NPR's Nancy Barnes on pandemic coverage and Eric and Wendy Schmidt's big new donation

Reliable Sources

CNN

News

3.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2020

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nancy Barnes, NPR's senior VP of news and editorial director, talks with Brian Stelter about the recent $4.7 million gift from Eric and Wendy Schmidt. The funds will bolster reporting hubs in California and the Midwest. The gift is "specifically geared towards our efforts to grow local journalism," Barnes says. She also discusses NPR's pandemic coverage, and how the public radio network is faring financially. "The budget hit is significant," she says. "It's almost exclusively related to Covid-19." To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Amid all the bad news about the news during this pandemic, all of the cuts, furloughs,
0:10.0	in some cases entire newspapers closing due to the economic crisis.
0:16.8	There is a great headline to share.
0:19.4	So we're going to start with that on this week's Reliable Sources podcast. Let's cue the music.
0:25.0	I'm your host Brian Stelter,
0:27.0	and this is our weekly podcast,
0:29.0	our weekly chance to go more in depth
0:31.0	with media leaders and newsmakers talking about the story behind the
0:35.8	story and I promise good news so that's why I'm going to bring in NPR's Senior Vice President for News, Nancy Barnes.
0:47.0	Nancy's been at NPR for about a year and a half now. She's a veteran newspaper
0:52.2	editor and she's a veteran newspaper editor and she's working at NPR now to expand and
0:56.8	strengthen the news operation both nationally and also at the local level. This week MPR announced it was receiving a 4.7
1:06.4	million dollar gift from Eric and Wendy Schmidt. Eric Schmidt of course the former
1:11.8	executive chairman of Google.
1:13.5	The Schmitz are making this donation to help launch a Midwest regional newsroom
1:19.0	and to help grow a California newsroom hub.
1:24.0	So what does that mean?
1:25.8	What's it all about?
1:26.8	And yes, that's good news, but what about the bad news?
1:29.8	What about the cutbacks we're seeing across the country in newsrooms how is NPR being
1:34.7	affected let's talk about all of that and more with Nancy she is joining me now from
1:39.9	Washington Nancy thanks so much for joining me. My pleasure. Tell me about how this gift
	...

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