Mendocino County Today: Friday 4/26/24

Showers | Hopping Elk | Oregon Suspect | Robert Calson | Tree Cutting | Student Volunteers | County Notes | Meth House | Ukiah Construction | Plant Sale | Train Plans | Petit Teton | Dos Rios | Ed Notes | Garden Tips | Newman Corrections | Liberty Swap | Best Weekly | Dust Bowlers | Depressing News | Yesterday's Catch | Bottle Bill | Dog Sense | Religious Confusion | Tucker Look | Dem Backfire | Plucking Chickens | Awesome Buffet | Fake Electors | Cancel Culture | Columbia Protests | Romani People | Yew Tree | Not Busy | Coke Plastic | Blowing Corn | NPR Crisis | Oxford Canal

RAIN SHOWERS will continue across the area today. Tonight chilly temperatures are expected with some of colder valleys seeing frost. Showers are possible again Saturday afternoon. Generally dry conditions and below normal temperatures are expected Sunday and into next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): I have .10" of rainfall from overnight. 53F under cloudy skies this Friday morning on the coast. We might still get a shower this morning before skies clear out later today. Warming temps into next week & some wind is our forecast. Some sprinkles later next week, we'll see.

OREGON MURDER SUSPECT ARRESTED IN YORKVILLE

On Thursday, April 25, 2024 at 12:31 A.M., a Mendocino County Sheriff's Office (MCSO) Deputy was working uniformed patrol in the 31000 block of Highway 128 in Yorkville. The Deputy observed a vehicle parked on the side of Highway 128 and contacted the occupant of the vehicle.

The sole occupant of the vehicle was identified as John Kelley, a 49-year-old male from Eugene, Oregon. 

A records check revealed an active warrant for Kelley's arrest out of Lane County Oregon for homicide. Kelley was ultimately placed under arrest without incident for his out-of-state homicide warrant. Neither Kelley nor any Law Enforcement personnel were injured during the apprehension and arrest.

The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office is currently assisting the Lane County Sheriff's Office from Oregon with this investigation. The vehicle occupied by Kelley was seized as evidence to be processed at a later date.

Kelley was subsequently booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held on a no-bail-status awaiting extradition back to the State of Oregon.

ROBERT B. CALSON (September 12, 1942 - April 14, 2024)

Living his final days with the same compassion, wisdom, humor, and equanimity he embodied throughout his life, Dr. Robert (Burt) Calson passed away on Sunday, April 14, with his wife and daughters by his side. He was 81. 

Burt’s life was the epitome of one well-lived, rich with love, family, friendship, professional fulfillment, integrity, adventure, and an insatiable desire to learn as much as possible about this “wonderful world.” The only child of Robert and Grace Calson, he was born in San Francisco, where his father was a firefighter in the S.F. Fire Department. Burt liked to say he came from a long line of “preachers and teachers;” serving others was a value engrained in his very being. He graduated from U.C. Berkeley and U.C.S.F. Medical School; drafted into the Army in 1971, he served an Allergy and Immunology Residency at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Denver and completed his military service in Fort Leonard Wood, MO before entering private practice. 

While still a medical student, Burt met the love of his life, Joanne (Wilson) Calson, on a camping trip with mutual friends. She would become his soulmate, helpmate, and partner for nearly sixty-two years. In 1975, Burt and Joanne settled in Ukiah, CA with their two daughters, Christi and Laura. As the only allergist/immunologist in Mendocino County, he served thousands of patients before he retired in 2017, and till the end, he continued to share his vast medical knowledge with anyone who reached out to him for help. 

Burt was never bored, and his zest for life carried him in myriad directions. A voracious reader, he “was just reading about” virtually any topic of conversation someone might raise. His travels took him far and wide, from New Zealand to the Soviet Union to Iceland to the Panama Canal. 

Wherever he went, he made friends, everfascinated by other people’s stories. A modern-day Renaissance man, he taught himself to play guitar, banjo, mandolin, and piano; he took up breadmaking, sewing, beer brewing, horseback riding, gardening, film-making, photography, canning, dehydrating, and fly tying with great enthusiasm and varying degrees of mastery. Burt’s love of nature was as much a part of him as his ready laugh. He was drawn to the scent of sun-soaked pine and river mist, to sea sides and mountains and valleys in between. 

As a backpacker, many are the trails he traversed, and many the nights he spent gazing up at star-filled skies. He spent hours fly fishing — one of his greatest passions — and he always proclaimed the river beautiful, even when fish eluded his perfect drifts, a comment that never failed to amuse his three grandchildren, Jaden and Jem Coursey and Cody Taylor. All three had the great good fortune to grow up enveloped by their grandfather’s humor, wisdom, and unconditional love. 

Per Burt’s wishes, there will be no public funeral. In lieu of flowers, please honor him with donations made to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the HealthWell Foundation, Doctors Without Borders, or the Sierra Club.

PG&E AT IT AGAIN

Editor,

Hello, my name is Tina Moody I live in Hopland. The reason for this letter is a tree service has come on our property and cut multiple trees down to the ground in the past two days and they say they are coming back to cut more in the name of PG&E.

In the 35 years I’ve lived in Mendocino County. The tree service contractors have always come through and trimmed and topped the trees, never have they ever cut them to the ground until now. 

Our home is on a steep hillside. They have taken trees out directly beneath our home, with no other tree above it, whose roots can sustain the hillside. Now we have to fear erosion and our home slipping. 

An employee of the tree service ignored my cries for him to stop cutting, told me it was state mandated. As chainsaws are decimating these trees, the tree service puts you through the voicemail, PGand E takes note of it, and Jim Woods office laughed. 

This is an extreme violation and we cannot be the only people going through this. 

Our supervisor Ted Williams basically said only the courts would have any chance of stopping this. So, so is it time for us to organize a class action lawsuit? 

We have always appreciated the respectful care that the private tree companies have shown our properties. 

Now it is just rape without any contact or warning. 

Tina Moody

Hopland 

BETH SWEHLA/AV FUTURE FARMERS OF AMERICA: Yesterday, the AVHS Leadership class (many are FFA members) volunteered at the Anderson Valley Food Bank. The class worked both the morning and afternoon shifts. In the morning students helped bag up the food that was going to be distributed in the afternoon. The afternoon shift did the actual distribution of food. All students worked hard, with smiles and giving hearts. 

Many students were surprised at the number of families receiving food. Many students are ready to volunteer again. Leadership is about living to serve others. These students make Anderson Valley proud.

* * *

Discovery FFA leadership conference at Willits High School

Our middle school Discovery Agriculture students went to the very first Discovery FFA Leadership Conference hosted at Willits High School. They participated in workshops about FFA, made new friends, and had fun. They also got their first FFA conference T-shirt. Thank you to everyone who made this conference possible!

COUNTY NOTES

by Mark Scaramella

A large portion of Tuesday’s “Budget Workshop” section of the Supervisors meeting was wasted on an ill-prepared discussion of a proposal from Supervisor Ted Williams to break down the County’s revenues and expenses by Supervisorial District. Apparently, Williams thinks his district is being shortchanged, compared to other districts. In fact, we are being short-changed compared to the Supervisors, the Executive Office and the County Counsel’s office. But you’ll never see any supervisors asking how that $2 mil a year could be better distributed.

As Supervisor John Haschak said, Williams’s idea has no effect on the budget, is a distraction for staff, amounts to unnecessary extra work for staff, is counterproductive, and “not useful.” Not to mention dumb.

