A leader and innovator in broadcast journalism, All Things Considered is incisive and intuitive, relevant and reflective. It embraces the details so that what emerges in listeners’ minds is an eloquent bigger picture: news, culture, people, places, what happened today, and a glimpse at what’s to come.

Sound News for More than 30 Years
The hum of helicopters, shouts from angry protestors, the roar of police motorcycles – these sounds filled the airwaves during the first broadcast of All Things Considered on May 3, 1971. “Today in the nation’s capital, it is a crime to be young and have long hair…” reported NPR’s Jeff Kamen as he covered anti-war protest activities taking place throughout Washington, DC.

That first story fit the mold of what would become an NPR trademark. By capturing on-the-street interviews mixed with chants of protestors, All Things Considered took listeners out of their living rooms and cars and transported them to the streets of Washington. There, they experienced the tension of angered youths in the final mass protest against U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Luckily for the first All Things Considered staffers, it wasn’t a crime at NPR to be young and have long hair. At the time, the average age of the staff was just 26. Many of them rookies, they sometimes found it a challenge to fill a ninety-minute news show on a daily basis. The program had a bumpy start and survived its first year thanks in part to the use of “panic buttons,” extended pieces of music used when a reporter’s tape failed to materialize at the right moment. Thus the term “button” for any musical break was born.

Once these youthful staffers worked through the kinks, however, they found themselves with a cult following—a core group of about 4 to 5 million listeners who tuned to All Things Considered for its new approach to radio programming. Over the course of 90 minutes each day, listeners would hear the stories and voices of the people who make up today’s world—from the leaders of nations to everyday citizens—woven seamlessly together. The format brought the news to listeners in a fresh way. One moment found host Susan Stamberg and science reporter Ira Flatow in a dark closet testing whether Wint-O-Green Life Savers sparked when chewed. Another followed Chicago bureau chief Scott Simon through a crowd angered by a Nazi gathering in Chicago’s Marquette Park. Yet, no matter what the subject matter, All Things Considered approached it with intelligence, curiosity, and respect.

Ellen Weiss, former executive producer of All Things Considered, believes this is the hallmark of the program. “What defines the show is the variety of reports and features you hear every day,” Weiss says. “There’s news, commentary, interviews, and humor…there’s variety in the places you go, the voices you hear, and the emotions evoked. Beyond being a solid news program, All Things Considered is about what people can relate to personally."

Reporting style and program format weren’t the only areas in which All Things Considered charted new territory. Perhaps most notable was the strong presence of female voices, which many other networks at the time considered not professional enough for broadcast news. In the second year of All Things Considered, Susan Stamberg became the first woman in the U.S. to anchor a national nightly news program.

Women were also featured prominently in subsequent broadcasts. During the Panama Canal Treaty debates in 1978, for the first time in history the U.S. Senate allowed a national network to broadcast live from the Senate floor. NPR sent Linda Wertheimer to anchor the All Things Considered broadcast and provided live gavel-to-gavel coverage. Nina Totenberg and Cokie Roberts also joined the reporting staff and helped create a female force in network broadcast reporting.

Within just two years of its debut, All Things Considered won its first awards. In 1973, the afternoon news program was honored with the prestigious Ohio State and George Foster Peabody Awards. It went on to earn the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, the Overseas Press Club Award, the Major Armstrong Award, the American Women in Radio and Television Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, and the Washington Journalism Review’s “Best in Business” Award. In 1993, All Things Considered became the first public radio program to be inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame.

Hosted by Robert Siegel, All Things Considered continues to bring nearly 12 million listeners award-winning reports from across the nation and around the world. Together with regular commentators such as Romanian poet Andrei Codrescu and book reviewer Alan Cheuse, listeners take a daily journey through the day’s news: from following Linda Wertheimer through Tennessee as she reports on local politics and culture, to sitting with Robert Siegel in an interview with author Salman Rushdie, who had been in hiding for three years.

All Things Considered regularly features revealing series as well. Recently, the “Yiddish Radio Project,” produced by MacArthur Fellow David Isay, musician/historian Henry Sapoznik, and Sound Portrait Productions, featured one-of-a-kind recordings from the “Golden Age” of Yiddish radio (1930-55). The innovative “Lost & Found Sound” series, produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) and Jay Allison with NPR, offered a collection of richly layered stories that chronicled and celebrated a century of sound. For his “Teenage Diaries” and “Prison Diaries” series, independent producer Joe Richman handed American teens and prison inmates tape recorders and asked them to record the sounds and experiences that made up their daily lives. The recordings aired on All Things Considered and resonated with listeners nationwide. Series such as these and All Things Considered’s commentaries, news reports, and features combine every day to form a rich and dynamic story of the human experience.

Past and present hosts, commentators, reporters, producers, and all those behind the scenes…through their hard work and dedication, All Things Considered has not only delivered sound news, it has been the sound of news for over 30 years.