Just Think of NPR Hosts as the Anti-Shock Jocks

Sitting around a conference table at KPCC-FM (89.3), two veterans of public radio engaged in spontaneous and rather lively debate--off air--on the future of commercial radio shock jocks and their impact on the medium.

Call Bob Edwards--host of National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” since its inception in November 1979--the optimist. And consider Susan Stamberg--NPR special correspondent, whose pieces are heard on “Morning Edition,” and on “All Things Considered” in afternoon drive time--the pessimist.

“It’s going to hit bottom, and we’re very close” to that, Edwards opined in mellifluous bass. “This is a cycle, and broadcasting will find itself again. It can’t get any worse. It has nowhere to go but up.”

“It will not get better,” insisted Stamberg, the grit of New York streets still in her speech. “I don’t think we’re going to reach a point of no return on this, and that the rainbow will pop up. It will continue to disintegrate--and,” she added, smiling broadly, “more people will come to listen to us as a result.”

On that point, they could agree. As Edwards explained: “With the shock jocks, and the talk-show gasbags, particularly the angry ones--the ones that wake up angry and expect you to be angry--it makes us stand out more.”

Along with “Morning Edition” newscaster Carl Kasell, also in place since “Morning Edition’s” beginning; executive producer Ellen McDonnell, who started as an NPR news writer in 1979 and moved to the top slot at “Morning Edition” a year and a half ago; and NPR President Kevin Klose, Edwards and Stamberg were in Los Angeles last week, celebrating “Morning Edition’s” 20th anniversary.

Edwards argued that a change in tone among his commercial counterparts is already occurring. “Don Imus figured out he couldn’t out-shock Howard [Stern],” he said, “so he went in another direction. He talks about public affairs; he [recommends] books.”

In typical NPR fashion, Stamberg eschewed the quick sound bite. “They’ve asked me to do a series, millennium interviews, with big thinkers. First one we put on the air was with Howard Zinn. He wrote ‘People’s History of the United States,’ and he said that the thing that emerged from this century, which will carry over into the next, is nonviolent protest. Because we’re so bloody [and] this is the most violent century in history.

“I think he’s as much a dreamer as Mr. Edwards here. . . . I wish you were right, Bobby.”

“But they’ve said all the naughty words,” Edwards offered. “Where are they going to go?”

While saying that “Morning Edition” has stayed true to its basic principle of unbiased, in-depth news coverage, the program’s representatives said the show is evolving. They pointed with pride to the newscast’s collaboration with Youth Radio in Berkeley, which resulted this spring in a highly publicized series by Finnegan Hamill, 16, reporting on his e-mail correspondence with a teenage Albanian girl under siege in Kosovo.

McDonnell also cited the program’s more diverse range of on-air commentators, including a Hmong rapper, and the upgrading of “Morning Edition’s” sound.

“We always did the news right,” Edwards noted, “but I felt we could be a better radio program, with better sound, and Ellen brought in a wonderful producer, Neva Grant. . . . [Now] you hear the factory, hear the ballpark--[the piece] puts you there.”

* The two-hour “Morning Edition” airs, in repeating cycles, weekdays on KPCC-FM (89.3), 5-9 a.m., and on KCRW-FM (89.9), 3-9 a.m.