Williams insisted that “several people” had asked for it, adding that he would settle for rough estimates rounded to the nearest million. McGourty agreed with Williams saying that such a breakdown would give the Board “a better knowledge base” and is “worth doing.” (McGourty loves to invoke phrases like “knowledge base. The assumption being that the Board has a good knowledge base, but with a districtwide breakdown it would magically become “better.” And if you believe that, I’ve got some County software called Aumentum and Opengov I’d like to sell you,)

Mulheren more or less agreed with Haschak.

Gjerde said he thought that County tax bills should inform voters that most of their property taxes go to schools, and that only about a third goes to the County with about 7% to Special Districts.

When Haschak asked CEO Darcie Antle if such a by-district report could be generated “by the push of a button,” (sic) Antle replied that she didn’t know but that she “could work with IT and the Treasurer and Assessor” and “might be able to find some of it.”

Might, could, some… Classic Antle-isms.

McGourty proposed a compromise suggesting that instead of looking back maybe they could start flagging revenues and expenses by District now and report on them in the future.

In the end they voted 3-2 with Mulheren and Haschak dissenting to ask staff to waste their time on this cockamamie idea. Obviously, most County expenditures out of the General Fund are not clearly identifiable to one District except maybe a few random projects here and there or perhaps Sheriff’s patrol assignments. But even then there’s lot of wiggle room because the Sheriff moves people around as needed.

If the Board can’t even get a basic departmental breakdown of revenues and expenses, they certainly can’t get a further breakdown by District.

Meanwhile, no new budget balancing proposals were forthcoming as the Board and the CEO continue to kick the question to the next meeting, again and again.

* * *

Williams at least asked the CEO for a monthly budget vs. actual report asking CEO Antle, “What would it take to get actual vs. budget, at least for previous years?”

After whining that “we were criticized” (which we have already written about), Antle replied, “That is a report we can generate for prior years. We’ve had a delay in closing out years. 22-23 is still in draft. I’d say we could go back three to five years prior. We should have it by end of the week.” 

Not.

Nor was “it” defined.

Williams also asked for copies of the budgets vs. actual from the departments after CEO Antle had blurted out that the Departments keep their own internal spreadsheets.

After again whining that “we were criticized,” Antle replied that “It’s all about timing. Invoices may be late. … It’s not straightforward. … Property taxes only come in once a year. I’m not afraid to do it. But it causes undue stress on the board. So we pulled it back.”

Oh Gawd. This person is CEO?

In the end the Board vaguely agreed that quarterly budget to actual reports from the departments would be nice. Obviously, they won’t have anything of the sort ready by next week, much less ever. And as long as the Board continues to blather without making specific demands with specific dates, Ms. Antle, a past master at non-committal indefinite postponement, will successfully keep the board in the financial dark and the County will sink further and further into the red.

* * *

Supervisor John Haschak asked whether the CEO report will include what Supervisor Gjerde asked for a couple of weeks ago: a tally of newly added, or “discovery,” properties to the tax rolls.

Instead of letting the CEO answer for herself, Supervisor/Board Chair Mulheren declared, “The discovery data will be in the CEO report on May 7.”

We’re taking bets on that one. At the moment odds are about 100-1 against.

* * *

CEO Antle, after skimming through her info-free CEO report, told the Board that returning the Veterans Service Office (VSO) to their original cottage on Observatory Avenue is still not done. Apparently the Air Quality office is having trouble making arrangements to move their office out of the VSO’s Observatory cottage because the landlord for Air Quality’s new target location is not being responsive. Antle noted, “Air Quality is calling [the landlord] on a regular basis to get that move done.” 

So, despite the Board’s directive to return the VSO to the Observatory cottage, the VSO and its clients continue to wait while the Air Quality Office tries to arrange for their own move. The Air Quality office is in no hurry to do that, and why would they be? They’re quite happy occupying the VSO’s rightful place.

The vets may have to storm the chambers again to get this moving. It’s on the verge of stagnation as is. Nobody on the Board asked why the Executive office is letting Air Quality move themselves in their own sweet time.

This is typical of Mendo affairs. No one steps up to the plate to see that what the Board orders done gets done. And the Board never follows up or demands an explanations or holds anyone accountable. 

Since the CEO is allergic to criticism and thinks that “we were criticized” (even when they were not) is a reason not to produce an ordinary budget vs. actual report, why would anyone expect any different?

SPOTTED IN FORT BRAGG

UKIAH CONSTRUCTION UPDATES FOR THE WEEK OF APRIL 29:

Important Update: The Urban Core Rehabilitation and Transportation Project, which will reconstruct Main, Perkins, and Gobbi Streets, is officially underway on Main Street. There will definitely be some overlap between this project and the completion of the streetscape project (anticipated in July), but we will do everything we can to mitigate impacts. We’re working to maximize this construction season and improve as many streets as we can, so thank you in advance for your patience! Visit our webpage for more info and to sign up for email updates: www.cityofukiah.com/ucrt

Back to streetscape…On the south side of the project, concrete crews are working the complete the formation of new curbs and gutters. Additionally, they are beginning to pour sidewalks on the west side, moving from the north to the south. Electric and landscaping crews will also be onsite working on electric infrastructure and irrigation lines for new landscaping. There will be temporary impacts to some driveways, but crews will provide advance notification and mitigate impacts to the best of our ability.

On the north side (Norton to Henry), installation of the brick band along the edge of the sidewalks will continue. All traffic signals in the construction area will remain on flash until the new pavement is in and the lane striping has occurred, likely late May/early June. Important: the stop sign on State at Norton is being removed. Please use extra caution around these changed conditions, as it will take some time for people to adjust.

Work on curbs, gutters, and sidewalks between Mill and Gobbi continues, along with electric infrastructure and irrigation; on the north side, installation of the brick band in the sidewalk.

Construction hours will be Monday-Friday, 7 a.m. - 6 p.m., depending on the weather.

There will be some noise associated with the south section; not much dust.

There will be disruptions to parking access or streets.On the south side, on-street parking in the construction zone will be closed; however, on-street parking on the north side of the project is open in most areas (see above). Pedestrian access to businesses will be maintained at all times. Through traffic on State Street will be allowed in both directions. Traffic signals at Gobbi/State and Mill/State and Scott/State will remain on flash.

We are applying for a grant that would allow us to “close the gap” on State Street between Norton and Low Gap. Once the current phase of the streetscape project is complete, that will be the only part of State Street (in the city limits) that hasn’t been redone. To present the plans and receive community input, we’re holding a community forum on May 8^th at 5:30 pm at the Ukiah Valley Conference Center. Full press release is below.

Shannon Riley, Deputy City Manager, sriley@cityofukiah.com

PLANT SALE SATURDAY AT BLUE MEADOW FARM in Philo. 9000 Highway 128 (at Holmes Ranch Road), Philo. 707 963-4555.

WHY NOT BOTH

Editor: 

Why not make the Great Redwood Trail rail and trail? How come there’s been no serious discussion about including a rail line with the Great Redwood Trail?

Work continues on connecting the Bay Area and Southern California via high-speed rail. Los Angeles and Las Vegas could soon be linked by a high-speed train. The ACE train is expanding into the Central Valley. There are plans for overnight train service between San Francisco and Los Angeles and electrification of Caltrain, on the Peninsula, is finally complete.

