NPR Legend Noah Adams Passes Away; the Voice of 'All Things Considered' Falls Silent at 84

Noah Adams, the longtime presenter, author and storyteller of US public radio NPR, has died. He presented the programme 'All Things Considered' for 18 years. His wife Neenah Ellis said he died on Friday at his home in Yellow Springs, Ohio. He was 84 years old.

Adams took listeners through big events such as Ronald Reagan's landslide victory, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the September 11 terrorist attacks. But to the colleagues who worked with him in the newsroom, his journalism became brightest in his soft-style feature reports.

He would travel across the country by train, or spend day after day in small towns talking to whoever he met. He would ask questions, listen, and write down notes and observations. Then he would create long, thoughtful radio reports, which helped listeners understand and appreciate the world a little better.

Melissa Block, who made reports with him for years and later presented 'All Things Considered' herself, recalled, 'He always observed. He kept a small reporter's notebook with him, and he took notes in shorthand. His handwriting was almost impossible to read — just faint scribbles. But coming back, he would portray the character of a place, a person or a town in the most vivid, rich and simple language. From his incredible power of observation, a complete picture was created.'

Kentucky-born Adams joined NPR in the mid-1970s, when the network was brand new and finding its own path. He was a man who strictly guarded his personal space, but he had mentioned that before coming to radio he had done various kinds of work.

He did construction work and sold cars — which he himself once described in an on-air essay. In 1972, he started working at the University of Kentucky's public radio station. Three years later, he applied to work as a production assistant on 'All Things Considered.'

The programme's staff would sit in long meetings every morning — about the day's news and what would and would not go into the two-hour broadcast. Adams never found those meetings boring. Looking back at his career, in an NPR essay he recalled, 'You would pay attention to all the mysteries of the world. Think with deep curiosity about aspiration. Notice who is in danger, and why? What is the meaning of Washington?'

Like most journalists, Adams wanted to leave the newsroom and go out into the outside world. He tried to keep his reports away from Washington's officials and politicians. Block said, 'He never liked talking to people whose words he knew in advance were rehearsed. He wanted people who truly speak from the heart, with strong conviction and sincerity. He himself was exactly like that.'

He also wanted to write and talk about dogs as much as possible — he would bring dogs into scenes, even into interviews. In 1987, he began a memorable interview in exactly this way with an eight-year-old girl named Betsy Walter, whose parents had divorced. To put the girl at ease, he started a conversation about dogs.

The producer working with Adams that night was a young Ira Glass. Glass later recalled that it was the 'fastest and most effective' way to put a child at ease. He said, 'He was not talking down to the girl. Then he went straight into the interview.' Adams did so well that day that Glass took the tape of the whole interview home and preserved it. Afterwards, Glass repeatedly mentioned Adams and his style of interviewing as the inspiration for the feel and tone of his own created programme 'This American Life.'

In 1987, Adams left 'All Things Considered.' After another public radio legend, Garrison Keillor, left 'A Prairie Home Companion,' Adams went to Minnesota to launch a new variety show in its place. That variety show did not succeed, and two years later Adams returned to 'All Things Considered,' where his co-presenters were Robert Siegel and Linda Wertheimer. Before that, he had also presented with Susan Stamberg.

Siegel said, 'Noah was our voice for going to rural America, for telling stories about what was happening in the small towns far from the Interstate 95 corridor.' He also said, 'He was a prolific writer. He appreciated good writing and good writers, and tried to be as good as he himself possibly could.'

Adams wrote five books. Among them are 'Piano Lessons' (1996) — a memoir of learning the piano over the course of a year at the age of 51; 'Far Appalachia: Following the New River North' (2001); and 'The Flyers: In Search of Wilbur and Orville Wright' (2003).

According to Siegel and many others, the peak of Adams's writing for radio was the extraordinary 1981 radio documentary 'Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown.' Cult leader Jim Jones, who carried out a mass suicide in the jungles of Guyana, had recorded hundreds of hours of audio. NPR got hold of them, and Adams, producer Deb Amos and writer James Reston Jr. together created this experimental documentary from them.

One aspect of the documentary was controversial — in it, Adams gave the narration not as a journalist, but as a fictional composite character who had survived the cult. His presentation was deliberately flat and trauma-laden. To Siegel, this documentary was NPR as Adams wanted it — 'experimental use of sound, compelling writing.'

Adams helped build NPR at a time when the network's identity was flexible. In Block's words, he wanted the network to hold on to that era's ideal — presenting the country's character and everyone's voice in their own manner, from their own viewpoint, and paying attention to subjects outside the centres of power. Quietly, with purpose, notebook and typewriter in hand, Adams did exactly that throughout his life. With his death, a familiar voice of an era of American public radio has fallen silent.