Why did NPR's WAMU close DCist?

The star-crossed marriage of Washington's NPR member station and a feisty digital news publication came to an abrupt end in February. Staffers are still unclear about what the station's management wants now.

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Last month, during an all-staff meeting at WAMU, Diane Rehm’s microphone mysteriously stopped working. Rehm began her career at WAMU in 1973 and has hosted a podcast and a monthly book club program for the Washington public radio station since she stepped back from daily broadcast of her nationally distributed show in 2016. Zooming in from her home, Rehm asked WAMU’s general manager, Erika Pulley-Hayes, a question about her decision, a week and a half earlier, to shutter the local news website DCist and to lay off more than a dozen people.

WAMU had announced the changes as a way to “deepen engagement with Washingtonians,” according to a press release. “WAMU has been a leader in purpose driven media for decades and sits at the heart of this community,” the release quoted Pulley-Hayes as saying. 

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