After nearly 30 years, NPR newscaster Korva Coleman thinks public media has taken great strides towards creating a more diverse workforce.
Coleman is the headliner for WGLT’s Radio Faces 2019. Speaking on WGLT’s Sound Ideas, Coleman said there is value in including voices and stories of women and people of color not only in reporting roles, but also behind the scenes.
“These are the people who decide, what is news? What are we going to cover? What do we think is worthy of focusing our attention on? That’s, I think, where NPR is making an honest to God difference, and I’m really proud of it,” she said.
Coleman reflected on the late Cokie Roberts, a friend and NPR colleague of hers, who struggled to find a media job in the 70s because she was a woman.
“She couldn’t get a job at another media outlet because they were hiring ‘other people.’ She says those ‘other people’ were called men. And so she was able to get a job at NPR, being paid less—this is NPR—than the other male colleagues who were at NPR.”
Roberts passed away last month, but Coleman said she thinks about Roberts’s legacy often.
“Sam Sanders, Ayesha Rascoe, Audie Cornish, Noel King—and these are all women and men of color. We are seeing people making decisions to put people of color and women in decision making roles,” she said. “This makes a difference.”
But Coleman said there is always room for more growth.
Facts about Coleman:
- She always wanted to go into news ever since growing up listening to her local AM station in Phoenix, Arizona.
- She studied law for her master’s degree, but dropped out to fully commit to news when she had an offer to go full-time with NPR.
- She wakes up at 1 a.m. every morning and is at work by 3 a.m.
- She records every morning newscast live and “freshly conceived.”
- If she could give younger self a piece of advice, it would be “stop being so anxious about what people think of you and continue to do the right thing.”
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