A Conversation With Delano Lewis,
President & CEO of National Public Radio

Interview with Delano Lewis, President & Chief Executive Officer, National Public Radio, and David Bender, Executive Director, Special Libraries Association

What is the future of Information Technology? How is technology leveling the global playing field? What is the importance of open information systems in today's businesses? SLA's Executive Director, David R. Bender, decided that it was time to ask a leader in information collection and distribution some of these questions. Dr. Bender recently met with Delano Lewis, President and Chief Executive Officer of National Public Radio (NPR) at the organization's Washington, DC, headquarters.

Del, as he prefers to be called, is warm as he welcomes me into his corner office--a highly professional and comfortable environment. Pen and ink sketches of NPR's Morning Edition staff are on the wall, with photos of family and friends placed in different locations. Progressive black leather furniture balances the corner office, which is flooded with natural light. Of immediate interest is "How does someone become the President and CEO of NPR?" Del Lewis may make it sound easy, but a quick look at his biographical sketch shows otherwise.

In January 1994, Lewis joined National Public Radio to serve as its president and chief executive officer. National Public Radio is a primary supplier of news, information, and cultural programming to public radio stations throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan. Lewis also acts a chairman of the NPR Foundation.

Seated comfortably and well at ease by Del's ingenuous manner, I begin our enlightening conversation.

David Bender

When you spoke at SLA's 1994 State-of-the-Art Institute here in Washington, DC, you were in the process of becoming more involved here at NPR, as well as in the broadcast media. But you were also taking on a role with the Department of Commerce and looking at the global information infrastructure.

What do you see? What changes have happened in the information field? And how people are getting information? What are they doing with information or the value of information?

Delano Lewis

The whole field is extremely dynamic and is continually changing. I joined NPR in January 1994--full-time from a communications background at the Bell Atlantic Corporation (telecommunications). I saw what was happening there with the merger of voice, data, cable, entertainment, telephony--that's continually happening now. The Telecom Bill, passed in 1996, gave the private sector many opportunities to cross ownership and to get into other fields. The marketplace has certainly deregulated to some degree.

I quickly learned about the broadcast industry, particularly public radio. We had to find our niche as public broadcasters in this dynamic communications environment. We're still looking and we're still plotting our way. There are opportunities and I think the opportunities are coming as technology progresses.

For example, we have our own Web page as so many other people do. We're now looking at other ways to use the Internet. We partnered with a company called Progressive Networks. Rob Glazer, who was formerly with Microsoft, founded the company. Progressive Networks developed an audio technology--RealAudio. With this technology, you can see the text of our broadcasts on your computer and hear the voices. If you listen to "Morning Edition," and you have the right kind of modem, you can see the text of the broadcast and hear Bob Evans' voice. I think there are going to be many opportunities like that to enhance what we do in public radio.

DB: That's a whole different dimension, when you think of radio probably being the second mass-means of communication after the printed page. If you're then tying and coupling the two together, what impact do you see this combination having on information providers?

DL: Well, you have to look at whether you're competitive or not competitive, profit or not-for-profit. You have to serve your listeners in the public sphere. But my competition is in the commercial area as well. So, I'm vying for your ear or for your eye and your need for information, and you, as the customer or listener or viewer, are very busy with your own lifestyle and schedule. And so it's really coming down to uses of technology and getting your information when you want it. And so it's sort of "information on demand." So again, you've got to stay in-tune with your customers' and your listeners', in my case, needs. You then need to customize your programs and technologies to current needs.

DB: That sounds really exciting. Having both voice with visual text gives it an added educational value, but also a whole new population to serve.

DL: Absolutely right. I view this as a way to increase audiences and to maximize revenues. We haven't figured out how to use the Internet to make money yet, but we're working at it. Our demographic is fairly homogeneous; 35 and older, usually two years of college, maybe average income is $30, 000-35,000.

