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- [00:00]
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Dave Davies
This is fresh air i'm dave davies if you're a regular npr listener you may already know that public radio lost one of its iconic figures last week with the death of susan stamberg a host of all things considered in the network's formative years she was eighty seven stamberg wasn't just an influential voice on public radio she was the first woman to anchor a nightly national news program when she took the host's chair in nineteen seventy two her work has been honored with an edward r murrow award induction into the national radio hall of fame and in twenty twenty her own star on the hollywood walk of fame today we're going to listen to excerpts of two of terry gross's interviews with susan stamberg and another with stamberg and bill semering the creator of all things considered and for nine years the station manager at whyy where our show is produced susan stamberg grew up on the upper west side of manhattan and attended barnard college she broke into journalism as an editorial assistant at the new republic and became a producer at station wamu in washington before being hired at npr she was a production assistant when all things considered was launched but soon moved into the anchor's chair and became one of the network's most recognized voices she was known for her incisive questions as well as her personal warmth and versatility handling topics from international crises to her mother's cranberry relish recipe which she shared for years around thanksgiving she was also a distinguished public radio innovator as the first host of weekend edition sunday she introduced listeners to the puzzle with will shorts and two wise cracking auto mechanics tom and ray malyazzi who themselves became public radio icons after weekend edition stanberg became a special correspondent for the network focusing on cultural issues she retired just last september terry first spoke to susan stamberg in nineteen eighty two about her book every night at five about all things considered and her decade on the.
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Terry Gross
Air when you started out on all things considered it still wasn't really accepted i think that women could be in that authoritative position a lot of people used to believe that no one would trust a woman reading the news let alone interviewing newsmakers did you have resistance either from within or from the listeners.
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Susan Stamberg
I tell you bill siemering your station manager to whom my book is dedicated by the way an extraordinary human being and a wonderful broadcaster was telling me that apparently there was quite a bit of resistance at the beginning they very kindly protected me from that maybe that's good management i don't know i didn't hear about it and probably if i'd heard it it would have shaken my confidence a lot and upset me greatly and changed in some way the way i broadcast the objection in the beginning was you don't sound like cbs you new network and his point was that's right because there is a cbs we don't need to sound like that we need to sound like and some of us are women they're real people too and they can certainly present information in a reliable and authoritative way you say.
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Terry Gross
In your book that you try to find the novel within the news story i don't mean the new but like the literary novel yes what do you.
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Susan Stamberg
Mean by that well it's the old english major in me i don't know maybe it's fancier than i can explain or analyze to you but i come to news from a background in the arts in the humanities i still sketch for relaxation and i still play the piano and what i really love to do is read novels it's what i did in college as an english major and i come to events of life with that against that background i'm not a journalist in that formal way and i've never had any fancy journalistic training so what i want to know when hostages are taken is what difference does it make to the life of misses moorefield out in wir washington san diego california i want to know the difference that that event is making in her life i want to know the difference it's making in all of our lives as citizens living here the idea that that many americans are being held in some foreign country by very frightening group of people what does that tell us about ourselves how does it change our perceptions of ourselves so it's that that i mean that kind of tension and conflict and the effect on personality and character is the most much more interesting to me and i come to news that way something else i wrote was when i did a national colon with president car for two hours in the oval office with him while people all over the country phoned in people afterwards said to me gee that must have been the high point of your career but i was far more absorbed by changes in his eyes and what happened to his complexion when he was dealing with a difficult question and how his posture changed and he sat up straight or he clenched his hands much more than any of the words he was speaking because those were words he'd spoken a lot before many many times before but that glimpse of character to me was special and that's what interests me.
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Terry Gross
The most one of the things that is very special about your interviews is the kind of rapport you're able to build with the people who you're speaking to you're pretty close to people both newsmakers and artists and people who you're.
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Susan Stamberg
Coming to thank you i take that as a compliment i'm scared much but.
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Terry Gross
I wonder how you try to balance that with politicians and newsmakers that desire to build rapport but the kind of journalistic distance that you need to keep with someone who might be very manipulative.
