From: Eva Rodriguez, Vice President and Executive Editor, NPR
Re: Monthly Content Review
August 2025 session/review of July 2025 stories
The Cohort:
Majd Al-Waheidi, Digital Editor 2, Morning Edition
Meghan Ashford-Grooms, Supervising Editor, Standards and Practices
Alfredo Carbajal, Supervising Editor, National Desk
Tasha Diakides, Executive Producer, Newscast & NPR News Now
Sylvie Douglis, Producer 1, Life Kit
Pallavi Gogoi, Chief Business Editor, Business Desk
Holly Morris, Digital Journalist Trainer, Training Team
Scott Neuman, Correspondent, General Assignment Desk
Jordan-Marie Smith, Associate Producer, All Things Considered
Nick Spicer, Europe Editor, International Desk
NOTE: DME Jim Kane joined at my request to take notes to allow me to focus entirely on the conversation. Jim also provided insights into themes and takeaways, but did not participate in the conversation.
The Content, by the numbers:
NPR aired or published 1,982 pieces of content (not including Newscast) in July 2025.
- By category: 1,478 were news -- produced pieces or two-ways with NPR/Member station reporters or outside experts/newsmakers; 277 were categorized as culture, and 110 as music. (117 pieces were uncategorized.)
- By platform: Broadcast shows hosted 1,026 of these pieces; owned and operated digital platforms were vehicles for 718 stories, and podcasts accounted for 238. (Content posted exclusively on third-party platforms such as Instagram and YouTube are not discoverable in this data scrape.)
The Topic: NPR's coverage in July 2025 of Gaza/Israel and the continuing drama over the Epstein files.
The Discussion, generally: At the cohort's request, we tackled two topics during our discussion -- the growing starvation crisis in Gaza and the renewed interest in the Jeffrey Epstein files and why the Trump administration reversed course in releasing all of the documents. What these two topics have in common is NPR's extensive run of daily coverage throughout August, raising questions about whether we provided enough new information to warrant the concentration of coverage.
Particularly with coverage of Gaza and starvation, the daily stories too often verged on the incremental. To be clear, the question wasn't whether the situation on the ground was important enough to cover – it indisputably wasand is. The question was whether daily coverage is required when there have not been significant developments on the ground. Would the absence of daily coverage signal NPR's conclusion that the situation was not worthy? Could repeated coverage despite significant changes signal that NPR was essentially sending a political statement about this very politically-charged situation?
Digital listening and readership data showed dips in engagement with the starvation crisis in Gaza as the month wore on. We discussed whether this suggested that audiences were becoming immune or overwhelmed and, thus, were more frequently skipping these stories. (There is no data to document broadcast engagement.) Perhaps counterintuitively, a daily drumbeat of incremental stories may also serve to diminish the significance of what's happening on the ground if people tune out because they feel as if they already know the basic outlines of the story.
It's important to remember that Newscasts – even though produced independently – are part of the run of coverage heard during Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Listeners don't necessarily know – or care – if two independent units produced the spot coverage on, for example, Israel/Gaza for Newscast and the longer piece for one of the news magazines. We risk sounding repetitive and alienating listeners if we are not mindful. (There is a silver lining, however, which we'll highlight in the Takeaways section.)
One member of the cohort opined that NPR's coverage of the starvation crisis in Gaza was consistently fact-based and fair. But this person pointed to a piece that sought to explain how starvation causes death as an example of an approach that may come off as exploitative. There was not unanimity within the cohort about whether the piece, in fact, was inappropriately opportunistic. The piece was written after engagement editors pointed out that many readers were searching for questions on how starvation affects the body. NPR has pulled back dramatically on jumping on topics that are trending unless we believe we have something substantial to add or to advance the story. An explanation of how a lack of food slowly degrades the body seemed an instance where NPR expertise could provide insights.
Digital text and digital audio pieces on the Epstein developments performed well – far better than the pieces on Israel/Gaza. Most of the stories focused on the Trump administration's reversal of course on releasing all of the Epstein files – a reversal that many of President Trump's critics – and even some Republicans who had been Trump loyalists found disturbing. These developments were primarily political storie, seeing as not much new information had surfaced about what was contained in the files.
Takeaways:
1. Audience needs must always be top-of-mind – regardless of the topic. But sensitivity to this principle is even more important when we know we will be revisiting a topic or development regularly to avoid essentially pummeling the audience with pieces that may seem repetitive. "Stepback" analysis or enterprise pieces that shed light and add context to incremental developments are often more helpful in these instances than individual stories on the incremental developments themselves.
2. We should remember that listeners don't necessarily experience Newscast, which airs the lastest headlines on the half hour, and the news magazine shows as separate things. To listeners, Newscast is a part of the news magazine experience. It can be annoying to hear a newscast spot on Topic X only to hear a piece or conversation a few minutes later on the same topic on a show that doesn't advance the audience's understanding significantly.
3. NPR long ago stopped jumping on most "trending topics" after finding that in many instances readers for these trending stories – especially if they were weird or quirky -- were "one and done" and unlikely to stay or return for other coverage. BUT…we should continue to pursue trending topics where we have expertise and value to add for readers seeking depth and breadth. In these instances, explainers often serve audiences well.
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