PUBLIC RADIO
Radio host's job can be a real heartbreaker
Posted on Sun, May. 18, 2008
BY CONNIE OGLE
STEPHEN VOSS
Diane Rehm will talk at a fundraiser Thursday for WLRN-FM 91.3 at Gusman Center for the Performing Arts.
IF YOU GO
What: WLRN Presents Diane Rehm
Where: Gusman Center for the Performing Arts, 174 E. Flagler St., Miami
When: 7 p.m. Thursday
Tickets: $25, $50. Proceeds benefit WLRN-FM 91.3
Info: 305-358-5885, 954-523-3309 or
www.ticketmaster.com
Another long week has ended, and with it another lively and interesting ''Friday News Roundup,'' but Diane Rehm is sad. With its focus split between recent domestic developments and international issues, Friday's show is the most grueling of the week. But more than the stress of production infuses traces of emotion into Rehm's familiar voice. After 35 years in the business, the popular National Public Radio host remains deeply affected by what goes on in the world.
Today, she's recalling discussions on Myanmar's refusal to admit aid workers after a devastating cyclone and the outbreak of civil war in Beirut.
''I was almost in tears thinking about Burma and Lebanon,'' Rehm says from her office at WAMU in Washington, D.C. ``When I think about the prospect of civil war in Lebanon again, it makes my heart break. My father's family came from Beirut, so for me it's truly in my heart, even though I've never been there.''
Rehm, who grew up in Washington, appears Thursday at a fundraiser for WLRN-FM 91.3 at Gusman Center for the Performing Arts, where she'll talk ''far more casually, perhaps, than many,'' about the world, her work and her career, which began in 1973 when she signed on as an NPR volunteer. In 1979, she became host of WAMU's morning talk show Kaleidoscope.
''It was still very much directed to the home,'' Rehm says. 'I just got bored and said to my boss finally, `We've got to change this, or I'm out of here. I want to talk about politics and what's happening in every corner of the world.' ''
And so, in 1984, Kaleidoscope gave way to The Diane Rehm Show, which airs from 10 a.m.-noon Monday through Friday. Rehm also has published two autobiographical books: Finding My Voice, about her childhood, her career and her diagnosis with spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological condition that strains her speech and requires periodic treatment; and Toward Commitment: A Dialogue on Marriage, co-written with her husband John Rehm.
Rehm has interviewed presidents and politicians, authors, journalists, trend-setters, world leaders. But The Diane Rehm Show's most important component may be its audience, estimated by NPR to be more than 1.7 million listeners per week. This morning, a listener has called in to update Rehm and her panel on negotiations between the Clinton and Obama campaigns after the Indiana and North Carolina primaries.
''I think it's critical to allow callers, because this is one of the few shows even on NPR that does take calls,'' explains Rehm, who in June plans to launch an online component so she can chat with listeners and ''continue the conversation'' after the show. 'My theory has always been that with radio -- and TV, newspapers, blogs, magazines -- information is coming at you so fast. The callers' role is to tell us what they're thinking about it all, to have that ongoing conversation and to have it in real time.''
Her insistence that guests be willing to respond to callers usually works. But not always.
''The only time I excluded callers was when we had Robert McNamara on after his book [In Retrospect] came out,'' Rehm recalls. McNamara had phoned her the night before the broadcast to say he wouldn't take calls; after consulting with her program director, she decided to have him on anyway. Her first question to him? ''Mr. McNamara, why won't you take calls from listeners?'' His reply, she reports, was ' `They all want to crucify me for Vietnam, and they don't know what they're talking about.' ''
Such tenacity appeals to Rehm's audience, says retired Miami radio personality Audrey Finkelstein, who spent 37 years on the air and will introduce Rehm at Gusman.
''She is very knowledgeable, straightforward and honest,'' Finkelstein says. ``. . . I believe she can get the guests she wants because she has the reputation of being knowledgeable and thorough. But she's tenacious enough to get an answer to any question.''
''Listeners appreciate a number of things about her,'' says Peter J. Maerz, WLRN's programming and operations manager. ``She's very genteel in her approach to interviewing. She doesn't come off as abrasive or aggressive. She's very civil. But by the same token she asks very tough, probing questions, the questions the listeners would want to ask. She always wants to know more about the subject the guest is interested in.''
As the November presidential election looms, politics weighs heavily on the minds of the listeners and, to an extent, on Rehm herself.
In an election year, ''I think the audience becomes more focused,'' she says. ``We become more focused, too, because everything in the world is going to be affected by the election and vice versa. Everything happening in the world is going to have impact on the election, what's happening within our own country, the economy, food prices, the way people are having to cut back. . . . ''
Rehm isn't exactly sure how having a new resident in the White House will affect her programming, but she hopes for more access, since the only member of the current administration to appear on her show was Vice President Dick Cheney. Though what she calls a ''funny incident'' did occur at a British Embassy party: A friend introduced Rehm to Karl Rove. He shook his finger at her and said, ''Oh, I know who you are,'' -- and walked away.
''In the Clinton era and the first Bush era, we had access to everybody,'' Rehm laments. ``It's been difficult.''
Whatever the future of the demanding 24-hour news cycle may hold, Rehm believes her show's quick-thinking producers will be on top of things.
''We've gotten pretty good at anticipating,'' she says. ``I remember years ago, I was on the floor doing my exercises and listening to the first rollover of Morning Edition and hearing that Indira Gandhi had been shot. I jumped up off the floor, got hold of a producer at 6 in the morning, and by 10 we had a show. When you need to do it, you do it.''
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