I think by looking at multi-stream programming through other systems, called multi-distribution systems, I can increase audiences. The same kind of programming, or new programming, to increase audiences and hopefully to increase revenues. So, it does open up a lot of possibilities.

After being at NPR for four years, I look at National Public Radio not as a broadcast medium, but I really look at what we do as a content/context provider. And then the whole world opens up. I'm the son of a railroad porter from Kansas and my dad was in the train business. If trains had looked upon themselves as in the transportation business that whole world might have looked differently for the railroad industry. So, if we look at ourselves as content/context providers and not just simply broadcast providers, it's really interesting. Because that's what we do. We are great content people and we put it in context better than anybody else in public radio. So, that if you look at yourselves as a content provider your horizons open because there's a lot of distribution media out there, but you have to have something to put on it, and that's where context is key. And there's a part for us there.

DB: Drawing a parallel then, between your content providing and looking at the information professional, there is a natural tie or connection. That really is a role for information professionals as well. What role do information professionals play in National Public Radio? Is there a role here for librarians on both the creative side as well as the programming side?

DL: I definitely think so. We have a research library here and we have people looking at researching issues and ideas. It's very important to maintain the quality of news that we do. So, yes, there is a role to be played [by librarians] to continue the high quality at NPR.

In terms of the uses of the equipment, information specialists are needed to understand the new technologies as we get ready to move to digital. Obviously, the specialists will have to take on some different kinds of skills. So, there's a lot of implications here for work, jobs, skills and for growth as this all unfolds.

DB: So, it really is not the typical information provider that would have a niche here, it's someone really that has gone further in technology than just picking up on the digital.

DL: It would be helpful. We have very few positions here for a straight research library person or two. There is a need here and we use them certainly to the fullest. But, there's not a gross of positions, I think that you'd have to expand your skills to stay on top of what's happening.

DB: Regarding the work that you did with the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act (NII), was it agreed that it is a progression of information gathering and the value of the competitive edge that has made information into a sort of commodity? Is it the product that we think it is?

DL: What I learned from NII was that there are so many facets to this and the government had given us a two year mandate to come up with giving them recommendations on this whole communications explosion. And we had all of these competing interests sitting around the table-- we started with 25 and ended up with 35--and we were trying to make hay of how all of this was beginning to unfold. We divided the task into three areas.

The first area, was the uses of this technology, whether it's electronic commerce, the transfer of information to educate people, long distance learning, and those kinds of things. The second was the whole area of universal service. How do we make this available to the greatest number of people without creating a society of haves and have-nots? The third area dealt with issues of privacy, security, and intellectual property, which are the consequences of all these things beginning to unfold.

We made recommendations to the Clinton administration in those particular areas.

We then decided that we would develop a document about "connecting," because the President and Vice President were interested in connecting schools, universities, and libraries to the information infrastructure. And we decided to do a "how-to" document and we called it Kick-Start. We had interviewed people around the country and had groups speak to us and we had gone to perspective school districts and areas and we had McKinsey help us analyze all of this. You could go to this document and really find out how they did it in particular parts of the country; how they got their school boards interested; how they got their communities interested; what the library system structure was--how to begin to connect people into the information infrastructure. We thought it was a good document, and I think it's been very well received. It has been over a year since we presented our first initiative. So anyway, that was an exciting effort for those two years.

DB: You talked a little bit about access, information, value, and so on. Look at one of the things coming out about the NII and some other things that you touched on. What are some of the results of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) conference and copyright and intellectual property rights? Were there any real surprises that happened there? Some things that appeared to be strongly supported in the U.S. certainly didn't go very far in the worldwide community, such as opening access to some areas and being as open for the use of copyright provisions.

DL: Well, I am not up to date at this point. I would think that as we were looking at it, we were trying to explore all the issues as they would unfold, and there are many in terms of intellectual property.

