NPR-No Pleasure, Really

I keep waiting for the day when 7 out of 10 people will NOT be impressed by the fact that once upon a time, before the Earth's crust had cooled, I used to work in this building. Those 3 simple letters used to produce such a sense of awe and respect whenever I invoked them, I guess I got a little drunk on the Kool-Aid myself.

Whenever people ask me what working at National Public Radio was like, I often respond with two very distinct impressions. First, it was and remains the smartest place I've ever worked. Nine out of 10 people in this building are smart. Extremely smart. Now, I might not have liked some of them for a whole constellation of reasons, but everybody, including the security guards sitting at the reception desk, was freakin' smart!

Seriously, though, what that means is that out of all the newsrooms I've worked in, I was never so surrounded by as many curious, inquisitive, intellectually rigorous people. You could sit in a meeting for a couple of hours at NPR just discussing the whys and wherefores of a particular story, and whether it was worth doing, and still come out feeling there was some territory left to explore, and with no final decision. But whenever that decision was made, you best believe it was the right one.

I started out at NPR in August 1998, working on the Science Desk. I have never worked with a more hilariously deranged group of people! And most of them had advanced university degrees! Talk about intimidation, at first anyway. But I was a seasoned newspaper reporter with a deep voice, and an interest in child well-being and health issues, and that's how I got the job. With my typical "can do" spirit, I jumped in with both feet. And I had a lot of fun working for NPR's Science Desk. Especially on Friday afternoons, when the impromptu bar was opened at somebody's cubicle.

But a few months after starting, I "heard through the grapevine" that one of my Science Desk colleagues was openly objecting to my presence there, because he felt I'd been hired for no other reason than my skin color. This was in the Fall of 1998. And this brings me to my second major impression of my experience at NPR:

It was one of the most stubbornly resistant cliques of white, middle-upper middle class privilege I have ever encountered. (Strap yourself in, y'all...remember, I done TOLE you 2011 is my year to say what I mean and mean what I say!) Now, let me parse that statement carefully, so as not to give the wrong impression. When I use the term "white, middle/upper middle class privilege," I do NOT mean to suggest that there is an overt pattern of racist exclusion, or formalized structures that result in people of color getting paid less or being openly ill-treated. Rather, the privilege I refer to is that the people who run NPR by and large reserve for themselves the inalienable right to interpret the world, and what is newsworthy, based on how THEY view it, and how people who look like them, sound like them, and live in their neighborhoods or similar ones, view the world.

Don't get me wrong: that world view is just as valid as any other. It's just limited. It isn't the same as mine, or the Latina living in the Bronx, or the Asian guy in San Francisco's Chinatown. So the question becomes, do you want to produce programming that sounds like, and appeals to, mostly people who look like you, sound like you, think like you, and experience the world through your lens, or do you want to broaden your range?

That's the question legions of people have asked about NPR through the years. People who love NPR ADORE it, and I'm not questioning the quality of its content. What I'm saying is that the people who have sampled NPR and rejected it, or who've heard about it but never looked into it, or who have never even heard of it, constitute a significant percentage of the populace. I'm not just basing that on skin color; millions of young people think NPR is for old people. Lots of rural folk think NPR is for snobby, citified elitists. People in various ethnic groups feel the programming has absolutely no content that reflects their experience.

The good news for NPR is that the die-hard core audience of people who adore the network is largely well-educated, affluent and influential. With demographics like that, who'd want to risk fiddling around with content? Well, funny you should ask that, because that brings me to the main reason I'm writing this blogpost--I recently learned that NPR's Senior Vice President for News, a woman named Ellen Weiss, "resigned" last week. In case you are among those people who aren't slavishly devoted to NPR, Ellen's gone because she was the person who fired a...ahem..."journalist" named Juan Williams for saying that he gets nervous whenever he's in an airport with people wearing Muslim garb. Oh, and he said it during his extracurricular commentator stint at the rabidly conservative Fox News Network. Oh, and one MORE thing...she fired him over the phone.

Now, I'm not gonna get into the whole rigamarole around the Juan Williams/NPR/Fox News shitstorm. You may have already deduced what I think about Juan Williams AND Fox News, based on that last paragraph. But I mention it because the way Ellen Weiss handled that incident does such a terrific job of summing up NPR's Diversity Strategy. First, in my association with the network, which consisted of part-and full-time stints off and on over a 9-year period, I saw very few attempts to "grow their own" when it came to internal efforts to change the culture and make its' sound and programming more diverse. Diversity was attempted by hiring a marquee-named person of color and then pointing to him or her and shouting, "See?? We are oh-so-diverse!"

