When she first came on the air – as the first female nightly news host – it made news, but not in a good way. “When I first went on the air, there was quite a bit of opposition, not from listeners, but from the managers of our stations, who were worried on behalf of the listeners. A woman’s voice is not authoritative enough, they said. Women will not be taken seriously. A woman cannot do news.”
Fortunately, her boss, Bill Siemering, did not tell her this 11 years later. Otherwise, Susan Stambergwould not have become what many refer to as the “Founding Mother” of NPR News. Susan hosted the show for decades, shifting later to start the Sunday Morning News and later becoming a culture reporter until the year before she died at age 87.
Terry Gross, herself an accomplished radio host, interviewed Stamberg several times, and in tribute to Stamberg, Fresh Air ran clips from these interviews. What comes through is a professional who was different from the norm in her early days.
The art of interviewing
Stamberg graduated from Barnard with a degree in English. She played piano and sketched, and she lacked fundamental training in journalism. What she did have was a keen eye for observation, watching and listening to how those she interviewed acted and spoke. Doing so enabled her to get the story behind the story that she believed her listeners wanted to hear and how it could affect their own lives.
For example, when she interviewed John Erhlichman, who went to prison for his role in Watergate, she chose not to be confrontational; instead, she asked about his life. “At the end [of the interview], [he said] let me tell you something about Washington. In this town, there’s one king of the mountain, and everybody else in this town is out to shoot him off that mountain. That’s Washington. That was Watergate in a nutshell, you know? That was all the paranoia of the Nixon White House right there.”
The power of connection
What we learn from Stamberg’s example is that when you communicate, you first must connect. Stamberg did that with her audiences over the decades because they felt that when she was on the air, they were getting an inside look at people and issues. You only achieve that connection by preparing in advance, putting your interviewee at ease, and then conversing in ways that allow them to say their piece. It is the reporter’s job to lay out the facts and for us to draw our own conclusions from what we see and hear.
Final word
At the close of one interview with Terry Gross, Stamberg said, “Sure, but I never want to stop asking questions. That’s the real issue. It’s not so much the interviewing. I feel I am blessed that I found microphones in this world because I spend my life talking to people away from the microphone. It’s something that I do naturally as a person. Luckily enough, I found a place where they’ll pay me to do that.”
And luckily, too, NPR listeners were fortunate to have had Susan Stamberg’s questions – quizzical, probing, sometimes funny, and always fair – for these many years.