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After Day 1: New Realities, Old Mindsets

By Todd Mundt • May 2, 2006

Halfway through the first day of the NPR New Realities sessions in Washington, it occurred to me: a well-placed bomb would do wonders for the future of public broadcasting.

Consultant Robert Paterson began yesterday’s session with this warning:

It’s time to grow up and take responsibility for the things you’ve blamed others for all these years.”

The room was silent when he said that, and I thought, “wow, this is really sinking in.” Indeed, it did. People looked inside themselves, paused to reflect, and determined that, in fact, they were blameless and everyone else was at fault. What followed was about 7 hours of venting, whining, blaming, talking without listening, fighting old battles, and defensiveness.
Actually, the second session I attended, on disruptive technologies was quite good: a collection of smart people in the room and good facilitators. But based on my experience, and others I talked to, this was the exception to the rule.

Some may blame the Open Square concept on which this conference is based. I don’t think it’s the problem. From what I can tell, Open Square seems to be designed to reveal what people are thinking rather than breakthrough ideas. If that’s the case, it worked.

Now, none of is a genius; none of us is perfect. But if there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s mediocrity buttressed by self-satisfaction. And I’ve seen and heard enough of it in the past day to last me a lifetime.

New Realities isn’t jeopardized by this ridiculous display; the right players and thinkers will come together, consider the facts, think of solutions, test them, change them, learn from their mistakes, and slowly change public radio as we know it. Neither is my station directly jeopardized; I and my colleagues will go back to our jobs, make good decisions, quickly correct the bad ones, and do our best to maintain and grow our station.

But here’s what bugs me: a group of pioneers made public radio interesting; then, many of those same people, as well as others, made public radio important. Now, we have an opportunity to make public radio essential to the lives of the American people. A collection of three “generations” of public radio professionals is committed to creating news and music services that will place public broadcasting at the core of American culture and civic life. Unfortunately, one of the realities we face is an old one: many of us aren’t ready to grow up.

UPDATE: As we all know by now, the second day of the conference was more successful, with NPR and the stations agreeing to work together on the change initiative, with the details to be worked out as we go. See these thoughts from Robert Paterson here.

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    Wow, Todd. I was feeling ambivalent about not attending this meeting but you sure have cured me of that. I have vowed to myself that -- especially in my new incarnation as an indy -- I just cannot surround myself with negativity and the old blame game. I wonder if there is any place where optimists -- even aging ones! -- can gather and scheme.

    Thanks for your insightful comments. Did the meeting get better in Day 2?
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    I left more hopeful. My concern as you so accurately statede was that the work for the people there was to leave childhood and to become adults responsible for themselves and leave behind their old wounds.

    In the closing open session I saw evidence of a shift in culture to a more self suffficient, confident and adult way of being

    For me, the breakout sessions - all 49 of them - were the warm up. What I was waiting for and experienced in the closing last 90 minutes of the Open Space was the following:

    1. That many made a decision to take responsibility for what was to happen

    2. That no station alone and not NPR alone could do this unilaterally There was powerful affirmation that Public radio had to strengthen itself by coming together as a real system that had a structure that would help the parts and theewhole become healthier and more effective

    3. That many acknowledged that NPR, including NPR itself, did indeed have a role in initiating the birth of such a structure. There was acceptance that the work of setting the principles for such a structure would be the work not intially of all but of a few. That such a design process would be open ansd transparent.

    4. That as many who could would start to work to do things that would take us down the paths that have emerged from the NR process

    Rob Paterson
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    Thanks, Robert, for offering that perspective! It's encouraging.
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    A very valuable set of observations, Todd. So many public radio gatherings are Janus-like events: we are pulled by our inherent optimism and hope but we struggle with the painful reality of our business, our habits, our own worst behaviors. The NR sessions were exactly as Rob described them: akin to a dysfunctional family deciding whether or not it had the capacity and the courage to change.