As you're opening up communications, ownership issues will arise. And what happens to your rights once it gets to the public domain? There are some really good questions on intellectual property. Intellectual property certainly gets into the security and privacy areas as well. Your world is open. Your life is open--and what happens to your own privacy? How do you deal with that? Is it on a regulatory basis, is it laws and restrictions? How do you deal with these issues? Cultural questions come into play. And I'd assume, not having participated in the worldwide efforts, that you have to understand the cultures of the world, as well as the politics of the world, to figure out how these issues will play.

DB: This brings two points then to mind, information and intellectual property. How do you, in essence, make information a global commodity that people find its value? It seems to me that in many countries a lot of people have information and they hold on to it. They hold on to it because they still think it's power. They don't understand that the power of information is getting rid of it and sharing it with somebody else. Did any of this ever come out in discussions while your were working with the NII?

DL: I can't remember specifically, but I'm sure those issues surfaced in some detail. I don't recall their coming to the council in any deliberative way to take a position one way or the other. But, I certainly would think they were probably surfaced and it's a fascinating question and I've had some thoughts about it. I don't recall that it came up as an official kind of question we had to tackle.

DB: How about your own thoughts on it?

DL: I think that my own personal view is that you have to look at these from the cultural/political side as well. In terms of what you're trying to achieve and the values of your particular organization, in this case, your country. My travels to certain parts of the world, say in Scandinavia, for example, where I've spent some time, there's much more openness and sharing. And then you go into certain other countries that are probably more marketplace driven or have a capitalist free-market enterprise system. There's some control of information because there's some market return. So those are the forces that are at play and I think that they'll probably continually be in play. Generally, what governments do is balance those forces. That's what I think is the issue.

DB: One of the forces that is probably more political than the former Soviet block is Singapore. Singapore is an example of a country that really does restrict information from a government standpoint and really controls what their citizens can do. Singapore probably has locked more horns over the Internet than any other country as far as allowing or not allowing access.

Going back to the other part of that--just looking at what's happening concerning intellectual property rights and copyright--is this an albatross around NPR's throat? How have you navigated around all of this, to continue airing materials? I know you go through all of the clearance processes, but do you keep on top of that process? It's certainly a problem within the information community with programs in place to ensure that licenses and agreements are followed...that kind of thing.

DL: Well, this was all new to me when I came here--to understand that part of the business--and it is a complicated part. But I think it's manageable and I think we're getting a better handle on it. For example, we have 25 years of archived work that we've done at National Public Radio. I believe that this body of work is valuable and can be marketed to our public--we might possibly get some monetary return on that as well. So I think it does have value. But you've got tremendous rights problems with the material--to find out whether the musicians have the rights; the writers; the owners of the material; and then you have to get those cleared--the processes are complicated. The reason why I say it's manageable is that we are now understanding, and getting our people to understand, that there can be other uses for the material other than straight broadcast. So as you begin to work with a producer, you begin to work on a contract which will allow for some flexibility. And that contract can state that you will have some options on the use of that material, not just for broadcast, but for other means. And so, they give up some rights, and we give them rights in return. There are things you can do in the up-front contracting process to manage that process better than we have in the past. But again it's an understanding from the very beginning and we're beginning to have some success.

DB: I think within the information community, if we're really looking at licensing, perhaps we need to increase our perspective of licensing rather than just for a particular use, and look to what might be some other means of use.

DL: That's right.

DB: Looking at information, and using the Internet as an example, the Internet could lead to serious misinformation because it's simply filled with a lot of opinion. If somebody put something up and you read it, and you think that it really is a hot-breaking news story. How do you protect yourself from reporting falsities with this kind of mass media that now has developed? Everyone's using it. Everybody is getting on Web pages, Web sites, and chat rooms and all of this stuff. What does NPR go through to guarantee that you're not using incorrect information, which I assume would be just as disastrous to you as it would be to an information professional providing inaccurate information to a customer?

DL: Well, it's absolutely true. The possibilities for misinformation are certainly there. I think that just because you have new technologies doesn't necessarily mean you abandon your old ways of doing things--to check and to double check, and to use other sources for information and to have more than one source for your information. I'm not in the journalistic side of this enterprise, but I know that our journalists are of the highest quality of standards and they've got to certainly be vigilant to those possibilities. But, yes, the possibility of misinformation on the Internet is certainly great. And I think that we have to understand it.

