To the editors:
Having once worked on a long piece on NPR myself, I read Glenn Garvin’s feature in the June 25 issue with interest. I read with even greater interest an exchange on that piece between Jim Naureckas and Garvin in the letters column of the August 13 issue. I don’t know either man, and I don’t want to get involved in the ideological points of their debate, but from my own research on NPR it seemed to me on first reading that Naureckas nailed Garvin on a number of inaccuracies and that Garvin’s response was to avoid Naureckas’s points and insult him. So I did some homework on the subject, ordered tapes of the original NPR broadcasts in question, and talked to–and taped–both Naureckas and Garvin. When the two of them duked it out in the pages of the New York Press and Washington City Paper, I sent in my findings. I now observe that Garvin, in his letter of August 13 to the Chicago Reader, has considerably altered his attack in acknowledgment of the mistakes I caught him on. Nevertheless, in regard to their exchange of 8/13,
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(2) Garvin’s response to that is: “Trying to analyze NPR’s content by reading Nexis transcripts is hopeless; Nexis transcribes only the network’s largest stories. For the April 13 edition of All Things Considered, for instance, Nexis offers transcripts of only 8 of 33 stories.”
Now, you may accept Naureckas’s definition of “story,” or you may accept Garvin’s; but if Garvin had told you what his definition was you might not have put so much credibility in his reply to Naureckas–or in his story on NPR, for that matter. Oh, and by the way, Garvin is in error on what’s on the April 13 Nexis. It contains 12 stories, not 8. That’s 12 stories by Garvin’s definition of story.
Allen Barra South Orange, New Jersey
(3) Barra suggests that I keep changing my story in response to his “findings.” Wrong, Allen. The only guy to change his story is you. In one of your original phone calls to an editor in New York, you offered to pay me $5,000 if I could find “one single word” spoken on an NPR newscast that didn’t appear in Nexis transcripts. When I found those words, by the thousands, you suddenly clammed up about the $5,000.