Meanwhile, SMART and an adjacent pedestrian path marches northward. I think we’re missing the boat when it comes to California’s transit future. Renovating the old rail line would take trucks and cars off the road and boost North Coast commerce on both ends.

Larry Chiaroni

Sebastopol

PETIT TETON FARM

Petit Teton Farm is open Mon-Sat 9-4:30, Sun 12-4:30. Along with the large inventory of jams, pickles, soups, hot sauces, apple sauces, and drink mixers made from everything we grow, we sell frozen USDA beef and pork from our perfectly raised pigs and cows, and stewing hens and eggs. Squab is also available at times. Contact us for what's in stock at 707.684.4146 or farmer@petitteton.com. 

Nikki and Steve

ED NOTES

I LAUGHED at the description of the Oregon fugitive arrested in Yorkville as “armed and dangerous.” Strictly considered, that descriptive applies to a dozen or so residents at the south end of the Anderson Valley.

INTERSECTIONALITY, N. This new word and concept has popped up a lot lately in the context of university presidents frantically trying to hang on to their cush jobs as their student bodies ignore them and come to the defense of Palestinians. I'm surprised anybody can invoke the word in a non-ironic context, but higher learning these days is rife with dubious scholarship. I ask you: “Demarginalizing the countless intersections of structural oppression is a crucial step towards dismantling those systems of oppression and empowering individuals with intersectional marginalized identities.” 

DISMANTLING this or any other system of oppression takes guns and people unafraid to die, not a bunch of fakes rattling their teacups in faculty lounges. 

MEANWHILE, at UCLA: The UCLA medical school had been condemned by a renowned Harvard doctor for forcing students to take a “fat-positivity” class. All first year medical students at UCLA are required to read an essay by Marquisele Mercedes, a self-proclaimed “fat liberationist” who claims that “fatphobia is medicine's status quo” and that weight loss is a “'hopeless endeavor.” Mercedes's article, titled “No Health, No Care: The Big Fat Loophole in the Hippocratic Oath,” is on the required reading list for the mandatory Structural Racism and Health Equity course. The class syllabus shows what students at the elite medical school are learning - which has attracted derisive attention from experts nationwide who disagree with the teachings of the course. Jeffrey Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School and one of the world's foremost experts on obesity, slammed the course and said the curriculum “promotes extensive and dangerous misinformation.”

PALESTINIANS have been the wronged party since 1948. Shouldn't be any confusion about that. Screw over people long enough and you get Hamas or versions thereof. The last hope for a just two-state option was lost a couple of times, first in '79 under Carter when Sadat of Egypt talked peace, which got him assassinated by Hamas types, and then in '93 under Clinton, Arafat and Rabin, the latter the last rational, humane Israeli leader. That one in '93 blew up when the Hamas types sabbed the tentative agreement with a mass terrorist attack on Israeli civilians, which ushered in Israeli fascists as heads of state. And here we are. Not to be too pessimistic, but the current horrors in the Middle East seem long-term intractable.

ORANGE MAN appeared on the morning news on his way into court to defend himself in the sordid context of porn stars and the National Enquirer. In his usual monologic stream of consciousness, during which, as usual, there was no evidence of consciousness, he said that "Joe Biden is the worst president in the history of the United States." Biden's certainly up there among the worst, but a couple of inches ahead of Trump himself as one of the all-time presidential disasters. I'd say W. Bush was the absolute worst as the man who destabilized the entire Middle East with, natch, the usual bipartisan sign-off. Then there's Nixon, and going back some there was Andrew Johnson who succeeded Lincoln and unraveled Reconstruction, and before him the infamous Indian killer Andrew Jackson, and a hundred years later, Warren Harding. I didn't like Wilson much either. Overall, we had the gifted founding aristos, then Lincoln, Grant was pretty good, too, at least in intention, and Franklin Roosevelt. Since Roosevelt we've suffered a parade of mediocrities, straight-up imbeciles, and now, a cadaver. I'd say Kennedy showed enough promise to get himself assassinated. '24 is shaping up as the last presidential election as we slide into a kind of civil war and regional balkanization.

MARK SCARAMELLA ADDS: I’d add Bill Clinton to the list of the worst presidents. He ushered in the conversion of Democrats into neo-liberal Republicans-under-another-name via the DNC beginning the era which brought us the fake liberals who followed including Gore, Kerry Billary, Obama, and Biden, In the process he ended what was left of a marginally humane welfare system, normalized high-altitude bombing as a foreign policy, and brought us a bunch of awful legislation that the Republicans could never have pushed through on their own such as NAFTA (which brought on the immigration crisis), the Crime Bill, Option 9, and so many others. 

AS A PERMANENT medical case, my life now involves lots of family time getting me to and from endless and often redundant testing sessions, the latest one Thursday morning at a bare bones medi-care and medi-cal "clinic" called Quest Diagnostics in a half-deserted office complex in Larkspur. A lopsided sign propped up against the outside wall featured an arrow pointing to a battered door through which and down a long, dimly lit, scuff-marked hall with sagging overhead sheetrock and protruding pink insulation, my sister and I arrived at a consistently stark room reminiscent of a commercial blood sales operation I once visited in Oregon. At the front of the room were two stanchions resembling parking meters with screens on top. A dozen resigned Americans peopled the waiting room. The two electronic stanchions were in lieu of a human receptionist and way beyond my technical abilities to negotiate. My sister checked me in. A sign on the wall read, “Please be kind to our line staff,” meaning unruly patients were common enough to warrant the Miss Manners reminder. The obviously lucrative blood and piss op is probably owned by a doctor's syndicate, as are the most depressing rehab facilities in Ukiah and probably everywhere. Confirming the posted plea to be kind to staff, a large man cursed his stanchion. “You son of a bitch, goddammit.” That could have, would have been me if my sister hadn't signed me in as two youngish women argued. “I'm going in next. I was here before you.” They both went in. We had a 9:30 appointment, as did the two ladies seated next to us. Nobody in the waiting room looked sick, but then neither do I. Behind flimsy partitions, two harried young Hispanic women not earning a living wage you can be sure drew blood, five vials in my case. I drew my own urine sample. We were in and out in twenty minutes. I bet the owners of this under-staffed, under-paid operation raked off lots and lots in a month.

MARK SCARAMELLA ADDS: In the days leading up to the above appointment, we got several messages left on our machine here in Boonville from “Quest Diagnostics” asking “Mr. Anderson” to call and make an appointment. The caller was a very polite young woman who seemed to be whispering, leaving nearly inaudible messages. I had no idea who “Quest Diagnostics” was, who she was, nor what they wanted. I happened to be near the phone one time and picked up, immediately requesting that the caller speak louder. She seemed physically unable to do that. I had to ask her over and over to repeat herself until I finally realized that she wanted “Mr. Anderson’s” phone number in Marin. Which I provided. The above visit thus was finally arranged.

MARSHALL NEWMAN:

A couple of quick corrections and some additional notes regarding Terry Sites report on El Rancho Navarro…

The owners of El Rancho Navarro from 1947 to 1957 were Joe and Marian Selby (not Selwyn). Our neighbors across the river at Tumbling McD were the Archie and Alice MacDougall (not MacDonald). On the trips from Marin, was six to eight miles to camp when we got to Boonville (Art’s Apples was a lot closer and in the wrong direction).

Guy Worth and Bill Lawlor, who bought Highland Ranch from Frank and Goldie Ward, also deserve credit as great neighbors.

We hauled some interesting stuff across the swinging bridge in winter, including – one memorable day – two day-old calves from a dairy on the coast.

