As you may have heard, our fiscal year is wrapping up so we’re doing a short fund drive. Your contribution will help keep your favorite public radio programs on the air.
But that’s not all!
We’re now offering a special Where We Live mug! It was designed by our friend Constanza Gowen-Segovia and we’re pretty darn happy with it. The white mug features our relatively new logo that was designed by Cummings & Good and it has a sketch of our fearless leader on the other side, which was done up by Constanza. We’re offering this for a contribution to WNPR at the $65 level.
We’re offering this mug for a $65 contribution to WNPR.
We’re looking forward to drinking out of this mug while in meetings with JD in real life. You can drink out of it too by calling 1-800-584-2788 or visiting WNPR.org.
by John Dankosky – WNPR news is featured in the latest edition of Current, the news magazine about public radio. The article is about how stations are luring new audiences by innovating with news and entertainment program. I talked to reporter Karen Everhart about how our hiring of Jeff Cohen from The Hartford Courant has helped to change our newsroom atmosphere, and led to more in-depth reporting about the city of Hartford.
Here’s some of what Current wrote about my presentation at the Public Radio Program Directors conference in Denver:
“Newspaper reporters understand that doing the news means a lot of what you do doesn’t go anywhere.” he said. Smaller staffs of public radio newsrooms don’t have that flexibility. “If we spend an hour on radio, something will be done with it — even if it doesn’t go anywhere.”
Cohen’s city-beat experience helped to reshape WNPR’s coverage of minority communities, bringing on newsmakers and other sources who hadn’t been heard from previously. “We have spent too long talking about the problems of our city and not talking with the people of our cities,” Dankosky said. Taking more time to talk to people from those communities is part of pubradio’s mission.
This is a bit of her story, told by Richman on his website:
Photo by Melikhaya Mpumela - Thembi Ngubane died at the age of 24. She was 19 when she was given a tape recorder to make an audio diary of her struggle to live with AIDS.
We first met Thembi when she was 19 and living in one of the largest townships in South Africa. We were struck by her candor, sense of humor and her courage. She was willing to speak out about having AIDS at a time when few South Africans were willing to say, “I have AIDS.” Thembi carried a tape recorder from 2004 to 2005 to document her life. Her story aired on National Public Radio in the U.S., and in the U.K., Australia and Canada, reaching more than 50 million people.
Thembi then traveled to the United States in 2006 to present her story. In 2007, Thembi’s AIDS Diary was heard in South Africa for the first time – in English, Xhosa and Zulu. Thembi and Radio Diaries toured South Africa, presenting her story at high schools, universities, community clinics, Constitution Hill, and Parliament.
Her story eventually reached millions and she became a spokesperson traveling around the world to present her story.
On June 5th, 2009, Thembi died of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. She was 24. She leaves her daughter, Onwabo, her boyfriend Melikhaya, her mother, brother and sisters. She is greatly missed.
The loving obit Richman produced for NPR can be heard here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105017959. He told me that this was “the most important project I’ve ever worked on.” But, while the recordings of her life were universally praised for their power and intimacy, Richman said that Thembi truly shined brightest when she went on tour, delivering her message to teens, not much younger than her. ”It’s amazing to be able to reach millions of people on the radio, and it’s amazing to be able to reach 50 people in a high school class. And she was able to do both,” he told me.
In 2006, we presented some of this story on Where We Live, on a program where I interviewed another person touched by Thembi, Nicolas de Torrente, the executive director of Doctors Without Borders. His organization was credited with providing the antiretroviral drugs that extended, but couldn’t save her life.
I highly encourage you to listen to her story, as she tells it. There is no better way to learn about what it’s like to be young. To be in love. To be caring for a child. And, to be living with AIDS.
For more about 15 years of Radio Diaries, see the video below:
