National Public Radio News (NPR)

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 2:01pm on Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

One More Phone Call Might Have Made All The Difference, NPR's ombudsman reported on December 28, 2009:

"NPR recently ran a profile of a mother who has spent years fighting the Veteran's Administration (VA) to get equipment she needs for her son, Staff Sgt. Jose Pequeno, who lost almost half his brain in 2006 when a grenade was thrown into his Humvee in Iraq.

The piece portrayed Pequeno's mother, Nellie Bagley, as a once-meek, selfless woman who gave up everything and moved to Tampa, FL to care full-time for her son, who can't talk, walk or do anything alone.

She also surprised NPR listeners and Daniel Zwerdling, who did the story for All Things Considered on Nov. 30.

What Zwerdling didn't know was that Bagley had a criminal record."

The full story:
http://www.npr.org/ombudsman/2009/12/only_a_phone_call_away.html

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 1:35pm on Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

December 29, 2009: Joel Sucherman is now project director at NPR. He was previously director of product innovation at USA Today. Matt Thompson is now editorial product manager at NPR. He was previously online community manager at Knight Foundation.

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 6:53am on Thursday, December 24th, 2009

Liz Smith talked to NPR's Renee Montagne on how she got started in the gossip business, and on some of her run-ins with celebrities.

December 23, 2009:

"Ms. LIZ SMITH (Gossip Columnist): I became the ghostwriter for the old Cholly Knickerbocker Society column, and it was the last gasp of cafe society. So, for five years I went to El Morocco and the Stork Club and wrote about society, what people were doing.

MONTAGNE: And what were they doing?

Ms. SMITH: Well, you know, here's the thing. The cafe society came into being because people kept letting their help go one day a week. And then they would go out to eat, and that had been unheard of in the old-fashioned society of the original Mrs. Astor. You know, you never ate out in a restaurant.

So, times were changing. And there was a lot, if you just sat in El Morocco and watched them and described their clothes and who they were with and how they danced and whether they were fooling around or whether they hit somebody with a toy bear, like Humphrey Bogart did. He had a fight with a woman. She had won the bear in some contest, and he took it away from her.

There were just wonderful, silly things happening. And, you know, then society was slopping over into show business. It wasn't just society, or what was left. It was also these big movie stars.

MONTAGNE: Well, it would allow readers into these lives.

Ms. SMITH: I think you're right."

The full story:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121798372&ft=1&f=1020

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 2:19pm on Friday, December 18th, 2009

December 18, 2009: Robert Garcia is now executive producer, newscasts, at NPR News. He was previously executive director, news and sports, at ABC News Radio.