Since camp only ran nine weeks of the year and access to El Rancho Navarro was limited to spring, summer and autumn, Irv worked other jobs – among them teacher, substitute teacher and religious leader – to make ends meet. During our time in Philo, we had a milk cow that produced five or six gallons of milk a day, way more than we could use. So we bought a pasteurizer from the Sears, Roebuck catalog and Irv sold gallons of milk to his fellow teachers.

Lastly, a “Thank You” to the Anderson Valley Historical Society for inviting us to share our memories. It was fun. Personally, I also think these presentations are great and encourage local residents to attend. There is a lot of Anderson Valley history that isn’t in books, but is preserved in the family memories of those who have lived here for generations.

* * *

Three more notes.

I mixed the names of the people who bought Highland Ranch. They were Bill Worth and Guy Lawlor. My bad!

Andy Rooks, who lived on the Nunn property (where the Husch Tasting Room is now) helped us learn the intricacies of the property and worked periodically for my parents in those early years. I am pretty sure he was related to the Nunns, but do not know in what way.

Those misspelled names corrected in my previous comment are perfectly understandable. Transcribing and editing a recording is difficult, and names can be miss-heard. Kudos to the person [Terry Sites — Ed] who did the hard work that made this article possible.

AVA: THE INCOMPARABLE MOTHER

Paper of today & yesterday

But not tomorrow

I say with sorrow

Yet I give cheers

For enlightenment for years

Smart, all heart

Stories & science & art

Exposing corruption

Preventing eruption

Bruce & the Maj will go down

Producing the best weekly to be found

We know we'll never see another

To match the incomparable Mother.

— Pebbles Trippet, Laytonville

DEPRESSING NEWS NEWS

Hi AVA,

Now that you are moving The AVA to all online news, I am sending a copy of a memo I prepared last October after reading a Reuters report about online news. I sent this to Matt LaFever at the time, for his information as a publisher of online news.

The Reuters report is pretty depressing, but you should read it. Tik Tok is the source of news for most young people. I do not have a Tik Tok account because I believe the CCP is using it to spy on and influence us. I make it a point to follow news from both the left and the right, and then I form my own opinions. There is talk of divesting Tik Tok from its Chinese owners and creating a stand-alone company based in the US, but experts say that the Chinese will never allow a US version to use their algorithm, so the US version would be an inferior product.

My memo contains a hyperlink to the full Reuters Report.

Here is a link to former Navy Seal Sean Ryan’s podcast episode on the subject of Tik Tok. His guest on this episode is an expert on Tik Tok. Worth listening to. The link is to Apple podcasts. If you don’t have an iPhone, search for Sean Ryan on any computer or phone and you should be able to find his April 15 episode about Tik Tok.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shawn-ryan-show/id1492492083?i=1000652477189

Monica Huettl

Redwood Valley

* * *

Notes on Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023

by Monica Huettl

October 1, 2023

Here is a link to the report. 

While browsing on X (formerly Twitter), I found the Reuters Digital News Report 2023, prepared by faculty at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University in England, led by Professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Director of the Institute. It’s pretty depressing to realize how few people care about the news, although Nielsen, who wrote the summary, is an older white man, so perhaps that colored his conclusions (but data doesn’t lie). The sample size in the US was only about 2,100 people. I read through it and took some notes. My takeaways:

Print news media is dying fast. People prefer to get their news digitally. There is no going back to print, in the future the majority will get their news digitally.

The population overall is less interested in the news. The younger generation prefers to get news from friends and influencers on social media. Facebook is less important to them than Tik-Tok. To succeed in the digital news business today, it sounds like the best option would be posting videos to Tik-Tok and other social media, with a link to a written article. Newscasters will need to revise their game to fit social media. The format will be video, with few written words. 43% of the 18 to 24 age group get their news from social media, 20% from Tik-Tok

The market for news is fractured and fractious. The public has declining levels of trust and declining levels of engagement when it comes to the news.

Only 22% of respondents started their news journey by going to a news website or an app. The majority of them read news stories as they came up in their social media feed, particularly TikTok. Facebook is used less often.

About half of the US population does not consume news at all. Since 2016 10% fewer people have sought out news.

36% of respondents are news avoiders, people who don’t want to ever read or hear news.

Younger audiences don’t get their news from public broadcasting, even though that has a higher level of trust. The authors of the report say it’s important to find a way to engage with the younger generation.

Only 17% are willing to pay for online news. In the US they prefer premium providers, such as the New York Times and Washington Post. There are few outlets that have a large market share. 

Inflation and cost of living expenses are causing many subscription holders to cancel, saying they can get news for free on social media.

At their height, Google and Facebook drove about 50% of all traffic towards news sites. This is now much more fragmented, as there are podcasts, YouTube videos, and various social media sites.

Mainstream journalists are mainly found on Twitter and Facebook. The younger group mainly use TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram, and they do not seek out journalists to follow.

Only 19% of news consumers typically share and comment on a social media news story. Both the extreme left and the extreme right are motivated to comment, more so than centrists.

56% of people who use online news say they worry about being able to detect fake news.

12% of people get their news from podcasts. There are basically four types of news podcast: 1) a news wrap up, typically under 10 minutes; 2) a deep dive on a news subject, typically 20 minutes; 3) documentary podcasts, typically 30 to 40 minute episodes in a series; 4) a roundtable, long discussion type of podcast such as Joe Rogan.

The majority of podcast listeners are male, and they tend to be more educated and affluent than average. Two of the top ten podcasts in the US are produced by NPR.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, April 25, 2024

ISIDRO BARAJAS, Geyserville/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JOSHUA BONNET, Leggett. Failure to appear.

ANDRU CAMPBELL, Ukiah. Parole violation.

JAIME COLLINS, Lakeport/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, parole violation.

ANTHONY DEGARMO, Fort Bragg. Domestic battery, false imprisonment.

ALDAIR GARDUNO-BECERRIL, Sacramento/Ukiah. Grand theft of firearm, concealed weapon in vehicle.

CHARLES HAYES, Clearlake/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

GABRIELE JASYTE, Mendocino. Trespassing refusing to leave, resisting.

JOHN KELLEY, Eugene/Ukiah. Fugitive from justice.

MICHAEL KUBAS, Nice/Willits. Probation revocation.

CAMEO LIMA, Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs, toluene or similar substance.

MICHAEL LUCAS, Ukiah. County parole violation.

JOHN MARTOGLIO, Seiad Valley (Siskiyou County)/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JUSTIN PICKENS, Ukiah. Stolen vehicle, failure to appear. 

JESUS RAMOS-RIVAS, Healdsburg/Ukiah. County parole violation.

KIMBERLY RODRIGUEZ, Philo. Probation revocation.

TOBIAS WOOD, Ukiah. Disobeying court order.

ESTHER MOBLEY: California’s “bottle bill,” as it’s known colloquially — the new law that adds a deposit to wine and spirits bottles, and allows for their redemption at recycling centers — has had a “rocky rollout,” according to Betsy Andrews in SevenFifty Daily. She describes poor government communication, accusations of gerrymandering and confusion among small wineries. 

CONGRESSMAN HUFFMAN

[This week], U.S. Representatives Jared Huffman (CA-02), Jamie Raskin (MD-08), and Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (VA-03) led their colleagues in applauding the Biden administration for rescinding Donald Trump’s discriminatory faith-based regulations and finalizing updated regulations to protect religious freedoms and other civil rights for all people participating in federally funded social services.

