day, May 03, 2004


By Kevin Kittredge




o why is Bob Edwards, host of America's most popular morning radio show until he was taken off the air three days ago, coming to Roanoke this week?

Thank WVTF (89.1 FM), Roanoke's public radio station.

"They asked," Edwards said last week.

The longtime host of National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" news show will be at Shaftman Performance Hall on Wednesday night. Admission is free, but tickets are required.

Edwards will discuss his new book, "Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism." He will also answer questions, sign books and talk about his own 30-year career at National Public Radio - including, presumably, the tumultuous last couple of months, which have landed him on front pages and in opinion columns around the country.

Edwards, 56, was the only host "Morning Edition" had ever had until last Friday. The news broke in March that Edwards had been asked to step aside as of April 30. NPR, which has said the move is part of an effort to expand the morning report, will replace him with two anchors yet to be announced.

Edwards is expected to return to NPR as a senior correspondent sometime after his book tour concludes this summer - though he also says he is considering other offers.

He has made no secret of the fact that he left against his will.

"I would have loved to have stayed with 'Morning Edition,'" he told The Washington Post the day the news broke. "But it's not my candy store."

Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman wrote that rumors Edwards would be replaced by younger anchors had "sent a chill of vulnerability down the spine of his baby boomer peers."

In a telephone interview after one of his recent broadcasts, Edwards said he had received stacks of supportive letters and cards. An online petition to reinstate him had garnered nearly 24,000 signatures as of late last week at petitiononline.com/nprbob/petition.html

NPR's own Web site acknowledges, "To many listeners, Bob Edwards is public radio." The audience for his "Morning

Edition" broadcast has grown to a mind-boggling 13 million listeners a week in 25 years.

How did NPR management break the news that he must leave?

The famously resonant voice goes quiet for some seconds.

"They said, 'We're going to make a change,'" Edwards said softly. "I told them I didn't feel anybody else could work harder at it or produce more."

To no avail.

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Edwards grew up in Louisville, Ky. He worked at a commercial radio station, then served in the Army, producing and anchoring radio and TV broadcasts in Seoul, South Korea, before earning a master's degree in broadcast journalism from American University. He joined NPR in 1974, three years after it began, and co-hosted the afternoon "All Things Considered," until becoming "Morning Edition's" first anchor when the show was launched in 1979.

Edwards' book tour was actually conceived long ago, but Roanoke jumped to the head of the line last month when WVTF asked Edwards to stop by. Truth be told, Edwards was headed home to Louisville this week anyway, he said, and Roanoke is on the way. Thus, the Star City became the first stop on his tour.

Edwards' presentation Wednesday at Jefferson Center will "bring to life" some of Murrow's major stories and include audio clips of Murrow himself, according to a WVTF release.

Edwards conceded that touring the country, talking about the legendary Murrow and meeting some of his millions of fans is a heck of a swan song for his years as host. NPR is underwriting part of the cost of the tour, he said.

Edwards said not having to go to sleep at 6 p.m., then wake up at 1 to drive to work among late-night revelers, will be a relief. "That part I won't miss."

Also, "It's a heck of a hard job. I forget that sometimes," he said.

Perhaps the biggest treat for Edwards in the months to come will be talking about Murrow. Murrow was an uncompromising journalist who introduced real-time, on-the-spot broadcast news to America with his radio reports on the German bombing of London during World War II.

Murrow assembled a staff of top-notch journalists, many of them stolen from newspapers or the wire services, to cover the war in Europe.

"The idea of enterprise reporting, original reporting, began with Murrow," Edwards said. "Broadcasters weren't supposed to do that."

After the war, Murrow was known for his weekly television news show, "See it Now," a forerunner of "60 Minutes." He socialized with presidents and prime ministers, but he was also a native of Polecat Creek, N.C., who had worked in logging camps and never lost his feel for the common man, according to Edwards' book.

Unfortunately, his hard-hitting reports often made his bosses queasy. CBS boss William Paley told him at one point, "Your programs give me stomach aches."

Murrow's response: "It goes with the job."

"He was brave almost to a fault," Edwards said. After a series of confrontations, Murrow and CBS eventually parted ways.

In 1958, he delivered a speech to the Radio-Television News Directors Association that seems prophetic today.

"Our history will be what we make it ... Television in the main is used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us ... I do not advocate that we turn television into a 27-inch wailing wall. But I would just like to see it reflect occasionally the hard, unyielding realities of the world in which we live."

A lifelong chain smoker who once puffed his way through his report on the dangers of smoking, Murrow died of lung cancer in 1965, at age 57. In his lifetime he had covered the German blitz, the Nazi death camps and the Communist witch hunts of Sen. Joe McCarthy.

Edwards, too, has done much. As host of "Morning Edition," he conducted some 800 interviews a year. An earlier book, "Fridays with Red," chronicled his friendship with sports broadcaster Red Barber, with whom he talked about sports and life on the air every Friday for a dozen years.

His most memorable morning on the job? Sept. 11, 2001, Edwards said. On most days, "Morning Edition" is a two-hour broadcast first aired from 5 to 7 a.m. and then repeated. On Sept. 11, Edwards was on the air for eight hours straight.

"We started with a hole in a building. We didn't even know at that time it was an airplane." He recalls describing the burning towers of the World Trade Center as "flares," and struggling for words when they fell.

In a way, Edwards said, he was lucky - since so many on Sept. 11 did not know what to do or how to help. Not so, the staff of "Morning Edition."

"We could do our jobs"

I am a faithful listener of NPR because my job requires this old night owl to rise at 5 am. Bob Edwards IS NPR. No one can replace him. How is Cokie Roberts going to reply to someone else's "good morning, Cokie?" And then there should be dead silence, as there will be a huge hole where Cokie is supposed to say, "good morning, Bob."

I wouldn't be surprised if in 45 years, someone is writing a biography of Edwards in the same way Bob has chronicled Murrow.

I've gotta go sign that petition.