In which real people bring us the world

When Lisa Mullins made the trek out to Greenfield yesterday, she passed through familiar lands. Long before hosting PRI's The World, she had her first radio gig at WEIM (now WPKZ) in Fitchburg. The World, a collaboration between the BBC, PRI, and WGBH, is a rare treasure, bringing international news to an American audience.
Mullins and The World editor Ken Bader spoke last night at an event sponsors by WFCR and Greenfield Community College. WFCR has just launched a new FM outlet, 91.7, in Greenfield, bringing the news channel to the static-free airwaves.
The crowd of 70 or so^[1] filled the chairs in a brick-walled room in The Arts Block, a renovated factory in the revitalized downtown. Through a presentation of photos, Mullins walked us through the production of the show. The World goes on the air at 3 PM Eastern. The staff starts shortly before 8 AM, reviewing the overnight news and holding conference calls with the BBC staff in London (where its early afternoon). She introduced us to the staff from the big league executives to the go-fers, providing a insightful anecdote about each.
The show doesn't do much breaking news. Bader noted that The World is more like a newspaper, developing a daily digest of news. The World also does longer investigative pieces. Mullins previewed a series on South African health care that will air in December. In that series, a medical panel makes the life-and-death decisions about who will have access to the limited dialysis services.
Mullins noted that, even with the reorganizations and budget cuts at the BBC, there's still no news organization with a greater reach than the BBC. The dictatorship in Burma doesn't allow foreign correspondents into their country. The BBC has a reporter in Burma.
Bader gave us a clever demonstration of editing for radio, taking the lead graf of a New York Times story and making it work for the listener. Simple sentences do the job.
The show is brought to us by a crew of reporters who get shot at, crawl into dark and dirty places to bring us the news, talk to leaders of the world and drummers from Brazil. Mullins played an audio clip of a Honduran bishop who was struggling with grief after Hurricane Mitch drowned the country in 1997. "I am very bad with God," said Bishop Leo Friday. Sometimes, she observed, you just have to let the interview go where it's going to go.
These are consummate professionals, but also, and most importantly, real people who work with real people to help us understand a complex and troubling world. Mullins, at once humble and confident, is one of those few people who could find both the Zambezi and Nashua rivers on a map.

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^[1]Although the black population of Franklin County is just 1.7%, this crowd was whiter than that. The only black person in the room was the technician running the audio equipment.