Poynter and Public Media Company are moving quickly to answer the question at the heart of the Future of Public Media Initiative: What does public media need to become to serve our communities and society for the next 50 years?
A national survey of practitioners
Earlier this month, thousands of professionals across public media and adjacent spheres, including civic and nonprofit news, began receiving invitations to take a survey about the future of public media. Results from this large-scale survey – as well as takeaways from recent research about the information needs of U.S. adults, decades of scholarship, one-on-one conversations and virtual and in-person convenings later this fall – will be synthesized into actionable recommendations for what comes next.
The Future of Public Media Initiative is fielding the survey with City Square Associates (CSA), a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based research and strategic consulting firm with a long record of partnering with media organizations, higher education institutions and community-based nonprofits. CSA has worked with PBS, public television and radio stations, and local newsrooms on questions ranging from audience strategy to fundraising.
“Of all the research my small team here at City Square does, there is no research that is more meaningful to us than the work we do for public media,” said Chris Schiavone, founder and managing director of CSA, in a recent informational webinar about the initiative. “The consequences of the actions that you take in public media and adjacent to public media are just profound across American culture and society.”
CSA’s recent work gives the Future of Public Media Initiative survey an unusually strong foundation. Its “Community Signals” report, commissioned by American Public Media Group and the Station Resource Group, synthesizes three national studies CSA led between 2024 and 2026. Those studies cover Americans’ unmet information needs, the needs of rural communities and the new donors who stepped forward after the 2025 funding cuts. Together they reflect the needs of more than 100,000 U.S. adults.
The new Future of Public Media Initiative survey asks the people who work in and alongside public media which of those community needs are most urgent, which needs public media can uniquely solve – and what must change about the very nature of public media to best align with the evolving needs of communities everywhere.
“This survey asks people who know their communities best what needs are going unmet, and where public media can play a role that no one else can,” said Sitara Nieves, Poynter vice president and co-lead of the initiative. “What we learn will help ground our recommendations in what communities actually need.”
Poynter, Public Media Company and CSA designed the survey to be future-focused, unbound by past definitions or present politics. In some cases, the questions force prioritization of important principles or attributes. In other cases, questions are open-ended to encourage organic input. The questions pose bold or provocative ideas that will reveal areas of alignment and opportunities for deeper study.
“Our overall commitment is to listen, facilitate and synthesize,” said Tim Isgitt, CEO of Public Media Company and co-lead of the initiative. “Our recommendations will reflect what we hear from the research. Our goal is to help the rich, thoughtful conversations happening all around us coalesce into a tangible path forward that produces real change on a timeline that matches the urgent needs of communities everywhere.”
The survey will close on Oct. 30, 2026.
One input among many
The survey is important, but it is not the whole picture, and it won’t decide the Future of Public Media Initiative’s recommendations on its own. Alongside it, the initiative is:
Reviewing existing research. People have been studying and debating the future of public media for decades, and the initiative is building on that work rather than starting over. The initiative leaders are reviewing years of reports, proposals and scholarship to understand what has been learned, what has been tried and which ideas deserve a fresh look.
Convening practitioners. Later this fall and winter, Poynter, Public Media Company and CSA will bring people together in person and online to work through some of the hardest open questions, including how a future system might define core purpose and governing values, how the parameters of public media might be redefined to match community needs, how local governance and national coordination are best achieved, and how funding mechanisms might support a system that operates at appropriate scale and ambition.
Talking with leaders and futurists. CSA will interview leaders inside public media as well as experts in technology, community building, democracy and other fields. Their outside perspectives can challenge assumptions and surface possibilities the initiative might otherwise miss.
Each of these activities tests and informs the others. What is revealed in the survey will shape the questions posed in the convenings, and what is learned in interviews and from past research will add depth to the data. Through spring 2027, Poynter and Public Media Company will draw these threads together into preliminary recommendations, which then test and refine with the field before sharing them publicly.
How you can help
If you’re invited to the survey, please take it, and use the space at the end to suggest colleagues whose voices should be included. Sign up for updates from the Initiative to be invited to join upcoming webinars, give feedback on the preliminary recommendations or take part in a convening. The initiative will continue to post updates to futureofpublicmedia.org.