love, love, love NPR! It's my primary news source and I have great respect for the staff and the excellent, fairly balanced work they do.
This book told the fascinating history of NPR, which debuted in the earlys, I read this book on my Kindle and it most definitely was not meant to be read on a Kindle.
The layout was awful, with headlines wrapping around to the next sentence and the next page breaking words in half, using different unappealing typefaces in different sizes.
The photos were so tiny, I would need a magnifying glass to see them, The book featured essays by NPR reporters but quite often, I wasn't sure who was reporting the story I was reading.
They also included some people and didn't include others, For example, they included the story of Bob Edwards' sudden replacement, which angered many people, but then other than a brief mention of what happened, they don't go into detail about why Juan Williams was terminated.
I know Diane Rehm's show isn't officially produced by NPR, although it's broadcast on NPR, but they mention other shows not produced by NPR, but are part of NPR's schedule, such as Car Talk or This American Life.
How could they have left out Diane Rehm Or Terry Gross I'm sure they had their reasons, but they're such big names, they seemed like major omissions to me.
But, the creation and history of NPR is fascinating, Many of the founders, or early reporters for NPR, are still there today! When NPR was started up, a conscious decision was made to include as many female as male reporters.
That's still evident today. This book was somewhat of a disappointment to me, so I think I will try listening to some of the NPR audio books.
That is, after all, their medium! This is pretty much the autobiography of National Public Radio, It is really a collection of short memoirs from many NPR employees along with a few transcripts from broadcasts, The most interesting parts to me were those covering the time period before I ever began to listen, The stories from days of splicing together tape seconds before it went on air give interesting, behindthescenes views of life in the early days of NPR.
I liked reading about the birth and evolution of All Songs Considered as well, Interesting infoI appreciated the variety of ways that information was distributed transcripts, pics, etc, . I wonder if this book were published in a year's time instead of now if the funding controversy would have been included.
This is always how I prefer to read history books: from the perspective, and in the words, of the people who were there.
"This is NPR" is organized as a series of essays, excerpts from actual broadcasts, and charts and photographs illustrating the rise over the last forty years of the inspired, inspiring programming millions of people rely on for their news and information.
From harrowing stories of journalists who were reporting from somewhere Iraq and China come first to mind when they came under attack of experienced massive natural disasters, to funny, silly stories about the NPR Relay Race inTeam name sampling: Greased Cheetahs Consider our Dust, Jerks, I got what felt like a thorough, personable walk through one of the best things the U.
S. of A. has going for its radio programming, I SUPPOSE that's arguable, but I'm pretty much not going to be convinced otherwise,
I should also mention that the typography is superstylish, and, SWOON, the book utilizes a very similar robin'seggandtangerine color scheme to theth edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, which.
. . matters a lot to me,
And now it shouldn't surprise you at all that I am EXACTLY the kind of person who checks books about NPR out from the library and reads them in her spare time.
Heh. It's a fine life, carrying the banner, I enjoyed learning more of the history of NPR, even if the way it was presented seemed rather disjointed, The old photos were great, and it's always kind of neat to put faces to people you only hear day in and day out.
Various anecdotes from producers, reporters, and managers added to the overall story, but the format of pull stories on every other page made my eyes jump, and I wasn't sure what to read first.
But after learning how shows were scrapped together at the last minute and to see how far NPR has come inyears, it reaffirms my belief that public radio is VITAL to the larger media landscape.
I've been an NPR fan for all of my adult life,so reading this book felt like getting in touch with a lot of old friends.
It was great to see the faces, hear the voices, be told the backstories behind many shows, learn about the successes and failures, how the programs are put together, how technology has profoundly changed radio, how reporters have put their lives on the line in wartorn countries.
An amazing book! As a bonus, there was a CD of a few clips from the pastyears, I do wish the CD was much longer,years of US history, through the lens of NPR, Come for the photos of NPR when they were young, stay for some interesting behindthescenes anecdotes, To preface this, this is a review of the audio recordings, This was hard to rate, It was a confusing mix of emotions, and a crazy run through history, almost like a radio recordedforest gump tale.
Parts of it were small, seemingly meaningless however I think those quiet moments of joy, those moments of tender laughter, were important to give weight to the heaviness of some of the other content.
The frontline account of the war protests in thes were very disturbing, The accounts of the challenger disaster were disheartening, The most moving, probably the accounts of wartorn Rwanda, brought me to tears, But there was hope in the midst of all this too: hope from the Velvet revolution in Prague, Hope in the peace that has come to the Balkans, Hope even for people in the Sudan and Afghanistan, I think this time capsule of our modern history is important, and while I think they could have gone a little deeper into some topics I was surprised the/story felt almost abrupt I cannot say this was not good when my main complaint was that it left me wanting more.
Man, I love NPR. A fun book for any NPR fan and should be read by those who don't know NPR,
NPR grew over my adult life, This book gave me a "Forrest Gump" feeling, because I remembered so much of what they the NPR names I've always known tell about in the book.
Hey, I always assumed that the people on NPR must have "faces for radio" maybe worse after all, PBS personalities aren't cute! But the NPR personalities, besides having great voices and memorable names, are goodlooking.
Who knew
I took a long time to read this book because it was my treat, Anyone giving up their cup of Starbucks could replace it with a few pages a day of "This is NPR" and not miss the caffeine! I'm not sure if most people read this cover to cover, as it does seem to be a coffee table book more appropriate for brief glances andpage reading stints.
It took me a year or so of off and on reading before picking it up and plowing through the lastpages or so.
