NPR boosts, overhauls its online offerings

NEW YORK — National Public Radio, already strong online with free downloads from many of its shows, is boosting its digital ambitions with Monday's introduction of social-networking features akin to Facebook.

NPR also plans to overhaul its Web site and expand the tools for sharing its programs elsewhere over the next few months. And it is working to increase the flexibility of its popular "podcasts," audio downloads that have tripled in usage over the past two years.

These digital initiatives are aimed at capturing and retaining audiences — particularly younger people who aren't habitual radio listeners but who represent the future for fundraising at NPR's member stations.

Yet NPR faces a challenge in finding common ground with the stations, which rely on traditional, local radio offerings to draw contributions.

The national organization, acknowledging that its early Internet initiatives at times collided with its member stations, insists many of the new offerings have been developed with the stations' needs and concerns in mind.

Jeffrey Dvorkin, a former NPR ombudsman now with the Ryerson School of Journalism in Toronto, described the tensions as "growing pains as NPR uses its considerable editorial and creative muscle to use the Internet to maximum effect."

The fears come down to whether enhancing the NPR.org Web site will encourage listeners to bypass the individual stations on the Web as well as on air.

But both public-radio audiences and contributions to public radio have been going up. Online traffic is also up. According to comScore, NPR.orghad 2.6 million unique visitors in August, a 78 percent increase from a year earlier.

Many stations credit the Internet for exposing local programs to a broader audience, be it "The Leonard Lopate Show" on WNYC in New York, "The Kojo Nnamdi Show" from WAMU in Washington, D.C., or a 24-hour classical-music feed from KUHF in Houston.

Laura Walker, chief executive for WNYC, said 60 percent of its contributions now come over the Internet, and the expanded audience for local shows has resulted in pledges from as far as Japan and China.