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Susan Stamberg
Of the rapport that's built i don't know trying to think of some example what's rushing through my mind is how good sandy is at that sandy unger and he tends to interview politicians a heck of a lot more than i do i'm not terribly interested in doing it mostly because for some of the things you said i like to get inside people and i don't think politicians are going to let me inside much they're not going to tell me anything they haven't said seven hundred times before he's terrific though sandy at breaking through that somehow and i'm not quite sure he's very quick and he doesn't mind a good fight he's a good fighter and he doesn't mind scrambling scrambling up with people my approach is different and mine is to disarm in a way that sounds manipulative and i don't mean it that way i'm just much more comfortable in quiet conversation or laughing hard you know having a good time and joking than i am in confrontation so the other example that i think of was john ehrlichman which bob edwards and i interviewed him after he had gotten out of jail and was going around touring with his first novel and i was as scared before that interview as i've ever been in connection with radio and i'll tell you why i felt we covered watergate so thoroughly and so carefully and all through it i felt he was the one that was seemed to me the most malevolent the one who would be most deceptive and most dishonest i changed my view of him by the way in recent years in sort of reading new writings of his and seeing the kind of change that he himself has gone through but at that time i was very frightened i thought ahead how am i going to do this interview how will i do it if i do it in a prosecutorial fashion it'll be you ever see two dogs worrying over a towel you know each gets the talisman and they shake their heads back and forth and that's what it'll be plus i don't have that kind of mind i cannot commit to memory every page of the white house transcripts and be able to say to him but mister ehrlichman on the third of june you said blap and on the twenty second i just can't my mind doesn't work that way so i sort of discarded all of that and thought i'll do what i can do and that is ask him extremely soft sounding questions which ended up you know things like mister ehrlichman tell me what happens when you go you live in santa fe and you drive up to a gas station for gas you drive your car and you say fill them up and they realize who you are what's the reaction you get questions just real personal ones like that not aren't you ashamed of yourself leading the nation down this thorny path none of that just you know what's it like for you how's your life and it ended i don't remember the specific question that i asked but it ended with something that he said that was more revealing to me about watergate than i could have gotten with seven hours of you know really mean questions he said at the end let me tell you something about washington in this town there's one king of the mountain and everybody else in this town is out to shoot him off that mountain that's washington that was watergate in a nutshell you know that was all the paranoia of the nixon white house right there and if i'd said to him weren't you all terribly paranoid in that white house he never would have said anything like that so sometimes you know just through that sort of softer approach that comes that comes i like listening to good arguments on the air i'm just not very good at it sandy's good.
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Terry Gross
Did it ever happen to you that someone who you really cared for and respected turned out to not be an interesting interview and you kind of felt that for the sake of your listeners you should erase the tape but for the sake of this person you didn't want to hurt their feelings and not.
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Susan Stamberg
Play what a wonderful question.
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I guess.
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I want to answer your question because something else is occurring to me so let me tell you this story i think i won't name a name but it was a time when i had to go and interview a writer whose work i very much respected and i got to see the writer and we talked for hours and everything i'm trying not to even reveal sex let alone identity in all of this the writer would talk and go on and on and on and on and on and on and go into a million different directions and corners and angles and i couldn't make any sense out of what was being said sentences would never be finished ideas never completed and i got home with days worth of tape and said to myself what am i going to do here you know this is a writer of major talent but clearly damage some damage has been done some emotional damage or something why reveal that you know what's here's my choice here it's journalistically dishonest for me to clean up this tape to build in through editing a logic that in life was not there on the other hand look at the harm to do for what end to simply present this kind of rambling to listeners it will neither edify them nor enlighten them nor really be true to the spirit of the person so i ended up doing a fairly careful edit in which on tape the person came out far more logical than in life that person was but i guess it was troubling enough to me that i'm telling it to you now because there was a certain kind of dishonesty to that it wasn't real it was edited then again life you know unedited life is fairly rambling and has.
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Very little shape or proportion to it.
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And editing sort of imposes that structure on it but it was troublesome to me terry i'll tell you it still bothers me that kind of choice and it happens all the time often did you this was a dramatic example no never because i knew there were wonderful moments on it and the truth of the person came through as a matter of fact there was enough of that sense of rambling and kind of disorganization that you got that but not so much that you would end up throwing your hands up in the air saying why do i have to listen to this because they were good nuggets there useful nuggets but that's interesting these are problems it's such a good question because they're problems that we face i think.