“When the government funds social service programs, it must protect religious freedom and make certain all people can get the help they need. No one should be forced to pass a religious litmus test to access federally funded employment opportunities or social services, such as food, housing, and job training,” the members said in their letter. “We applaud the Biden administration for adopting a rule that refocuses on people in need.”

The members also called on the administration to go further in preventing religious discrimination by also rescinding the remaining Department of Justice (DOJ) memoranda and opinions that license discrimination in the false name of religious freedom.

“While the finalized nine-agency rule replaces Trump administration policies that stripped away critical religious freedom protections, failing to also rescind the Sessions Memo and the OLC Memo undermines the administration’s goals of upholding equal protection of the law, ensuring racial equity, supporting underserved communities, and combatting LGBTQ discrimination. We urge you to act expeditiously to rescind these flawed memoranda,” the members said.

In addition to Rep. Huffman, Raskin, and Scott, the letter was signed by Suzanne Bonamici (OR-01), Shontel Brown (OH-11), Sean Casten (IL-06), Valerie Foushee (NC-04), Robert Garcia (CA-42), Robert Garcia (CA-42), Sheila Jackson Lee (TX-18), Hank Johnson (GA-04), Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC-01), Mark Pocan (WI-02), Katie Porter (CA-47), and Delia Ramirez (IL-03). 

* * *

AN ON-LINE COMMENT: It’s really hard to get to any concrete examples to know for sure what this political-speak really means but I suspect it means that religious groups can no longer choose who they employ or how they give services based on religious principle if they get government funding. So catholic organizations can not treat abortions or birth control as if they don’t exist if they offer services to pregnant women nor can a NGO refuse to hire a transexual because they object to that based on religion or conduct prayers as a requirement for free meals, etc. It seems to be more a freedom from religion than of religion. Would be nice if politicians could manage enough honesty to say that.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN [Identity Politics Cue]

“Now, in the Democratic Party, because the mantle of the Democratic Party became identity politics. At its base, like the Black Lives Matter movement and all kindred movements like that, they had adopted Palestine as a cause, it’s true. And then when October 7th. happened and thereafter, the genocide in Gaza, that base was now energized by Palestine because, already… they were supportive of the cause and that created the big split in the party now, where the leadership doesn’t know what to do… because it created this monster, namely, it invested in the identity politics. And now the identity politics is saying, ‘Well, Israel, too, is a settler colonial State.’ That was part of identity politics. ‘Israel is oppressing the Palestinian identity’, you know.

And so, in a way, the identity politics backfired on the Democratic Party because the leadership is deeply entrenched, both ideologically and financially… in supporting Israel. But the base of the Democratic party, because it was created on the ideology of identity politics… is totally committed to Palestine. And so, as I said… it backfired on the party, because the base had appropriated Palestine as its cause.”

PLUCKING CHICKENS was not my favorite thing to do. We done it so much growing up that I can still smell the stench of chicken feathers after it's been dunked in hot water and all I can say is ewwwww there is nothing like that smell and it becomes ingrained in your senses.

Granny would grab the chickens and wring their necks, then take a hatchet and cut off their heads. We would have 5 gallon buckets (old Fischer Lard buckets) filled with steaming hot water. We then dipped the chickens in the water and plucked the feathers. After we plucked all the feathers, Granny would take a newspaper, light it and burn all the fine feathers off that we missed and then the chicken was ready to be cut up and fried.

One time I was sitting in a chair plucking chickens and my cousins Tony and Johnny were plucking beside me. As kids you learn things, some faster then others. When you kill a chicken you could take your hands and position your thumbs and fingers just above the chicken's butt and squeeze causing poop to come out. I learned that trick fast.

None of us kids were happy about plucking chickens because it was an awful job and I had my chicken and aimed at my cousin Johnny just right and when I squeezed the poop squirted out and landed on him. He started crying "Granny, Patty made her chicken poop on me!" I was rolling because it was so funny. Johnny tried to do his but didn't know how so I grabbed it to "show him" how to do it and squirted him with poop again.

My grandpa was laughing but Granny didn't see the humor in any of it. One thing for certain we didn't like plucking chickens but having fried chicken for supper was always one of my favorite meals especially with buttermilk biscuits.

(via Everett Liljeberg)

GRAND JURY INDICTS 11 REPUBLICANS WHO FALSELY DECLARED TRUMP WON

by Jacques Billeaud and Josh Kelety, The Associated Press

PHOENIX — Eleven Republicans who submitted a document to Congress falsely declaring that Donald Trump beat Joe Biden in Arizona in the 2020 presidential election were charged Wednesday with conspiracy, fraud and forgery, marking the fourth state to bring charges against “fake electors.”

The 11 people who had been nominated to be Arizona’s Republican electors met in Phoenix on Dec. 14, 2020, to sign a certificate saying they were “duly elected and qualified” electors and claiming that Trump carried the state. A one-minute video of the signing ceremony was posted on social media by the Arizona Republican Party at the time. The document was later sent to Congress and the National Archives, where it was ignored.

Seven others were indicted, but their names were blacked out of records released by Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes. Her office said the names will be released after those people are served with the charges.

Biden won Arizona by more than 10,000 votes. Of the eight lawsuits that unsuccessfully challenged Biden’s victory in the state, one was filed by the 11 Republicans who would later sign the certificate declaring Trump as the winner.

Their lawsuit asked a judge to de-certify the results that gave Biden his victory in Arizona and block the state from sending them to the Electoral College. In dismissing the case, U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa said the Republicans lacked legal standing, waited too long to bring their case and “failed to provide the court with factual support for their extraordinary claims.”

Days after that lawsuit was dismissed, the 11 Republicans participated in the certificate signing.

The Arizona charges come after a string of indictments against fake electors in other states.

In December, a Nevada grand jury indicted six Republicans on felony charges of offering a false instrument for filing and uttering a forged instrument in connection with false election certificates. They have pleaded not guilty.

Michigan’s Attorney General in July filed felony charges that included forgery and conspiracy to commit election forgery against 16 Republican fake electors. One had charges dropped after reaching a cooperation deal, and the 15 remaining defendants have pleaded not guilty.

Three fake electors also have been charged in Georgia alongside Trump and others in a sweeping indictment accusing them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally overturn the results. They have pleaded not guilty.

In Wisconsin, 10 Republicans who posed as electors settled a civil lawsuit, admitting their actions were part of an effort to overturn Biden’s victory. There is no known criminal investigation in Wisconsin.

Trump also was indicted in August in federal court over the fake electors scheme. The indictment states that when Trump was unable to persuade state officials to illegally swing the election, he and his Republican allies began recruiting a slate of fake electors in battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — to sign certificates falsely stating he, not Biden, had won their states.

(The Mercury News)

COLUMBIA PROTESTS, NOW & IN 1968

by Jonah Raskin

The student protests on the campus of Columbia University this April have reminded me of the protests that took place there 56 years ago. Along with about 700 or so other men and women, I was arrested and jailed at the Tombs in Manhattan. Those arrests didn’t curtail student protests. Indeed, there were demonstrations later that year and again in 1969, 1970, 1971 and 1972. When push comes to shove, Columbia has called on the police again and again and the police have arrived in force and have made arrests.

