All Things Cultured: An Analysis of Popular Culture Coverage on National Public Radio's All Things Considered

Abstract

National Public Radio's flagship news program All Things Considered has long been known for its sophisticated style of political and cultural news coverage. In past years the program has increased the number and types of popular culture stories covered to reflect the changing interests of listeners. This content analysis found that coverage of popular culture significantly increased in relation to the more traditional “high” culture stories, such as opera and art. The results suggest that All Things Considered is working to bring more popular culture coverage to the program while not losing focus on its traditional style of news coverage.

Notes

Note. ^ano significant change.

^bsignificant change at p < .05.

Note. ^ano significant change.

^bsignificant change at p < .05.

*Sports stories were not counted in this variable as they are a category on their own.

*Sports officials as sources did not occur in any of the stories categorized as “popular culture” or “high culture.” Celebrity sources were collapsed into the “Creator” category, as there were only 2 celebrity sources used in all the stories coded.

¹Pacifica Radio is a group of independently owned and operated, non-commercial, listener-supported radio stations known for progressive political views.

²Stories covered in NPR's top of the hour 4-minute newscast (that airs throughout the day at the top of every hour) were not coded for this story because they usually repeat stories covered in depth during the hour and being hourly live reports, are not archived.

³Sports stories were coded along with arts/media for purposes of future study, but are considered separate from arts/media stories.

⁴In a 2007 interview with “ATC” executive producer Christopher Turpin, he stressed that the program did interview and do pieces on celebrities themselves quite often and many times it was a coup to get celebrities on the program. However, that was not reflected in the data examined here-most likely because of its limited nature and timeframe.

⁵Arts/Media story subjects coded as movies, TV shows, video games, awards ceremony, entertainment industry, and popular music were categorized as “popular culture” while ballet, theater, opera, art/museum, books, oldies & folk artists/music, classical music/artists and other were categorized as “high culture.” Sports stories were left out of this variable because it is a category unrelated to arts/entertainment as examined in this paper.

⁶An example of this would be Robert Siegel or Michelle Norris conducting a one-on-one interview with Peter Overby on the latest situation in Iraq or Nina Totenberg on the latest Supreme Court decision. In both cases, the only sources of information used are the journalists themselves.