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Terry Gross
What do you do and i think this happens to every interviewer when you like the writer but you don't like their new book that the interview is.
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Susan Stamberg
Well that happened as a matter of fact with joan didion and i write about that in my book as a matter of fact i discovered in preparing she was one of my favorite writers and has been for years in fact i hadn't known anything about her until the first week i set foot in the studios of national public radio and someone on the staff a fellow named doug terry said read this woman's stuff she's fantastic and it was diddy and it was her first collection of essays called slashing towards because it's british so it's got an s on the end slashing towards bethlehem took them home and thought oh my lord i've never read reporting like this it's sensational well years later that must have been around seventy one seventy seven or seventy eight she went on a book tour her only one so in preparation for interviewing her i got out everything and she was touring with the novel her last novel a book of common prayer got out the first collection of essays got out all the early novels and i guess that was all the white album came out later reread them and found in fact that i didn't like the novels very much at all here's what i did though that opened up the whole interview for me it gave me a talking point that as i trusted those reactions i trusted that response i knew i felt that the journalism was first rate what she did something else so her powers of observation of life were wonderful something else was happening between her page and me when she went to make fiction and i asked myself what it was what is distasteful to me here what am i not liking and what i found was in figuring that out a point of view a talking point for when she came in the studio she was saying there's a void at the center of experience and that's normal i felt that's horrible she thinks there's a void at the center of experience ugh that's a nightmare i don't like that so we had a terrific interchange about it because i went in with that viewpoint you can always you know you don't need to be polite in front of these microphones you should trust your responses and your natural reactions and your own intelligence and figure why am i reacting that way well if i am i'm not alone i'm like a whole lot of other people so i'll make that a talking point let me work with that let me use that and writers gee boy they appreciate it someone taking them so seriously that they formed an opinion about the work what nothing's more flattering oh sure they've got egos oui how do you like that because now i wrote a book i can say i'm a writer too and you want to please people and have them think that what you've done is terrific but also it's wonderful that someone else has taken the time to think so hard about something you've worked so hard at and that's exciting to start to talk about to explain yourself and that's also exciting then for listeners.
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Dave Davies
To hear susan stamberg and terry gross recorded in nineteen eighty two we're remembering iconic npr anchor and correspondent susan stamberg who died last week at the age of eighty seven terry spoke to her in nineteen ninety three when susan had published a book called talk which featured excerpts of her interviews and reflections on her work terry asked what it was like for her to listen back to her early interviews and whether it seemed her voice had changed over the years.
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Susan Stamberg
I was so formal and in those early days when there weren't a whole lot of women on the air in fact none doing news i was the first to anchor a nightly national news program nineteen seventy two with all things considered we were imitating men so i was lowering my voice to sound as authoritative as i could and i hear in those tapes my getting looser and more relaxed with it i hear in more recent work speeding up to a point where i it's a too fast sometime i've got to start slowing myself down again i hear those changes in voice voice per se but also you know a growth of confidence which i hope happens to you how you used to feel about radio you keep doing it till you get it right you know you practice it every day and someday it'll kick in and i hope that that happens too over the years.
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Terry Gross
Let'S go back to was it nineteen seventy two when you started hosting all things considered yeah yeah okay now the first time you hosted it was a.
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Susan Stamberg
Substitute yes i sat.
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I have to.
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Say terry there's a lot of first women and feminist stuff in this book because i'm a believer in it but men gave me breaks every inch of the way and he wasn't the first host of all things considered that was a man named robert conley but he was the second one i think mike waters was doing the program and at that point i was hired as a tape editor but at that point because things were so open and possible at npr in those days i was also getting stuff on the air he said to me i really like your work how can we hear you you more i'm going on vacation why don't you sit in and it was that kind of generosity he went away i sat there there was nice response to it and poof we were co hosts as.
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Terry Gross
The first woman to anchor a national daily news show were there complaints that the network got from either listeners or stations that carried the show there were.
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Susan Stamberg
There were but you know something terri i didn't know about it i write about this in talk too there's a story that i heard eleven years after the fact and i heard it from bill seimring who was important in getting you on the air i know that when he was manager of absolutely we.
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Terry Gross
Would never have become a national show if it weren't for bill semering we.
