Turf War? What Turf War?

National Public Radio has opened a huge new West Coast operations base in Los Angeles despite facing a cash crunch so severe that the network has been laying off veteran correspondents, and the expansion has nothing whatsoever to do with rival Minnesota Public Radio’s incursion into the same territory last year. (MPR is closely allied with Minneapolis-based Public Radio International, NPR’s main competitor in the distribution of programs to public radio stations nationwide.) The ‘NPR West’ mission seems a bit vague, but the important thing, according to network execs, is that there is no turf war, there has never been a turf war, and they are shocked – shocked! – that anyone would assign them such scurrilous motives.