Exactly, I was going to ask KMan the same thing. Are they making their statement purely as a listener, or with actual inside knowledge?
Many of the reporters and writers for public radio are starting straight out of journalism school. Maybe the writing staff at a public station like KUOW is a greater number than say, KOMO. The difference is; staff at the public station write longer-form news, or more in depth than headlines or news pieces, requiring more writing, research, fact checking, etc. Stations like KOMO, both write, edit, and report.
This isn't the first time I've criticized KUOW for being staff heavy, content light. I've been out of the market for 3.5 years now, but I don't know how much has changed. I used to listen daily in PM drive on my way home, and found much of their coverage to be superficial. They carried a shocking amount of reporting with minimal relevance to Seattle from Northwest News Network. I always chuckled when I'd hear Anna King reporting on farm worker housing in the Tri-Cities in a top of the hour newscast that had zero coverage on the local or state political beats.
I don't have any insider info on how their staffing budget for their newsroom compares to other comparable NPR stations. But take a spin through the bios section on their website. It's an extensive list. Look at the names. Patricia Murphy was once the morning edition newsanchor and host (something that is now two jobs). Listen during drive time for two weeks. Tell me how many stories she files... I've been through this exercise (though it was a few years ago). Many of these reporters are heard very infrequently.
In the last decade I've spent considerable time in Juneau AK, Phoenix AZ (twice), Houston TX, and Los Angeles, in addition to my time in Seattle. I've listened, extensively, to the public radio stations in all of those cities.
KJZZ in Phoenix is an outstanding station that has tremendous local news coverage. When I had a car commute in Phoenix, I'd hear the same 5 reporters, every day, filing short and long form stories, during the local cut-ins in All Things Considered and Morning Edition. The news was well written, well researched, compelling, and relevant.
KTOO in Juneau does a lot with a little. This is truly the kind of station where kids right out of journalism school go to cut their teeth. But in a region with a paucity of news coverage, public radio does big lifting, and KTOO with their tiny newsroom + the reporters at Alaska Public Media, managed to put out great local coverage, every day. Ed Schoenfeld, a longtime reporter with Alaska Public Media (he's now the news director) was constantly filing stories ... it was rare when you heard a newscast that didn't include reporting from him.
I'm in Los Angeles now. I usually listen to KCRW, even though KPCC has better local news coverage. KCRW has a very small newsroom (I could count all the reporters on one hand) but their signal covers my whole commute, and KPCC's doesn't. With more reporters on more beats, KPCC has a better handle on the news that's relevant for LA. It's a big station with a big newsroom, but I just took a peak at the staff directory, and those names are all familiar, regular voices I hear covering LA.
I recognize that one of the differences between a public station's newscasts and a place like KOMO is the depth of coverage is very different. At KOMO, Carleen Johnson can rip and read a half dozen AP wire stories, add some audio gathered by the TV guys, and have a new report every half hour. The public stations aren't doing that, and that's one of the reasons they have big newsrooms.
But in my years of flip flopping between KUOW and KPLU, and the comparisons I've made listening in some other cities, large and small, I've found KUOW to have some pretty unsatisfactory local news coverage, and a pretty big staff putting out a sub-par product.