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Susan Stamberg
Wouldn'T exist all things considered npr if it hadn't been for bill simmering that's exactly right he was our first i think they called him program director then and the man who really conceived of all things considered and he told me this story eleven years later that when i first went on the air there was quite a bit of opposition not from lists but from the managers of our stations who were worried on behalf of the listeners a woman's voice is not authoritative enough they said women will not be taken seriously a woman cannot do news now maybe in those days there was one little piece of it that could have been correct and it was about the voice carrying technologically we were not nearly as sophisticated as we are today we had bad staticky telephone lines over which we broadcast to the country today we've got satellites so things are clear and the base band of women's voices is not as strong as it is in the voices of men and so maybe my voice didn't carry quite as well as it would today but that was about it the rest of it was prejudice anyway bill never said a word to me and this to me was such a remarkable show of the quality of his leadership he knew if he told me i was very sensitive about it all i was nervous as heck and it would affect me it would throw me in some way it would affect my work and he had enough confidence in me to let me keep going sensing that i would prove myself as i did it and the criticism would go away and.
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Terry Gross
It did did anyone tell you that you sounded too new york did anyone ever say you sounded too jewish sure.
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Susan Stamberg
Yeah no they don't say jewish they say new york and i always hear that as jewish and maybe more than a little anti semitic i certainly didn't and don't sound like people who are on the radio today i really don't i have a distinctive sound and it is you're new yorker and i'm jewish.
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Terry Gross
Your style i think is one that is very direct very casual very real and that wasn't really the style when you started broadcasting and as you said before you were really trying to kind of put on this air of authoritative and sound like more male isn't that funny to fit in how did you start drifting away from that and becoming.
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Susan Stamberg
More of who you were well in those days i was also editing my own tapes i mean we had these skinny little skeletal staffs so you had to do everything and i think it was in editing my own work really taught me a lot it taught me to hate that stiff sound that i was trying so hard to produce to say i could hear how phony it was and i just decided to stop.
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Terry Gross
Can you share with us one of the scary moments from an early broadcast of all things considered when the staff was small and the show is still.
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Susan Stamberg
Being defined oh you bet we had those every other day the tape would keep breaking or the tape wouldn't arrive in the control room on time i can remember a very early program in which i introduced something the tape went on the air and the director rich firestone said in my head said wait a minute the tape's on backwards phil and threw my microphone on and i talked and talked and talked he got the tape he turned it around he ran it again and he said in my ear wrong it's russian phil again it wasn't backward it was a foreign language and he put my microphone and i got to talk some more i would come in in those days terry with reams of clippings and papers and books to use as film material i'll always take a little something with me.
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Dave Davies
Because you never know susan stamberg speaking with terry gross recorded in nineteen ninety three stamberg the award winning host of all things considered in npr's formative years died last week at the age of eighty seven after a short break we'll hear a special remembrance of susan that terry recorded and we'll continue with their nineteen ninety three conversation and another interview terry recorded with susan and bill semering the creator of all things considered i'm dave davies and this is fresh air.
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Commercial Announcer
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Susan Stamberg
Therapy i have kids under eighteen so.
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Dave Davies
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Susan Stamberg
Sessions sometimes at night depending on the.
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Dave Davies
Therapist or during the weekend so i.
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Bill Siemering
Think that's what we need to tell.
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Dave Davies
The parents you're not alone we can.
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Dave Davies
Fresh air we are remembering iconic npr anchor and correspondent susan stamberg who died last week at the age of eighty seven before we get back to hearing more of terry's interviews with susan terry has a few personal thoughts she wants.
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Terry Gross
To share when i started in public radio in nineteen seventy four i was just recently out of college susan had been co hosting all things considered for a couple of years she was proof that a woman could have a prominent and powerful position on a news show at least on public radio and that for me and so many women was affirming and inspiring she also proved she could be a good news journalist while also being immersed in covering the arts and culture and sharing with listeners some of her experiences as a mother back then a lot of people in the news biz would have thought that compromised her credibility as a journalist it didn't it just got listeners to like her even more that made her a role model too i never got to know her well we lived in different cities but in addition to interviewing her a few times i met her several times mostly at station events and she was always warm and we had good conversations she told me she often listened to fresh air during lunch i have emails from her dating back to twenty fifteen she didn't write often but when she heard an interview of mine she especially liked or enjoyed hearing me interviewed she'd reach out to let me know i see that as an example of her generosity and her interest in encouraging other journalists those emails meant and still mean a lot to me thank you susan for all you've done for public radio for women for your listeners and for.
