All things considered, UW’s Mitchell is a public radio giant

For Jack Mitchell, there was always radio.

During his childhood in Detroit, the future journalism and mass communication professor and first employee of National Public Radio listened to radio greats like Edward R. Murrow. As he finished his master’s degree at the University of Michigan in 1965, however, radio was facing a serious decline.

But in 1967 Congress passed “The Public Television Act,” which Mitchell says slipped in the words “and radio.”

“All the smart people focused on television. I was one of the few people under the age of 30 who said, ‘Wow. We can do something with radio. This could be neat,’” Mitchell says. “So I determined to get on the ground floor of what became NPR.”

Mitchell, during his career, has played a key role developing NPR and creating its first program, “All Things Considered,” which recently celebrated is 42nd year on the air.

Mitchell became interested in noncommercial radio while doing news for a commercial station in Flint, Mich. On his own time, he produced a documentary series on the struggles of blacks in Flint during the civil rights movement.

“I thought I was really doing something that mattered and not just the latest traffic accident,” Mitchell says. “Educational radio did that all the time except that nobody listened. And the whole point was that we could do this substantive stuff and get somebody to listen. That’s exciting, and basically that’s what happened.”

After the Public Television Act passed, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting selected Mitchell to spend a year working at BBC radio in London. Since he was an American working at the BBC during the Vietnam War and taking notes on how the organization operated, some staff — especially those in the international service — suspected he worked for the CIA.

When Mitchell returned to the United States, he became NPR’s first employee, arriving in the office three weeks before the network’s first president. He soon began work on “All Things Considered.”

“For the first few months, it was run as a commune — nobody was in charge,” Mitchell says. “The first person who got there in the morning sort of figured out what the program would be that day and set it up.”

After about six months, Mitchell became the first fulltime producer of the program and made many of the major decisions shaping the show’s future. For instance, he selected Susan Stamberg as one of the show’s first hosts — the first woman to anchor a national nightly news program.

Stamberg, now a NPR special correspondent, says Mitchell focused on making NPR into a “community center for listeners” and on good reporting, shaping “All Things Considered” and NPR into a solid journalistic operation.

“He created the building blocks on which NPR rests today, just in those first years where he had such as an important role,” Stamberg says. “He was terrific, wonderful to work for, very encouraging always, and wise. He is one of the wisest and fairest people I have ever known.”

When Mitchell left “All Things Considered,” the Wisconsin Educational Radio Network offered him a position as its director. The network would soon become Wisconsin Public Radio, one of the strongest public radio networks in the country.

While serving as WPR director, Mitchell returned to NPR in 1983 when the network faced bankruptcy. He had to cut programming by 25 percent. He also organized, the first national NPR fundraising drive, called the “Drive to Survive.”

“At the time, we were saying we have to save this place,” Mitchell says. “I think that it would have been saved no matter what because it had become too important to let it go. But at the time, it was literally within hours of locking the doors — you know, on Monday morning, when we get to work, is the building going to be padlocked?”

Bill Siemering, NPR’s first director of programming and current president of the nonprofit Developing Radio Partners, which works with radio stations in developing nations, worked with Mitchell in developing “All Things Considered” and on the “Drive to Survive.”

Mitchell was critical to both the foundation of NPR and stabilizing the station during the period, Siemering says, adding that Mitchell has also played a role as a member of the network’s board and in writing a history of NPR — a book called “Listener Supported: The Culture and History of Public Radio.”

“He’s had a very strong influence and role to play in his professional career in NPR, as executive producer, board member, troubleshooter, and later to document it,” Siemering says. “It was a really important contribution to the history of the network.”

Mitchell continued to work at WPR before moving to the UW journalism school in 1998, the same year he received the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Edward R. Murrow Award — public radio’s highest honor.

He taught introductory courses on mass communication and reporting, helped to pioneer a course on ethics, and currently is working on the history of educational and public broadcasting in Wisconsin as it approaches its 100th anniversary.

Even with technologies changing the way news is reported and the way people receive it, Mitchell says he has no doubt that public radio will survive.

“The monopoly that broadcast technology gave the broadcasters is gone,” Mitchell says. “Now there are lots of ways to deliver programs, and lots of people to produce them. The future is with those who produce the highest quality content, and public radio staffs are simply the best at that.”

—Sean Kirkby