"Quicker and Deeper?" continued   

The future of National Public Radio, say many inside the network, is at NPR West, a production facility that opened in November 2002. It's in Los Angeles, where things are, after all, different.

NPR West, which now houses 56 people, is an effort by the network to better cover the West. It's another counter-mainstream media move by NPR: While big news organizations get criticized for their East Coast-centric mentalities, NPR is working to incorporate more voices and stories from the other side of the country.

Everyone interviewed at NPR West agrees their sheer presence in L.A. has brought new sources, experts and a decidedly not-Washington feel to the programs. That goes for the office as well--an old red-brick warehouse converted by a dotcom into a hip space of concrete floors, multiple skylights and a sofa-and-fireplace lounge area. The dotcom died before its staff could move in, and NPR bought the building--Sub-Zero refrigerator and all.

The staffs for "Day to Day" and "The Tavis Smiley Show," the two programs broadcast from L.A., don't talk about preserving NPR traditions as much as they talk about branching out, creating something very different. "Day to Day" Executive Producer J.J. Sutherland says simply, "We are an outlet for experimentation."

There is an atmosphere of creativity at NPR West, a feeling that they're out here , 3,000 miles away from the immediate reach of the NPR establishment. Says "Day to Day" host Alex Chadwick, a longtime NPR staffer, "I want to try something that's a little different, a little more spontaneous" and more personal than other NPR programs.

The show was launched to raise a dip in public radio listenership during the day, but staffers talk about filling another role as well. "I'll bet we make more mistakes than any other NPR program," Chadwick says. But that's not what's important. "I want to give other people on the program the same freedom that I felt at NPR in the last 25 years--to write, to think, to take chances, to fail" and to get up the next day and do it all over again.

"Day to Day" isn't an hour of freeform experimentation--it still sounds like NPR--but it does have a more personal tone, and it tries to make use of the work of independent producers. Chadwick, long an advocate for airing independent pieces and paying more money for them--both Nelson and Allison say the rates at NPR are shockingly low--wants to get those voices, and hence a richer texture, on the air.

So what's experimental? Sutherland cites short segments that Transom.org has been collecting in which a list of seemingly unrelated items is read and their relationship isn't revealed until the end. "One tie-dyed stuffed gecko," says producer Marianne Rahn Erickson, "one ace of diamonds, one adjustable pipe clamp..." All from the glovebox of her 1986 Volvo station wagon, before it went to the crusher.

The listener response? "Some people love them, some people hate them," Sutherland says.

"Day to Day" Associate Producer Alicia Montgomery says change is sometimes difficult at an entrenched network with an entrenched audience. NPR has a wonderful, smart listenership, she says, who doesn't want it to change. Her mother is a fan of what Montgomery calls "old school NPR." She tries to defend the newer efforts, but "some people feel it's a betrayal."

There is more creative freedom for a show that airs on 100 stations for more than a million listeners--the fastest growing program in NPR history, but way below the levels of "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered," with 13 million and 11.5 million, respectively.

"Day to Day" may be different, but it has nothing on "The Tavis Smiley Show." The first public radio national newsmagazine from an African American perspective, "Tavis" launched in January 2002, created by the network and a consortium of African American member stations.

As Supervising Senior Producer Sheryl Flowers explains, some focus group listeners said NPR can be like Muzak: You can have it on as background noise and turn it up when something catches your attention. "Tavis," she says, "is a very bold presence, and you don't have to turn it up. When 'The Tavis Smiley Show' is on, it is up... It's a show that every single day we really aim to see how different we can be than everybody else."

The hour-long daily news-and-opinion show takes on the host's personality much more so than other NPR programs, Flowers says, addressing subjects ranging from Haiti to blacks and gay marriage to comedy about racial issues. "Tavis" has attracted about 900,000 listeners, 28 percent of whom are black. The average black listenership for NPR programs is 10 percent.

It's the first line of the show, Flowers says, that really symbolized that NPR was turning a corner: "From NPR in Los Angeles, I'm Tavis Smiley." The one line, she says, said a lot: "It's a new day; NPR is not just inside the Beltway. Wow, Tavis Smiley, that's a new voice. He's African American; he's under 40."

"NPR certainly fulfilled a lot of its mission in that one line."

A number of NPR staffers say the network needs to air more perspectives and voices--a part of its mission that's always been a challenge. Montgomery, of "Day to Day," points out that the median household income in the United States is $42,000 a year and fewer than half of U.S. adults have a bachelor's degree. "You'd never know that if you were a listener of NPR," she says.

Senior correspondent Noah Adams is spending a year covering low-income workers, "a noble intent," Montgomery says, "but it points out that for 20 years" NPR hasn't done a good job of covering those people. Not getting perspectives of such Americans on the air is "treacherous for an organization that speaks to the country."

National desk reporter Mandalit del Barco also talks about bringing in more voices and viewpoints, and she points out that she's the only Latina on the air at NPR. Del Barco was based in Los Angeles when there were only a handful of staffers in an office building. Now, NPR West is much more diverse, but it could be even more so. Management is aware that it needs to further diversify the staff, "not just to represent," del Barco says, "but to bring in a different perspective."

Add diversity to the growing list of demands NPR has placed on itself: to cover hard news faster and deeper, to do more investigative work, to fight complacency and yet to adhere to its original mission.

The balance that it has maintained so far has done nothing but attract listeners. Since 1980, the NPR audience has declined only once--in 1984. And both employees and supporters alike say they're coming because, this type of coverage? They can't find it anywhere else.

Cinny Kennard, a former CBS News correspondent now on leave from her teaching job at USC, became NPR West's manager in October 2003. (The facility grew so quickly, she says, Washington woke up and realized they needed an adult out here.) There are few broadcast entities left in the country that fit her aspirations as a journalist, Kennard says. "My goals and my mission and my feeling that journalism is an essential part of this democracy. Where else would I go?.. I couldn't say no."

NPR, says Hub Brown, an associate professor of broadcast journalism at Syracuse University, "is a resource for people, and it is a real positive for American media." The in-depth examination that the network does, not just a glossing over, is what the public wants from journalism. "It shows what we're capable of doing."

CEO Kevin Klose says regardless of the changes underway at NPR, the network's original ideals remain. Back in 1970, Klose says, "they said, and they say it to this day, right to this minute, that..this was a brand new medium, it was not like radio that had ever existed before. And they were going to paint on this canvas with verbal communication, with nonverbal human expression, artistic expression, tap dancing or capture the sound of a sculptor's hammer on a chisel... They would use ambient sound, music and silence, and they would put that on the canvas for us...

"The idea was to treat people as equals in an exploration, in a conversation or a dialogue," he says, "and they're still doing that to this day."