The current president of Columbia, Minouche Shafik, an Egyptian-born American economist and a baroness, has surely not acted on her own impulses to establish what she might call “Law and Order.” Rather, she has surely followed the orders, the prayers and wishes of trustees, deep pockets and alumni who have wanted to see demonstrators punished for exercising freedom of speech and for practicing old-fashioned American civil disobedience.

Robert Kraft, the New England Patriots CEO, and a major financial contributor to Columbia —and my classmate— recently said, “I am no longer confident that Columbia can protect its students and staff and I am not comfortable supporting the university until corrective action is taken.” He also said, “I believe in free speech, say whatever you want, but pay the consequences.” That doesn’t sound like free speech, not if it comes with a price tag. Back then, the protests were largely about Vietnam. Now, they’re largely about Gaza and Israel. The names have changed, but the underlying story is much the same. Shouldn’t students today have a significant role to play when and where it comes to university investment?

Columbia University president Shafik was deputy governor of the Bank of England, and a vice president at the World Bank. She surely knows who has buttered her side of the crumpet and who has poured her cup of tea. Over many decades, Columbia has known very well how to make cosmetic changes and alter its image. It is now, as it was in the 1960s, about making money, expanding and occupying more and more of the island of Manhattan, and about mass-producing students to become consumers and citizens loyal to the social institutions that have made the US a global superpower.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, we raised awareness about the university’s collaboration with the war machine and with institutions of racism and patriarchy. Columbia began to hire women and Black and brown intellectuals and to revise the curriculum in response to student demands to make education relevant to their own lives and their times.

In 1968, I was not a student at Columbia. I was already a professor at the State University of New York who had graduated from the college in 1963 when it was still locked in the mindset of the Cold War, and McCarthyism and could not be accurately described as an “Ivory Tower.” In 1968, my beef with Columbia had its roots in my undergraduate years when I was rebuked for using Marxist sources for essays I wrote for teachers and slammed for thinking critically and questioning academic dogma. In 1969 when I was arrested again for my role during a campus protest, one of my former professors said that since I was a “Columbia scholar and a Columbia gentleman” I should apologize to the university. When I declined to knuckle under, the powers that be had me arrested and jailed. Who then was the scholar and the gentleman?

My freshman year at Columbia, my classmates and I were required to read Jacques Barzun’s tome The House of Intellect. It didn’t take long for me to see that the house of intellect was a house of cards. In 1968, we didn’t blow it down or blow it up, but we rocked it for a time and then watched as it put its house back in order and restored its foundations.

I don’t believe it’s possible to dismantle Columbia now, much as it wasn’t possible to dismantle it in 1968. It’s too big, too powerful, too wealthy and too rapacious. But protesters today can certainly raise awareness about the political and economic ties between the US “power elite,” as Columbia professor, C. Wright Mills called it, and the power elite in Israel. Things may not improve in the Middle East any time soon, but they won’t stay the same way they have been for the past half-century, either. The student protesters with their tents on campus are a sure sign that the times have changing and will go on “a-changin'” as Dylan suggested.

Too bad Columbia is locked in the past. Too bad it has given up on meaningful dialogue with student protesters today. Too bad it doesn’t see the handwriting on the wall. Over the past few weeks, I’ve wondered what Columbia professor Edward Said, the author of Orientalism—and for a time an independent member of the Palestinian National Council—would think and say. Indeed, he seemed to occupy a kind of middle ground when he observed in 2003, the year he died, that with regard to Palestine, “nobody has a claim that overrides all the others and entitles that person with that so-called claim to drive people out!”

That middle ground seems to have evaporated. Indeed, the ground under our own feet has shifted dramatically. There is less room for dissenting opinions today than there was in ’68, near the height of the war in Vietnam. There are also more virulent anti-Arab and more virulent anti-Jewish voices today than there were then. Better prepare for the rocky road ahead.

(Jonah Raskin is the author of Beat Blues, San Francisco, 1955.)

THE ROMANI PEOPLE are unique, not only in their interesting style of dress and culture, but because they aren’t technically from anywhere. 

The Romanis - also known as gypsies - are known for constantly traveling, who are believed to have originated in northern India, although they’re closely related with Eastern Europe and even the Americas.

By the late 19th century the Romani people could be found traveling across the world, from England and Scotland to New York City. Beginning in 1888 the Gypsy Lore Society started to publish a journal that was meant to dispel rumors about their lifestyle.

BATTLEFIELD BAND – The Yew Tree Lyrics (via Bruce McEwen):

A mile frae Pentcaitland, on the road to the sea
Stands a yew tree a thousand years old
And the old women swear by the grey o' their hair
That it knows what the future will hold
For the shadows of Scotland stand round it
'Mid the kail and the corn and the kye
All the hopes and the fears of a thousand long years
Under the Lothian sky

Did you look through the haze o' the lang summer days
Tae the South and the far English border
A' the bonnets o' steel on Flodden's far field
Did they march by your side in good order
Did you ask them the price o' their glory
When you heard the great slaughter begin
For the dust o' their bones would rise up from the stones
To bring tears to the eyes o' the wind

Not once did you speak for the poor and the weak
When the moss-troopers lay in your shade
To count out the plunder and hide frae the thunder
And share out the spoils o' their raid
But you saw the smiles o' the gentry
And the laughter of lords at their gains
When the poor hunt the poor across mountain and moor
The rich man can keep them in chains

Did you no' think tae tell when John Knox himsel'
Preached under your branches sae black
To the poor common folk who would lift up the yoke
O' the bishops and priests frae their backs
But you knew the bargain he sold them
And freedom was only one part
For the price o' their souls was a gospel sae cold
It would freeze up the joy in their hearts

And I thought as I stood and laid hands on your wood
That it might be a kindness to fell you
One kiss o' the axe and you're freed frae the racks
O' the sad bloody tales that men tell you
But a wee bird flew out from your branches
And sang out as never before
And the words o' the song were a thousand years long
And to learn them's a long thousand more

Last chorus:
My bonnie yew tree

THE TRUE STORY ABOUT COCA-COLA’S PLASTIC FAIRY TALE

by Jim Hightower

Years ago, Coca-Cola excitedly debuted a new formula for its soda, dubbing it “New Coke.” Consumers hated it, and sales plummeted — a marketing fiasco.

But here comes Coke again, pushing an even worse product: “A Better Plastic Bottle,” trumpeting it as “100% Recycled.” Coke really needs an environmental PR goose-up, because today’s consumers know and care a lot about the massive plastic contamination of our planet — and Coke has been ranked as the globe’s *number one plastic polluter* for six years in a row!

Problem is, the corporation’s recycling hype is a fraud, for plastic is a fossil fuel polymer that essentially is forever. Even though most of us dutifully put throw-away containers in recycling bins, the industry’s dirty secret is that 95 percent of plastics can’t be recycled, so they’re simply burned, dumped in landfills, or tossed “away.” In a February report, The Center for Climate Integrity reveals that the plastics-industrial-complex has been like Big Tobacco and Big Oil — intentionally fabricating, promoting, and profiting from a mass-market scam for decades. As the Climate Center commented, “The only thing the plastics industry has actually recycled is their lies, over and over again.”

But, taking another lesson from tobacco and oil, Big Plastic figures that if one lie stops working, tell a bigger one. So, Coca-Cola is presently gushing about “better” plastic bottles, while plastic manufacturers are so desperate to keep peddling environmental contamination that their new media blitz frantically insists, “Recycling is Real!”

Of course, their “new” claims are nothing but re-fabricated prevarications. Meanwhile, the industry is planning to dump *300 percent more plastic* on us in the next few years. Hello, let’s get real — the only way to stop planet-choking plastic contamination is to stop making the stuff.

