In Black America; Adam Clayton Powell, III

6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 6 6 6 6 10 29 3 Adam Clayton Powell III is the new director of News and Information at National Public Radio. I'm John Hanson, join me this week on in Black America. I'm making changes and they can see some of the changes already, but I think those changes are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. I think that the basic news and information programming is quite sound. Adam Clayton Powell III this week on in Black America. This is In Black America, Reflections of the Black Experience in American Society.

I didn't proceed for a long time that there was that difference. I can recall being allowed to stay up late to watch the 11 o'clock news, and so I guess I must have been about seven years old, eight years old at the time, and I was absolutely amazed. The first story on the 11 o'clock NBC News was about my father, and he was sitting there. He just came back from Indonesia that day, and there he was. The first item on NBC, and there was film of him getting off at what was then idle while there at Port, now Kennedy Airport, and that was a rather remarkable one, and I can really date to that night. My idea that there was something really extraordinary going on. I knew that he would commute to Washington, and my mother would commute all over the country. She would go to, in fact, she came down here to the University of Texas and had a bit

of a dispute down here in the 40s when she was booked for a concert here. I before I was born, but I thought that that was obviously a great deal of traveling, but I knew that one of our neighbors was a doctor, another one was a successful businessman, and I didn't really understand yet that there was something especially extraordinary about what my parents were up to. Adam C. Powell III is now head of News and Information at National Public Radio in Washington, DC. Mr. Powell has spent 20 years making a name for himself in the broadcast industry. Mr. Powell is the eldest son of the late, powerful flamboyant congressman and minister, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. During his broadcasting career, Adam C. Powell III has worked in radio and television behind the scenes and on the air, and more recently, president of his own media consulting

company. I'm John Hanson, this week, Adam Clayton Powell III in Black America. When I began to work in journalism, in my early paying jobs, my first paying jobs were summers while I was still in college, and I was able to work at CBS in New York, there was a certain misgiving because I had seen a lot of things that reporters weren't exactly invited to. At 41 years of age, Adam C. Powell III is perhaps the best-known son of the late New York congressman, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and the renowned jazz pianist, Hazel Scott.

In the summer of 1964, while a student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he began working as a volunteer at the CBS radio station in New York City. The following fall semester, he changed his major from architecture to political science, something he thought more useful in broadcasting. In 1971, he became program director of the now-defunct FM station WRVR in New York. In 1976, he won the Overseas Press Club Award for Specials on the Iran Revolution, while working for CBS News in New York. Powell has also received the Associated Press Award for Best Regional News, while News Director at New York's All News Station, W-I-N-S Radio. From September 1, 1987, Adam Clayton Powell III officially accepted the new job as head of News and Information for National Public Radio.

I recently spoke with Mr. Powell while on the visit to the University of Texas at Austin's College of Communication. And I was absolutely amazed that the first story on the 11 o'clock NBC News was about my father. And he was sitting there. He just came back from Indonesia that day. And there he was, the first item on NBC, and it was film of him getting off at what was that idle wild airport, now Kennedy Airport, and I thought that was a rather remarkable. And I can really date to that night my idea that there was something really extraordinary going on. I knew that he would commute to Washington, and my mother would commute all over the country. She would go to, in fact, she came down here to the University of Texas and had a bit of a dispute down here in the 40s when she was booked for a concert here. I before I was born. But I thought that that was obviously a great deal of traveling, but I knew that one of our neighbors was a doctor, and another one was a successful businessman.

And I didn't really understand yet that there was something especially extraordinary about what my parents were up to until that night in 1954, when suddenly I realized that there was a lead story, and my father's lead story on the 11 o'clock news, and then I started to look around the house, and I was like, look at all these magazines, my mother's picture in it, and look at all these different newspaper articles about my father. And that's really, I began to really see what was happening. Did your parents have any influence? Good or bad? On your deciding? Eventually, they're going to broadcasting, but when you just decided to become an architect, you wanted to go to MIT to become an architecture. Did they say no, we want you to do this, or whatever you want to do out of them is fine with us? They never said I couldn't do something, and in fact their attitude was exactly the way you phrase it at the end. Anything you want to do is fine with us. Now having said that, architecture was fine because in fact I designed a house for my father,

