By Rima Dael, NFCB CEO
Published: February 5th, 2026
Over the next few months, there will be several gatherings, convenings, and working sessions focused on the future of public media, the role of nonprofit news, and how we operationalize the buzzword that dominated 2025: “hyperlocal.” These are good questions and important conversations.
Too often, however, we keep talking strategy, sustainability, trust, and innovation—without grounding ourselves in a foundational distinction that shapes everything from editorial decisions to revenue models: Audience and community are not the same thing. And if we can’t clearly define the difference between reach and relationship, we will keep building strategies that don’t fully serve either.
For stations and newsrooms reliant on philanthropy, underwriting, membership, and public trust, this isn’t semantics. It’s the essence of a business plan. So here is the reminder, plainly: Do not conflate audience with community.
We need to go back to the beginning and define these terms—and stop conflating them, which happens far too often, in my humble opinion. Serving audiences and serving communities may require different approaches. Yes, there is overlap—but their needs are often different.
Public media would benefit from learning how much of the broader nonprofit and arts sectors already understand this distinction. Journalism needs to understand it too.
Audience and community are not the same thing—and public media must do both
Public media has long used “audience” and “community” as interchangeable ideas. They are not. Yet, as we head toward the midterm elections and deeper into 2026, the ability to serve both audience and community—at the same time—may be the single biggest issue facing public media.
”This is the heart of it: Audience sustains the institution, but community legitimizes the mission. Public media was designed to hold both.
What I mean by audience
When I say audience, I mean:
- Transactional: people who consume content
- Measurable: reach, ratings, downloads, clicks, membership
- Intermittent: they come and go
- Reactive: we respond to them, but they aren’t necessarily co-responsible with us
Audience strategy matters. It keeps stations visible, funded, and operational. It supports the work. Audience strategy often asks:
- Who is listening?
- What content performs best?
- How do we grow reach?
None of that is wrong. But it is incomplete.
What I mean by community
When I say community, I mean:
- Relational and ongoing
- Rooted in place, identity, shared risk, shared fate, or shared need
- Present whether or not people are listening
- Plural and complex: communities aren’t monolithic, and they don’t always agree
Communities include people who may never subscribe, donate, or tune in regularly—but who are still profoundly affected by what we choose to cover, how we frame it, and whether we show up at all.
Community-centered strategy asks:
- Who is affected—especially who is most vulnerable?
- Who isn’t showing up in our metrics but is still impacted?
- What obligations do we have beyond content delivery?
This is why “hyperlocal” cannot simply mean “local content.” Hyperlocal requires local relationship, local accountability, and local presence—especially among people and places that are easy to overlook.
Community radio already knows how to do this
Community radio stations are of the community, not just for it. Their governance, staffing, and legitimacy depend on local accountability. They show up for emergencies, multilingual access, civic conflict, grief, and joy—even when it doesn’t “rate.”
They broadcast to many and remain accountable to those most affected, including people invisible to metrics.
This isn’t romantic. It’s relational infrastructure.
And I want to be explicit about something: highlighting that community radio knows how to do this is not meant to carve out an “us versus them,” or to suggest community radio is somehow better than our colleagues in public media or nonprofit news. Not at all.
It’s an invitation. A reminder. An opportunity.
It’s a way of saying: look around your local community and partner with the organizations that already understand the difference between audience and community. Many community radio stations do. Many arts organizations do. Many community-based nonprofits do.
This is a time to pull the best practices of organizations across our sectors so we can serve our communities more holistically—to benefit our friends and neighbors, to strengthen our collective civic infrastructure, and to reinforce the safety net people rely on when things feel unstable.
The arts sector figured this out, too
The arts world has long distinguished between audience development and community engagement:
- Ticketed performances alongside free workshops
- Exhibitions alongside listening sessions and co-creation
- Success measured not just by attendance, but by who shaped the work and who benefited
This is a lesson public media can borrow directly: you can build for audience while still being accountable to community. In fact, the most resilient institutions do both—because they understand that reach and relationship are separate responsibilities.
The danger of choosing one over the other
When public media privileges audience without community, it risks becoming optimized but brittle—safe, extractive, and politically vulnerable.
When it privileges community without audience, it risks becoming under-resourced and precarious, unable to sustain itself.
The answer is not choosing. The answer is designing for both.
Why this is the defining issue of 2026
By 2026, public media will be operating amid deep distrust, rapid disinformation, and communities experiencing real material harm tied to elections and policy shifts. In that environment:
- Audience metrics will lag reality
- The most affected communities will often be the least visible
- Serving only your audience will fail the public—and ultimately the institution
The real question is no longer: How do we grow audience?
It’s: How do we grow audience while remaining accountable to communities who may never become part of it?
That question becomes even more urgent heading into the midterms, when the public will need more than explainers and election maps. Communities will need trusted messengers, local verification, safety information, and journalism that understands lived realities—not just political narratives.
What “doing both” actually requires
This is where public media has to get concrete. Serving audience and community together means committing to both reach and accountability—and building systems that don’t collapse one into the other.
If you’re a station leader: Align your mission, programming, revenue strategy, and metrics to serve both reach and relationship.
If you’re a newsroom: Invest in the slow work—listening, trust-building, and accountability—especially with people who will never show up in ratings, subscriptions, or membership files.
If you’re a funder or partner: Stop rewarding only scale and “growth,” and start funding civic infrastructure that holds communities through crisis—especially the communities most likely to be ignored or harmed.
Some of the most essential work will not trend, monetize, or scale quickly. But it will matter.
Community radio and the arts have lived this reality for decades. Public media and journalism need to catch up—quickly.
The work ahead (and the call to action)
Public media is entering a moment that will test its legitimacy—not just its sustainability.
The midterms will bring pressure, polarization, disinformation, and real harm for communities already living on the edge of visibility and safety. In that environment, “hyperlocal” cannot be treated as a slogan. It must be treated as a public obligation.
And that obligation starts with a choice public media has avoided for too long: whether we will optimize for audience comfort—or show up for community reality.
We have to do both. Audience sustains the institution. Community legitimizes the mission. But if we design for one while assuming the other will follow, we will fail the very people public media exists to serve.
So let’s be clear—and urgent: this is the work of 2026.
Not another panel. Not another buzzword. Not another strategy deck.
A reset in how we define who we serve, how we measure impact, and how we earn trust.
Community radio is here to share our lived experience—and what has worked in our communities. A huge part of that is understanding that community stations are often music and cultural daily companions, not just news or public affairs outlets. We are not extractive. We are representative of the communities we serve. Based on NFCB’s 2024 member survey, the average number of volunteers per NFCB member station is 125.
If you want to better understand community—not just audience—reach out to your local community radio station. Or reach out to me at NFCB: rima@nfcb.org.
