All Things Considered co-host Robert Siegel debriefs correspondent Ted Clark. At right: co-host Linda Wertheimer.

Tired of NPR's newsmagazines? Or of the question? Originally published in Current, May 25, 1998

By Jacqueline Conciatore

From the first All Things Considered on May 3, 1971--sound of young, exuberant reporters running around Washington, D.C., taping skirmishes between antiwar demonstrators and police--NPR laid claim to special ground in broadcasting.

The promise from the start was that NPR News would go deeper, reporters would be out there on the ground, capture stories of "real" folk. And there would be more fun on the air, as well as more sentiment, more drama, more tragedy. More.

Now, All Things Considered is 27 years old, Morning Edition is almost 20, and some people say they're hearing less of that "more" on both weekday shows. "I think NPR in general has become too hard-news," says Steve Martin, program director for WAMU, Washington. "They're still heads above anything else that's out there, but what really builds audience loyalty and offers what nobody else can offer is using the medium to its fullest." What he wants is "a few more sparkles."

With a new vice president at NPR News, more sparkles may be coming. Jeffrey Dvorkin has repeatedly and publicly discussed his desire for the shows to use more sound elements and take more risks. Some say they're noticing a bit more liveliness already. And Morning Edition has promoted to e.p. its longtime No. 2 manager, Ellen McDonnell, replacing Bob Ferrante, who now produces PRI's The World. Only a few weeks into her new gig, she's made big changes in staffing.

Radio bashing

Worries about ATC or ME becoming a bit boring aren't new. "This is the same discussion anybody who's been paying attention has been having for 8 years, 10 years," says one observer. Jack Mitchell, NPR Board member and a founding staff member of ATC, dates concerns about the level of hard news all the way to the years just after Watergate. By 1976, "there was a tremendous crisis at NPR" as stations expressed their unhappiness. Ultimately, the company fired then-news director Bob Zelnick, he says. Little anecdote: in 1977, the news department, trying to be politic, would hire a new public affairs reporter (Scott Simon), but call him a "human affairs" reporter, according to ATC co-host Robert Siegel.

So the issue goes way back, and anxiety over it waxes and wanes, always fueled by uncertainty about what kind of media competition lurks in the electronic mist. In the past few months, though, when people have given NPR a hit, it's been a hard one. There was (ever-cranky) Garrison Keillor in a January issue of The Nation, complaining about NPR's "precious" commentators and "little audio documentaries about old ballplayers ... and maple syruping in Vermont."

And there was onetime Rolling Stone critic Greil Marcus opining in the New York Times that NPR hosts sound contemptuous and bored, as if they'd rather be at an embassy party.

And there were the folks inside the system, giving their two cents' on the Internet listserv "Pubradio." Public radio consultant and former WXPN manager Mark Fuerst described a dinner conversation with friends that turned into a "public-radio-bashing rage." One woman called NPR commentators "flatulent;" someone else said, "What's fascinating about public radio is that these are people who started out trying to change the world, and what they've done is help to put the world to sleep."

What gives, with such harshness? Siegel argues that the criticism at bottom indicates positive things: the Times considers NPR programs important enough to cover.

Within the system, discontent is perhaps heightened by the success of Ira Glass' distinctively artful program, This American Life, which won a Peabody in its first year. As a new program by a former NPR producer and reporter, Life stands as an obvious contrast. Says Danny Miller, executive producer of Fresh Air: "This American Life [has] generally raised the bar on creative storytelling, doing a show with a sense of surprise, letting the host relax and talk to you." [Glass analyzes his program's values, page B1.]

The comparisons irk Siegel. "Every time a good program comes online in public radio, there's the idea that it must disprove the value of any prior program." It's the trap of formatting, the idea everything should sound the same, he says. "People who don't think programs are supposed to sound different would ruin public radio."

How do the listeners feel?

"Started out trying to change the world, put the world to sleep."

"That's not true!" Siegel says emphatically. "We set out to change American radio, and we have. We're a big force and beyond."

ATC senior producer Sean Collins and senior editor Jonathan Kern (center) talk with Siegel (right) in a daily story meeting. (Photos: Current.)

Who could dispute this? There's a plethora of DuPont-Columbia and RFK awards on walls at NPR's headquarters. Things that "I heard on NPR today" not only spark many dinner-party conversations, but inspire myriad columns in dailies around the country. Outside of the biggest cities, NPR has become the most substantive daily news medium a person can get.