which he built in Puerto Rico, and designed a house for my godmother in Los Angeles. While I was still a student, I suppose family clients are the best kind to have. But when I began to work in journalism, in my early paying jobs, my first paying jobs for summers while I was still in college, and I was able to work at CBS in New York, there was a certain misgiving because I had seen a lot of things that reporters weren't exactly invited to. Proviate that. Exactly, yes. And I ever once my father's saying, now you're not going to tell them what really goes on here, are you? And I said, oh, don't worry, they wouldn't believe it if I did. Having said that a few years later, he was one over. My mother, of course, thought that I was just another branch of show business, so she

was happy. Okay. How did you happen to choose MIT for your college education? Was it something that your parents wanted for you or in perusing the universities and colleges that were available and for your field architecture that MIT was the best college for you at that time? Well, I'm not certain what my, well, yes, I am certain. I think my parents would have preferred my going to Yale or my grandfather went or to Harvard because that's where he didn't go and Yale and Harvard being somewhat rivals. I chose MIT because I was very much interested in additional architecture in science and engineering and had through high school had done particularly well in those subjects. And so I was interested in much more than the architecture there. I was interested in particular physics and mathematics and math found up as my minor. Now you eventually changed your major to political science and in the information that I read

because you thought that was a better correlation with broadcasting. Could you give us an in-depth analysis to that particular reasoning or is that the correct reasoning? That's correct. I don't know if there's very much that's in depth that I can add to it. I found myself, as I said, working summers at CBS, at WCBS in New York and then at CBS News. And I received very strong advice that I should learn more about history and economics and politics and perhaps the most crucial thing, which I'm not quite certain how you go about learning this. If anyone's found an easy way of teaching this, I'm sure that he or she would be made very rapidly. At least the chairman of the department of not the head of the university is how to write well.

And that's something which I think I was lucky enough to have acquired somewhere along the way. But I thought it was clear that political science was a closer fit than architecture. And at MIT, that was a brand new department. That was the first year you could major in political science. But a strong background in also the, what I guess are still called, the hard sciences and social sciences has, I think, been very useful. Well CBS, your first paying job, and if so, how did you happen to get to CBS? Did my dad have any influence in getting your foot in the door? Only indirectly. We had, I had had summer jobs during high school and once again I had a summer job lined up as a draftsman at a design firm on Long Island. And so I was gearing up once again, this would have been, I guess, the third summer that

I had a job. And it was a fairly long commute, it was about an hour and 45 minutes each way to get from Manhattan out to this firm in each way and then the evening coming back again. And I called a neighbor of ours who had just gotten a job at CBS, I guess, about a year earlier. And I explained to him that I'd been a news director of the campus radio station at MIT and that I had no background whatsoever in news and I told him that I was not in my high school paper or a yearbook, in fact I originally went there to complain because I had no intention of doing news myself. I just said that I'd heard them do this newscast and I had to complain to them because the newscaster had said that good morning and now here's the news, black nationalist leader Malcolm X said today that he wasn't going to accept, I was trying to think of myself who in the world is Malcolm X? And finally it pretty much must be Malcolm X and then obviously the newscaster had read the copy cold and didn't understand who he was referring to.

So I went there to complain and they wound up making me news director because they had very few volunteers in the news department. But nonetheless I had had no experience in news and so I called this friend of the family who wasn't CBS and I said can I come down and see what a real newsroom looks like. And he said sure come in at three in the mornings when I'm here, welcome to the real world. And so I showed up at three in the morning one morning and watched the CBS morning news go on the air which was then on at 10 am and it was extraordinary. This was the days of black and white film as the medium of field coverage. And you'd have 2,500 feet of unprocessed film arrived from Vietnam at 8, 38, 45 in the morning and you had to make a show at 10 o'clock with a cut piece. And so they'd break it apart and as much as processing you'd cook it for photography buffs they know what that means.

