That's great for radio listeners, but can the public broadcaster achieve a similar degree of success online?

Nielsen ratings claim NPR's Web audience jumped 32% from 2007 to 2008, partly due to the 2008 Presidential election. But even then, the 4.3 million monthly NPR visitors estimated by Nielsen for 2008 puts it on par with second-tier newspapers like the New York Post and San Francisco Chronicle. MSNBC and CNN tout Nielsen ratings ten times the size of NPR.

Farhi reports that NPR's broadcast audience keeps growing largely because local radio stations are cutting back on news reporting, for lack of budgets to pay for gathering and broadcasting news stories. Producing news shows costs much more than playing music, or airing syndicated talk shows. NPR's foreign correspondents at 18 separate bureaus outside America are nearly unchallenged by other radio or TV outlets. Despite declining revenues, NPR continues to crank out news coverage that local stations just can't match.

Online, though, NPR competes not with a shrinking news media, but a growing one. Whether it's nytimes.com or the Huffington Post, many online news and commentary sites are producing more stories than ever, freed from the relatively high costs of print, radio, or television distribution. Add the vast galaxy of smaller niche sites and blogs, and it's unlikely NPR will be able to win online by simply out-producing the competition. That works well for NPR over the airwaves, but not in the packet and pixel world.