Public radio and the unpaid workforce

A vast unpaid workforce for news.

Increasing the ranks of professional journalists is no doubt the key to building stronger local public TV and radio newsrooms, but some stations are getting by without them.

Surveys show that for almost every paid worker in public media news, there is an unpaid worker. That essentially doubles the total news workforce from 3,000 to 6,000, through the donated work of volunteers, students, interns and other unpaid contributors, according to a 2010 survey that I did for Public Radio News Directors Inc.

This is not to suggest that the nonprofessionals mirror the skill sets or carry the workload of the pros, who certainly deliver the bulk of the hours and the bulk of the talent, yet the data reveal a rich human resource that may be unique to the world of public media.

It also shows differentiation between the use of volunteers and students.

Half the free labor is donated by volunteers, largely concentrated in non-NPR, community-radio licensees such as KBOO in Portland, Ore.; WORT in Madison, Wis.; KBCS in the Seattle area; and the Pacifica stations. In fact, 30 such community stations account for more than three-fourths of the volunteer staffing..."