"That credibility," says former NPR News head Bill Buzenberg, "is the most important asset [NPR] has. Anybody who criticizes also has to recognize they do a lot of things right."

When defending against critics, Dvorkin, Siegel, and others point to the size and growth of NPR's audience. The latest figures from NPR show that ME had a weekly cumulative audience in 1997 of 8.3 million, compared to 6.5 million in 1993. ATC had a weekly cume of 7.8 million, compared to 6.6 in 1993. Time-spent-listening and quarter-hour audience figures, however, haven't grown as much or as consistently.

"The audience for these programs has steadily gone up, very strongly," says Siegel. "It's just a fact. It's not as if the programs have developed with utter disregard to overwhelming negative audience opinion about how they're doing."

And it may be that most listeners are far less critical than NPR's naysayers. Says Dvorkin, who came to NPR from the CBC: "With great respect to people in the system--maybe they don't have an outsider's appreciation of how good public radio in the U.S. really is."

NPR can hopefully settle, with forthcoming research, any questions about listener feeling. A recent CPB Program Fund grant will support focus groups, auditorium testing, and surveys, according to NPR research chief Jackie Nixon.

The company last did extensive research a decade ago, when stations were concerned that Morning Edition was sounding "draggy," Nixon says. The results showed that listeners liked Bob Edwards and preferred the program's slower pace to commercial broadcasting's hyperactive one, she says.

Steve Robinson, manager of Nebraska Public Radio, is a harsh critic of Morning Edition, calling it bland and boring. "I'm not going to pooh-pooh that research," he says. "But I go from my gut. The show is deadly. It's only a matter of time before [listeners] move toward the way we're thinking."

Says Glass: "I think by and large most listeners are satisfied." But he, too, wonders. Recently he did a set of appearances in Minnesota, talking to live audiences about the art of radio. "I did a call-in, and talked about, 'Here's what's going wrong at ATC.' And callers said, "You know, now that I've thought about it, you're right, it is kind of boring."

To Fuerst, the danger is that listeners will at some point change their mindset about the value of NPR News. Listeners don't assess what's on the air at any given moment so much as they're in touch with a general sense of whether the programming gives pain or pleasure, he suggests. "If [programs] become boring enough of the time, it's hard to overcome that sense. Because then when you're brilliant, it's like, "Well, that's one good thing...."

Better or worse?

Some people actually see little difference between the NPR of old and NPR today. Says Ross Reynolds, p.d. for KUOW, Seattle: "You could anecdotally point to something [ATC] did five years ago and say the show isn't the same. But you could just as easily point to something such as Teenage Diaries and Radio Expeditions as counter examples."

Others say the NPR of old rather sucked: production values lousy, pieces over-long, too many telephone interviews about events that cried out for first-hand reporting. Susan Stamberg remembers the early days as being marked by fabulous successes, but also "dismal failures."

Siegel thinks people's fond memories are out-and-out distorted. "[The critics] should be subjected to tapes from 20 years ago," he says. "You'll hear programming the way it really was." Once in the 1980s when he headed the news department, Siegel collected tapes from the same day over five years, thinking he'd play them to staff to illustrate NPR's progress. But after listening, "I actually thought it was too embarrassing to share," he says.

Still others wish the shows were different, but vary as to how, or how much. Many people want more surprises--what one correspondent calls the "oddball, quirky experimental raggedness" that she believes used to characterize the shows.

Other wishes pertain to--

• Hosting: It was Marcus' big complaint, and it's shared by Glass, who says he finds listening to the shows "rather dispiriting." Only intermittently, he argues, do hosts come across as human beings.

  Once upon a time, Glass says, it was his job to help ATC hosts do just that. The time period was shortly after Stamberg quit hosting ATC and Siegel replaced her, with Renee Montagne--a period when NPR was more sensitive to the importance of tone, Glass says. "I was hired with instructions, first by Ted Clark, then Neil Conan, to make Robert seem less professorial." Siegel is "way funnier" in person than he is on the air. "He would say these smart, funny things, incredibly acerbic comments, in story meetings." (What did Siegel think of Marcus calling him "terribly earnest" and yet not very interested? "It was I guess better than being hit in the eye with a stick," the host replies.) Conan, then ATC's e.p., and Glass would devise a way for Siegel to repeat the quip or observation. "It often meant creating an interview for him."