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Dave Davies
Me that was terry gross next we'll hear some more of terry's nineteen ninety three conversation with susan stamberg after the publication of her book talk which featured excerpts of twenty years of interviews and reflections on her work you hosted all.
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Terry Gross
Things considered for i think it was fourteen years yes why did you leave.
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Susan Stamberg
Oh i left for a range of reasons i've been wanting to get off that program for quite some time it is an enormous grind noah adams and i were wonderful partners on the air for five years and the only thing and we are dear friends the only thing we ever thought about was who had the harder job in broadcasting whether he did or i did i suppose it was for me because i did it for so much longer than anybody else did and that just was a lot of it but it was a conscious decision that i really wanted to get off that daily carousel something that i wanted to do for some time i write in this book that what really made the decision final was the fact that in nineteen eighty six i discovered i had breast cancer it was treated my prognosis is excellent but that was the point at which i said to myself okay this is something you've wanted for a long time now is the time to do it you don't need this kind of stress in your life i take my work very very personally and i work awfully awfully hard and it doesn't come easily to me and i just wanted to move that quotient of stress out of my life and do less and i did how.
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Terry Gross
Many people did you tell about the.
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Susan Stamberg
Breast cancer very few i told family of course and a handful of really close friends and only a few people here at npr who i felt needed.
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Terry Gross
To know did you go through chemo.
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Susan Stamberg
And no i had a lumpectomy and.
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Terry Gross
Radiation and you'd come to work after.
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Susan Stamberg
The radiation yeah i was working all.
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Through that actually it was a salvation through that time i felt i needed to keep working work has been important to me at a lot of rough times in my life as it is for many of us there must have.
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Terry Gross
Been times when after radiation treatment if you'd go to the npr offices you'd really feel like saying to everybody listen you don't know what i've been through.
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Susan Stamberg
This morning no i don't that's not.
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Me.
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Long pause the most compelling thing you can do on the radio keep quiet so you didn't no i didn't.
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Terry Gross
People did not need to know no.
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Susan Stamberg
I didn't i wasn't ready to do that to people and i wasn't ready to handle their reactions to it i'm a bucker upper it's part of my nature i like to make people feel better i'm the one that in the all things considered days when the program was being put marked up on a big map on the wall i'd come in that would start at two thirty the order of the pieces and who was going to be reporting what i was the one that would come up to that map and say where is the joy in this radio program and i did what i could to be the bringer of joy joy whenever i could to the air and i felt that i didn't want to inflict this on people and i also selfishly didn't want to have to cheer them up or make them feel better which is a part of what illness what happens with illness people become very upset with you and i feel a certain obligation.
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Terry Gross
So this was in nineteen eighty six yeah eighty six susan there's something i want to ask you and this relates to breast cancer but it's much more about interviewing when like i sense that the breast cancer is not something you're really interested in talking about in detail the question always comes up for me as i'm sure it does for you how far do you go with somebody when there's something personal that's happened in your life that you'd maybe like to hear more about but you have a feeling they probably don't want to talk about it more now what's your general how do you guide yourself when asking.
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Susan Stamberg
That question well i don't have a rule of thumb but it happens often in this book i see evidence of it and i see an interesting development as well a rule with me and i think it's a current one too is if someone starts crying i turn off the tape recorder it's why i wasn't meant to do journalism i have all the wrong instincts if it's that painful they need to be private about it and i don't need to record that to broadcast that pain to others if they can talk about it it's one thing i just hate when on television the camera zooms in and focuses you know the lens zooms in to show you the tears it's none of.
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My business i turn away.
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But i think i've also learned a lot about human resilience and it's been something that's meant a great deal to me personally i write that one of the things that cancer did was to affect my work and make me much more interested in people who've faced up to something terrible and gone on with their lives you don't understand what learning from someone's courage is until you need to until you need those lessons susan i know.
