New Books Network – "Listeners Like Who?: Exclusion and Resistance in the Public Radio Industry" with Laura Garbes

Episode Date: September 13, 2025
Host: New Books
Guest: Laura Garbes (Author, Princeton University Press, 2025)

EPISODE OVERVIEW

In this episode of New Books in Critical Theory, host [Name Unspecified in Transcript] interviews Laura Garbes about her new book, Listeners Like Who?: Exclusion and Resistance in the Public Radio Industry. The conversation explores how public radio—institutionally, historically, and sonically—continues to center white, middle-class norms despite decades of attempts to diversify. The episode delves into the institutional, racial, gendered, and financial dimensions of American public radio, connecting historical legacies to present-day experiences of workers and listeners, with a critical lens on authority, representation, and the future of public media.

KEY DISCUSSION POINTS & INSIGHTS

Why Public Radio? The Sonic Lens

• Laura Garbes’ Route to Radio: Garbes didn’t plan to study media or radio but was drawn to theoretical questions about whose voices are valued in public spaces—questions that led to public radio as a prime site for examining racialized linguistic organizations ([02:52]).
• Sonic Color Line: The concept, borrowed from Jennifer Stoever and W.E.B. Du Bois, explores how race is inscribed in sound, not just sight:

  “Radio is the perfect medium...it actually takes out the visual cues...and you can see the ways people talk about race via sound pretty clearly...”
  (Laura Garbes, 03:30)

• Public vs. Commercial Ambitions: Public radio’s nonprofit mission implies inclusivity, but its association with the white middle/professional class remains a “very interesting and troubling puzzle” ([04:52]).

White Institutional Space in Public Radio

• Theoretical Foundation: Most U.S. industries, including radio, are not neutral spaces. Racism is encoded in organizational structures and cultural expectations ([06:42]).
• More Than Demographics:

  “It’s not counting the number of people of color in the room...it’s about how authority and expertise, and even whose voice is good for the radio, ends up getting linked with the white professional class and their dominant cultural expectations.”
  (Laura Garbes, 08:37)

• Whiteness as an Institutional Norm: The “good talker” is often someone with credentials from white-dominated institutions—think tanks, academia, etc.

Historical Roots: The Foundations of NPR

• Not a Blank Slate: Though NPR emerged from the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act amid civil rights optimism, it borrowed heavily from “educational radio” systems created during the Jim Crow era, which were racially exclusionary and university-centric ([10:09]).
• Quantifying Exclusion:

  “By 1970, only 16 US radio outlets in general, both non commercial and commercial, were Black-owned...the vast majority of noncommercial stations were run by white institutions.”
  (Laura Garbes, 11:55)

• Missed Reckonings: Idealistic founding leaders failed to account for inherited structures of exclusion.

Gender and the “NPR Voice”

• Feminized Authority: From the 1970s and '80s, prominent white women—“the founding mothers”—became the signature on-air authorities, setting a new, softer, calm standard for “broadcast authority” ([13:56], [15:10]).
• Persistent Whiteness:

  “These iconic voices of public radio had also been majority white for a very long time...set a new standard...still white and still from the professional middle class.”
  (Laura Garbes, 15:55)

• Experiences of People of Color: For professionals of color, conformity to this ‘iconic’ public radio voice does not shield them from policing of their legitimacy.

Financial Models & Institutional Whiteness

• Chronic Underfunding:

  “Public radio in the U.S. has always been vastly underfunded...always operated on survival mode and at a poultry fraction of any of its European counterparts.”
  (Laura Garbes, 18:27)

• Audience Narrowing: In the early 1980s, in response to funding crises, NPR focused on the “core 40%” of loyal listeners—middle-aged, college-educated, generally liberal or centrist, overwhelmingly white ([19:35]).
• Sponsorship and the ‘Halo Effect’:

  “Small businesses saw who the audience was...it was appealing to sponsor programming...they kind of associated them with some sort of social goodness and social responsibility.”
  (Laura Garbes, 21:15)

• Consequences of Audience Dependence:

  “As soon as this money comes into play, and it’s sort of a privilege-dependent organization, you’re kind of blocking out voices from outside of this core 40 from having meaningful representation on these stations.”
  (Laura Garbes, 23:33)

• Recent Crisis (2026): The Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding is being entirely withdrawn, deepening dependence on this core, privileged demographic ([22:30]).

