| Recently,the promotions team at NPR asked us to write up little 25 second pieces about why we work at NPR (or something like that). So,I wrote about being trapped in the back seat of a very small Subaru listening to NPR (KCRW at the time) while sitting in traffic on the 101 or the 405 or Forest Lawn Drive. That was the beginning. Then when I was older,my parents would actually discuss the stories with me –not just the content but the production. Then there was the Marantz professional tape deck my dad got me when I was 11 or 12. I still use the RE-50 microphone that came with it. I suppose my career path was inevitable. And I feel incredibly lucky that it’s all worked out this way. Here’s the final product,at 25 seconds of it.
The photos in the video are me when I was a kiddo randomly sitting on a small battery operated car,me interviewing Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour about the BP oil spill,and me in Haiti shortly after the earthquake.  This fall I’ll spend the better part of a week at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism as a “journalist in residence.” I swear it hasn’t been that long since I graduated from the J-School. Well,if I do the math,I guess it has been nearly a decade. I can’t really explain how excited I am to visit the school,meet the students and hopefully share some of the things I’ve learned over those 10 years. Most of my time will be spent in classrooms,but there is one public event planned. Here’s the official description: The Big Story:National Public Radio’s Tamara Keith When: Wednesday,October 6 Reception:5:30 PM Where: North Gate Hall Library … Let’s hope those improv comedy classes I’ve been taking pay off! The other day,I got a message on Facebook from myself. Well,at least that’s what it looked like. I had gone 30 years thinking I had a completely strange name that only my hippie parents could come up with. I suffered through all the mispronunciations and misspellings and mocking from kids who [...] The other day,I got a message on Facebook from myself. Well,at least that’s what it looked like. I had gone 30 years thinking I had a completely strange name that only my hippie parents could come up with. I suffered through all the mispronunciations and misspellings and mocking from kids who [...] Yummy latkes. If there was a Tamara’s Greatest Hits album,this story would be on it. Luckily for all of you no such album exists. Learning to Make Latkes is a funny little story –and more like a personal essay than anything I’ve done since my teenage years as an essayist [...] Yummy latkes. If there was a Tamara’s Greatest Hits album,this story would be on it. Luckily for all of you no such album exists. Learning to Make Latkes is a funny little story –and more like a personal essay than anything I’ve done since my teenage years as an essayist [...] It’s called a quick turnaround,a piece with an incredibly tight deadline. As a reporter it’s scary,exillerating,thrilling and ultimately very satisfying (if it turns out well,which amazingly it usually does). Here’s how it usually works. The assignment comes and then I start frantically calling everyone who might possibly know anything [...] When I came through the door of the Hanford Sentinel and said I wanted to write a column,the editor I spoke with agreed to let me try it out. I’m pretty sure he figured he was signing up for a one off deal. I had different [...] Tamara when she was 15,penning,literally penning a column. In the summer of 1995,I started writing a column for the local newspaper in the relatively small town where I grew up. The paper was the Hanford Sentinel,the town was Hanford,California –population 30,000. At the time,there were [...] This weekend (Sept 12-13) on Maryland’s Eastern Shore you can check out a tradition unique to the Chesapeake Bay – log canoe racing. Log canoes are historic boats…on steroids. Their masts are so tall,their sails so large that they have a tendency to tip. A few weeks back I went out to [...] |  |
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