When we caught up with Vivian Schiller, the just-announced president and CEO of National Public Radio, she was in a surprising location: her own kitchen in Bethesda, catching a breath after the NPR board meeting this morning when her appointment was approved. Schiller has been commuting for the past two-plus years from the DC area to her job as SVP-GM of NYTimes.com; tomorrow she’ll be back in the NYT building, preparing to wrap up by the end of the month. Between that job and her earlier role as GM of cable network Discovery Times, Schiller has been with NYTCo for nearly seven years.

The switch from cable TV to digital in April 2006 was a big leap. This one is even bigger—in addition to a switch of primary medium, she’s moving to not-for-profit from commercial. And she’s moving from the corporate pack to the top of that not-for-profit with constituents that include a board, member stations, and listeners. This conversation was a far cry from our harried first interview, in the hallway at the Las Vegas Convention Center just after she took the NYTimes.com job, but the two have this in common—not much in the way of specifics yet. In addition to NPR matters, we talked about TimesSelect and digital-print integration. Some excerpts after the jump: 

—Why NPR?: Schiller admitted to getting teary when she met with Arthur Sulzberger to tell him she was leaving. “I wouldn’t have left the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) to go just anywhere.” But she was drawn to NPR’s news operation with 36 bureaus, including 18 overseas, what she calls “a powerhouse” organization and “constellation of stations.”  Plus, “if all of that were not enough, my family lives here.” She avoids comparisons between the two media organizations. “Really, it’s a different paradigm. I’m reluctant to draw too many parallels.”

—Digital: Schiller: “I’ve seen the spectrum of media and digital is a huge piece and a vital piece. We will figure out a digital strategy that works” for NPR and for member stations. “The digital experience that I’ve gained in the last 2.5 years, a lot of that experience absolutely will play into NPR.” 

—Hyperlocal: Schiller has watched start-ups and big media alike fail to crack the hyperlocal conundrum. She thinks NPR is well-positioned to actually do it. “So many companies have started and folded trying to win in local hubs. Big news organizations spend hours wondering how do I create the hyperlocal presence, you don’t have the infrastructure. NPR can do it. It already has the trust and the infrastructure in every town and campus in America. I want to find a way to create indispensable local media hubs.”

—Economy: Schiller: “The people who fund not-for-profits are facing the same recession as advertisers and investors. For-profits and not-for-profits are living with the same economy.” These times make NPR’s news organization even more important, she contends. “I think that’s a powerful message I really want to communicate: NPR is more important than ever because of, not in spite of, the economy.”  She added later: “We want to have the funding to continue to grow and support our journalism, to support our stations at the local level.”

—NYT:  When I mentioned that Gawker, of all sites, was complimentary about her tenure (as complimentary as a Denton pub gets), Schiller quickly refused to take credit. She talked of collaborating with Jon Landman on the edit side to cut through obstacles and corporate digital head Martin Nisenholtz to create an environment where innovation can thrive. “To me, election night was the culmination of everything we’ve been working towards.”

—TimesSelect: Schiller inherited TimesSelect. “Reasonable people will disagree about whether TimesSelect should have been launched at all. My position about TimesSelect was it was the right decision to launch it at the time, that we made that decision and it was the right decision to end it. In the meantime, we pulled in $10 million a year from subscriptions. ... It became a cause celeb like it was a mistake of some kind.”

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