Fifty And Forward, An Anniversary Celebration Of NPR
It's been a turbulent time, with a deadly pandemic and a chaotic — sometimes violent — political climate. In the midst of all this, NPR is marking a milestone; on May 3, 2021, the network turns 50 years old.
On the same day, in 1971, we started holding up our microphone to America. Just outside our doors, on the streets of Washington, DC, one of the biggest antiwar protests in American history was taking place. NPR's story is that of a ragtag network — born in the era of the Vietnam War and Watergate — one that came of age during the explosion of the 24/7 news cycle.
In the 50 years that NPR has been around, the news and journalism have changed. The network has been shaped by its talented reporters, producers and hosts.
NPR has also had to reckon with the ways it has not lived up to its mission of diversity and inclusion, a mission it continues to strive for today. But, as stories go, NPR's is quite a memorable one.
NPR's beginning was improbable. The network barely made it on air.
Linda Wertheimer, who directed the first broadcast of All Things Considered, thought they would never survive another week. Given the chaotic nature of that first day, her sense of NPR's future was grim. "[It] was just going to be beyond awful," Wertheimer says.
But from the start, NPR's blueprint was infused with the chance to do something different, something extraordinary. "We were creating it from scratch. There was no template for it," says Susan Stamberg, NPR's Founding Mother.
To understand the media world from which NPR sprang, you need to look at what was going on — not in radio, but on television, in the late 1960s. At the time, concern that public television was not adequately serving the public was growing. In a now famous speech before the
