekends, bringing experience and judgment to news developments.
More oversight and coordination on story assignments — Historically, NPR radio shows, podcasts and reporting departments each independently have identified their reporting priorities. That has led to duplication at times, and has left holes in NPR’s overall coverage. A new layer of editors is tasked with keeping track of the biggest stories, avoiding repetition and pushing for deeper reporting by encouraging collaboration between different divisions within NPR. “We are rolling out a new planning document that anyone at NPR can see,” Rodriguez said.
Back-end editing and quality control — In October, NPR announced a team of six new editors to provide additional editing for all stories. This team is now fully functional. With these added editors, every NPR story will have at least two levels of editing, Rodriguez said.
Better coordination with member stations on all stories — In 2024, NPR launched three new regional newsrooms to collaborate with local stations, in Appalachia-Kentucky, New England and the Mountain West. These newsrooms join collaborations in Texas, the Gulf States, California and the Midwest. And more newsrooms are being planned. Eventually, all member stations will be invited into the central NPR story planning document, mentioned above. With more NPR journalists stationed throughout the country and better communication with the member stations, NPR leaders hope to tap the work of local reporters for the national broadcast. Doing so will naturally diversify the story mix, Rodriguez said.
Assist member stations as they localize national stories — NPR will help local stations that are seeking deeper reporting on federal issues, even when NPR isn’t covering the story. This is one way that NPR is trying to demonstrate a commitment to local coverage. “The NPR/Member station relationship must be a real partnership and a two-way street that brings as much value to the member station as the member station brings to NPR,” Rodriguez said.
Mixing up the story selection — NPR news leaders are directing the staff to look for stories that spark joy and curiosity, as well as stories that report not just on problems, but on solutions. These “driveway moment” stories are the deeply reported and well-crafted reports that NPR built its brand on.
All of these realignments are designed to “focus our work more on what our listeners and readers told us they really craved from us,” Rodriguez said. “Solutions, rather than depressing stories all the time. More personal finance, more, 'What does this mean for me and my pocketbook?’ More exploration and discovery.”
Having served as NPR’s Public Editor since 2020, I can tell you that these changes are significant. But I can also tell you that NPR is a newsroom in perpetual motion, putting out so many daily news shows, newsletters, digital stories and podcasts that it’s hard to quantify and measure change.
When people accuse NPR of being too liberal, they often say that NPR stories are too focused on D.C., New York and Los Angeles, which is where NPR’s main offices are. Conversely, critics say that NPR doesn’t cover issues that are central to less-populated states like Missouri, Indiana or Idaho. We’ve noticed this as well. In January 2022, for example, Iowa received a record amount of snow. New York and D.C. also got snow, but not as much. When we asked why the Iowa snowstorm didn’t get any coverage, an editor told us it was because not as many people were affected in Iowa as on the East Coast.
This question of which snowstorm to cover is admittedly a small example. But it illustrates how difficult the task of providing news to all of America can be with finite resources.
Of all the changes in the NPR newsroom, elevating the work of local reporters, and in turn the voices of people living in places far from the coasts, may be the heaviest lift. Matching local reporting to a national audience requires sustained coordination on both ends.
To fulfill its mission and defend itself against its critics, NPR will have to do more than expand the topics it covers. It has to demonstrate a commitment to this level of geographic and cultural diversity across the entire news portfolio. And just to get it on the record, this new effort to expand coverage can’t come at the cost of covering race, gender and other forms of diversity, which NPR also strives to do well. It’s all important.
We’ll be listening, reading and watching. And we’ll be responding to your questions and critiques. — Kelly McBride
The Office of the Public Editor is a team. Reporters Amaris Castillo and Nicole Slaughter Graham and copy editor Merrill Perlman make this newsletter possible. Illustrations are by Carlos Carmonamedina. We are still reading all of your messages on Facebook, X and from our inbox. As always, keep them coming.
Kelly McBride
NPR Public Editor
Chair,
Craig Newmark Center for Ethics & Leadership at the Poynter Institute
Copyright 2025 NPR