  After a while, NPR producers weren't paying enough attention to matters of tone and personality, he says--though not as the result of any conscious decision. "It's more like the mix of personalities changed. It wasn't coming up as priority."

  Glass also criticizes ATC billboards, which the hosts typically write and read. They are too often "the dullest, most pedestrian rundown--they aren't conceived of as teasers, as a finger that's drawing you near."

• Lack of "radio" on the radio: "There is a tendency toward using less and less sound as part of the vocabulary of radio," says Elisabeth Perez Luna, who contributes cultural pieces to NPR and has her own weekly show, Artbeat. "There's more of an approach of print journalism translated into radio."

  The clash between values of radio journalism versus radio art is actually a source of tension inside NPR that Thomas Looker detailed in his book, The Sound and the Story. Jay Kernis, the first e.p. of Morning Edition and now a 60 Minutes producer, hinted at it recently: "I don't think NPR pays enough attention to producers. It hasn't developed enough producers. I was criticized at NPR for paying too much attention to producers. They'd say, 'You're not interested in journalism, you're just interested in production.'" He finds NPR programs today "still very exciting and still very useful," but "if there's anything missing, it's wonderful journalism combined with taking the microphones out and capturing stories as they happen."

  The spirit if not the letter of this particular criticism is shared by someone key at NPR--Dvorkin. Since his arrival, he's repeatedly said the news staff should incorporate more sound elements into pieces. Pity the poor NPR staffer who told Dvorkin that "all that sound just gets in the way of the story." Dvorkin has several times publicly used the comment as an example of wrong-think, demonstrating the need for more radio training inside NPR.

  Dvorkin has taken the discussion about sound out of corridors and put it on the conference room table, says ATC Executive Producer Ellen Weiss. "Jeffrey is really great about raising things in way that doesn't come at point of crisis or reprimand."

"Safe haven" for the risky

Systemwide, there's a strain of optimism that Dvorkin will take the NPR News programs to a new level. Stations are enthusiastic about his plan to expand NPR's domestic bureau system, which will enrich the flow of stories into NPR from outside D.C. Dvorkin says the number of station-contributed stories has already increased 20 percent.

He also wants to expand NPR's presence internationally, and has just staffed a new bureau in New Delhi.

Independent producers--the most conscious and consistent critics of NPR news shows--praise Dvorkin for beginning to open up NPR's acquisition processes. Last year, top indies including Jay Allison and David Isay expressed terrible frustration that it was increasingly difficult to get their stuff on ATC. Believing the problem was an increasing conservatism in ATC's tone and style, they proposed a special slot, a "safe haven" for longer-form, more experimental work. But Weiss was apparently reluctant, and months of e-mail dialogue ensued.

Last month, Weiss sent a memo to independents, inviting their work and committing the show to at least one "radio exploration" per month. "The message we're trying to convey to outside contributors and people inside the building as well, is ... that they can try stuff," says Weiss.

Her effort is having an effect. Isay says the company is much more responsive, in fact a pleasure to work with. "That air of arrogance has dissipated that made people crazy and put you one step out of a mental hospital. It's a different atmosphere." Dealing with NPR will be even more of a pleasure for indies if Dvorkin finds money in his budget to give them a pay raise, as he says he wants to do.

The relationship between indies and NPR is so improved that the Association of Independents in Radio and NPR's news department are co-hosting a schmooze session at the Public Radio Conference this week.

Isay believes all the change is beginning to liven up the programs. ATC in particular seems to be "reclaiming its place as risk-taker and innovator," he says. "I think there was a fear of stuff that was unconventional, and that seems dissipated."

If the question is put directly to him, Dvorkin won't go so far as to acknowledge any need for significant change. "My sense is [the shows] are remarkably fresh," he says. "The fact that we continue to grow audience is a sign of their vitality. ... I think all of the people here are committed to making wonderful radio."

That said, "We have to make sure we don't rest on our laurels and get complacent. We have to serve the audience in important and different ways."

 

To Current's home page

Earlier interview: Q&A with new NPR News chief Jeffrey Dvorkin, January 1998.

Related interview: Q&A with Morning Edition anchor Bob Edwards.

Outside link: NPR Online, include pages about the newsmagazines and Real Audio files of most parts of the programs going back to 1995.

Web page created June 8, 1998
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