Introduction

The 2020-21 fiscal year felt permanently temporary, as we worked to keep Granite Staters informed about the COVID-19 pandemic.

But there were many other stories as well, during a fiscal year that spanned July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021. This Impact Report highlights the work of our award-winning journalists, editors and producers, and the staff working to keep NHPR on air and online:

In July 2020, NHPR launched By Degrees, a new climate change news reporting initiative. It is balanced by the long-form, narrative journalism of our Outside/In podcast. And the launch marked a milestone in our new strategic focus on our environmental reporting.

In October, The Exchange celebrated its extraordinary 25-year history of live on-air interviews; as the fiscal year ended, we said farewell to host Laura Knoy in June 2021.

Fall 2020 also saw the lead-up to the 2020 election. NHPR welcomed national candidates to The Exchange for live, socially distanced debates on issues surfaced by our listeners and users. And we brought the people of New Hampshire in-depth local and national reporting on the election and its results.

Also in the fall, Document, a new investigative journalism podcast hosted by NHPR’s Jason Moon and Lauren Chooljian launched its first season. 

The fiscal year saw the expansion of NHPR’s Spanish-language reporting, to meet an unmet need for news and information for New Hampshire’s growing population of native Spanish speakers.

Another of our strategic initiatives — the Civics 101 podcast — released a new series on Supreme Court cases related to civil rights. COVID in the Classroom, provided an on-line home for our reporting on the pandemic’s impact on education in the Granite State.

And through it all, NHPR continued to deepen its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.

These and many other initiatives were made possible by our supporters. We are profoundly grateful to those individuals who made contributions, purchased tickets, donated their cars or made a bequest to NHPR. They provided more than 60% of the funds that kept NHPR going in fiscal year 2020-21.

We also deeply appreciate the businesses and organizations that became corporate underwriters, and the foundations — including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — that provided support. These generous individuals and organizations enable NHPR to continue to fulfill its mission of bringing indispensable news reporting and programming to New Hampshire and beyond.

Banner photo: Letizia Ortiz (left), and Eva Castillo (right), canvass to reach Latino voters ahead of the 2020 Election. Photo by Casey McDermott.