There have been more than 900 Tiny Desk Concerts since 2008, and until the pandemic, most of them were filmed in NPR’s headquarters, which artists visit to wedge a set in between workers’ cubicles. The most popular of all time, by video views? Anderson .Paak and the Free Nationals’ August 2016 set, with 68 million views. (Surprisingly, it wasn’t BTS, who have still notched an impressive 34 million plus.) But as popular as they are with music fans, the shows are also popular with staffers. For our June 2021 feature on the network’s 50th anniversary, we asked NPR employees which gigs left the biggest impression. We couldn’t fit all of their choices into our print-magazine feature here are the choices of the dozens who answered.
Today NPR is one of Washington’s most familiar and influential media companies, operating out of a gleaming, ultramodern broadcast facility on North Capitol Street. Its radio programs, online content, and podcasts reach millions of people around the world. But when it launched 50 years ago, in April 1971, National Public Radio was a decidedly scrappy enterprise.
How did a modest radio project from a bunch of audio idealists evolve into the multimedia behemoth that we now spend countless hours listening to? To celebrate NPR’s anniversary, we’ve put together a look at its history and transformation. Please note: If you would like to imagine the whole thing being read to you in the voices of Nina Totenberg and Robert Siegel, we won’t object.
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Nella Rogers is happy at first to see that another Black woman has been hired as an editorial assistant at Wagner Books. She s tired of being just about the only Black person in the room or really any room at Wagner. And then one morning, Nella looks through a small crack in a cubicle and sees what she calls the flash of a brown hand.
It s Hazel-May McCall, resplendent in locs, every one as thick as a bubble tea straw and longer than her arms, a sharp marigold pantsuit and red patent leather ankle boots that Nella would have broken her neck just trying to get into.
Zakiya Dalila Harris drew on her book-world background for her new novel, about a Black woman in publishing who thinks, at first, that she has a new ally when her company hires another Black woman.
Lauren Migaki is a senior producer with NPR's education desk. She helps tell stories about teacher strikes, college access and a new high school for