From the beginning, I was interested and excited to explore WBUR’s coverage for my JO304 Newstrack blog. Audio journalism, in particular public radio, is the type of journalism I’m most interested in, and I had the chance to intern at Pittsburgh’s NPR affiliate station, 90.5 WESA-FM, back in 2019, so I was interested to compare my experience with how WBUR runs things. Taking a look at how WBUR uses multimedia methods and how their different programs and shows cover a range of beats and news areas will give me a better understanding of how coverage at a public radio station works in today’s news environment.
90.9 WBUR-FM, which is Boston’s NPR news station, puts out several nationally syndicated programs along with written reporting covering local, national, and international issues, all of which is regularly published on their website. It is a nonprofit NPR affiliate, and according to its website, reaches around 500,000 listeners each week. On Point and Here & Now are syndicated programs that cover national issues from a news magazine perspective, and Morning Edition and All Things Considered explore national and Boston and New England news and culture.
On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial in the Senate began, and the homepage of the WBUR website, which allows viewers to listen to live radio at the same time that they scroll through written articles and photos, was devoted to coverage of the trial from a number of angles. The station broadcasted national coverage while broadcasting regular programs on a separate page. On the live radio feed, live audio of the trial testimony played, with explanations periodically from NPR journalists of who was speaking and what their relation to the trial was. While a video brought up by the Trump defense team as part of their testimony played, for instance, showing Democrat senators speaking about impeachment, a voiceover explained some of the visuals being shown in the video, over top of the audio of the video itself. Elsewhere on the site, as shown in the image I chose, other articles by national NPR correspondents go deeper into the impeachment situation, and explain more of the background behind the trial in a written and audio format. The WBUR website even included links where interested viewers can read the impeachment managers’ brief documents in full text form.
On social media, the official WBUR account promoted live tweets from NPR national correspondents, while also promoting articles, editorials, and informational “FAQ” pieces about other pressing issues like COVID-19. Local, national, and feature pieces were promoted in kind as well on the Twitter page, with multiple tweets each hour, while every few hours tweets appeared reminding viewers of when impeachment coverage was scheduled to begin.
At the same time, other local coverage took up space on the website’s home page, coming from the WBUR newsroom. Tuesday afternoon saw coverage of the snowstorm heading into Boston, upcoming vaccine sites in Chelsea and Quincy, and the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by Cambridge Whole Foods employees over discrimination this summer. This past Tuesday wasn’t a typical day for the station, with the impeachment coverage taking up a lot of bandwidth, but the regular work of the station was clearly still going on–and being promoted–at the same time.
Julia Maruca 
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