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Terry Gross
On those occasions when i'm interviewed there are two parts of me that kind of go to war each time i'm asked a question and one part of me is the professional part that's saying well as an interviewer i ask people questions all the time and i expect that they'll kind of reveal as much as they can and blah blah blah and so i too should reveal as much as i can to the person answering these questions and besides i know that if you don't reveal a lot you stand the risk of being really boring and there's no greater sin and so on and so on then the other part of me is saying you really don't need to be very personal and it's probably better if you're not because particularly as an interviewer you need to be a kind of neutral person do you know what i mean i do know what you mean and not.
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Have.
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You want to keep people guessing in a way and you want to be able to draw on the parts of yourself that are most relevant to the interview that you're doing and so on so you don't want to reveal too much so these two parts of me go to war is there a war like that that happens to you when you're interviewed and do you know how much you're comfortable with in revealing about yourself whether it's your health or any other personal part of your life.
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Susan Stamberg
Yeah i guess so it's not so much a war as i it's not a war i fight anymore i know what i will and what i won't speak about and you hear the long pause so that's i know how to do that now and getting older makes that easier you know terry my generation we were raised as nice girls philip roth says this wonderfully too and there's somebody sends him an angry letter and asks him for lunch and he goes and i said to him how come you went why did you do that he said i was young when summoned i went now he wasn't raised as a nice girl but i was your you answer it i don't leap to those answers quite as quickly now maybe i've learned a kind of privacy and professionalism and i also wonder as i said this sort of cult of personality has a short string as far as i'm concerned there are other things to talk about there are issues there are ideas there's wonderful writing to talk about.
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Terry Gross
I'Ll give you an example of something just to happen to me i was interviewing isabel allende the chilean writer now living in the states and during the interview she'd mentioned that her daughter had died not too long no i knew her daughter had died but it turned out her daughter had died in december just a few months ago and i.
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Could just tell by the way she.
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Just you know said that parenthetically that this was something that was still obviously really close to the surface for her and then so i had to decide well should i ask her more about it or should i just kind of change the subject what did you do i changed the subject and moved on i just felt like do i need to put put her through this because she's written a new book and i decided no but in all honesty on another day i might have said well let me ask her something and maybe then i'll pull back do you know what i mean yeah i guess it's a really i think difficult call it's.
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Susan Stamberg
A tough call it's a tough call but when you know the experience is very raw you need to i feel the need to let people heal from it before i go poking around in those depths of their lives and i don't know what's to be served really i don't know i don't know what good it does to do it and i don't want to make my living off the pain of someone else have.
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Terry Gross
You ever wanted to stop interviewing it's.
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Susan Stamberg
Real nice to take breaks it was good to take the year off to write talk sure but i never want to stop asking questions that's the real issue it's not so much the interviewing i i feel i am blessed that i found microphones in this world because i spend my life talking to people away from the microphone it's something that i do naturally as a person luckily enough i found a place where they'll pay me to do that so no.
- [33:14]
Dave Davies
I can't imagine it susan stamberg speaking with terry gross recorded in nineteen ninety three after a break we'll listen to some of terry's twenty twenty one conversation with susan and bill siemering the creator of all things considered who put susan in the anchor's chair in nineteen seventy.
- [33:31]
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- [34:41]
Dave Davies
Air and we're remembering susan stamberg the host of npr's all things considered in the network's formative years and later host of weekend edition and then an npr special correspondent until she retired in september stamberg died last week at the age of eighty seven next we're going to listen to some of an interview terry recorded just four years ago in twenty twenty one on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of npr and all things considered she spoke to susan and bill siemering who was the first director of programming at npr he created all things considered and wrote the network's first mission statement saying that npr should reflect the diversity of america and let the country hear itself from nineteen seventy eight to nineteen eighty seven siemering was station manager here at whyy where he played a critical role in making fresh air then a local product a daily national show he also hired me in nineteen eighty two in their interview terry asked susan about the first days of all things considered when susan was a production assistant.
- [35:45]
Terry Gross
On the show so susan what was your job that day that first day that npr signed on the air with all things considered editing tape were you actively involved with that first broadcast yeah.
