The essentials to good journalism? “Listening. Empathy. Curiosity. And check it out,” Ann Alquist told Barrett News Media over a Zoom call. Alquist has dedicated her entire career to Public Radio and earlier this year became Director of Radio at Prairie Public in North Dakota.
Her venture into the industry started in 1999. “I took a tour of Minnesota Public Radio, and there was a guy at the front desk at the tour and he said you should check out this radio station in Minneapolis. It’s called KFAI.” Alquist attended a volunteer orientation where, “They put me in the newsroom — this is before the term citizen journalism was a thing — and put a recorder in my hand and sent me to a press conference with then-House Majority Leader Tim Pawlenty and he was my first interview.”
Alquist volunteered at the station while attending a post-baccalaureate program for international journalism. “I did my apprenticeship at KFAI. I already had a relationship with them, and then they were hiring for a news director. My friend said we should apply, it would be fun to apply. And I was like, no, they’re not going to interview us. We’re like kids, like 22, 23 years old. And I got an interview and she did not, and our friendship ended. And I got the job in November of 2001.”
From KFAI in Minneapolis, Alquist worked at public radio stations across the country including, Alabama, Alaska, Rhode Island, Maine, Missouri, and at the National Center for Media Engagement based out of Madison, Wisconsin. In a Prairie Public Press release about her hiring, Alquist said “The best way for me to make an impact, and act on the mission of public media, is in rural media.”
Expanding on the idea Ann Alquist added, “I think that a lot of what we get fed in terms of information and news is from the coasts and a lot of our problems are local or regional, and it’s hard to solve problems from the coasts.” She added, “I see public media’s role as institutions to help solve public problems. And that can only be done locally. So that’s why I think all media is really important.”
Originally from California, her family moved 30 miles north of Frankfurt, Germany where Ann Alquist said she spent her youth. “The only English language broadcast that we had access to was AFN, the Armed Forces Network, which is NPR. And so having that connection it was important for my parents to know what was going on because they were voting in elections absentee.” Alquist believes this had some influence on her work today.
Passionate about local media, Alquist expressed concern about the shrinking media footprint in rural areas.
“You know, it’s interesting to observe because newspapers are now able to tap into a non-profit model thanks to Report for America. Report for America acts as a fiscal agent.” She added, “Condé Nast is a good example. They own all of the major news outlets in Alabama, Alabama Media Group, AL.com. They got a grant from the Ford Foundation. Those are billionaires and they’re being able to tap into philanthropy.”
With competition for funding increasing Ann Alquist said, “There’s a conduit now for [commercial] to be sort of non-profit. Public radio is a good example of this. They’ve had to get better at corporate sponsorship, business sponsorship.” She went on to say, “I remember a time when public radio would say, ‘We’ll never take underwriting or advertising,’ you know, ‘we’ll never do sponsored content.’ All these ‘we’ll never.’ Today Public Radio has taken underwriting, advertising, and sponsored content.”
Alquist sees another “we’ll never” happening in the near future. “The one that they’re hanging on to right now is paywalls. ‘We’ll never have a paywall.’ I wouldn’t be surprised at some point if there was a station that commanded enough appetite for their content. I can see it happening.” She added, “So I think it’s going to be I think it’s going to be a mix. It’s going to be a mix of, I guess, what I would call transactional revenue streams, audience revenue models and business sponsorship, business support and foundations, of course.”
Ann Alquist believes in order to save local media we need to take a look at the beginnings of the country. “I think the government should do what it did for newspapers starting in 1794. It had a postal subsidy. [Newspapers] never paid full freight. There’s always been a government subsidy for media in this country. That’s George Washington. That’s a founding father. One of the first acts of Congress to pass was that postal subsidy because they recognized that they needed an inform citizenry. So I’d like to see a modern version of that.”
Expanding more on this Alquist said, “We sort of have it with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Although it’s a private corporation funded by the American people.” She noted, “There are state legislatures that are providing subsidies and some for a long time. Minnesota does. North Dakota has state funding. Alaska used to. And then they zeroed it out. I wouldn’t be surprised if within my lifetime Congress identified tax credits, as a way to incentivize, support for news media.”
More than 20 years after starting in the industry, Ann Alquist credits her ‘values as a professional’ to her first mentor in the industry.
“The executive director, Janis Lane Ewart, who hired me. She tasked me with basically a mission statement. She’s like, ‘You really need to focus. I don’t care what they say. Figure out what your thing is. What’s your North Star going to be like?’” Alquist added, “She was a really good mentor to have in those formative years.”
Looking forward, Alquist is looking to expand the reach of Prairie Public. “Launch a digital engagement platform and a series of partnerships to spur participation so we can really map community information needs and some of those really small towns in western North Dakota, because we don’t have boots on the ground there.”
She later added, “That’s where the oil boom is still and that part of the state has changed dramatically. So that’s one of my, one of my plans is to boost our, our partnerships and our digital engagement so that we can reveal community agendas in western North Dakota, especially in an election year.”
Krystina Alarcon Carroll contributes features and columns for Barrett Media. She has experience in almost every facet of the industry including: digital and print news; live, streamed, and syndicated TV; documentary and film productions. Her prior employers have included NY1 and Fox News Digital and the Law & Crime Network. You can find Krystina on X (formerly twitter) @KrystinaAlaCarr.
