The book NPR shifts the story rich in character of public radio, but does not spare the organization “opposite to risk”

Each narrative work is based on those who preceded it. In the case of Steve Oney In the air: triumph and NPR tumultTwo books cited by the author as inspirations shed light on his approach to sprawling and long history of public radio.

One of them is that David McCullough The path between the seas: the creation of the Panama canal, 1870-1914. The other is Adam Nagourney The Times: How the newspaper of the file survived scandal, contempt and the transformation of journalism.

The story of McCullough concerns “major American projects and how Americans do things,” said Oney on an interview. Nagourney’s approach to a contemporary press organization, on the other hand, was published in 2023, but only took readers until 2016. Likewise, Oney has no effort to bring readers to the disorienting era of Donald Trump, when social media, AI and “false news” condemn suppliers of traditional new beaten. The name of Trump is only mentioned once in the 470 -page book, in a past mention of the infamous roast of President Obama of him during the dinner of the correspondents of the White House.

“I decided that my book is a story and that this is not current events,” said the author. “The news is like a river, it flows very quickly…. It is impossible to judge and obtain a prospect at the current moment. »»

On the air, This struck the bookstores this week, jumps chronologically to tell specific stories over the decades. He details the launch of NPR by a young and eccentric news and political drug addicts during the turmoil of the 1970s. Rather than chronologically proceeding, he delivers chapters deeply reported on Ira Glass, who spent 17 years at NPR before creating This American life; long -standing eviction Morning edition anchor bob edwards; And the twin scandals in 2010-2011 of the dismissal of the commentator Juan Williams and a damaging project Veritas exposed.

At the start of the period of 14 years of reporting and writing, Oney said that he had struggled with the way of structuring it. “I ended up thinking:” What if I did it as a shortpoint? ” “He said. “I looked for the big sets that I could really develop.”

An advantage for the structure is that a handful of characters, in particular Edwards, glass and key personalities, notably “La Troika” by Susan Stamberg, Linda Wertheimer and Cokie Roberts, emerge as figures of flesh and blood. This color is more than readers in most stories of large cans in the context of Bureaucratic Washington, DC

Oney is a former staff member of Atlanta Journal-Constution And Los Angeles Magazine that wrote the book And the dead will increase On the lynching of Leo Frank. Like many NPR listeners, he has developed an attachment there while driving in his car. As a newspaper journalist, fresh out of the University of Georgia, he connects during his way to the municipal council or the meetings of the school board.

NPR, he said, “is quite omnipresent. It’s everywhere. A former editor -in -chief of his suggested that the NPR origin story was created. While the CIPs NPR when he won an agreement with an imprint by Simon & Schuster left an impression with their blessing, the management teams have changed several times on the publication. After Uri Berliner, a long -standing editor -in -chief of companies at the NPR, published a scathing criticism in 2023 of what he called the evacuation of the organization on the political left and the abandonment of the collection of news, many anchors and contemporary journalists refused to speak to Oney.

The author says that Berliner’s criticism “had a lot of validity”, although he said that NPR work is “incredible at the moment”, and his coverage of Trump’s first weeks according to “and a million other things were superb”.

As On the antenna Detail documents, however, NPR have always been “opposed to risk”. When the Gulf War broke out in 1990, many staff members resisted to cover it, which considered him a jingoisical exercise unfit for media participation. Even on the morning of September 11, Edwards had to be cajolé by performing pre-tapped segments with living stories of the greatest loss of life in the hands of a foreign enemy since Pearl Harbor day.

“If I directed NPR, I would run full with new forms of narration,” said Oney about the challenge of today’s management.

The task faced with all inherited media is intimidating, conceded Oney. The newspapers, news from television and radio once had a cachet, he noted. “It was not the assimilated and desperate constituencies that they are today. … Everyone feels the same pain.

Written America, he said, “is going through a societal crisis that we have not seen since the start of the industrial revolution”. The idea that “organization can be the information center – this idea is now on the decline”.

Despite this, NPR remains a “noble and precious business,” said Oney. “Without that, we become a kind of Babel tower speaking in different languages ​​… I always believe in the mission.”