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Feed“He just didn’t have the luck, I guess.”
The words were spoken by a grandfather, referring to a grandson’s problems with catching fish, but the discussion was happening in a much larger and more serious context. The young man was also a young Marine, killed last month in Afghanistan. He was a Native American from Alaska whose grandparents had been sending him care packages of smoked salmon and dried moose meat.
Every morning I listen to NPR on the way to work, and every morning I hear stories like this. They’re not always about war, but they are always riveting, entertaining, or fascinating, depending on the subject matter. They call stories like this “driveway moments,” but I think of them as “do I have Kleenex?” or “I hope the people in that car don’t think I’m crazy for laughing to myself” moments.
I don’t have those moments listening to commercial talk radio or watching network news, and I rarely am affected that way by stuff I read in the newspaper.
NPR seems to work. It gives you the stories behind the news, it gives you the human interest, it goes into depth way beyond most other mainstream media outlets. I knew about the Fort Hood shootings, but it became real yesterday when I listened to the first-hand account from a sergeant who was shot 4 times. Either before or after that story, there was a local segment with 4 interviews and clips from a valuable local education project, Squeaky Wheel’s Youth Media Institute—that I doubt 2,4, or 7 would have bothered with, much less WBEN. And the WNED morning host, Jay Moran, seemed truly interested in the program.
Public radio and TV receives partial government agency funding, as we all know. As we also all know, newspapers, TV stations, and radio stations are in increasing financial difficulty. We talked about that a couple weeks ago at our “Journalism on the Brink” panel. If we are looking for a model that would keep professional and responsible journalism alive, a model that includes government support seems to work—at least it has for NPR. Sure, there have been some lay-offs—nobody’s recession-proof—and we have to put up with the pledge drives, but for me, the intelligent communication is worth it.
