NPR Folds Climate Desk Into National Coverage After Federal Funding Cuts

National Public Radio—better known as NPR, a widely-venerated non-profit radio network in the United States—disbanded its climate desk in late May, citing financial strain linked to the Trump administration’s public media funding cuts.

“Today, I was laid off by NPR,” wrote Neela Banerjee, NPR’s last Chief Climate Editor, in a May 27 post on LinkedIn. “The climate desk no longer exists separately but has been folded into the National Desk.”

NPR laid off 10 journalists, among other staff, attempting to save money and reorganize the newsroom after Congress voted to eliminate federal subsidies for public media in 2025, NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik wrote. The broadcasting organization had offered buyouts to about 300 employees, saying it would accept up to 30 takers, with targeted layoffs to follow if too few came forward before a May 26 deadline.

NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher said the aim was to fill a gap of US$8 million in the network’s $300-million annual budget. The Current reported that overall, the work force reduction amounted to fewer than 30 employees, at least 18 of whom accepted buyouts. In all, they represented 4% of NPR’s content division, Editor-in-Chief Thomas Evans said.

The move follows several other newsroom reductions that have cut into climate desks. The Washington Post laid off more than 300 staff earlier this year and scaled back its climate team. At the time, Felix Horne of Climate Rights International called it “the loss of expertise and sustained scrutiny at one of the world’s most influential newsrooms,” adding that other broadcast outlets like CBS, CNN, and NBC had also laid off employees in 2024 and 2025.

At the same time, a dwindling number of local news outlets has meant reduced coverage of floods, heatwaves, refineries, pipelines, and mines—news that would have improved readers’ understanding of climate issues. [For local outlets in Canada, help is one click away–Ed.]

“The facts still exist—but fewer people are paid, protected, or empowered to surface them, and with that goes people’s understanding of how climate is intimately intertwined with our lives,” Horne wrote.

NPR spokesperson Juliet Barbara told ex-LA Times climate reporter Sammy Roth on Climate Colored Goggles that NPR has not eliminated its climate team or any other coverage areas.

“Integrating the climate team into the national desk means climate journalism is able to be woven into more of our reporting: climate is a cost-of-living story, a politics story, a community story that touches every beat we cover,” Barbara said.

But other news outlets are “bucking the trend of de-prioritizing the climate story,” wrote global news collaborative Covering Climate Now, highlighting Agence France-Presse, Tthe Guardian, The New York Times, CNN, and The Associated Press.

In some cases, outlets that previously cut their environment teams reincarnated them for climate reporting in later years. In 2014, NPR cut its environment team down from four reporters to one—before launching a dedicated climate desk in 2022. The New York Times closed down its environment desk in 2013, but then announced in 2016 it would establish a new team dedicated to climate change.

In both cases, their messaging about cutbacks prefigured NPR’s current framing almost exactly. Spokespeople said at the time the move was purely structural and would not affect environmental or climate coverage, which would be integrated into other beats.

Criticism from the climate journalism community too has echoed across both moments—that spreading climate coverage across various associated issues fails to emphasize how it links them all together.

“It’s true that ‘environment’ stories are about a lot more than just that, but that very fact requires reporters dedicated to connecting those dots, as well as editors who can guide that coverage,” wrote U.S. reporter, editor, and journalism professor Kate Sheppard in the Guardian in 2013. “That’s why having a team of reporters and an editor committed to that beat is essential.”