Since 1967, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has funded public media stations across the country, delivering news, educational content, entertainment and emergency alerts to millions. However, the CPB will be shutting down on Sept. 30 due to federal funding cuts.
President Donald Trump signed the Rescissions Act of 2025 on July 24, canceling $1.1 billion of funding for the CPB, which funds National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.
NPR and PBS operate across the country through local affiliate stations, which broadcast both licensed programming and their own productions.
WBUR and GBH, two of Boston’s NPR member stations, are closely tied to Boston University and its students.
BU owns and operates WBUR but has given control of oversight and financial operations to WBUR’s own Board of Directors.
Dan Mauzy, WBUR’s executive editor for news, said the station aims to produce “high-quality journalism” and “enriching experiences” that people from Boston and beyond can tune into on a daily basis.
“What is unique about public media is that we are supported by the community that we serve, and therefore, we are accountable to that community,” he said.
WBUR also offers opportunities for BU students in the College of Communication, which Mauzy said will continue despite federal funding cuts.
WBUR hosts several programs for COM students, including a paid fellowship for both undergraduate and graduate students and JO400, BU’s “Newsroom” program, a new initiative launched in January that pairs students with local nonprofit news outlets.
“A lot of these [outlets] are in hyperlocal communities that are in real need of quality, trusted, on-the-ground reporting,” Mauzy said.
Cici Yu, associate producer of WBUR’s “Morning Edition” and an alum of WBUR’s COM Fellowship, said the partnership gives BU students valuable opportunities to explore their journalistic interests.
“I was a podcast fellow in [the] spring of 2024,” she said. “It was definitely a great experience for me to embed into the podcast team doing daily podcast episodes for ‘The Common’ and also pitching narrative podcast episodes for ‘The Endless Thread.’”
Yu described the fellowship as “valuable” because it enables students to put their skills into practice.
“When you’re in college, it’s sometimes really hard to land your first professional internship,” she said. “Through the partnership between BU and WBUR, it [gives] students an opportunity to be in a real newsroom and be really immersed in the news environment.”
Earlier this year, COM graduate student Mira Donaldson worked for WBUR as a news fellow.
Donaldson said the breaking news fellowship gave her an opportunity to “learn and be flexible” with the journalistic interests she pursues.
“The reason why I got into journalism was because I wanted to be a political commentator,” she said. “But I think [the fellowship] allowed me to know that the opportunities in front of me are just so wide and to not shut myself out of one thing just because I have one direct goal.”
GBH is facing an 8% loss of funding due to the CPB’s closure.
“GBH has been a public media leader for 75 years and has a long history of innovation; we are creative people and are relying on that muscle memory as we move forward,” a GBH spokesperson wrote in an email to The Daily Free Press.
Donaldson, who is starting to work at GBH this semester, said she is worried about the funding cuts not just as an employee but as an individual.
“I was just concerned about the state of media, period. It seems like we’re deprioritizing information and learning,” she said. “Public media has been a big part of how people learn for such a long time.”
Although both WBUR and GBH are experiencing funding cuts this month, they will continue to seek team members for 2026, including interns and full-time fellows.
“We’ll continue to evolve, creating high-quality content, reaching new audiences, and meeting the needs of our community in the most impactful and sustainable ways possible,” the GBH spokesperson wrote.
Mauzy expressed similar optimism, stating that “public media isn’t going anywhere.”
“We, here at WBUR, are committed to developing the journalists and the news leaders that are going to continue to be providing the stories that our communities need to hear for years to come,” Mauzy said.
Cici Yu was a city editor for The Daily Free Press in the spring of 2022. She was not involved in the reporting, writing or editing of this article.
