Joyce Davis  On NPR


TELLING A STORY FOR NPR

No, you see, somebody told me, in fact, when I first came here the senior editor was Connie Simon. And something she told me right at the beginning stuck with me. And this is actually, for what we do at NPR and radio, it's actually telling a story. So that, if I'm telling you a story, I like to draw you in. I give you a little bit at first, and say, "Well, you know there was a bad accident today" and you say "Oh, really?" That's what you're thinking. "Yes, three people were killed." And sometimes you save some of the best for last. You never do that with newspapers, or with print, because you always worry about the end getting chopped off. That's the first thing you learn. But with this you have the luxury of really making, doing a complete circle if you'd like. But really letting a story be told, and that's the way to keep the audience there with you. So it really is quite a different thing, and what I have found is that yes, at the beginning, they don't understand really what, that there's a difference between a lead in a newspaper story, and an intro, what we call the introduction and the beginning of the story. And sometimes it's just lots of repetition. In newsprint writing, we have a tendency not to worry about repeating things, sometimes. I mean, a good editor will try to catch it, but we generally will repeat things later in the story. We try not to do that. We don't have time to waste. So every minute, every second counts. And once you tell somebody something, there's no reason to rephrase it and tell them another way.

SPINNING STORIES AT NPR — SEEING THE OTHER SIDE

NPR is wonderful in the way that it allows you to do offbeat things. It allows you to come at stories from a different angle. And getting back just to the series on Muslim women that I did. While the rest of the media was preoccupied with suddenly, "Islam" and "Oh, how horrible it treats women" and "Let's talk about all the dogma that keeps women oppressed," I actually approached it from a different angle. I said, "So why are women Muslims?" Why would anybody accept a religion that would do this to them? And so I went to the women, and I said, "So why are you a Muslim?" and they said, "Because you're not getting the whole story from the heart." Yes, any religion, Christianity, Judaism, has all those things that try to keep women oppressed. But, there is another side. People ignore it, or they evolve, or they do something about the doctrine, they re-interpet it, and that's the thing that is happening here. So we came at it from another side. From the opposite point of view. What is there that keeps women Muslim. Or that would allow women to convert to Islam. And we found another whole side of the story that did not get explored at all in the press. And that's what NPR likes to do. Give you another view, in addition to the one that's just out there.

WHAT IS NEWS TO NPR?

You know, news for me would be sending someone to Liberia to cover that massacre that I've heard of. But I don't think a lot of people are interested in our listenership, frankly. If that massacre had taken place in Bosnia, we'd be all over it. So, news is really trying to gauge what the American public out there is really interested in. Now I think it's a bigger mission, it's also trying to tell them why things they may not be interested in may be interesting, and they may need to know about. But it's so subjective. If you and I were sitting down deciding the show tonight, we'd have a different show than if myself and my mother were sitting down deciding the show. What is news depends on what are your values, what are your interests and what mission you even have. Now I know journalists aren't supposed to have any missions or anything, but we all have something pushing us. Or else, we don't stay in this business. We all have something, we hope it's just a sense of trying to do right, and get a message across and serve the public, we hope it's noble values, but we all have those things driving us. The little engines, the fuel. So what is it? I would like to get Africa coverage much better than it is. I'd love to get the American public to see Africa in a way that's not just disaster related. It's people related. Just as we cover the continent of Europe with its wonderful artists, and its music, those things exist on every continent. We've got to be able to let people be seen as human beings.

The mission of NPR is to try to tell the Americans, to try to inform. Not just entertain. And that's, that is a big difference. I mean, entertainment is just feeding what we think your interests are and what we, you know in a way that will keep you there. But I do think NPR has a mission to try to tell you about different parts of the world, parts of the world that will eventually affect you. We don't, as much as we'd like to be isolationists, close up and only take care of the United States, and the poor people here and all that. The fact of the matter is, this world will not allow that. And even a little place like Togo can cause an enormous amount of problems in the world, and can eventually force us to deal with it. It's hard getting this through to people, but this is our burden to make it creative enough and interesting enough that people will listen, and they will care.