NOW on PBS Host
David Brancaccio
Interview
Notes from Evan Smith
"He's a public media lifer - someone whose entire career has played out on public radio and public television in service to the idea that good, solid, aggressive, ambitious, imaginative journalism still has a place in this world, and that we the people are, or should be, both the funders and stakeholders. He first hit the public radio airwaves, unpaid, in 1973, the year he bought his first radio with money collected at his Bar Mitzvah. His first paid gig was with WTVL, in his hometown of Waterville, Maine, in May
1976 - and from there, David Brancaccio was launched. After graduating from Wesleyan University in 1982, he became, briefly, a newscaster with KQED in San Francisco. He earned a master's degree in journalism from Stanford University and then, not long after, began freelancing for the public radio show Marketplace. He became the show's European editor two years later and, finally, its host in 1993. He spent ten years in that job, remaking the coverage of business from something drab and dour to quirky and cheeky. In 2003, he agreed to co-host the weekly PBS newsmagazine NOW alongside Bill Moyers, who had long been a fan of his work, and the next year, when Moyers retired, the show became Brancaccio's. A winner of a Du-Pont Columbia Award, a Peabody Award, an Emmy, and a Walter Cronkite Award - nearly every honor a journalist of his cast and caliber could hope for - the 49-year-old will soon set sail on a new adventure, as NOW comes to an end this April. But chances are that wherever Brancaccio docks, it will be with the public good foremost on his agenda - and we're all fortunate for that.." - Evan Smith, Texas Monthly Talks, Broadcast 03.04.10