NPR Pushes Digital Initiative

National Public Radio has kicked off a 10-week, 18-city "road show" to sell its affiliates on a new digital plan it hopes will help secure public radio's long-term health at a time when some of its chief sources of revenue have come under threat.

The nonprofit news organization is trying to persuade its 268 member stations to outsource more of their online operations to NPR by offering them a suite of digital services it says will help them raise money and expand their websites beyond archived radio programs into breaking news, blogs and other material. The campaign is a critical one for NPR, though not because of the fees it would collect for providing the additional services. The biggest percentage of NPR's revenue comes from the money local radio stations pay to air its programs, such as "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered." But a push in Congress to cut federal funding for public radio, as well as the toll the weak economy has taken on corporate underwriting and support from foundations, threaten to make it harder for the stations to pay for NPR's shows while also producing local programming.