NPR The Trials and Triumphs of National Public Radio

NPR: The Trials and Triumphs of National Public Radio by Michael McCauley
English | July 14, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0231121601 | 216 pages | PDF | 3,9 MB
Any history of a large corporation must cover finances and bureaucracy to some degree, but McCauley's account of NPR's past rarely ventures beyond these subjects. The author, who worked in radio for 15 years and is now a communications professor at the University of Maine, says he wanted to understand what makes NPR appeal to listeners, but rather than offering background on its acclaimed programming or talented journalists, his book is largely taken up with dry accounts of hirings, firings and budget difficulties. Certainly, such considerations are crucial, for NPR has long struggled with them: in the early years, it had to fight for funding from lawmakers and lobbyists who preferred television, and then, just as it was hitting its stride, it fell into a damaging debt crisis.