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Wanyu Zhang
toggle caption Wanyu Zhang
With the help of Bill Siemering, NPR was able to identify its core values and goal to diversify its storytelling. Wanyu Zhang
When I was six years old, I knew that radio was a medium with a purpose. Twice a day, my teacher in a rural school turned on the radio and we listened to the Wisconsin School of the Air and I learned art, music, science and nature studies listening to the radio. This was but one example of the Wisconsin Idea that the boundaries of the campus are the boundaries of the state.
On May 3, 1971 the newly formed National Public Radio aired the first broadcast of
All Things Considered.
Bill Siemering was a founding member of NPR and became the first director of programming. The Wisconsin native says that at the time news came exclusively from one of the few large radio outlets and he felt that those organizations were simply dictating what was happening in current events. His vision was of radio content that started conversations for listeners and gave broader explanations of why events were happening in the news.
“There’s so much more to tell than ‘this just happened, to be reflective, to give context, to talk about things that did not fit in a short news summary,” he says.