WHEN YOU START putting names on things, it gets to be something you do — and for me all imagination disappears. I can think of nothing more exciting than just sitting in a cornfield on a windy day and listening to the dry rustle. 

And when I walk through rows of blowing corn, I'm reminded of the way a king must have felt walking down the long line of knights on horseback with banners blowing. I love to study the many things that grow below cornstalks, and bring them back to the studio to study color. If one could only catch the true color of nature. The very thought of it drives me mad.

— Andrew Wyeth

INSIDE THE CRISIS AT NPR

Listeners are tuning out. Sponsorship revenue has dipped. A diversity push has generated internal turmoil. Can America’s public radio network turn things around?

by Benjamin Mullin & Jeremy Peters

NPR employees tuned in for a pivotal meeting late last year for a long-awaited update on the future of the public radio network.

After many tumultuous months, marked by layoffs, financial turbulence and internal strife, they signed in to Zoom hoping to hear some good news from NPR’s leaders. What they got instead was a stark preview of the continued challenges ahead.

“We are slipping in our ability to impact America, not just in broadcast, but also in the growing world of on-demand audio,” Daphne Kwon, NPR’s chief financial officer, told the group, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The New York Times.

For the past two weeks, turmoil has engulfed NPR after a senior editor assailed what he described as an extreme liberal bias inside the organization that has bled into its news coverage. The editor, Uri Berliner, said NPR’s leaders had placed race and identity as “paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace” — at the expense of diverse political viewpoints, and at the risk of losing its audience.

The accusations, leveled in an essay published in an online publication, The Free Press, led to a deluge of criticism from conservatives, including former President Donald J. Trump, who called for the network’s public funding to be pulled. The essay also generated vociferous pushback internally, with many journalists defending their work and saying Mr. Berliner’s essay distorted basic facts about NPR’s coverage.

But NPR’s troubles extend far beyond concerns about its journalism. Internal documents reviewed by The Times and interviews with more than two dozen current and former public radio executives show how profoundly the nonprofit is struggling to succeed in the fast-changing media industry. It is grappling with a declining audience and falling revenue — and internal conflict about how to fix it.

NPR’s traditional broadcast audience, still the bulk of its listenership, is in long-term decline that accelerated when the pandemic interrupted long car commutes for millions of people. The network has begun to sign up digital subscribers who pay for ad-free podcasts, but that business has lagged far behind that of its competitors.

While NPR still has an audience of about 42 million who listen every week, many of them digitally, that is down from an estimated 60 million in 2020, according to an internal March audience report, a faster falloff than for broadcast radio, which is also in a long-term decline.

A yearslong push to diversify NPR’s staff, in part to lure listeners beyond its aging and predominantly white audience, hasn’t generated the listenership boost some executives had hoped for. But the effort, which NPR’s former chief executive called its “North Star,” had been a point of contention within the organization long before Mr. Berliner published his essay this month.

Making matters more complicated: NPR’s unusual leadership structure. NPR’s reach is the result of its hundreds of member stations around the country, many of which both pay NPR for its shows and produce their own. But the leaders of those member stations — who control NPR’s board — often have conflicting priorities and compete with the network for donors, making changes more difficult.

Together, the challenges raise questions about the long-term vitality of NPR, one of the country’s most storied and far-reaching media organizations. More than 98 percent of the U.S. population lives within listening range of at least one of the more than 1,000 public radio stations that carry NPR programming, including longtime staples like “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.” Legions of die-hard listeners proudly carry tote bags emblazoned with the nonprofit’s three signature letters.

“I believe that public radio has five to seven years to reimagine itself before it’s simply unsustainable,” said Eric Nuzum, a former NPR executive and co-founder of the audio consulting and production company Magnificent Noise. “And they can’t take two or three years of that time debating a business model.”

Inside the Media Industry

Apple: FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, is close to an agreement with Apple that would give the tech company worldwide television rights for a major new World Cup-style tournament.

Warner Bros. Discovery: David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, received $49.7 million in compensation last year, a 26 percent increase from the previous year, according to a proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

NPR: Uri Berliner, the NPR editor who accused the broadcaster of liberal bias in an online essay, prompting criticism from conservatives and recrimination from many of his co-workers, has resigned.

The Daily Beast: The billionaire Barry Diller is bringing in the former Disney executive Ben Sherwood and Joanna Coles, the former Hearst content chief, to turn around the digital tabloid.

An NPR spokeswoman, Isabel Lara, said in emails to The Times that the organization had confidence in many of its recent initiatives, including its podcast subscription business, its push to diversify its staff and its efforts to reach listeners digitally. Ms. Lara said three of NPR’s podcasts — “Up First,” “Fresh Air” and “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!” — were in Apple’s top 10 subscriber podcasts.

“Our focus on the North Star has led to increased diversity in our content: the voices on the air, the sources our journalists go to, the broader range of topics and issues discussed in our shows,” Ms. Lara said. “We want to reach people where they are.”

The organization is now led by Katherine Maher, who started as NPR’s chief executive last month after leading the Wikimedia Foundation, which supports the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Ms. Maher had no professional experience in the news industry. In a January news release announcing her hire, NPR’s board said Ms. Maher would help the network “reach audiences on new and existing platforms.”

Ms. Maher was criticized this month for social media posts she published before joining NPR, including one from 2018 that called Mr. Trump a racist and expressed support for numerous progressive causes, including Black Lives Matter. NPR has said that she wrote those posts as a private citizen expressing her free speech rights, and that she oversees the organization’s business, not its editorial product.

In a statement, Ms. Maher said NPR was not alone in facing a challenging media environment and pledged to use its distinctions to its advantage.

“Its differences — as a broadcaster, a nonprofit, a federated network — serve both as unique challenges and remarkable differentiators,” Ms. Maher said. “The obstacles we face are real, but the quality of the programming and the integrity of the mission are also indisputable. They offer a strong basis from which to build our future.”

First Expansion, Then Declines

NPR sprang up in Washington in 1970 as an alternative to commercial media, less than three years after former President Lyndon Johnson signed a bill that created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a taxpayer-funded organization that partly funds both a nonprofit radio network, NPR, and a nonprofit TV network, PBS.

The founding documents of NPR stipulated that its board of directors would include many representatives from member stations, along with the general public. The goal was to ensure that the board always had the best interests of its local stations at heart.

A network of 88 charter stations banded together to bring listeners across the United States stories including the Senate hearings on the Vietnam War. NPR began making “newsmagazines” for member stations — starting in 1971 with the first broadcast of “All Things Considered” — and received grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Before long, NPR exploded. By 1983, it had nearly 300 stations and about eight million listeners. Today, more than 1,000 people work at NPR, and its audience of millions makes it one of the most influential media companies in the world.

But that growth has reversed course in recent years.

“News fatigue, digital transformation and increased competition continue to drive audience declines across platforms,” the report said.

Conflicting Priorities

To some degree, those recent declines have been balanced out by the emergence of a relative bright spot: the rise of podcasting.

Public radio podcasts, with their distinct blend of reporting and narrative, quickly won over millions of listeners and pioneered a new format. “Serial,” a gritty whodunit from the makers of the public radio show “This American Life,” became a breakout hit, leading to spinoffs and illustrating the promise of podcasting for nonprofit radio organizations.

