Twenty years ago I was tasked with cataloging a warehouse of carburetors. It was my first photography job and involved taking clearly identifiable carburetor portraits, matching them with their respective part numbers, and assembling the lot into a homemade scrapbook. Picture a family photo album, Monster Garage style. Like any novice, my results were mixed but generally just shy of acceptable. My employers very grudgingly agreed to pay for a couple of hours of training from a local professional photographer. An already weary, but still impressionable 18 year old, I didn’t know that my life and perception of the world was about to change.
Entering the studio of the man who would become my friend and mentor was a sensory overloading experience. Chaotic clusters of equipment slowly emerged into discernible pieces of photo gear, although few of the names were familiar. Norman strobes (Mmm…), various flags, gobos, scrims, fingers, and the homemade light tent my new friend would show me how to assemble littered the working area. The close-quartered warehouse wore a perfume of dust and photofinishing chemistry, earthy and pungent with the vinegary scent of fixer. It’s an aroma I still dearly love. But of all there was to see, smell, and touch that day, what I heard on the radio would leave a bigger imprint.
It wasn’t a particular song I heard, but rather the overall concentration of quality programming. During many subsequent visits I was treated to classical, jazz, folk, talk, and news with substance — unlike the sausage the 6:00 meat grinder churned out over television airwaves. My friend always owned up to being an old hippie. We discussed life, the economy, and politics freely. Listening to his shop radio in that cozy studio, I forged opinions that I still hold true.
The radio station playing that fateful day… I honestly don’t remember. It was a college station, but it was also an NPR affiliate. National Public Radio, the network of free speech loving, thinking men and women everywhere. I may have been aware of NPR before then, but hours spent learning about photography and life against the gentle backdrop of sane voices in an insane world had an indelible effect. Twenty years later, whenever I find myself in a strange city, I automatically troll the bottom of the FM dial. In all but the most remote locales I’m usually rewarded with the dulcet tones of Carl Kasell, Robert Seagull, or Renee Montagne. Other times I’m lulled by the romantic wash of a string section, or the atonal musings of a famous sax player.
I’ve lived through NPR’s changes as Capitol Hill bandits tried to starve its funding, and failing that mission tried to reinterpret its focus to serve the currently hawkish mainstream right. It’s not a perfect network and all of its journalists aren’t on par with the previously mentioned three. Neither is its programming totally bias free. But you’re likely to hear more of the story and be able to reach your own conclusions listening to NPR. And after two decades, I’ve recently codified exactly why I still listen.
Mainstream news mostly tells what happened. NPR offers 360 degree insight into why it happened, and additionally gives an in-depth look at future ramifications. But the best testament to NPR’s relevance is the fact that I often listen to newscasts that are a week or two old! Televised evening news goes stale before the broadcast is through.
Here’s looking forward to the next 20 years of music, news, intelligent talk, and wacky game shows. NPR, Keep proving to the world that talk isn’t cheap and gray matter matters.