Listener Supported: The Culture and History of Public Radio

LISTENER SUPPORTED provides a useful(if somewhat dry)account of National Public Radio's development from its difficult birth in 1967 to the end of the 20th century. Mitchell has impeccable insider credentials for the task: he was NPR's first employee, the first producer of All Things Considered, and three-time chairman of NPR's board of directors. In keeping with his current job as a journalism professor, Mitchell takes a detached, academic approach to the problems and controversies that have beset NPR over the years. The book would be more engaging if Mitchell displayed more personal passion and would have attracted a larger audience if he had chosen to dish behind-the-scenes gossip about NPR's on-air personalities. LISTENER SUPPORTED is worth reading just for the story of the machinations of Bill Kling, President of Minnesota Public Radio (a.k.a. Public Radio International). He used Prairie Home Companion as a vehicle to become a competitor to, as well as a customer of NPR. Kling is proof that entrepreneurial spirit exists even in the ivory towers of public radio. The least interesting part of the book, for this reader, was the final section dealing with critics of the "Right" and of the "Left". Mitchell categorizes critics of the left as "Frustrated Progressives", "Frustrated Pacifists", "Frustrated Curators", "Frustrated Mass Educators", "Frustrated Populists", or "Frustrated Community Builders". He offers no neat pigeon holes for the rightest critics.

If you're a public radio fan wanting to know what Garrison Keillor is really like, or how angry Bob Edwards actually got when he exited Morning Edition unwillingly after almost 25 years as host, this is not the book for you. It is a highly readable, highly personal perspective on the philosophies and politics that shaped NPR and made public radio a force in American media. Those most apt to appreciate it are among the thousands of people who have been employed in public radio over the last 30 years -- including career veterans who will recognize the names and remember the events that Mitchell recalls.