WFYI announces reorganization; cuts one position, proposes eliminating two others

WFYI, the Indianapolis NPR and PBS affiliate, announced a reorganization that eliminated one position and proposed eliminating two others in its marketing and radio operations departments. It also announced that a hiring freeze on most vacancies would remain in effect.

WFYI also owns and manages WBAA, in West Lafayette.

In a message sent to staff late Thursday afternoon, President and CEO Greg Petrowich said these were “not easy decisions to make, but as you know, these are not easy times in public media.” He said in the email that the organization has made “significant strides” in building digital audiences and philanthropic support, but it is not in “the position we need to be at this time.”

Petrowich said the public media station is facing a $500,000 operating budget deficit for the fiscal year and the changes announced Thursday were designed to close the gap for the 2025 fiscal year.

He also said WFYI is facing the same problem that a lot of public media stations are: the COVID-19 pandemic and inflation have caused station budgets to stagnate.

“We expect to be here for the long run — we’ve been here for 50 years, we expect to be here for another 50 years,” Petrowich said. “We’re committed to the mission forever.”

Petrowich said he doesn’t expect additional cuts in the future, nor cuts to WFYI’s newsroom which is largely grant-funded. However, he cautioned, “the challenge for all of public media is, we don’t know what’s around the corner.”

The immediately eliminated position was WFYI’s director of marketing and strategic communications, Kirsten Eamon-Shine. In a post on LinkedIn, she said the news about her role at her “beloved lifelong station” was “bittersweet.”

Louisville Public Media also announced Thursday it is laying off eight staff to meet its own budget shortfall.

Both of these announcements come on the heels of significant cuts at large NPR and PBS stations across the country. WGBH in Boston, KQED in San Francisco, WAMU in Washington, D.C. and Chicago Public Media all have announced staffing cuts in the last few months.

WFYI voluntarily recognized the union of its content creators in March.

Lauren is our digital editor. Contact her at lchapman@wfyi.org or follow her on Twitter at @laurenechapman_.

Editor’s note: This story was edited by Scott Cameron, Rebecca Green and Henry Zimmerman. Cameron, Zimmerman and Chapman all work for Indiana Public Broadcasting News, but are employees of WFYI. Rebecca Green is the news director of WBOI in Fort Wayne — part of the IPB News collaboration. No members of WFYI’s leadership team were involved in the editing of this story, nor did they review it before it was published.