Equality, You're on the Air

Alisa Miller, MPP/MBA’99, has always been interested in how media, technology and storytelling help people make decisions about their lives. So when she finished the Chicago Harris/Chicago Booth dual-degree program, it seemed natural that she would go to work in public broadcasting. After running a media startup, she moved to Sesame Street and then Public Radio International, where she became president and CEO in 2006, the youngest person and first woman to assume such a role at a major public radio network.

There have been a lot of changes in radio during Miller’s tenure at the helm of PRI. For one, radio isn’t just about broadcasts anymore. It’s also about building websites, producing podcasts and finding listeners via social media. But for Miller, these changes haven’t been obstacles so much as opportunities – a way to change not only the way PRI’s listeners get their news, but how they think about and respond to the information they’ve received.

Now, instead of a radio network, Miller runs a multimedia content provider that reaches nearly 20 million people each month. And she’s started to rethink PRI’s approach to the news. Instead of viewing it as a series of separate beats, like business or health or sports, she wants to examine the way different subjects – what she calls “driving forces” – affect these different areas. “Because the digital world has evolved,” she says, “the way we think can be more fluid and networked.”

In time, Miller wants PRI to explore climate change, immigration and the role of snake people. But she decided to start with a series called Across Women’s Lives, which examines the status of women in society.

“Across Women’s Lives comes from the premise of three important realizations,” she says. “One, women are not being covered in the news media. Two, when women are covered, the stories are stereotypical, with the major emphasis on us as objects or victims. And three, the news media has a perception about how serious women are about news. The hard news stories are more male-oriented. There’s a perception that women aren’t interested in wars or major policy debates or economics or science.”

Miller based these conclusions not just on anecdotal evidence but on hard data. A study by the Global Media Reporting Project shows that women appear in just 24 percent of news stories across the world. In the United States, they appear in 34 percent. 

The project also tracks media portrayals, finding that women come off worst in the Middle East, followed by Africa. The United States is third. “It’s like, ‘We suck less,’” Miller says. “I took a look and thought, We need to do something.”

Miller wants to create what she calls a “drumbeat of coverage” to tell women’s stories, and not just in relation to women’s issues. She wants to feature women in stories about economics and climate change, showcase them as experts and generally portray them as complex characters – not just as accessories to men’s stories or career women who have found success at a price. Those sorts of stories don’t just hurt women, Miller says. They hurt men as well.

“Across Women’s Lives is a balanced view of the world,” Miller explains. “It’s not just about people understanding the news. It’s about helping people understand how things work. The news documents our history today. Swaths of that history have been missed. Half the population is missing.”

Across Women’s Lives is funded through a partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. While it will initially emphasize the changing roles of women in Africa and India, Miller hopes listeners will realize that the underlying issues are universal.

As the project progresses, PRI plans to conduct regular surveys of 1,200 listeners to measure how the coverage has changed their knowledge about women. “We’re creating a case study that will show that this is not only the right thing to do,” Miller says, “it’s also the smart thing to do.” 

Miller’s colleagues at PRI appreciate her analytical approach to problem-solving. “She’s not telling anyone what to do,” says Chief Content Officer Melinda Ward. “She’s allowing them to see what can be done.”

As CEO, Miller led PRI’s expansion into satellite radio and oversaw the creation ofThe Takeaway, a news program meant to compete with NPR’s Morning Edition that became more successful when it was reconfigured as a midday news program. She also managed the sale of PRI to WGBH, the nation’s largest producer of programming for public television. “It was a midsized legacy organization,” Ward says of PRI. “Alisa saw it had to be part of something larger. It wasn’t easy, but she stayed the course.”

If the past nine years have taught Miller anything, it’s that it’s impossible to predict the future. Still, she’s been trying to envision the nature of media ten years from now and how it will be consumed.

 “I’m not trying to figure out the scenario,” she says. “But at Harris, I learned that frameworks are important. They don’t tell the answers, but they give an approach to figure out a method to get to the answers. There’s more than one way to solve a problem. It’s about what you can bring to the party.”