From ‘nice’ to ‘necessary’: How to make a case for your university station 

What are the questions that keep you up at night? Current is here to help!

In this column, public media veteran Scott Finn taps into the wisdom of the system to find answers. This time, he helps university licensees make the case to university officials. Future columns will look at state and community licensees.

A new university president. An enrollment decline. A budget cut from the legislature.

Any of these changes can disrupt the relationship between a college or university and its public media station. Penn State’s proposed 20% funding cut to WPSU is just the latest example. How can university licensees compete for scarce resources?

Here’s how one Penn State official explained the decision: “They’re trying to invest where they believe they’re going to get the most value for that investment in students.”

Translation: Penn State leadership is directing money to departments they believe lead to student success.

You may disagree with the university’s priorities, or think their perceptions about the station’s value are unfair and inaccurate. That’s not the point. To convince university leaders of your worth, you need to understand what’s important to them.

Their ‘D’, not yours

There’s a formula for change you can apply to any situation, work or otherwise:

CH = D x V x P

Change = Dissatisfaction x Vision x Process

Change is your desired goal — in this case, to improve the perception of your value to university officials. 

Dissatisfaction is the reason someone is not happy with the status quo. Vision is a picture of what success looks like. Process is how we get there.

Here’s one real-life example. You want to wake up one hour earlier — that’s the change. Your dissatisfaction comes from the chaotic rush of getting everyone off to school and work on time. Your vision is watching the sun rise while drinking coffee, then calmly getting ready. The process is moving your alarm and bedtime back two minutes each day for one month, until you’re waking up an hour earlier.

Here is the most important thing to remember: The dissatisfaction has to belong to the person you want to change.

In the case of influencing the university, what’s important is their “D” — not yours.

Understanding your university audience

It helps to put university leaders into a public media framework as an audience to be understood and a donor to be cultivated.

Peter Dominowski brings his experience in audience development into his new role as executive director of the University Station Alliance, the affinity group for university-owned stations.

To reach your audience of university officials, Dominowski says to start with research. What are the priorities of university leaders? To increase enrollment? To boost scientific research? To balance the budget?

If you’re dealing with someone new, why were they hired? What is their previous track record? What do they know and believe about public media?

“You can’t assume they know what you’re doing. Show them and tell them,” Dominowski said.

Higher education leaders in the U.S. are dealing with declining numbers of high school graduates. They’re facing unprecedented competition and financial pressures.

What are you doing as a station to help them solve their problems?

Sometimes, university leaders need to be reminded of how public media’s huge reach builds name recognition and positive brand association for the university. U:SA has a formula to help its members show universities the monetary value of all that publicity, as well as its membership, underwriting and community service.

Also, university officials may be aware only of a station’s broadcast service. Make sure they know about podcasts, YouTube channels and Instagram feeds.

This brand equity and goodwill helps recruit new students to campus. Dominowski compares the reach of a public media station to attendance at a football game. 

“There might be 60,000 people in a football stadium, but public media’s reach is far greater,” he said.

Teaching hospital

Increasingly, goodwill and brand-building are not enough. Universities want to see the direct impact of their investments on their students.

Students are a huge, largely untapped resource for public media stations of all types — especially those on college campuses. I believe this so strongly that I’m working with the Center for Community News to grow partnerships between college reporting programs and local public media organizations.

A recent CCN study shows that only about half of university licensees air student stories, and only 11% partner with a college class. But 91% of public radio stations want to collaborate more closely with their college or university.

For a long time, public media organizations were reluctant to use student work because of quality concerns, Dominowski said. Today, stations have more platforms to publish student work. Meanwhile, support from faculty can help student-created stories meet the high standards of public media.

Increasingly, public media stations are positioning themselves as “teaching hospitals” for journalism. Just like a teaching hospital, they can provide top-quality service to the community while educating students.

One of my current clients, WSHU, is growing its student journalism program at universities on both sides of Long Island Sound: Sacred Heart and Stony Brook. It’s not just big journalism schools like the University of Missouri and KBIA, but smaller programs like the University of Nevada-Reno and KUNR.

The benefits aren’t just for future journalists. My former employer, Vermont Public, has developed a robust student reporting program with the University of Vermont — even though the station is not licensed to the university, and UVM doesn’t have a journalism major!

Students who report on their local community develop skills that are valuable in ANY job — research, writing and presentation.

Finally, journalism isn’t the only way you can partner with your university. Many stations sponsor internships in engineering, development and marketing. Education students can help stations develop curricula. Students can create music, interactive games, animation — the potential is endless.

Moving from vision to process 

So, how would you apply the Change = Dissatisfaction x Vision x Process equation to your university?

Let’s say you want to create a stronger, more reliable relationship between your station and the university. How you define stronger is up to you — for some, it’s money; for others, in-kind university resources. Or maybe it’s more freedom from university rules.

CH = a stronger relationship with your university

Remember, the “D” is the college administrators’ dissatisfaction, not yours. Let’s say they want to become a more well-respected research engine.

D = University’s desire to become better known and respected for research

What’s the potential vision? I suggest you create a Venn diagram with two circles — what my public media organization does, and what the university wants. Where do those two circles overlap? (If there’s NOT much overlap, you have a problem.)

In this case, the vision is knowledge of and appreciation for scientific research among students and the public.

V = A student body and broader community that understands scientific research

Finally, the process is how we move toward our vision. In this case, the university and station could seek a grant to expand science literacy on campus and in the larger community.

P = Grant-funded science literacy media project

From ‘nice’ to ‘necessary’

Here’s the thing: colleges and universities don’t have to sponsor public media organizations. Your mission and their mission need to align or, eventually, you’ll be in trouble.

If worst comes to worst, you can remind university officials of the negative consequences of a budget cut or of selling the station. You could talk about the pain they’d experience from angry, tote-bag–carrying fans, and imply the damage will be greater than the savings or the value of selling out to, say, a Christian broadcaster. But these talking points are a last resort.

I used to run a state licensee (more on that in a future column), and we received one-third of our funding from the state legislature.

A mentor once told me, “To them, you’re nice, but you’re not necessary.” Those words haunted me, and I spent my tenure doing everything I could to go from nice to necessary in their minds.

If you’re more nice than necessary to your university, be ready to change that equation.

Scott Finn owns Finn Advising, which helps the people who are rebuilding local news. He’s worked as a GM at West Virginia Public Broadcasting and Vermont Public, a news director, an award-winning reporter, and a really bad whitewater rafting guide. Have a question you want tackled in a future column? Email Scott at [email protected].