Marginalized Voices: Worker Experiences & Exclusions

• Voice Policing: Both listeners and internal colleagues judge voices that deviate from NPR’s white, feminized standard—whether in accent, intonation, or code-switching ([26:47], [27:30]).
• Tokenization:

  “There’s this weird thing that there’s this presumed whiteness...even when voices conform, there’s an authenticity conversation that opens up.”
  (Laura Garbes, 30:46)

• Exclusionary Practices: Nonconforming voices face stunted career advancement; sometimes stories by those with non-normative accents are reassigned ([28:50]).
• Double Binds: Workers of color are burdened with both the labor of diversity and resistance (“figured out strategies to push it through...to support my other colleagues of color...”) and navigating exclusion ([31:50]).

Content & Expertise: Who Gets to Tell Stories?

• Driveway Moments: Editorial focus on captivating the “core 40%” leads to careful selection and framing of stories ([33:20]).

  “Trying to comfort this imagined listener and make sure that they keep tuning in because they’re delighted enough by it...”
  (Laura Garbes, 34:13)

• Framing Communities of Color: Stories about minoritized groups are often presented “behind the museum glass,” catering to the imagined (white, privileged) audience ([34:42]).
• Expertise Remains White: The “good talker” still tends to be someone with professional or academic bonafides linked to institutional whiteness.

Living in a Moment of Crisis & What’s Next?

• Accelerating Inequalities: The withdrawal of federal support and policing of funding sources has intensified the crisis for U.S. public radio ([38:49]).
• Hopeful Medium-Term Projects:

  “We need to really think robustly about the fact that information is a public good...we need a project 2027, 2029 to start thinking about public media as public infrastructure.”
  (Laura Garbes, 40:25)

• Future Research — Audiobook Narrators: Garbes is designing a study on the working lives of audiobook narrators in the digital/AI era, examining labor, unionization, and the future of audio professions ([41:45]).

MEMORABLE QUOTES

• On public radio as a racialized institution:

  “Even if a place is racially diverse...it can still be a space dominated by white dominant cultural frameworks. These frameworks can reproduce ideologies of white dominance...even if there are plenty of people of color in the space.”
  (Laura Garbes, 07:07)

• On the persistence of standards:

  “I always say my methods are not counting the number of people of color in the room...it’s more about how authority and expertise, and whose voice is good for the radio, ends up getting linked with the white professional class...”
  (Laura Garbes, 08:37)

• On the “NPR voice”:

  “It distinguished public radio from other broadcasts at the time to speak calmly and a softer voice of authority...even prominent voices that do not conform...people point out, sometimes even positively, how great it is to hear so-and-so on air as a fresh or different take...the fact that they notice the voice at all shows how pervasive this calm, soft voice of feminized authority is.”
  (Laura Garbes, 15:18 - 16:30)

• On editorial gatekeeping:

  "I can't have two 'Hispanic stories' back to back, or I can't have two sad stories back to back because it's going to be too much... There just seemed to be a sense of... trying to comfort this imagined listener."
  (Laura Garbes, 34:05)

• On current challenges and future vision:

  “We need to publicly fund public media...we need to really think robustly about the fact that information is a public good.”
  (Laura Garbes, 40:19)

TIMESTAMPS FOR IMPORTANT SEGMENTS

• 02:52: Why study public radio? Theorizing sound, race, and the choice of medium
• 06:42: Concept of “white institutional space” and its effect on exclusion
• 10:09: The hidden, segregated history of public/educational radio in the U.S.
• 13:56: Gender, the “NPR voice,” and the experience of women and people of color
• 18:23: The impact of chronic underfunding and its effects on public radio’s audience and editorial choices
• 26:47: Marginalized workers’ stories—voice policing, tokenization, and authentic storytelling
• 33:20: Content, expertise, and the racialized logic of “driveway moments”
• 38:49: The present crisis: federal funding withdrawal and Garbes’ reflections on keeping public media public
• 41:45: Garbes’ next project—studying audiobook narrators and the impact of AI

CONCLUSION

This compelling episode with Laura Garbes weaves together the intersecting forces of race, gender, economics, and sound that shape American public radio. Her research surfaces how exclusion works not just in numbers but in norms, and how resistance emerges even within limiting structures. The book and interview land at a critical moment, with federal support for U.S. public media vanishing, underscoring the urgency to reimagine public radio as infrastructure for a truly inclusive public sphere. Garbes’ future work, now shifting toward audiobook labor and AI, promises further insights for anyone interested in the politics of who gets heard.