NPR Correspondent Reflects on Challenges to Journalism

When students ask veteran reporters who is more of a journalist: Glenn Beck, Rachel Maddow or Jon Stewart, you know the media landscape has changed radically.

This was just one of the anecdotes that Lynn Neary, TMC ’71, shared on Oct. 25 with about 60 alumnae of Thomas More College.

Patrick Verel at fordhamu.edu writes the reunion brought together alumnae of Fordham’s “most selective college”—so nicknamed because its students had the highest average SAT scores and GPAs of any school in the University’s history. It was an all-women’s college from 1964 to 1974 before being folded into Fordham College at Rose Hill.

Neary parlayed a job at a small radio station in Rocky Mount, N.C., into a career at National Public Radio. Since arriving at NPR in 1982, she has risen through the ranks and is currently the arts correspondent.

She spent the afternoon at Rose Hill, meeting 15 students at WFUV-FM (90.7), and teaching a telecommunications/media ethics class.

“If you want to be a reporter, go out and report,” Neary told the students. “That’s how I realized how much I loved radio. I loved the idea of walking around with a recorder and asking people to tell me stories.”

Throughout the 75-minute class, Neary mixed personal anecdotes with professional and technical advice. She played audio clips from some of her recent work, including a piece about what it means to own a book in the digital age and a pre-concert, backstage interview with members of the band Black Eyed Peas.
Read more here.