AT A MOMENT when public broadcasters are staggering from the loss of $1.1 billion in federal funds over the next two years, Boston’s two leading public media executives say that rebuilding trust and community are the keys to survival. 

“I think the best way to build trust is from the local community up,” said Susan Goldberg, president and chief executive of GBH, which operates television, radio, and digital platforms. She touted the radio station’s studio at the Boston Public Library as a way for people to come in “and watch us create the content in front of them,” saying: “I think it’s that kind of transparency that can help build back trust.” 

Margaret Low, chief executive of WBUR Radio, agreed, observing that her station reaches beyond its airwaves and digital presence through events at its CitySpace venue and through such initiatives as the WBUR Festival. 

“There’s something very powerful about bringing people together in a place to talk about some of the most pressing issues of the day,” she said. “And it’s different than the one-to-many that broadcasting is, or even a newsletter is. It’s actually people feeling like they’re part of something bigger than themselves, that they’re part of a community.” 

Goldberg and Low spoke Wednesday at a webinar sponsored by the New England chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. The theme of the evening was survival. Earlier this summer the Republican-controlled Congress, acting at the behest of President Trump, eliminated the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a semi-independent agency that provided funding for PBS, NPR and local public television and radio stations. 

Though public media outlets receive a majority of their funds from private grants, donations, and corporate underwriting, a number of stations — especially in rural areas and urban communities of color — were heavily dependent on CPB money and are now struggling to stay afloat. Earlier this week a consortium of foundations led by Knight, MacArthur, Ford and others announced an emergency grant of nearly $37 million to 115 stations that are at the highest risk of closure. 

The irony is that even though national operations at PBS and NPR will suffer less than some of their member stations, studies such as a 2024 survey by the Pew Research Center show that local news outlets remain more trusted than national organizations, which have gotten hopelessly caught up in the partisanship that is tearing the country apart. Even as mainstream outlets attempt to reassure their audience that they are dedicated to fair, truth-telling journalism, critics rail that they are hopelessly biased. 

These claims are especially loud on the right, as years of deriding sources such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and, yes, NPR and PBS as “fake news” have taken a toll. The latest survey from Pew, for instance, shows that 73 percent of Democrats and respondents who lean Democratic say that journalists’ role in society is “extremely” or “very” important, whereas only 45 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners say the same. 

Evidence suggests that robust community journalism can offset such polarization, with one study even showing that readers of a newspaper that eliminated national opinion content and replaced it with local commentary for just one month demonstrated a measurable decline in partisanship. Communities without reliable news and information suffer from lower voter turnout in local elections, fewer candidates running for office, and other civic ills. Yet local news is in crisis, with one recent study finding that there are 75 percent fewer journalists working in local news today than in 2007. 

A thriving public media ecosystem could help solve the local news crisis and ease the partisan divide. Unfortunately, Trump and the MAGA movement want to move in the opposite direction. 

Both GBH and WBUR produce a variety of national and local programming. Susan Goldberg noted Wednesday that GBH is the largest producer of national programming for PBS, and that the failure of local stations would harm GBH since they would no longer be able to pay for that programming. 

“There are a lot of efforts under way to help stabilize the system,” she said, observing that PBS has cut member fees by 21 percent so that they are better able to pay for national programming. She added: “We’re going to have to make some hard decisions as well.” 

Likewise, Margaret Low pointed out that WBUR produces two national programs, “On Point” and “Here & Now,” both of which are paid for by member stations. “We may have to make some tough decisions,” she said. “It’s serious. It’s not insurmountable…. It’s hard to know how serious that impact will be.” 

As Low and Goldberg said, though, it’s the connection with the local community that will determine whether public media rises or falls. Both outlets have robust news staffs and cover local and regional news as part of the national morning and afternoon newscasts. 

Unfortunately, financial challenges that arose even before Trump’s second term have forced both outlets to make some painful cuts at the local level. ’BUR canceled its daily “Radio Boston” program last December. GBH-TV canceled all four of its public-affairs programs over the past several years (“Beat the Press with Emily Rooney,” “Great Boston,” “Talking Politics,” and “Basic Black”), though it has revived “Basic Black” as “GBH News Rooted” on digital and has plans to bring back “Greater Boston” in some form as well. GBH Radio also broadcasts four hours of local talk each day via “Boston Public Radio” and “The Culture Show” as well as an hour on Sundays with “Under the Radar with Callie Crossley.” 

With no government funding to fall back on, such locally oriented programming, more than ever, is going to depend on viewers (and listeners) like us. Goldberg and Low said that their stations as well as public media throughout the system have experienced a heartening spike in giving since the CPB was defunded. 

“We have a direct relationship to the audience. The fact that people give even though they don’t have to is astonishing,” Low said, adding: “As we anticipate the year ahead, if we could find 10,000 more donors and have everybody who gives give 10 percent more, that would cover it.” 

Low told the story of a wealthy listener who had never given before and who donated $10,000. Some checking revealed “that he had capacity, as we gently like to say.” He was invited to visit WBUR, and he ended up giving $250,000. “Part of it is figuring out how to tell that different story so people feel motivated to support something that they actually love,” she said. 

Goldberg, though, issued a caution. 

“I don’t think that fundraising alone is going to solve what is going to be a structural problem,” she said. “Long term, it is pretty hard across the system to replace $1.1 billion, or $535 million each year, which is how much the CPB has given. So I do think that we need to think of other really creative ways, in addition to reaching out to audiences, to helping them understand our value. We’ve got to be better. We’ve got to be more clear about what our value proposition really is.” 

Building community, encouraging civic engagement, and telling the stories of the people who live here need to be at the heart of that mission. 

Dan Kennedy is a professor of journalism at Northeastern University and the author, with Ellen Clegg, of What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate. Follow their updates and podcast at whatworks.news. Kennedy is also a member of CommonWealth Beacon’s editorial advisory board and was a paid contributor to GBH News from 1998-2022.