Chicago Public Media (CPM)

The organization has a strong emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and states that such concerns are at the heart of its news reporting and human resources practices, going so far as to report the racial breakdown of its staff. ^{1 2 3}

Founding and History

Chicago Public Media originated in 1943 with the establishment of the WBEZ FM radio station as part of the Chicago Board of Education. In 1970, it became a charter member of the National Public Radio. ² In 1990, the Chicago Board of Education sold the station to the newly established non-profit WBEZ Alliance Inc., which would later change its name to Chicago Public Media. ^{4 2}

In 2022, CPM acquired the Chicago Sun-Times and became the largest non-profit news organization in the U.S. ¹

Financials

In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2023, Chicago Public Media reported $38,697,858 in revenue, of which $30,954,140 was derived from contributions and grants, $2,223,748 from program service revenue, and $5,283,557 from investment income. CPM had $29,952,071 in expenses, of which $17,825,335 was allocated to salaries and benefits, and $6,657,362 to fundraising expenses. It ended the year with a surplus of $8,745,787 and net assets of $67,074,464. ⁵

The MacArthur Foundation has been a major funder of Chicago Public Media since 1982 when WBEZ was owned by the Chicago Board of Education. Since its first grant in 1982, the foundation has awarded $5,797,500 to CPM. ⁶

Organization Philosophy

Chicago Public Media has a left-of-center perspective and fully embraces the race-centered intersectional approach of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). CPM states that it seeks to hire racially diverse staff. To that end, it employs a DEI manager and publishes a breakdown of the races of its employees. Additionally, CPM maintains “The Sounding Board,” as a community group that reviews programming and decisions from a DEI perspective. ³

The Chicago Sun-Times, a subsidiary of CPM, is rated as being left leaning by the AllSides media bias rating system. ⁷

Leadership

Matt Moog is the chief executive officer of Chicago Public Media, a position he has held since 2020. He was previously on the board of directors for 11 years before becoming CEO. Moog founded several tech companies and emphasizes that he has built DEI-compliant workplaces. ⁸

Since June 2022, Jennifer Kho is the executive editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, which CPM acquired in 2022. She previously worked as the managing editor of HuffPost and the U.S. managing editor of The Guardian. ⁹ Kho’s hiring is listed as among the “results” of CPM’s DEI policy. She states that DEI is essential to the newspaper’s mission and that, among other policies, led to the deindexing of past crime stories under a new “right to be forgotten” principle. ³