A theme on this blog is the steady decline of BIG media.

And the rise of independent voices: blogs, podcasts, social networks.

But one of the big media players is thriving. National Public Radio in the USA.

Why?

… NPR’s ratings have increased steadily since 2000, and they’ve managed to hold on to much of their 2008 election coverage listenership bump (with over 26 million people tuning in each week so far in 2009), unlike many of their mainstream media counterparts.

Compared to cable news, where most networks are shedding viewers, and newspapers, where circulation continues to plummet, NPR is starting to look like they have the future of news all figured out. Or at least, they appear to doing a lot better at it than the rest of the traditional media.

But what is NPR doing differently that’s causing their listener numbers to swell? They basically have a three-pronged strategy that is helping them not only grow now, but also prepare for the future media landscape where traditional methods of consumption (TV, radio, print) could be greatly marginalized in favor of digital distribution. …

This reviewer sees NPR doing 3 things right:

Of the three, the third is most important to me.

Read the entire article on Mashable – Why NPR is the Future of Mainstream Media

As a non-profit, NPR is less tied to the old media bias of shareholders, perhaps.

I’m a regular listener, subscribing to a number of their audiocasts.