Al Massitti, one of the local talkers in Wilmington on the AM dial, spent many years as a reporter and later as a columnist with the Wilmington News Journal. Even though I may not agree with some things he says on his show, I do find when he's discussing actual news items of the day and not just ranting [on those ranting days he appears to have forgotten to take his meds - haha]. Most of the time though Al seems to use his skills as a former reporter to dig into whatever story or issue he's discussing, which makes listening to his show a better experience than many of the other AM radio talkers, both local and national who are doing what Fred mentioned.
That's seems to be what makes NPR programming better, even with the dumbing down, their folks have had prior skills as reporters, who studied Journalism. From what I understand, Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity do not have college degrees even in basket weaving or advanced truck driving much less Journalism. They simply have a high school diploma so they might have worked for their high school paper, but they didn't study college level Journalism, nor have prior experience as a real reporter. Funny how the masses on the right think these guys know it all and the better educated folks at NPR they consider to be idiots. Go figure.