Today, NPR is the fourth most popular podcast publisher globally, according to Podtrac, with nearly 113 million downloads in March alone. But it also faces many new competitors, including The Times, which bought “Serial” in 2020 to bolster its own growing audio business.

Corporate sponsorships — public radio speak for advertisements — grew nearly 70 percent in the five years before 2022, according to filings from NPR, generating more than $135 million that year. The vast majority of that growth comes from podcasting, which allows NPR to tap into a younger and expanding audience.

But that business took a major hit last year in an uncertain advertising market. In 2023, NPR generated $101 million in corporate sponsorship revenue, a decrease of about 25 percent from the previous year.

The growth of NPR’s podcast business has also led to tension with its member stations. If local advertisers can reach public radio listeners directly through a podcast, why would they pay for a sponsorship on a member station? In 2022, a group of executives at member stations sent a letter to NPR’s chief executive at the time, John Lansing, expressing concern that the organization’s growing portfolio had “caused distress on local stations’ sponsorship revenue.”

“If unaddressed, it will continue to impact the health of stations in an increasing way,” said the letter, which was signed by executives at many of the biggest NPR stations.

Adoption of NPR’s podcast subscription bundle, NPR+, has also lagged behind competitors’ subscription businesses. According to internal documents obtained by The Times, about 51,000 people subscribed to NPR+ as of early March, and the product has generated about $1.7 million in revenue since it was introduced in November 2022. Users can pay $8 monthly for a bundle of podcast extras or subscribe to individual shows for $2.99 per month.

In late 2022, NPR began selling fewer sponsorships, part of an overall downturn in the ad market. So, for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr. Lansing and his team planned for NPR’s revenue to remain flat in 2023. He wasn’t prepared for what happened next. When January arrived, the “bottom just fell out” of the digital ad market, he said in an interview. Sponsorships fell $34 million compared with the previous year.

“That’s 10 percent of our revenue, and you can’t go back and get it,” Mr. Lansing said. “It’s like an airplane that takes off with half the seats sold — once it’s gone, it’s gone. ”

The scope of the shortfall became apparent early in 2023, when NPR’s leadership decided to cut about 100 positions to help make up for a $30 million budget deficit.

An Uncertain Future

In May 2022, the board met to discuss taking a big step: an ambitious membership effort that it hoped would be a big part of NPR’s future.

The nonprofit was planning to create the NPR Network, a service that would allow listeners across the United States to donate directly to NPR. In doing so, the board was wading into an issue that had generated tensions between NPR and its member stations for decades: fund-raising.

For years, NPR’s rules restricted the ways it could ask listeners for money directly. Those solicitations were supposed to be done with participation from local member stations.

Now, the board planned to suspend that rule so that NPR could ask avid public radio listeners to donate directly to the NPR Network.

There was some initial disagreement on the board over the NPR Network, according to people familiar with the meeting. Some of the directors said NPR needed to do a better job of reaching listeners directly. Others urged caution, warning that the proposal could interfere with fund-raising efforts at local stations.

After much back and forth, the board held a special session in June for a formal vote on whether to remove the rule. Ultimately, the board voted to suspend the rule, but agreed to revisit the decision in the coming years, setting up yet another debate.

‘The North Star’

The network still has an estimated audience of about 42 million who listen every week, many of them digitally — but that represents a large drop, from 60 million in 2020.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Like many companies that committed themselves to confronting racial inequality in recent years, NPR put an ambitious action plan in place. Its commitment to diversity — which Mr. Lansing called NPR’s “North Star” — would be not only a moral imperative but a foundation of its business strategy.

NPR’s leaders redoubled their efforts to diversify their audience and work force and closely tracked metrics for each. They added podcasts aimed at people of color and younger listeners. They promoted people of color to high-profile reporting and hosting jobs. All of these moves were meant to ensure the nation’s public radio network would remain competitive as the country’s population continued to grow more diverse.

So it came as a disappointment to some people on NPR’s board last fall when they were presented with new internal data showing their efforts hadn’t moved the needle much with Black and Hispanic podcast listeners.

Black listeners made up roughly 11 percent of NPR’s audience in the second quarter of 2023, unchanged from the same period in 2020, according to the data. The data further showed that the share of Hispanic listeners went up only two percentage points since 2020, to account for 16 percent of the total audience. One 2020 survey, from the Pew Research Center, found that of the people who named NPR as their main source for political and election news, 75 percent were white, more than any other outlet except Fox News.

NPR’s efforts to diversify itself and its audience didn’t always live up to the expectations of the people who worked there. During a round of layoffs last year, NPR cut “Louder Than a Riot,” a hip-hop podcast that examined Black and queer issues. After that decision, the show’s editor, Soraya Shockley, who had previously worked at The Times, grilled Mr. Lansing during an employee question-and-answer session about why the show had no dedicated budget, pointing out the lack of resources supporting content that furthered diversity, equity and inclusion, or D.E.I.

“How are we supposed to support diverse programming — actually commit to D.E.I., and make it not a folly — when this company seems scared to talk about money when it is not a $30 million deficit?” Shockley asked. In a statement, NPR said the second season of “Louder Than a Riot” had comparable marketing support to other podcasts at the network; Shockley said they were never shown a marketing budget.

Later on the call, after Mr. Lansing urged employees to be more mindful of “civility” in their questions, an NPR employee wrote in an instant-messaging chat accompanying the conversation that the word “civility” is often used as a cudgel against people of color, calling the language choice “racist.”

After the meeting, Shockley filed a human resources complaint against Mr. Lansing, saying his remarks about civility amounted to “dog-whistle racism,” according to a person with knowledge of the exchange. The complaint against Mr. Lansing was referred to an outside law firm, which did not recommend any punitive action.

Mr. Lansing, who announced his retirement last fall, declined to comment on the interaction.

Still, some critics of NPR believe NPR’s “North Star” strategy has failed for a completely different reason: It has not taken ideological diversity into account. Tim Eby, who was the general manager of St. Louis Public Radio until 2020, said in an interview that while it made sense for NPR to seek an audience that looked more like the country, he wasn’t sure its approach was the right one. And its story selection has on occasion left it open to criticism that its focus on race and identity has affected its news judgment. There have been stories, for instance, on how to “decolonize your bookshelf” and “thin privilege.”

“The demographics of the country being what they are, it goes without saying that if you want to have a sustainable business going forward, you have to reach new audiences,” he said. “I think the question is how you’re doing that. I think they’ve overcompensated on attempts to reach audiences that are not going to listen,” he added.

(Mr. Eby has a personal stake in the debate. An anonymous post on the Medium website accused him of presiding over a workplace that was unfair to employees of minority groups. The station replaced him. He has denied those claims and is suing for defamation.)

Mr. Berliner’s criticism this month of NPR’s North Star strategy hasn’t swayed the network’s leaders. In a statement, NPR said it was committed to a more diverse staff and on-air voices. The network pointed to its large audiences on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok and YouTube as bright spots.

Many employees also pushed back against the claims in Mr. Berliner’s essay, both in public and internally. The staff of “Morning Edition” set aside more than a half-hour of one daily meeting to discuss his remarks.

Bill Siemering, an early leader at NPR who wrote a statement of purposes in 1970 that the nonprofit continues to use, said in an interview that NPR’s mission was as important today as when he first put pen to paper.

“There’s a place in society for a independent source of information that reflects the culture in a meaningful way where all the voices are heard, and where there is intentional programming to help solve some of the most critical problems facing America,” Mr. Siemering said.