And then you break the reel up into 4 pieces and 4 different film editors they're looking for the track and somebody else is looking for the beginning and somebody else is looking for the clothes and I thought this was an extraordinary process. And they said well if you're interested you can stay and watch the evening news which was then done by Walter Cronkite which was if anything even more chaotic and I said well this is obviously an extraordinary day and I should return some other time when you're not quite so busy. And they said well fine come back tomorrow and I came back the next day this is in addition to my other job which is going on so I had to come in in the middle of the night and go to work and then come back. And the next day seemed even more chaotic and one of the film editors who only recently retired about two years ago I think from CBS said hey kid if you're going to hang around here why don't you get a job here. And I thought sure right. And he said well seriously what do you do? And I said well I'm just a student and I have this job as a draftsman on a long island he said no no no what do you why are you here and I said well I'm news director of WTBS which were then the call letters at MIT and I do a nightly newscast at midnight and it's carried on four or five other college stations I said great go down the hall and tell

that to the guy who's in that office down there. And they happened to need people and I wound up working for them on paid at first and then paid and went to the conventions and the next year what worked for WCBS TV as a summer desk assistant and then writer and and then they knew me and so I went back. Did you ever try your hand in running an operation a radio television station on your own a far from a far away from a network affiliation as far as you being employed by a network but having the ownership under your tutelage. I did fairly recently and that was oh my goodness I'm going to be tripped up on the years now but it will have been about three years ago I guess I formed a company on my own first for consulting using as I had a launch client so using as a base a contract with an

Nigerian television authority and the specific goal that I had at that time was to use the spare time because they the NTA only needed me for for less than half of my time to create a situation in which I would be running my own operation and we wound up acquiring a radio station in the San Francisco market and a television station in the Dallas market and the radio station was and is now once again music I had it running as an all news station and the Dallas station was designed as a we called a niche programming if there's so many TV stations in Dallas for those really with the Dallas market that you don't want to be the sixth station on the year of running the Vernon Shirley reruns and so we were busily programming

it for a certain niche having signed some non-disclosure agreements I probably shouldn't say what it was and then along came a buyer who offered us an attractive price until we wound up selling it and so I sold both stations last year sold my interest to both stations you're now vice president for news and information with national public radio how did you get to national public radio they called me I was I was sitting quite happily in San Francisco where I continued to run my own company after the sale of the stations or sale of my interest in the stations and I had contract consulting agreements which ran for another year and a half and I was joking with someone that in the event of total disaster I could

sit back and survive for quite a while quite happily and then a friend of mine from CBS who I had worked for called me and said you're going to receive a telephone call in the next 72 hours from somebody who you've never met and you're going to be offered the last best job in broadcast news in the United States and I was sitting there you know what in the world could he be talking about and I had all things considered on on the on the radio in the office so it was on the background and he said don't think too hard just listen and I was listening thinking he met something that he was going to say on the phone and he said no no no don't listen to me listen to what's in the office and I was listening I was listening to what was on the office and then I suddenly realized he was talking about all things and I said NPR I know a few people there but why in the world they called me he said don't ask just pick up the phone and that's how it happened. How has it been oh the new kid on the block moving from a more or less commercial background into an organization of non-commercial but is it that much of a change as far as from the business standpoint.

Well you're still managing bottom line NPR you don't have commercials you have a stream of funding from from different sources primarily stations. That's under the NPR. That's under the NPR. Yes. Business agreement, business plan, whatever. So so you're not faced with with the constant weekly fluctuations you'd you'd have in advertising revenue but but you still are managing I'm managing a cost center and so we are talking about managing bottom line I have a budget of X million dollars and I expected to come in on or under that budget. In terms of news it's very different but I have the the advantage of having been a very close listener to NPR's programs to all of them I was joking with Susan Stamberg I think I may have heard her first program on the air what 15 years ago but certainly for the time I've been living on the west coast I've been especially attuned to NPR because the stations in the Bay Area notably I hope you don't mind if I give callers KQED and KLW

which which I know this program has heard on because I've heard it on it run all of the NPR news and information programs more than once and so I've been able to listen quite closely and a number of the reporters and producers have been surprised that the the details which the details I know what they've been doing for some years now will you bring a new perspective or a new focus as far as news and information NPR or the shop were pretty much run away it's been run in the past somewhere in between I told everyone there several times that I'm making changes and they can see some of the changes already but I think those changes are evolutionary rather than revolutionary I think that the basic news and information programming is quite sound and that's not a bad pun but that there

are certain areas that need strengthening when I first met the senior foreign editor he asked me before I worked there he asked me what don't you hear on NPR and I said Asia I don't hear enough from Asia so when I took this job he said I guess we're going to hear more from Asia and I said absolutely I think we should hire another reporter for Asia which we are doing we're also moving to gear up a little bit more on business and finance and economics and I don't just mean having experts on the air but also how business cycles and trends affect everyone I've been talking about that with a number of the senior editors and executive producers during the month of October and suddenly developments with the sudden decline of the markets around the world caught up with us and one of them said I thought you told us we had another year because we were looking at the we thought