For example, Tavis Smiley got hired, but his show was targeted to public radio stations with largely black audiences. I don't believe it was ever carried on the main network. When he didn't work out, along comes Ed Gordon, formerly of BET. He eventually exited stage left. Journalist and commentator Farai Chideya landed a gig, but her show got axed last year. Two marquee names remain--Michelle Martin of "Tell Me More," and Michelle Norris, a co-anchor of "All Things Considered."

(If I were a complete cynic, I'd even read something into THOSE hires. "Make sure your two black female stars have the same first name, so you'll never be accused of thinking they all look alike." But then, I'm not a complete cynic...much.)

You might say at this point that the fact that I was hired contradicts that point, but then I'd reply with the bottom line reality that for my entire time as a reporter with the network, I was told my voice just didn't make the grade. Literally everywhere else in the Universe I travel, people comment on my rich vocal timbre, but at NPR it was rubbish. Now, I know that just because a person has a deep voice doesn't necessarily make them broadcast material, and I also admit that it took me years to relax and try to be conversational in my delivery. But that's not what they were saying.

My voice was not a fit at NPR because it has too much bass in it. Too much African bass. I don't sound like Mara Liasson, or Jennifer Ludden, or Andrea Seabrook. Or like anyone who lives near, or looks like, the people who run NPR. And in their minds, that would be an affront to the core audience. It doesn't fit into the NPR signature sound.

Again, I am not suggesting racist intent here, and I need to make that clear. Other than the one or two folks who resented me being there early on, I never experienced overt racism while working at NPR. Ever. But as someone commented on the National Association of Black Journalists blog following Ellen Weiss's departure, it's as if NPR simply just doesn't know what to DO with people of color! All those brilliant intellects become flummoxed at the prospect of including a different worldview at the table. Which led to the Public Relations DEBACLE of the Juan Williams firing, which any 9 year old who's watched enough TV could have advised Ellen that you probably should give the guy, like, a warning first, or at least have him come in for, like, a meeting before you fire him, because, like, he's black, and, like, kinda famous, right? And, like, there are very few black people in your office and, like, you don't wanna make people think you don't like black people, do you????

But in what was just the latest in a series of ham-fisted moves involving employees of color, Ellen just simply didn't know what to do about the "Juan Problem," and chose the most expedient way of removing it. After all, she had lots of other important things on her plate. See, you have to understand a bit about a woman like Ellen. She's about my age, but graduated from Smith College (which incidentally, I received a financial aid package offer from back in the Stone Age, but realized I didn't want to go to an all girls' school, and couldn't afford it anyway. And then promptly decided to go to Northwestern University, which I also couldn't afford. Go figure.)

Ellen started working at NPR as an intern straight out of college, and I'm betting she intended to retire from there 10 or 15 years from now. And even those people who may be somewhere humming "Ding, dong the Witch is dead..." right about now would concede there are few more single-minded, totally focused, hard-working and driven people on the face of the Earth than Ellen Weiss. They would laud her perseverance, and the fact that she achieved the goal she articulated when she started, to one day run the whole kit and caboodle.

But they would also say that the same single-minded focus was what may have ultimately contributed to her downfall. Ellen Weiss spent so much energy creating a signature philosophy and sound and culture and ethos at NPR, that there was no time or energy left to consider how it might be shaped to reflect the larger society. Recognizing and acknowledging the need for people who don't look like you, or live near you, or sound like you to be a part of the mix would divert that focus. Staffing that newsroom with said people would require you to move outside of your interpersonal comfort zone, to maybe consider programming content that holds absolutely no interest to you. In other words, becoming the Big Kahuna at NPR was more about Ellen Weiss's personal goal and vision instead of creating a more inclusive newsroom and product, in my opinion. That's fine, I suppose, but once again, her departure proves that mindset quite frequently has a expiration date.

Bottom line: When there are half as many people of color in NPR's Newsroom as there are in NPR's Mailroom, or in the IT Department, I'll believe they're getting serious about diversity. Period.

Did I forget to mention here that I LOVE NPR?? And that I have many friends who are still there, and that I have a deep and abiding reservoir of respect for the work that is produced there? That said, I also remember being on assignment once in Atlanta, and having a black public official tell me that while she listened to NPR all the time, she couldn't help noticing the dearth of black voices on the network. For some reason I had a bit of the Devil in me that day, and I shared with her that in some circles (namely, my brain), NPR stood for, "Negro, PLEASE Run! Don't walk outta there, RUN!"

That woman laughed for a good 10 minutes straight! I bet she's still telling people what I said, especially lately. Thing is, these days, when I think of all the wasted potential and bad press and glacial efforts at diversity at NPR, I find I derive "No Pleasure, Really."