To Inform and Comfort

When veteran television news reporter Michele Norris says, “It’s a bit daunting to step into these shoes at this moment,” she’s not talking about fashion.

She’s talking about signing on as co-host of National Public Radio’s All Things Considered just as NPR was gearing up to cover the war in the Persian Gulf.

“Talk about jumping into the deep end of the pool,” Norris says.

But, since she came on board in December, Norris says she’s learned two things very well: She isn’t swimming alone, and well-done radio provides a powerful lifeline for listeners and journalists.

Norris credits the ATC staff for helping her cross the bridge from ABC television to high-voltage radio news. She loves the collaborative environment of the 35-member team, including correspondents John Burnett and Eric Westervelt, who are embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq; Guy Raz in Turkey; Steve Inskeep in Qatar; and Ivan Watson in Northern Iraq.

Norris says the morning editorial meetings for ATC buzz with ideas about how to use the frontline stories they get from these veteran journalists and about what else to consider for the two-hour daily show. She says the morning meetings energize her because everybody, including the interns, feels free to become part of their “always yeasty discussions.”

The first of these discussions happens at about 10 a.m. But, Norris dives into her workday long before that. Pre-dawn Washington, D.C., finds her moving quietly about her house in search of news — devouring newspaper descriptions and analysis from journalists all over the world. Next, she goes online to check for new developments. She moves quickly, because soon her two small children will be up to pull her away from the terminal and off the front pages. She’s reading everything she can find in her few hours of solitude because she’ll need to hit the ATC door talking. She’ll need to be up to speed to stay ahead of her “intellectually curious” listeners and to help the NPR correspondents stationed abroad who rely on her for the big picture.

During their intense coverage of the Iraq War, Norris and co-hosts Robert Siegel and Melissa Block link listeners with those correspondents stationed in the Gulf. The nine-hour time difference complicates matters. Burnett and Westervelt call the station whenever they can, she says. When she connects with them directly, she’s well-informed and prepared to listen. Sometimes, she hears more than their reports. Sometimes, she hears their concerns.

“Every so often it comes through and you hear — I don’t want to say fear, but you hear a certain anxiousness in the voice, as you would expect from someone who is literally talking to you as bullets are whizzing past them,” Norris says.

At those times, she says she wonders whether to let them talk or yell at them to take cover. Her listeners would probably support the yelling, she says, because they feel as connected to the journalists as she does and as concerned about their safety.

Norris says she has been surprised and now convinced by radio’s ability to create community. “It connects with listeners in a very powerful way,” she says. Listeners feel empowered to hold the journalists accountable. They are often quick to pick up the phone or send off an e-mail when they hear something they don’t like.

“They will take you to task,” Norris says of the ATC listeners. “They don’t mind at all.”

She sees the coverage of Iraq as a story for television, the web and radio. “We’re getting the fabric and the texture and the hue of war that we had not perhaps been privy to and certainly not in real time,” she suggests.

Television’s pictures show us the battles and share strong emotions. Web reports punch out the almost-instant updates and details from the largest variety of journalists in and around Iraq. But, radio, says Norris, has the unique purpose of informing and comforting — of raising and answering more of the questions that plague people and become the stuff of bad dreams.

“It’s not just to report what happened, but to explain what happened and why it happened and what it might mean and whether it might happen again,” says Norris.

We have the luxury of timeMore than that, TV reporters are lucky to get two or three minutes of air time, she says. But with radio, especially public radio, “We have the luxury of time.”

For example, ATC spent two to five minutes on two consecutive shows to talk about words — just words. Words that her listeners just didn’t understand. Jargon that listeners said cluttered their understanding of the stories. So, ATC provided vocabulary lessons. They explained words like “brigades” and “regiments,” “units,” and “divisions,” and other words that we hear during the briefings from Central Command.

Listening to the military and to the correspondents has been a big part of Norris’ “one long sprint” (that’s how she sums up her new job). The rest has been reaching back for the storytelling skills she learned early and nurtured through her years at the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, then at “World News Tonight with Peter Jennings” for nine years.

Norris is a longtime fan of “All Things Considered.” Now that she’s on the other side of the mic, she’s become a fan of radio. “That voice that comes out of the box just connects with listeners in a very powerful way,” she says.