Every community relies on infrastructure — roads, power grids, water systems. Public media is no different. We’ve spent decades building one of the most remarkable content networks in the world: a constellation of local newsrooms, national shows, and independent creators. But it rests on infrastructure built for a different era: satellite distribution, analog assumptions, fragmented digital tools, FM carve-outs, and a thicket of vendor relationships that favor scale and capital over mission.

This is a year for deeper innovation — not with another app, but with a shared public good. The question for 2026 is no longer if we rebuild our core infrastructure, but how, so that the news, information, music, and meaningful entertainment that define public radio continue to flow from local stations to their growing communities.

Where the system shows its cracks

With the loss of federal funding, local public media stations are still expected to modernize their technology and meet audiences where they are — across platforms, devices, and modes of listening. But they’re doing it with fewer resources and no systemwide economies of scale. That leaves leaders making untenable choices: invest in journalism or in the infrastructure required for that journalism to reach people.

At the same time, the philanthropic community is facing its own reckoning. Museums report layoffs and steep revenue declines; funders are responding with remarkable generosity amid real uncertainty. And museums are not alone. Performing arts groups, libraries, and local news nonprofits are seeing rising demand at the very moment donor capacity is being pulled in multiple directions. Public media is weathering the same storm. A mission-driven civic institution cannot fulfill its purpose unless its infrastructure strengthens over time, matching the scale and resilience the future demands.

A new kind of public utility for public media

Public media’s superpower has always been collaboration. We co-produce. We syndicate. We promote each other’s work. We’re partners within our communities. But when it comes to an increasingly important pillar for sustainability — modern digital infrastructure — collaboration can fall short. This was one of the ideas that led a group of us within public radio to create Public Media Infrastructure (PMI), a new independent nonprofit. The idea is simple but ambitious: build and steward shared digital infrastructure for every public radio station, governed in the public interest, and make the core services available to stations at no cost.

Instead of each station negotiating its own hosting, its own ad tech stack, its own analytics tools, its own emergency alert workflows, PMI will provide a toolbox of services across content delivery, monetization, and audience analytics. If that sounds a little like a public utility, that’s the point. The goal is not to build the flashiest consumer brand. It’s to make sure the plumbing of public media is strong, updated, and aligned with our values — so stations can focus on continuing to serve their communities in the way only public media can.

Why this matters

“Infrastructure” is not a word that sets most hearts on fire.

But if you care about journalism — especially local journalism — you care about infrastructure, whether you realize it or not.

When a station can’t reliably deliver a breaking news podcast to listeners because its tech stack is fragile, that’s an infrastructure problem.

When a newsroom can’t see who they’re reaching on digital platforms, or how their work travels, that’s an infrastructure problem.

When emergency alerts can’t reach people on the devices they actually use, that’s an infrastructure problem — and a public safety one.

Right now, many of those underlying systems are controlled by a small number of commercial platforms, ad tech companies, or vendors whose incentives don’t always align with public service. The risk is that public media becomes just another content supplier in someone else’s ecosystem, subject to someone else’s rules.

Building shared, mission-driven infrastructure is a way of clearing the path.

So what does this look like in practice over the next year? A few brief thoughts:

• Public media stations will (and should) start to see infrastructure as a right, not a luxury.
• Funders and policymakers will look at infrastructure differently. For years, much of the investment in journalism has gone directly into content, talent, and one-off projects. We’ll see more recognition that infrastructure keeps local news discoverable, sustainable, and resilient.
• Public media will continue to evolve as an ecosystem. That doesn’t mean uniformity. It means recognizing that some key services — such as distribution, analytics, and emergency communications — are stronger when we build them together, in service of many.

If we get this right, listeners won’t know the name of the content delivery system that’s quietly working behind the scenes, but they’ll know that when they open their app, ask their smart speaker, or get into their car, their local station is there — with trusted reporting, cultural programming, and critical information.

A reporter won’t need to think about whether the story they just produced will reach people on linear radio or on-demand. They’ll publish once into a system designed to carry that work everywhere their audience is.

And stations will need to spend less time on vendor contracts and more time serving their communities.

Public media has always been about more than the shows we make. This is a year to innovate our infrastructure with the same rigor we bring to our leading journalism, together.