Bob Edwards was the voice of NPR’s Morning Edition for decades. He was an amazing journalist and just a great human being. As an affiliate station’s news director and local ME host, I couldn’t imagine the morning without his voice filling the studio. Meeting him was a favorite memory from that time.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Very sad. He was one of the prominent voices of my childhood. My parents listened to Morning Edition on NPR every day and watched Macneil Lehrer on PBS every night. Of course, that was before the endless news cycle.

    • CaptObvious@literature.cafeOP
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      9 months ago

      He was a great journalist and an incredible voice. Some of the brightest moments from working in news were hearing him introduce stories that I’d filed for the network. One of the dumbest moves NPR ever made was letting a CBC hack remove Edwards as ME host. It cost them more than they could really afford to lose.

        • CaptObvious@literature.cafeOP
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          9 months ago

          Member stations, as I recall, were only warned through their fundraising contacts that there was about to be a shitstorm. Nothing more. I’d left by then, but it became known throughout the network over the next few months that Jeffrey Dvorkin, the “ombudsman” that NPR had hired from the CBC a few years earlier, had engineered Edwards’ dismissal.

          They were right about the shitstorm. I’ve rarely listened to the network since, and I don’t think I’ve ever contributed. The station, indeed the entire network, seems still to struggle with fundraising to this day.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            I am happy to listen and contribute to NPR now considering they’re as close as you can get in the U.S. to unbiased national journalism at this point. They aren’t perfect either, but they’re miles above most of the other options.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I’m Gen-X… according to the 1965-1980 definition anyway, because I was born in 1977, so it stretches further back. But yeah, I think any of us who had politically-aware left-wing parents and were alive in the 1980s probably knew Bob Edwards’ voice.

      • Bangs42@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Millennial checking in

        Rush Limbaugh in mom’s car, NPR in dad’s.

        It was a weird dichotomy. Even as a kid, had a hard preference for NPR. I do feel like they’ve lost something in the last 6-8 years or so.

      • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        Sounds much more pleasant than listening to Rush Limbaugh in the car. Paul Harvey would be on if we were lucky.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    My last real radio voice that I listened to daily on, y’know, on the radio.

    When they fired him, I knew the jig was up for NPR.

    Then they just kept saying “enhanced interrogation”, and that was it. I haven’t listened since.