[grc] NPR Speak dissed in NY Times

[Maria Gilardin]

This has become a great exchange!
There is one thing this article omits. The voice of the underwriting 
credits on NPR.
They have recently become so obsequious and pandering that they make me 
physically ill.
And the worst for me is that they are now done in a woman's voice.
Does it anger you too to hear "Chipotle" in that solicitous inflection --
or the salacious "Think about it" in their fracking commercials?
Maria

Maria Gilardin/TUC Radio
PO Box 44/Calpella, CA, 95418
(707) 463-2654
http://www.tucradio.org

On 11/2/2015 5:40 PM, Frieda Werden wrote:
> Kate Jessica Raphael called attention to this article, in KPFA's Women's
> Magazine, and went on to share it on Facebook:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/fashion/npr-voice-has-taken-over-the-airwaves.html
>
> When I moved to Canada in 2002, I found a big contrast between the
> relatively conversational and heartfelt way people spoke on CBC and what I
> heard as a very abrupt, choppy, and not very inflected way of speaking on
> NPR.  I much preferred the CBC.
>
> Now, after 10 years of Conservative pressure on CBC radio - serious budget
> cuts, consequent layoffs and reductions in new programming - CBC radio's
> role as daylong friend of the listener has been destroyed. There are
> endless repetitions, and none of the gentle winding-down to more relaxed
> material at the end of the day that used to lead you to bedtime.
> Everything is all mixed up, and people on the air have been sounding pretty
> stressed.  Possibly this will be reversed or at least improved under the
> new government.
>
> Meanwhile, I've spent a fair amount of time in the US recently and started
> to listen to NPR again, including online - mostly WAMU and WUNC.
>
> What the author of the NYT article refers to as NPR-speak is, he says, the
> trend to imitate Ira Glass.  I  have never even heard a whole episode of
> This American Life, just a few snippets; but the difference in NPR today
> doesn't sound like this author's description to me.  What I noticed was
> that  NPR news style, especially, seems more natural-sounding, a bit more
> expressive and less grumpy.
>
> The article says the shift is due to "more amateurs in broadcasting," but I
> would hazard that it's due to more professionals in broadcasting, but from
> more regions of the country.  I remember when I was at NPR in the early
> '80s, a job came open for a Midwest regional editor and someone told me
> that I wouldn't want that job because it consisted of rejecting and
> discouraging contributors from outside the major cities of the east and
> west.  Now I'm hearing deeply informative and well produced news features
> from various parts of the country - not amateur at all, in my opinion.
>
> The change may well be attributable to a few decades of a different funding
> model for NPR.  Until about a year after I worked there, NPR got its money
> directly from CPB.  In 1984, when I started covering public broadcasting
> for Current, CPB was putting a lot of pressure on NPR, and so NPR changed
> its funding model - having the CPB money go to member stations, in the form
> of grants for national programming - national programming meaning either
> programming they acquired from NPR or programming they produced themselves
> for distribution.
>
> This broadened the prospects for more producers in various parts of the
> country to be paid for production.  30 years on, that seems to have made a
> difference.
>
> I'm wondering if there is any argument to be made for community stations
> that are losing their CPB grants, if they contribute to national programs.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Frieda Werden, Series Producer
> WINGS: Women's International News Gathering Service www.wings.org
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