DB: When you spoke to the State-of-the-Art Institute back in 1994, I guess it was soon after your arrival here at NPR. You had indicated that you found at that point that there were some real successes that information professionals would have within their business communities, but there were other leadership things that could happen. Has anything developed over the last few years that has either brought you different directions, different insights into the role of information professionals, and where they might be in the future? Anything about their value, their ability to provide information? What's changing in the field in your eyes?

DL: Well, I think there's a lot. The fact that there's more information out there as to the kinds of technologies that are developing and use of those technologies among information professionals. I think they have more choices. I think the understanding of what's out there is increasing. I've been a firm believer that one of the things that we did at the NII was to highlight the use of the library system and structure and we began to offer, at least put that out in the public, that there was a system that was already in place that would possibly connect neighborhoods and communities to the information superhighway. I think that our work really sort of crystallized that and I'm sure that this understanding has probably increased over this last year or two. I think that's a valuable contribution to what's happening in this country, because not everyone's going to have a computer in their home. And so that network of information specialists, through the libraries, I think will be critical to our beginning to communicate and give people access to information.

DB: You've had various glimpses at corporate America, both first-hand, through this position and also through your work with the federal government. If the best corporations and the competitive business environment is going to thrive from the best decisions made, what role do you see information playing? And further, given that many people believe that a worker can access all kinds of information from individual desktop access to the Internet, and should be locating his/her own information, do you see a conflict there or how do you see this as a business person?

DL: Well, I see most things from my legal background to business experience that you have to know how to manage conflict. Yes, technologies are there...the responsibilities are there, but I think if you're going to make use of technology, you're going to have to manage responsibilities. So, if you gather with the people that are taking all this information and there's no one really sifting it, coordinating it, putting it in some context and making it usable, then we just have information overload. So, I just think that a conflict exists. We need to figure out how to use information, how to manage it. This would lead to questions--What is your focus? What is your direction? How will you use this information? At what value? I believe strongly that in research, it's extremely valuable to know what people think and to understand your customers, to understand their needs. I think one of the reasons President Clinton has been successful even though he's been given a lot of hits, is that he's a survey guy--a poll nut. What this does is gives him a sense of what the voters are thinking. And if you're going to serve the customer--and all of us will--whether you're in public or private business, you have to know what they think if you want to stay alive. If you don't, someone else will. So you can use information to know what your customer thinks. And the fastest you can get to it, the better. The other piece is, how do you serve the customer? You can use information technologies to reach the customer--to serve your customer. So, from a business point of view, uses of information or how you manage the information is absolutely key.

DB: In life, all too often, perception becomes reality. One of the issues that we as information professionals are tied to, is the perception that the information specialist or librarian is somewhat one dimensional, or on one side of the coin. SLA is trying to change this perception and move it in a different direction. We are all involved, to a certain degree, in part of how we perceive ourselves. Broadcast media falls into this as well--there is some perception between actions you display in the public sector and the material that you air. How do you go about changing some of your own public perceptions to create wider appeal from the public? NPR does good things for communities and people. How do you let the public know about the good things you're doing, and so forth. How are you getting the message across?

DL: We're starting several initiatives in that regard. We've talked to several consultants on branding and corporate identity and visibility. We think that NPR is probably the best kept secret in the country and we need to let people know who we are and what we're about. Those people who know us really love us. But then there are a lot of people who don't know us. So, we have talked about a corporate identity campaign--making sure that we have the right kind of logo that's attractive, getting our messages out to the public, having a visibility campaign or a tune-in campaign to let them know who we are and to get to them to tune-in and listen. But it's more of an education campaign than as to who we are. So, we definitely have to spend a little money. We've got to spend in that regard to at least try to reach out to those who may not know us. And we plan to do that in some print magazines. We're going to go first, business to business, then we're going to go in the trade magazines and we'll move out into some other areas. So, we believe that's an important part of getting the word out.

