Monday, April 28, 2008

John Hockenberry back on radio at WNYC


Broadcast journalist John Hockenberry, right, joins Adaora Udoji, formerly of CNN, in their new live radio show, The Takeaway, which began on WNYC April 28. The show is funded from a $2 million Knight Foundation grant and partners with Public Radio International, The New York Times, the BBC World Service and the Boston public station WGBH.

Maxie Jackson, WNYC’s senior director for program development, said in The New York Times that the live show will have a different tone that he hopes will make it more multicultural than usual public radio fare -- with “voices, perspectives, contributors and stories that are relevant to a wide swath of people.” Its tone, he said, “has to be more compelling, with more verve.”

The New York Times described the new show in its April 27 article, and I was pleased to see that no mention was made of John Hockenberry being a wheelchair user. (I do mention such things because of the focus of this blog.) But it's great to see a major newspaper NOT mention a disability when it has no relevance to a story.

I wrote about "The Takeaway" show April 8.