whether along with the number of others we thought there might be a recession sometime in 89 or so and instead we're faced with the story breaking all around us right now we're also going to be strengthening the basic Monday through Friday programs all things considered in morning edition one way is simply more stability another way is almost back to basics stability because all things considered simply hasn't had an executive producer in some time they've had a series of acting executive producers there are two new hosts there's a new newscaster there's a new relatively new senior editor and so you have this this virtually complete change at the top of the show and it's remarkable how well it's been doing all this time as this change has been going on sort of a tribute to the to the full staff there so so we have a new executive producer who is going to I think bring the kind of direction and leadership that that program needs and also differentiated more from from morning edition we've already begun to I think here some of the changes

in that we have a new producer who is designated as the one in charge of documentary and special project and longer more highly produced programming and so almost every night we now have a really highly polished produced segment of the program which I think has got to be one of the the center pieces of it and we're going to be introducing some more regular regular features and bringing back some of the things that that used to be done which simply have have been neglected not as a function of any conscious decision but more as a function of just this series of changes I'm having read I'm quite sure you want to like read the piece Americans as a total community or civilization do not read newspapers at the same rate that other countries so it's an increasingly important that radio and television pick up that particular slack I mean your opinion are Americans totally that

hunger or that hungry for news and information is the is the hunger still there to be informed adequately and precisely on what the issues are facing us today I think that hunger is there it's simply being expressed in different kinds of demands I can remember when I was growing up New York had seven newspapers and now there are what three four I guess news day but but then when I was growing up in New York didn't have to all news radio stations and you didn't have CNN and you didn't have national public radio and you didn't have all these other new new providers of information which run a fairly broad range and what I think has been fairly clear is that Americans have been able to find in this broad spectrum of publications and and broadcasts exactly what they want instead of having a few very large circulation outlets I guess life and look the old life magazine and look and I guess if

you go even further back to something I can't remember colliers come to mind instead of having those kinds of things you now have 50 different magazines none of which will have a kind of huge circulation that that life and look used to have but each one of which will in its in its own way supply information and the same thing has certainly been happening in broadcasting you've seen the the three networks quote unquote CBS NBC and ABC certainly finding their news audiences dropping rather sharply both radio and television and instead you have people going to to CNN or see span on television when that choice is available by cable or to a national public radio or or or all news radio stations on radio so if I recall correctly our our CUME with NPR is roughly a total number of listeners that we have at NPR is roughly 10 million that's 10 million people looking for the the longer more analytical more reflective kind of reporting that that we do and that we can do because

we're on for at least two hours in the morning at least an hour and a half in the afternoon every day and and we have the kinds of opportunities to do a report which can range anywhere from a 40 second spot in one of our newscasts on up to on up to half hours that we've done on for example the 20 year retrospective of urban unrest from 1967 and then 1987 looking back at that that was a whole half hour segment of all the considered and on to the more more feature oriented things or more recently we did another half hour segment on the centennial of William Randolph Hearst which is again a very different kind of segment so those kinds of things are available to people and there's obviously an appetite for them and need for them and demand for them and I'm I think that it's I think it's quite healthy I'm a

great believer in pluralism of all kinds and choices and I'll final two minutes Mr. Powell when you're not directing the news and information division and national public radio or your own company what are some of your likes and hobbies and pleasures to let you get back to yourself get back to nature as you will oh well I'm a swimming and tennis fanatic and now my sons are now their teenagers they're old enough to start beating the occasionally both both in swimming and tennis and I something happened to me this past summer which gave me a sense of deja vu which is we were climbing a mountain in the Bay Area Mount Town of Pius and they looked at me said do you mind if we go on ahead of you I something remember the first time I'd said that's my father I said oh I'm that old now right that's all right

Adam Clayton Powell III the head of news and information and national public radio if you have a comment or would like to purchase a cassette copy of this program write us the address is in black America longhorn radio network UT Austin Austin Texas 787 12 for in black America's technical producer Cliff Hargrove I'm John L Hansen Jr. please join us again next week you've been listening to in black America reflections of the black experience in American society in black America is produced and distributed by the center for telecommunication services at UT Austin and does not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Texas at Austin or this station this is the longhorn radio network.