Bob Collins
NPR’s Bob Mondello took and tweeted this photo of the All Things Considered staff and retiring host Robert Siegel. It is packed with so many more than 1,000 words. This picture, however, comes with words. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Tag: NPR
Radio people of a certain age get accustomed to departures. It’s the nature of the business. Long before the “gig economy” became a thing, radio was one giant gig economy. People come, people go, the institution moves on as if they’d never been there at all. Read more →
Listeners to a Story Corps episode on NPR about what happened when a man met the imprisoned man who killed his son in a shooting spree on a Western Massachusetts campus apparently noticed the same thing about the episode that I did when I wrote about it the day it aired: There was a lot left out. Read more →
Mary Louise Kelly, who made a name for herself weeks ago with a grilling of her boss in the wake of a sexual misconduct scandal, is the new anchor of NPR’s All Things Considered. Read more →
It’s almost as if NPR’s standards & practices boss had Minnesota newswriters in mind when he issued his annual memo today on what not to say when telling stories about the weather. Read more →
Since the story of Michael Oreskes surfaced last week, I’ve been waiting for NPR’s ombudsman to check in with an assessment of how NPR covered the story of sexual harassment allegations against the newsroom boss, who has since been fired. Today, Elizabeth Jensen did.
The unusual collision of a radio network’s management and a radio network’s newsroom was heard nationwide on Wednesday when NPR CEO Jarl Mohn was grilled by one of his network’s reporters — Mary Louise Kelly — on why NPR fired its head of news only after the Washington Post blew the whistle on Michael Oreskes’ behavior 20 years ago at the New York Times, when he accosted two women in separate incidents.
It was an unusual, and likely uncomfortable, few minutes as Kelly interrogated her boss. It was unusual for the CEO of an organization to be willing to be grilled so publicly. Read more →
There’s little chance that Ken Stern, who once headed NPR as its CEO, actually knew much about the news process, the decisions, the writing, the political leanings of its staff, and maybe even the names of a large number of people who worked for him. Read more →
There was a forehead-slapping moment last week when NPR’s Morning Edition interviewed one of its reporters about Facebook’s ad-targeting program which allowed advertisers to target anti-Semitics in the audience. Read more →
Last week, many of NPR’s most well-known names pulled the curtain on life at the public radio institution, revealing poor morale among newspeople.
With the new deal, however, silence about what’s in it is the order of the day. Read more →
NPR has been reluctant to use the word ‘lie’ when describing misstatements from the Trump administration. So it didn’t escape notice this week when an NPR reporter used it. Read more →
The current contract between NPR and the SAG-AFTRA union ended at the close of last month and employees agreed to an extension while talks on a new contract continue. The extension runs out tomorrow night. Read more →
There’s been a really great hashtag campaign on Twitter this week (#WeMakeNPR) as the people who work at NPR tweet about what they do and how it is they came to do it. For many people, radio is a voice, but the reality is the heart and soul of a radio network and radio station Read more →
Howard Husock doesn’t have a lot of friends on the CPB board, especially after his March anti-public media op-ed in the Washington Post, which prompted another CPB member to call him ‘an embarrassment.’ Read more →
NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep had to defend his network’s choice to interview Iowa Rep. Steve King today. King, who has regularly made racist comments that play well in his blood-red district — where his challenger dropped out of the race last week, citing death threats — is possibly the most extreme of the Read more →