- [36:00]
Susan Stamberg
The title was production assistant and it meant one of those a handful of us linda wertheimer was another who had to deal with tape that the reporters were racing in with from the field i mean you know if they came in with twenty minutes an hour's worth of tape we had to cut it down and get it wedding together with that sticky tape and get it into the control room and on the air so that was it just being pelted with this raw tape that they had just gathered in the field were you nervous i don't remember being a bit nervous i remember being thrilled to pieces it was all just so intense and we had to to be working so quickly and efficiently and sometimes mindlessly just blading that tape and getting it to move along and racing it again into the control room so it was pressure but i felt we could all do wasn't nervous making pressure particularly it was exhilarating pressure i mean it was just.
- [37:08]
Terry Gross
Thrilling bill you hired susan stamberg at npr what did you see in her when you hired her you obviously made a brilliant choice but you didn't know what she would become that was all the future so what did you see in her why did you want to.
- [37:25]
Bill Siemering
Hire her her curiosity and her energy and she has this wonderful voice that is expressive has rich tone color and it's the sound i really wanted for npr it's the sound that i still think represents npr the best this insatiable curiosity and susan has a lot of fun also i didn't need to look at her resume really i just said i was really quite blown away by susan when she came in the office and i knew that's what i wanted.
- [38:06]
Terry Gross
Bill it was suggested to you when you were first working on finding a host for all things considered and susan didn't start hosting until the second year the show was on the air it.
- [38:15]
Was suggested to you that you hired.
- [38:17]
An established network tv reporter who was experienced and can come in people already had faith in and they'd have this like authoritative male voice and that's not what you wanted to do why did you resist that and what did you have to do to resist it i.
- [38:36]
Bill Siemering
Didn'T get a lot of pressure fortunately don quayle the president was very good about this and he he also supported susan he was the one that recommended susan come in to see me now the stations were expecting the big voice they were expecting us finally we've got our own network and we'll sound just like cbs and we had a meeting of station managers a few weeks after all things started and it was kind of a hostile audience i mean they were saying who are these people and i said well your listeners will get to know them it's okay and they of course did but it took a while for people to get used to what we were doing and to accept.
- [39:21]
Terry Gross
It susan you said that bill encouraged you to be yourself and that's what you became and you showed like warmth and empathy as well as having good news judgment and being really informed but you talked to a lot of artists and just kind of people and yeah there was warmth you had a personality on the air and people loved that i mean you were famous for that that helped define what npr stood for how did you gradually let yourself come through and figure out like what was your on air personality who were you on the air being true to yourself but also being you know a radio professional.
- [40:05]
Susan Stamberg
Thank you for all of that it was all sort of an accumulation i mean it certainly didn't happen all at once and i would listen carefully after we went off the air to what it sounded like and what struck my ear and changes that i thought i ought to make the next day but again i had tremendous guidance from bill as always from a phrase from that mission statement and it was that one of the goals of national public radio would be to celebrate life and i sort of devoted myself to that first of all the arts were always so important to me from the time that i was a child and i loved music and i loved poetry and i loved visual arts all of that and being raised in new york i was lucky enough to be able to be exposed to some of the best of that and i carried that love with me into the broadcasting that i did and very unusually for those early days and even today brought it to the news broadcasts as you were saying you never heard anything like that on formal news programs except when you turned to public radio and when you turned to the very first broadcast of ours which was the flagship program all things considered and that continues not as much as i wish it would but that continues into today i just wanted to.
- [41:28]
Bill Siemering
Add susan has air presence which is something that may be difficult to define but you know it it's like stage presence and not all reporters have air presence like that that can host the program but when susan comes on you listen it's a quality that is important that isn't talked about much but it was really what i liked about her and you can hear that every time she comes on the air now susan.
- [41:58]
Terry Gross
I remember you telling me years ago that you were raised to be a quote nice girl what did that mean and what did you have to overcome of that to be a good host and journalist and learn how to ask hard questions and to sometimes in spite of all your empathy you sometimes really had to put somebody on the spot insist on an answer to a difficult.
- [42:20]
Susan Stamberg
Question yes i must say my dear that i have the ghost of that continues to haunt me and it wasn't so much a nice girl it was a good girl and you know i'm a woman of the fifties it's when i came up it was before there was women's liberation so we were expected to be married good housewives and be homemakers there are wonderful homemakers in this world and many people listening to this were raised by them but it didn't fascinate or interest me very much i always knew that there was more i wanted to do so i felt even when there were movements to make women more equal and more authoritative i felt i always straddled those two worlds the good girl world and the free and women's liberation girl and to some extent i still do it was very often my impulse to almost talk to myself and say toughen up susan don't be too soft on this put his feet to the fire get an answer that you really do need susan stamberg and.
