In 1985, an organization was founded with a self-describing name: Public Radio News Directors, Inc. And it did exactly what you’d imagine — creating a common association where peers could meet, engage in conversation, learn from one another, and advance their common goals. Just prior to the pandemic, the association expanded its mission and rebranded as the Public Media Journalists Association (PMJA).
Christine Paige Diers has been with the organization since the late 1990s, when she was part-time staff. In 2018, she was promoted to business manager, a full-time position, and subsequently to executive director in 2021. By 2025, the association’s staff grew to a team of three. Belinda Rawlins is chief experience officer, and Aubrey Nagle is director of member learning and community.
The team operates virtually, Diers explained; she’s based in Sturgis, South Dakota, and her teammates are in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Philadelphia. The nonprofit is also led by a seven-member board of directors.
Traditionally, PMJA membership is extended to public media stations. “And then everyone who works there benefits from the membership,” Diers explained. They are producers, on-air hosts, editors, podcasters, product developers and audience specialists.
But individuals and students may also be members.
Offering individual memberships has been particularly important in recent years, allowing public media journalists who have been laid off to stay connected to the community and benefit from the learning opportunities.
“We recently implemented a career-transition project,” Diers said. “If you’ve been laid off from a public media outlet — or really any newsroom, and you’re interested in audio — we’re offering a six-month free individual membership. And that includes discounts on our learning programs — so, if someone wants to take our editor training, they can do that at a deeply reduced rate. … We’re doing what can to help people through that career transition.”
PMJA has hosted learning sessions on newsroom culture, professional resilience, workflow efficiency, artificial intelligence, audience strategy, social video production, community-centered journalism and other topics.
The association also curated a digital library for members, including past conference sessions and materials on editing, leadership, innovation, reporting and storytelling, podcasting, AI, career management, ethics and other interests.
NEAR + NOW
Traditionally, PMJA held an annual conference, but diminished travel budgets for members and diminished newsrooms inspired the association to rethink its approach to professional development. Instead of the annual conference, PMJA now hosts four regional single-day “Near + Now” events.
“We wanted to figure out a way to serve our members closer to home and to still bring people together in person, because we know that our members really value that opportunity,” said Diers. They calculated that 52% of PMJA’s members are within a six-hour drive from four major cities, which determined the locations: Indianapolis, New York City, San Francisco and Austin, Texas. Each day has a theme, with a full day of programming, peer meetings and lunch.
Near + Now is sponsored by the Google News Initiative (GNI), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and digital audio developer Hindenburg. Tickets for each event are $150 for PMJA members and $199 for non-members. Scholarships are available.
In addition to the Near + Now days and online learning sessions, PMJA also hosts virtual conversations. “We have a news directors meetup. We have a storytelling meetup and one for engagement journalism. We’ve hosted meetups for early-career, LGBTQ+ and Black journalists,” Diers said.
The meetups convene monthly or quarterly. They’re hosted virtually, via Zoom. There may be a particular topic of discussion. Sometimes, conversation veers off-topic, indicating more pressing matters for PMJA’s members. They talk through them, exchange ideas, share materials and data, and support one another.
These opportunities to feel a sense of community can be invaluable — even cathartic — for public media journalists today. “I’ve had at least one member say, ‘I tell people I have to go to my PMJA therapy now,” said Diers.
PMJA also hosts a Slack channel for members.
“We believe that networking is our superpower,” she said. “We try really hard to bring people together in lots of different ways — and ‘in real life’ is only one of those ways. We do think that’s important, but we also know there are lots of people who can’t do it even if we make it as inexpensive as we can.”
PMJA’s “Opening Doors” program provides 10 BIPOC students with scholarships each year. Six of last year’s scholarship recipients are interning at public media stations this year.
Public media stations around the country are experiencing varying degrees of difficulty related to recruitment and retention. In some cases, stations will post a job and get just a handful of qualified applicants. In others, a “help-wanted ad” inspires a deluge of applications, almost too overwhelming to fairly assess.
“Location has a lot to do with that,” said Diers. She encourages those PMJA member stations to be transparent about salary ranges and employee benefits.
“If you provide any form of moving-expense assistance, let people know that,” she said.
Because newsrooms have fewer people in public media newsrooms today, those who remain often have to wear multiple hats, especially when it comes to editing. On-air peers are sometimes stepping in as editors; news directors are often called upon to serve this essential pre-air role, as well. There are simply too few dedicated editors in these newsrooms, Diers observed.
“We’re hearing from the entire [public media] system that editing is a big deal — that the editorial capacity in the system isn’t where we would like it to be, so that’s one of the reasons we created our Editor Corps. We’re building training around editing. … We hear from our members, our news directors, that they’re having trouble finding editors. So, we want to figure out a way to get people who are interested in public media moving along a career path toward editing.”
The Editor Corps is a bullpen of 12 experienced editors for hire, who provide editing assistance at a subsidized cost for members.
Prior to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s closure, it provided PMJA with funding for the Editor Corps, which should sustain the program for “at least five years,” the executive director estimated. To date, approximately 100 public media stations have worked with Corps experts.
To honor exemplary members of the public media community, PMJA has three awards. The Leo C. Lee Award originated in the 1990s — named for the founder of Western Public Radio in San Francisco. In 1971, Lee became the first western regional editor for NPR, and in 1989, he received the Edward R. Murrow Award. In his name, PMJA’s award recognizes outstanding leadership and innovation.
Seven years ago, PMJA debuted its Editor of the Year Award, honoring “the quiet heroes of public media.” The 2026 honoree was Elaine Clark, news director at KUER in Salt Lake City, Utah. The 2025 Editor of the Year was Laura Lee, with Blue Ridge Public Radio, and in 2024, Rachel Osier Lindley, senior editor, the Texas Newsroom at KERA in Dallas, received the award.
In 2025, PMJA introduced a new award to honor outstanding early-career public media journalists, the New Voices Award. Gerard Albert III, a reporter and Report for America Corps member at Blue Ridge Public Radio, was the first honoree.
When Congress voted to “defund” the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 2025, it was devastating for so many public media organizations and the local communities that relied on them. And many among those communities showed up when the stations needed them most.
“Great things happened after the rescission,” Diers recalled. “Lots of people came out and supported public media, and we’re thrilled by that. I think there’s still some question about the sustainability of those new donor dollars. I hope that those new donors recognize that giving one time is great, but if they can sustain their donations, it’s so much better for their local stations.”
Gretchen A. Peck is Editor & Publisher’s editor-in-chief. She welcomes your emails at editor@editorandpublisher.com.
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