Listeners Like Who?: Exclusion and Resistance in the Public Radio Industry

How public radio has perpetuated racial inequality since its founding--and how journalists of color are challenging white dominance in the workplace and on the public airwaves

National Public Radio was established in 1970 with a mission to provide programming for all Americans, yet the gap between public radio’s pluralistic mandate and its failure to serve marginalized communities has plagued the industry from the start. Listeners Like Who? takes readers inside the public radio industry, revealing how the network’s sound and listenership are reflections of its inherent whiteness, and describing the experiences of the nonwhite journalists who are fighting for change.

Drawing on institutional archives, oral histories, and original in-depth interviews with journalists of color in public radio, Laura Garbes shows that when NPR and its affiliate stations first began its appeals for donations from ＂listeners like you,＂ it was appealing to white, well-educated donors. She discusses how this initial focus created a sustainable financial model in the face of government underfunding, but how these same factors have alienated broad swaths of nonwhite and working-class audiences and limited the creative freedoms of nonwhite public radio workers. Garbes tells the stories of the employees of color who are disrupting the aesthetic norms and narrative practices embedded in the industry.

Centering sound in how we think about the workplace and organizational life, Listeners Like Who? provides insights into the media’s role in upholding racial inequality and the complex creative labor by nonwhite journalists to expand who and what gets heard on public radio.

Laura Garbes is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota.