The Future of KCUR and Public Media in Kansas City

Public Media has faced immense headwinds in the last decade, none more disruptive than the recission package passed by Congress in July of 2025. Sarah Morris, General Manager of KCUR, Kansas City’s NPR station, discusses the warning signs and the decisions made in advance of the federal funding claw back, and the changes necessary to make KCUR sustainable well into the future.

Biography: Sarah Morris

Sarah Morris was named General Manager of KCUR 89.3, Kansas City's NPR affiliate, and 91.9 Classical KC in 2021. Both are a service of the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC). KCUR is home to three major collaborative journalism services: the nine-state Harvest Public Media, the statewide Kansas News Service, and the NPR regional Midwest Newsroom, which provides investigative and in-depth reporting for Kansas, Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska.

During her early tenure, Sarah helped create the Midwest Newsroom, as well as a local news collaborative, the KC Media Collective, which includes six nonprofit media organizations. She secured a $1 million, three-year grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to support this effort.

She also launched KCUR Studios, which currently produces podcasts of local and national interest, reaching an average of 100,000 people each month. Prior to her current position, Sarah spent nearly two decades in various leadership positions in the private and nonprofit sectors. Most recently, she was Assistant Vice Chancellor of Strategic Marketing and Communications at UMKC, which included oversight of KCUR, from 2004-2020.

Sarah currently serves as a board member for the Station Resource Group. She is a 2024 Public Media Diversity Fellow of the Riley Institute at Furman, received an MBA from Baker University and a Bachelor of Science-Journalism degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder.