WXPR CEO: No local newspapers exist in the region

News analysis

Given recent federal cuts to public broadcasting, supporters of public broadcasting have been on a crusade to stress how important it is for them to survive in an age of declining newspaper coverage, and this past month Jessie Dick, the CEO of Rhinelander’s public radio station WXPR, made one of the wildest claims yet — namely, that no newspapers remain in its listening area.

That’s going to come as a shock to readers of The Lakeland Times, The Northwoods River News, the Vilas County News-Review, the Florence Mining News, the Forest Republican, the Price County Review, the Antigo Daily Journal, the Iron County Miner, and more — local northern Wisconsin newspapers that are thriving.

Dick’s comments came during a July 18 interview on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Wisconsin Today, in which she and Karl Habeck, the station manager of WOJB Woodland Community Radio in Hayward, were discussing with hosts Rob Ferrett and Kate Archer Kent the impact on their stations of the elimination of federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Dick said WXPR had, for its upcoming year, budgeted 25 percent of its funding to come from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

“So it’s usually about a quarter of WXPR’s budget that comes from the federal support,” Dick told the show’s hosts.

That’s when she dropped her bombshell claim about why federal funding for WXPR was so important.

“We’re in a rural area, and, as many people know, the coverage of local news has really disappeared,” she said. “We don’t have a local newspaper in this region anymore. So several years ago, WXPR decided to try to fill that gap and we added journalists to our staff to fill the need.”

But Dick said the station could see the handwriting on the wall and started making adjustments.

“And in this past year, knowing that this was a possibility, we’ve had to cut that and we’re down to one reporter at this time,” she said. “So really the largest impact is right in our local news coverage, which is needed in this region now more than ever before.”

For his part, Habeck said the situation was even more dire for WOJB, which broadcasts from the reservation of Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe. 

“Well, it [federal funding] actually comprises roughly about 40 percent of our operating budget, so it’s going to be pretty detrimental for us and it’s going to be difficult to make up those funds,” Habeck said. “We don’t have the population density like other city stations. They’ll probably be able to survive this more. I think that the more rural you get, the tougher this is going to be on a radio station.”

Declining popularity of public radio

While the newspaper industry has been hit hard in recent decades, the reality is far from Dick’s assertion that all of the region’s newspapers have disappeared. The number of newspapers in rural areas has actually stabilized in the past few years, and many are stronger than ever, such as The Lakeland Times, established in 1891, and the Iron County Miner, which is celebrating its 140th year.

Part of the resiliency is an enduring trust of newspapers over other media in local communities, as WXPR itself reported in a story last year by Judith Ruiz-Branch of Wisconsin News Connection.

“But amid an increasing climate of misinformation and media distrust among some Americans, the news outlets they say they trust the most are community newspapers,” Ruiz-Barnch reported in December.

Meanwhile, public broadcast stations are facing their own crisis amid signs of declining popularity, leading some to question giving tax dollars to media venues that are losing their appeal. Indeed, nationally, since 2020, National Public Radio has lost 30 percent of its audience, falling from about 60 million in 2020 to 42 million in 2024 across all platforms, according to The New York Times, which cited an internal NPR report it obtained.

Why the decline? Some people say it is a problem of public media’s own making as it persists in hewing to the left in a shifting political climate. That perspective is embraced by the Trump administration.

On May 1, the White House signaled what would be coming in Congress when Trump signed an executive order instructing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cease funding to NPR and PBS. For one thing, the executive order acknowledged that new digital formats had radically altered the media landscape, reducing the need for government-supported platforms.

“Unlike in 1967, when the CPB was established, today the media landscape is filled with abundant, diverse, and innovative news options,” the executive order stated. “Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.”

That independence was lacking because of political bias, the administration asserted.

“At the very least, Americans have the right to expect that if their tax dollars fund public broadcasting at all, they fund only fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news coverage,” the executive order stated. “No media outlet has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies, and the government is entitled to determine which categories of activities to subsidize. The CPB’s governing statute reflects principles of impartiality: the CPB may not ‘contribute to or otherwise support any political party.’”

The CPB fails to abide by those principles to the extent it subsidizes NPR and PBS, the administration asserted.

“Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter,” the president’s executive order stated. “What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens. I therefore instruct the CPB Board of Directors (CPB Board) and all executive departments and agencies (agencies) to cease federal funding for NPR and PBS.”

The executive order also instructed the CPB board to cease indirect funding to NPR and PBS, “including by ensuring that licensees and permittees of public radio and television stations, as well as any other recipients of CPB funds, do not use federal funds for NPR and PBS.”

The executive order set the stage for July’s rescissions package, which withdrew $1.1 billion that Congress had approved for 2026 and 2027 for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and which distributes the funds to NPR, PBS and affiliate stations.

Richard Moore is the author of “Dark State” and may be reached at richardd3d.substack.com.