- [43:30]
Dave Davies
Bill siemering spoke with terry gross in twenty twenty one we'll hear more of their conversation after a break this is.
- [43:37]
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- [43:54]
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- [44:38]
Dave Davies
Fresh air and we're remembering npr's susan stamberg who became the first woman to anchor a nightly news program when she hosted all things considered in nineteen seventy two in twenty twenty one terry spoke with susan and bill semering who as npr's director of programming made susan anchor of the flagship program can you share.
- [44:59]
Terry Gross
A moment from the early days of npr that you're particularly proud of of.
- [45:04]
Susan Stamberg
It'S not days from the very beginning but it goes into around nineteen i guess seventy three and the whole watergate story richard nixon and the nixon administration being exposed for having essentially as bob woodward said on our air once tampered with the vote of every american by pressures that the administration exerted and what i remember we did daily broadcasts it was the most sustained broadcasting that we did it was the biggest story because the vietnam war had ended fairly soon after we went on the air the biggest story that we had to cover over a long period of time the hearings in the congress et cetera et cetera and and i'm proud of having organized groups of citizens that voice that bill always wanted to hear of ordinary people all over the country reacting to the news that was new in those days and very unusual and i had a banker in kansas and a housewife in wisconsin i'm not going to remember all of them but there were about five different ones democrats and republicans and i would call them every week and just say so what do you think you know how did you react to what you heard this week on the hearings because we were broadcasting those hearings live as well and when the republican who had been the nixon supporter all along over months and months and months turned and said i really have started to have very big questions about what this administration has done and what their aims and what their goals were that's when we knew that the tide had turned we heard that on our air from someone whom our listeners had gotten very familiar with because they had heard him week after week so susan you.
- [47:12]
Terry Gross
Were a mother by the time you came to npr and your son josh was how old when you started hosting all things considered he was a year.
- [47:22]
Susan Stamberg
And a half and when i started i worked part time i wanted to be home every afternoon with him and was able to do that and i left him with a wonderful sitter in the morning and timed it so that i would be away from him for a big hunk of his nap time i missed him terribly when i started work but i knew that i needed to move my mind away a little bit from goo goo ga ga into some real human conversation so that was a perfect solution to be able to have that part time job and the network was wonderful so enlightened in permitting me to do it but it was always it was really tough as the parent and any woman will tell you or man that you're always moving things around on the burners that is the family goes on the front burner when it needs to and then you move it to the back when the job has to go move up forward onto that front burner you're always juggling life is never just a straight line.
- [48:31]
Commercial Announcer
I.
- [48:31]
Terry Gross
Want to express my gratitude to both of you for all you've done to create what we know as npr and so happy anniversary and congratulations and on behalf of so many people thank you.
- [48:45]
Susan Stamberg
So much thank you so much terry.
- [48:48]
Dave Davies
Thank you terry susan stamberg and bill siemering spoke with terry gross in twenty twenty one on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of npr and all things considered stamberg died last week at the age of eighty seven on monday's show we'll speak with cameron crowe who made the films fast times at ridgemont high jerry maguire say anything and almost famous his new memoir shows how his life parallels almost famous the story of how a boy in his mid teens gets to write about his rock heroes for rolling stone and grows up along the way i hope you can join us.
- [49:25]
Terry Gross
Take a straight and stronger course to.
- [49:28]
Susan Stamberg
The corner of your life.
- [49:32]
Make the.
- [49:33]
Terry Gross
White queen run so fast she hasn't.
- [49:37]
Susan Stamberg
Got time to make you.
- [49:41]
Dave Davies
Fresh air's executive producer is danny miller sam brigger is our managing producer our senior producer today is roberta shorrock our technical director and engineer is audrey bentham with additional engineering support from joyce lieberman and julian hertzfeld our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by phyllis myers anne marie baldonado lauren krenzel teresa madden monique nazareth thea chaloner susan yakundi and anna bauman our digital media producer is molly seavey nesper hope wilson is our consulting visual producer for terry gross and tonya moseley i'm dave davies.
- [50:20]
Commercial Announcer
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- [50:53]
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