Noah Adams
Noah Adams, long-time co-host of NPR's All Things Considered, brings more than three decades of radio experience to his current job as a contributing correspondent for NPR's National Desk., focusing on the low-wage workforce, farm issues, and the Katrina aftermath. Now based in Ohio, he travels extensively for his reporting assignments, a position he's held since 2003.
Adams' career in radio began in 1962 at WIRO in Ironton, Ohio, across the river from his native Ashland, Kentucky. He was a "good music" DJ on the morning shift, and played rock and roll on Sandman's Serenade from 9 p.m. to midnight. Between shifts, he broadcasted everything from basketball games to sock hops. From 1963 to 1965, Adams was on the air from WCMI (Ashland), WSAZ (Huntington, W. Va.) and WCYB (Bristol, Va.).
After other radio work in Georgia and Kentucky, Adams left broadcasting and spent six years working at various jobs, including at a construction company, an automobile dealership and an advertising agency.
In 1971, Adam discovered public radio at WBKY, the University of Kentucky's station in Lexington. He began as a volunteer rock and roll announcer but soon became involved in other projects, including documentaries and a weekly bluegrass show. Three years later he joined the staff full-time as host of a morning news and music program.
Adams came to NPR in 1975 where he worked behind the scenes editing and writing for the next three years. He became co-host of the weekend edition of All Things Considered in 1978 and in September 1982, Adams was named weekday co-host, joining Susan Stamberg.
During 1988, Adams left NPR for one year to host Minnesota Public Radio's Good Evening, a weekly show that blended music with storytelling. He returned to All Things Considered in February 1989.
Over the years Adams has often reported from overseas: he covered the Christmas Eve uprising against the Ceasescu government in Romania, and his work from Serbia was honored by the Overseas Press Club in 1994. His writing and narration of the 1981 documentary "Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown," earned Adams a Prix Italia, the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award and the Major Armstrong Award.
A collection of Adams' essays from Good Evening, entitled Saint Croix Notes: River Morning, Radio Nights (W.W. Norton) was printed in 1990. Two years later, Adams' second book, Noah Adams on All Things Considered: A Radio Journal (W.W. Norton), was published. Piano Lessons: Music, Love and True Adventures (Delacore), Adams' next book, was finished in 1996, and Far Appalachia: Following the New River North in 2000. The Flyers: in Search of Wilbur and Orville Wright (Crown) was published in 2004, and Adams co-wrote This is NPR: The First Forty Years (Chronicle Books), published in 2010.
Adams lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where his wife, Neenah Ellis, is the general manager of NPR member station WYSO.
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NPR's Noah Adams talks with Reuters correspondent Oliver Bullogh about popular reaction in Ukraine's eastern provinces to the former Soviet Union satellite nation's current political crisis. Bullogh returned Tuesday from the eastern city of Danetsk, where there is widespread support for pro-Russia candidate Viktor Yanukovych, to the capital of Kiev, where tens of thousands of protesters have held a week-long vigil in support of pro-European candidate Viktor Yushchenko.
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NPR's Noah Adams reports on a bottleneck at the biggest port in the United States. Demand for cheap goods from Asia has never been higher, but container ships sometimes have to wait in long lines to unload their goods.
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NPR's Noah Adams talks with Luis Sinco, a photographer for the Los Angeles Times. He has just returned from Fallujah, where he was attached to a Marine unit that saw some of the most fierce fighting of the Iraq war.
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NPR's Noah Adams speaks with Boston Globe Iraq correspondent Anne Barnard about efforts to assess the reconstruction needs of Fallujah. More than a week of deadly battles between U.S.-led forces and insurgents has destroyed much of that city's infrastructure.
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NPR's Noah Adams talks with Slate contributor and former U.S. Army officer Philip Carter about how the U.S. military compiles its figures of war dead -- particularly casualties among the enemy.
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Britain's Parliament has finalized a ban on fox hunting in England and Wales. NPR's Noah Adams talks to Jonathan Freedland, a reporter for London's Guardian newspaper, about the ban and the angry reaction from many of Great Britain's hunters.
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NPR's Noah Adams speaks with Astrid van Genderen Stort, a spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Jordan, about living conditions for refugees from the Iraqi city of Fallujah. Most of the population of Fallujah fled in advance of the U.S.-led assault on insurgents in the central Iraqi city.
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NPR's Noah Adams speaks to Amy Cook, a teacher at Irving Middle School in Pocatello, Idaho, who led a local group to construct a symbolic cemetery of white crosses for U.S. soldiers who've died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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NPR's Noah Adams speaks with NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton about the growing unrest in the Ivory Coast, a former French colony. France is evacuating hundreds of its citizens from the West African nation to escape the violence.
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NPR's Noah Adams talks to Slate military affairs writer Fred Kaplan about the aftermath of the U.S.-led siege of Fallujah, the insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad. Kaplan says it's unclear whether occupying the city has significantly diminished the strength of Iraqi insurgent forces.