Opinion: Susan Stamberg gave NPR its voice

We’re right here — and I imply on the air with you right this moment — due to Susan Stamberg. There are in fact others who helped flip the thought of Nationwide Public Radio into a particular sound. However just a little over 50 years in the past, when Susan’s voice started to crackle into kitchens and automobiles throughout America, the individuals who heard her did not ask, “What’s NPR?” however, “Who’s that?”

She was the primary girl to co-host a nightly information broadcast, and he or she did not sound like a sonorous information anchor. Susan sounded irreverent, not official. Boisterous, not boring. She was courteous, and sometimes hilarious.

Susan Stamberg gave NPR a voice, and that snigger that might make microphones tremble.

We saluted Susan at NPR — and on this present — when she retired final month. I am glad she obtained to listen to not less than a portion of our gratitude and love earlier than she died this week on the age of 87. These of us who work right here know we stand atop the partnership that Susan and some different scrappy journalists started greater than 50 years in the past, with what has grow to be tens of millions of listeners throughout America.

I have been making an attempt to recount all I discovered from Susan over time.

She usually jogged my memory that a very powerful factor you are able to do in an interview is to hear. Journalists usually attempt to plot out in depth questions prematurely, filled with pertinent info. However generally we’re so wanting to get via our questions we neglect to essentially hear the solutions and reply to them.

“You have to be ready to let all that prep hit the ground,” Susan as soon as instructed me, “and let the interview go someplace else.”

She additionally confirmed us how one of the best questions could be as brief as, “Why?” Or as ingenuously easy as when Susan requested an orchestra conductor, “Do not your arms ever get drained?”

And Susan confirmed us all that for a information program to grow to be a companion in individuals’s lives, it has to attempt to play all of the notes within the human symphony, excessive and low; darkish and light-weight; and also you play them with fashion. You possibly can pack all of the necessary info right into a story and a present, however when you do not maintain the curiosity of listeners, they will not stick with you lengthy sufficient to listen to any of it.

When NPR was a set of little-known initials, Susan Stamberg gave this place character.

I discover it telling that the recorded voice within the elevators right here at NPR headquarters is Susan’s. She continues to inform us which approach is up.