“We look to connect history and culture in our breaking news.”
We’d like to take a little time to show love to an organization that is near and dear to our hearts here at Root Concepts — National Public Radio.
These days it can be difficult to separate the accurate from the embellished in terms of news and journalistic reports. Cable News, Talk Radio, and your Facebook News Feed has become saturated with reports from abroad and breaking news making it harder to know which ones are actually accurate with your best interest in mind. With TV turning more and more towards ‘infotainment’ and the internet devolving into more and more content marketing and click bait who can you trust to give it to you like it is? In our opinion there is one that stands above the rest: NPR
NPR serves our most trusted news source and we’re glad to share how it has enriched our lives and gained our trust.
Sending A Clear Message
The world is a complex, difficult place to dissect what matters and how it affects the average person. NPR is the best news source in the United States at consistently finding the balance of telling the hard stories, as well as the uplifting ones, in a humanizing way, from across the planet to your local neighborhood.
Local communities provide the life-blood for local NPR stations and they do so willingly with a full grown sense of community. They believe in the integrity of the stories that NPR relays to them about national and international issues. That level of trust is hard to find with any mass media.
Local communities willingly give funds to NPR because of their simple message, that a better informed population of people is a good thing, and rather than distorting news to meet an agenda, NPR’s goal is to enrich and enliven minds to competently understand what’s going on in the world. In fact, their message is the exact opposite of cable and internet news fluff. They provide substance, questions, and objective stories for the purpose of increasing the understanding of their listeners. That’s cool. How do they do this? They don’t tell you what or how to think, but instead present ideas in a way that encourages critical thinking and spurs a deeper dialogue.
Check out this sampling of some of our recent favorites:
News: Syrian Civil War Prompts First Withdrawal From Doomsday Seed Vault In The Arctic and Risking Arrest, Thousands Of Hungarians Offer Help To Refugees
Culture: An Atlanta Neighborhood Tries To Redefine Gentrification and Ralph Nader Builds Shrine To Tort Law
Arts & Life: Durand-Ruel: The Art Dealer Who Liked Impressionists Before They Were Cool
Designed To Inform
It’s rare that a large organization has the foresight to “stay small” as they grow to be able to reach a large audience, but NPR has made that their goal from the beginning. By pulling on their local communities for financial support, each NPR affiliate is unique to its location, and yet ubiquitous in its ability to inform. Because they are community funded, each affiliate is held to a very high standard, so regardless of where in the country you live NPR must continually strive to find and report on the stories that are relevant to its listeners. As a large number of folks who listen to NPR would agree, they do this successfully.
Brilliantly weaving culture, art, and entertainment into the very fabric of the network has cultivated an extremely broad audience reach that social, political, and cultural divides and managed to bring together a following of like-minded people who understand the value of an informed society.
NPR Listener Profile
If you’re not familiar with it, here’s a little information on NPR that comes from their audience profile page. Not only do we love NPR, we love NPR listeners… why? Because they take the time to be informed citizens! Not surprisingly, over the years we have come to learn that folks who love Root Concepts also have an affinity for NPR. Check it out if you’ve got a minute.
The Affluent Business Leader-
NPR listeners are 140% more likely to be top management.
The Civic Leader
-NPR listeners are 218% more likely to have been an active member of any group that tries to influence public policy or government.
-NPR listeners and users are committed to civic engagement on the local, state and national levels.
The Sustainability Champion
NPR listeners are 81% more likely to purchase natural/organic foods.
60% of NPR.org users recycle, and are 26% more likely to participate in environmental activities and causes.
NPR listeners are 296% more likely to participate in environmental groups or causes and are 239% more likely to drive a hybrid vehicle.
The Real Deal
While these stats are nice reasons to love NPR, they’re far from the heart of the matter.
We’ve come to love it because they are the most unbiased news source in the country with the most complete, in-depth coverage out there.
We also love it because the NPR following speaks for itself in a recent survey as being the most informed group of all news consumers. The below survey comes as a report from Andrew Beaujon with Poynter.com.
Support The Cause
“We are unbought and unbossed, the listener’s own us.”
We Have to give a special shout out to KNAU! Our local NPR station here in Northern Arizona. KNAU keeps us going through the days, weeks, and years. love to help them carry out the NPR mission.
If you’re so inclined check out the station. They are currently in doing the Fall Fund Drive, click the donate button is on the top-right of their homepage — http://knau.org/ and join us in supporting this fine cause!