DB: Interesting. I just came back from a conference where there was a whole session on branding. And it was almost like, are we lining the cattle up and getting the branding irons out? How far does this whole branding mechanism go--if we're framing something, even our page, are we putting our logos, our names, our whatever on everything that's going out? So, it's going to be interesting to see how far down the road that goes and how much trademarking is necessary, and how fast that could be handled.

Do you have anything to add, just in wrap up, about the future, that you see coming down the road? Digital certainly is going to be a change that we're all going to be facing in delivery of information. I think there certainly is going to be an Internet Two someday, which will bring us some new solutions. Your exciting words about the simultaneous radio and text I think that is great--sight and sound is a new direction of which I was unaware. Are there some other things that you see in the offering?

DL: I really think that we're looking at partners and allies to help us maximize our audience and increase revenues as well. And I think the radio-on-demand idea is going to be a key point. So, we will continue to support our core mission through the member stations across the country--having our programming, news magazines and culture programs through that distribution system. We're going to be looking at some other distribution systems, whether it's the Internet or other means--maybe even non-broadcast means--to get our content out to the public. So, I see that happening more and more. What I mean by radio-on-demand, I mean, for one example, working with Microsoft. The technology's already been developed, where say, you're interested in issues dealing with Bosnia on public radio. You can program that machine to do that and turn it on and it will then do the job for you. So, several hours later when you have some free time you can turn on this radio that you have programmed and it will play back to you everything that happened on Bosnia while you had it recording.

DB: I was going to ask you about radio-on-demand, what it really meant, because that is a fascinating concept.

DL: Right. So, again the traditional way of reaching people will continue, but there are other ways with new technologies to reach people. I mentioned RealAudio, this idea of radio-on-demand--there are a number of things to meet customers' expectations and needs. But out of all of this, as far as I'm concerned in National Public Radio, we want to keep focused on our public mission, and that is to give people those things they can't find on commercial media, stories with more depth, stories from different perspectives and points of view, and those interest stories we consider in the public interest. We don't want to forget that we don't want to move, with all due respect to the new technologies--we're not interested in becoming a commercial media. So, as long as I'm here, I feel strongly that we have a mission in this country to really approach issues that most people may not think about, or subjects that might not be comfortable to your agenda, but things that we think need to be aired and discussed. And I hope it will stimulate people to talk and maybe even to act in a very positive way. We still have not moved too far field from my educational mission. We are building on that strength. We haven't gotten far from our public spirit--being on the leading edge of issues and bringing out issues from different points of view. But yet, we're also going to explore new technologies used to enhance what we do. We're still public radio and we hope to be around for some time to come.

DB: Just one last question, Del. If you look at the future, and what National Public Radio is, could you envision the day when it would be, instead of National Public Radio, International Public Radio, because changes with Radio Free Europe? Do you see a bigger role in the future?

DL: I definitely do. I came in, as you know, in 1994 with the thought of a global mission, because I do believe what we do has ramifications on interests across the globe. In fact, we partnered with Public Radio International with a grant from the Corporation of Public Broadcasting to do our broadcast of our programs in English in Europe and Eastern Europe. And we've been at it for about two years in an organization we put together called America One. It's on cable in some places, if you have cable radio. It's on some radio systems in countries like Sweden and Denmark. But we're having trouble getting the resources to continue it. So, I've had to manage this. We haven't given up on it. I definitely believe that there's a role for public radio that we do in America--its style, its sound. The American interest is there, but we just may not be able to support it. So, I've been having to balance that. The answer to your question, David, is yes--I do envision that what we do has value around the world.

Our time came quickly to a close as we discussed our philosophies and futuristic outlooks on information and its dissemination. I am thankful to have had the opportunity to meet with Del, and discuss the mutual challenges facing each of our industries. I look forward to sharing another conversation with a prominent leading thinker in the future.