National Public Radio and the Siege of Gondor 
By Kenny Brechner 

  
In J.R.R. Tolkiens Lord of the Rings when Gandalf remarked that what lay before him was “Work of the Enemy! ... Such deeds he loves: friend at war with friend; loyalty divided in confusion of hearts,”. he was referring to the slaying of the porter at the gate of Minas Tirith’s Citadel by a Captain of its guards. He probably would make the same comment, however, were he to remark upon National Public Radios’s Shop npr.org campaign.

The protagonists in this drama are NPR, Independent Booksellers, their customers and Amazon.com. NPR posts online lists and descriptions of the books it recommends for Summer Reading in various genres, and for those books featured on its programs. Browsers are encouraged to buy these books through links to Amazon.com. Why encourage buying through Amazon and not Independent Booksellers, a group which is comprised of many long and tireless supporters of NPR, donators of cash, merchandise and time, and providers of extensive underwriting?

NPR pushes its customers to shop at Amazon so that NPR can obtain a “revenue share.” Do these revenue shares amount to much in the way of support to NPR? Not according to Andi Sporkin, NPR’s vice president of communications. Publishers Weekly reported Sporkin as saying that “NPR gets only a small amount from the Amazon connection.”

For Independent Booksellers there is no positive here. NPR is an entity which it has considered an ally and a friend for decades. NPR is also an entity which is uniquely trusted by and influential with a core group of Independent Booksellers’ customer base, a base which has been particularly sensitive to the importance of supporting the local economy in the past. What greater harm could there be than to have NPR encouraging those customers to shop online in the future. In a tough marketplace where the ties that bind communities, the glue which holds fragile local economies together, is under relentless attack by billion dollar online and chain retailers, they have been jolted to find a long time friend joining in the attack.

For Amazon there is no negative here. The have managed to convince NPR to encourage its listeners to abandon brick and mortar bookstores in favor of shopping online at Amazon, thereby directly hurting their enemies, and directly helping themselves at no cost other than turning over a tiny cut of the transactions originating at npr.org, confident that customers will not bother to take the extra step of going through npr.org once their online shopping patterns become entrenched. They have managed to increase their sales through remarkably effective advertising obtained at a net profit for themselves at their competitor’s expense, and estrange once united groups of their opponents into the bargain.

Let’s do the math then. On the positive side NPR gets a tiny bit of some Amazon transactions in the particular cases where the transactions originated on npr.org. On the negative side NPR has alienated a group of bookselling supporters who collectively, according to Publishers Weekly, contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to NPR. As a member of this group I can reliably report that a sense of betrayal, frustration, and concern is percolating at Independent Bookstores throughout the country.

“‘Work of the Enemy! ... Such deeds he loves: friend at war with friend; loyalty divided in confusion of hearts.’” And why? For what? A few extra pennies in the NPR till in exchange for the loss of much more substantial support from longtime allies who were already on the endangered economic species list before this betrayal. If community matters people should support their communities directly. If NPR matters people should support NPR directly. Revenue sharing indeed.