    My public remarks were intended to push people beyond their comfort zones and to remember the mission---it is one that demands courage and willingness to do the uncomfortable, to overcommit in order to really make things change for the better.

    I admire some of what Rob has noted: at least there was the rhetoric of common purpose and common dreams.

    Let's see if the house remains on fire, in perilous terms, or if the house is on fire with the passion of new ideas, workable strategies and the urgency to get things done.

    My fear is that we didn't get to the critical items we need to address if we have any chance of success:

    * where to find the next generation of passionate producers, creators and managers
    * where to find the talented people who can do better than we have
    * how to rethink all of our structures and operations so we have faster and more open ways to advance the best ideas
    * how do we engage people's hearts and passions
    * as concepts of trust change (the next generation has different defintions than we do), will be be there? What is our response to the 'Jon Stewarts?'
    * what is our role in regard to preserving, presenting, respecting culture in all its forms?
    * can we address real threats from within to our credibility? Should we push for no more university licensees?
    * why shouldn't NPR, PRI, APM and PRX all merge? Martin Neeb opened that window and it was powerfully provocative. We do all waste a lot of money, resources, time and talent on competition with not much distinction.
    * Can we accept a different defintion of public radio and public media..one not defined by the past and from the top down, but defined more by the listeners who now have the capacity to produce and create?
    * We should have the courage to name those stations and centers of innovation that 'get it' and 'do it' everyday. Hold up models of the best, regardless of offending those who are not on that list. We have to be brutally honest about what works and what we have to do. We need to be courageous.
    * We don't pay enough attention to our audiences except in terms of what they pledge, what checks they write and the aggregate behavior of ratings. We need to listen to those who are listening.
    * How can we make risk taking less frightening? Failure is ok if we learn the right lessons and apply them. Failure is not ok if mediocre performance is an excusable standard.
    * Public service -- mission and leadership mixed with humility and openness -- will make public radio and public radio a bedrock of society. Who has the guts to work on that balance every day?

    We need to act smartly and quickly.
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    Thinking back on it I wish I or someone had proposed a "Truth and Reconciliation" session in the early going - a chance for everyone - including NPR staff - to confess and vent sins, injuries, misdeeds and misunderstandings, ask and give forgiveness. Perhaps the bad blood and mistrust between NPR, its competitors, and various stations and producers, needs to be exorcised or acknowledged more directly before certain breakthoughs can occur.

    The goal would have been to confine the "venting, whining, blaming, talking without listening, fighting old battles, and defensiveness" into one painful but necessary purge, instead of letting it continue fester and leak into other attempts to push into the future. It would have been a messy and public display of mostly inhibited feelings that are still palpable despite honest expressions of hope for collaboration. Some of this came up throughout the process but mostly obliquely. Rob called us a dysfunctional family and he was right, and he's been very honest with NPR about the depth of mixed feelings that he's encountered along his journey into the heart of the system. But perhaps a family needs to confront their dysfunction head on first, before focusing on how to live on and prosper.

    In any case, I felt there was a "holding back" dynamic on the part of some of the most thoughtful, influential, and opinionated people in the system.

    Ultimately, optimistic as I am, I think significant progress was made and a new spirit of openness and trust was achieved. It's a spirit that will not last indefinitely if the lofty aspirations voiced at New Realities are not followed up with some real achievements - even small ones - that reflect those values.
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    Maybe instead of a well-placed bomb, what we need is that golden parachute fund that was suggested at a long-forgotten public broadcasting meeting. But then again this media disruption is happening so fast that those who think they can survive by tweaking the status quo will find themselves retired without the 'chute.

    In the end, I felt that the structured approach of the individual NR retreats, which brought about a remarkable amount of consensus among many of the same people, and the unstructured approach of the Monday/Tuesday sessions were a useful contrast. Fortunately, what's needed on the backend is relatively inexpensive and what's needed on the frontend is granular, so that leaves stations with a lot of flexibility to either buy in or fa d e a w a y.
 

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