Near Two Harbors, 34 structures burned and Highway 61 closed; in Crow Wing County, a 1,600-acre fire sparked evacuations

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

Deep in the recesses of the World Headquarters of NewsCut, there is a picture on a wall of the original employees of Minnesota Public Radio. Young Garrison Keillor, Michael Barone, and Gary Eichten standing with three others.

All of them were men. That's the way radio was back then. Men. It wasn't a place for diversity.

As the then-youngsters become today's old-timers, a lot of the history of the medium is being lost, which is why 

today's history lesson from the public radio newspaper Current

It recalls the role that these three women -- Nina Totenberg, Linda Wertheimer, and Cokie Roberts -- played as pioneers, staking out the turf on which women belonged.

"To listen to NPR today -- and really for most of its 47 years -- is to listen to the voices of women," Jason Loviglio, of the University of Maryland, writes. Since All Things Considered debuted, the NPR "sound" has been the sound of women.

Loviglio contends the reason public radio sounds liberal is because it sounds diverse.

"Public radio’s many accents and dialects represent hard-fought battles that seem to be under attack with a bracingly renewed sense of vigor," he writes. "And with the revanchist white nationalism and toxic masculinity of the moment, we are reminded of the historical struggles required for diverse voices to reach the airwaves and the precarious nature of those victories. But active constructive participation going forward may require not just new voices but new words, as well."

NewsCut

Bob Collins

Author

Deep in the recesses of the World Headquarters of NewsCut, there is a picture on a wall of the original employees of Minnesota Public Radio. Young Garrison Keillor, Michael Barone, and Gary Eichten standing with three others.

All of them were men. That's the way radio was back then. Men. It wasn't a place for diversity.

Women gave public radio its ‘sound’

Go Deeper.

Like this?

News you can use in your inbox