THERE MAY not be anyone anywhere more qualified to write a book on public radio than UW-Madison journalism Professor Jack Mitchell. Samuel G. Freedman said as much in his review of Mitchell’s new book, “Listener Supported: The Culture and History of Public Radio,” in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review.
Mitchell, who managed Wisconsin Public for two decades beginning in 1976, “has lived much of the history” of public radio himself, Freedman wrote. “He was the first producer of ‘All Things Considered’ and a three-time chairman of NPR’s board of directors.”
Freedman, an author and professor and UW-Madison graduate himself, goes on to call “Listener Supported” “a valuable history of how and why so much talent assembled down on the left end of the FM dial.”