This may have been a mistake, as I grew tired of the formulaic half page contributions devoured in large chunks.
That said, I think that the This Is NPR's content is really solid and fairly encapsulates the history of NPR.
It's written from an insider's position which makes me question whether there are more incidents of ruffled feathers ala Bob Edwards that didn't make it into the mostly pleasant account of the storied public radio conglomerate.
But what a joy to see pictures of the names I've come to know so well over the radio!
Perhaps my overarching criticism is that I'd like to see a comprehensive history of any one of the many programs featured here.
The tidbits are tantalizing, but often seemed to offer me a summary of what I already knew about familiar shows.
Nevertheless, worthy of a read by any NPR fan young or old just try and break it into smaller chunks.
If I could, I'd split my for regular listeners and fans of NPRfor those who don't listen to NPR or aren't otherwise familiar with them.
The book chronicles the highlights of the firstyears of NPR's existence up throughor so, It centers on the greatest historical events of those years and NPR's role in bringing those stories to its listeners.
At times the essays run to a modest tooting of NPR's own hornhow they were there first, told the story best, succeeded against all odds and survived personal dangers and horrors.
Other essays have a "little engine that could" themeespecially the early years when no one knew what NPR was about, they ran on a shoestring budget, and somehow got the story first, or told it best, and did it with subpar equipment and facilities and an undermanned news department.
That said, for NPR fans, this is a nice encapsulation of their growth and increasing role in the national and international news business.
There are some nice reminiscences of NPR pioneers and "legends" like Susan Stamberg, Bob Edwards, Cokie Roberts, and Nina Totenberg.
We hear the story behind the story in many cases of reporters risking their lives in places like Iraq and Afghanistan during the wars there.
Note: I read the kindle version and some of the photos require you to enlarge the font in order to see them clearly.
posted this on facebook today
Finished listening to NPR audio cd The firstyears and parts of the last cd had me near tears with moving reporting.
But I also got some laughs out of this story which I'd heard about but never heard sitelink npr. org/templates/story/st
Here's a link to other NPR Hoaxes/April fools story
can't find the one i most want to find and share though the pickle ranch: family run sitelink npr. org/seriesrep
I love NPR , as I've talked about here sitelink newsvine. com/news/ and here,sitelink newsvine. com/news/
and am really enjoying this audiobook collecting some of its best and most memorable stories
one of the stories is by John Burnett who i interviewed here
sitelink newsvine. com/news/ As an NPR fan, I enjoyed reading some of the backstory of the organization's founding and growth, Some sections were more interesting than others, Reading transcripts of some of the news stories was a bit tedious, The tone was quite selfcongratulatory overall, but I enjoyed the sections written by various hosts, It's worth a skim for NPR fans, I wanted to love this but I just liked it, The idea was to put together an anecdotal history of National Public Radio with short essays and remembrances from journalists and staff, but the book needed more shaping.
The chapters are organized by decade and highlight major news events and NPR milestones, I was surprised that/got only a few pages, and the Challenger and some other major news events are not even mentioned.
A large section is devoted to NPR's coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,
The book also could have been improved with some editing, The section about "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," refers to the "lightening round, " Twice. Lots of misspellings and other typographical errors, The stories about the scrappy reporters were interesting but I would have preferred fewer selfreferences to scrappiness, I also am surprised at the mediocre writing considering this is a book about journalists,
The book only talks about NPR, so many shows that come from PRI and other organizations do not get a
mention.
The exception is "This American Life," which NPR refused to buy, Oops.
All that said, this is a fun book for NPR junkies I would just skim it for the good stuff.
The book came with a CD of a few historic broadcasts and I particularly appreciated the very first news report from All Things Considered, dated May,, the day I was born.
While I loved everything in this book, my main complaint is that there isn't enough of it, It's the entire history of NPR compressed into less thanpages filled with photos and other graphics, This all is organized well and looks terrific, but I felt like I was reading a Wikipedia article about the history of NPR a wellwritten one, to be sure, but it was terribly brief nonetheless.
I want to be clear everything about this book is awesome, There's just not enough of it, Good, in a "I'manNPRnerd" and enjoyed the different perspective on historical events from the lastyears, Definitely one from which I was easily distracted, though, This book is a series of smaller recollections by NPR staff and contributors put together into a brief history of the National Public Radio station.
This isn't a complete history, and it isn't meant to be, but the stories are spread out through the hears from the's to the present and paint a fairly representative picture of NPRs evolution over the years.
The last part of the book with the business plans for the present and future weren't quite as interesting to me as the behind the scenes stories of how the stories we heard on NPR made it to the airwaves.
An excellent look at an excellent news outfit, I'm a fan of the book and NPR, This was a history of NPR, which sounds like a boring topic, but instead of being discursive, it is anecdotal, with reporters, administrators, and guests chipping in to tell theirpage stories.
A few transcripts from episodes are included, as are lots of photos, It's nice to see what those voices really look like, This was a gift from a dear friend who in so many ways is very bright but she does NOT listen to NPR National Public Radio I know it is incomprehensible.
However I do so I just loved this book, It is like a 'coffee table' book although not as large but it's one to browse through it also comes with a CD which I did not listen to.
The best thing about this book are what I learned about NPR National Public Radio like the following: I finally got to see what all the broadcasters looked like and they looked nothing like I imagined them I was surprised to discover how many of these same broadcasters were with NPR National Public Radio from the the very beginning and are still working there it must be a wonderful working environment and finally the stories of war they are always hard to listen to and aren't any easier to read.
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