Anyone tuned into NPR Illinois on weekday mornings might've noticed a new show hitting the airwaves: Local Edition. But what exactly is Local Edition and what is it trying to do for central Illinois? To answer those questions, Ben Singson sat down with NPR Illinois General Manager Randy Eccles.
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Ben Singson
I'm Ben Singson. You're listening to Local Edition on NPR Illinois. But what exactly is Local Edition? To answer that question, I'm speaking with Randy Eccles, the general manager of NPR Illinois. Randy, thank you very much for joining me.
Randy Eccles
For sure, Ben. We are really excited about things that are happening here.
Ben Singson
Obviously, we are starting Local Edition, um, but I thought, uh, we thought, rather, that it'd be smart to introduce the audience to what exactly this show is. So, could you just explain to me and the listeners at home what exactly the main thrust of Local Edition is?
Randy Eccles
The sharpest point to present it is that over the last several years, especially since the pandemic, people have come to us saying, "We need more local news coverage," that there is not enough things like the SJR [State Journal-Register], uh, are not what they used to be, newspapers, business model has fallen apart. For that matter, journalism has, uh, try- is trying to figure out a business model that works, but the newspapers used to generate most of the local coverage, and that's not happening like it was, and we've been wanting to step into that space and do what our, our listeners and the audience have asked us, is give some more local coverage. Our first, uh, attempt at that is Community Voices, which is not news-based, but the concept was to get a local daily interview show going that was news-focused on what was going on. Local Edition, to start, is gonna be a half hour, uh, at 9:00 each morning, and in that, to some extent I should interview you about what's gonna be in it, but in that is going to be what we are seeing as top overall issues, top stories, or things you should know about. Okay, any newscast occasionally will have some feature segments in it, but we do have largely Community Voices to cover a lot of that stuff. We, we want as much as possible to focus on things like, I think the first week of the show, this week of the show is the election. So, that was pretty much a no-brainer to start with. We need to know what's going on with the election coverage, and sometimes that's gonna be us doing interviews. Sometimes it may end up being us bringing in NPR coverage that is important to the local area.
Ben Singson
In an ideal world, who do you hope we have on the air for Local Edition?
Randy Eccles
So, we'll make this invitation right now. Primary sources, we'd love you to call in and tell us what's going on. Uh, you can contact us. We have an email set up for the show, and that is localedition@nprillinois.org. So, primary sources are gonna be the people making the decisions, the people involved with things, probably our politicians at times will be some of those folks, other leaders or business folks who are involved in news stories. But then you'll also have, at times, other reporters from around the area, 'cause there's just no way to afford enough reporting capacity to do it all ourselves. So, we'll have people come on from other organizations at times and do interviews with you and, uh, the other parts of the team to tell us what's happening in their area. So, we... You were previously at the Jacksonville paper.
Ben Singson
Mm-hmm.
Randy Eccles
So, it might have been we reached out to you and we're going, "Hey, what's going on in Jacksonville?" And you update us on, you know, either generally what's going on or we know something's going on in Jacksonville and we want to learn more about it from somebody who has a much better background on it.
Ben Singson
Gotcha, gotcha. So, when people tune in to listen this morning, what can they kind of expect?
Randy Eccles
Well, that's a good question. We've been cooking this for a little bit now, and I think we're gonna have some really good interviews. The first segment every time is gonna be whatever we can give the most priority to. Uh, sometimes that will be, uh, a little more feature-y or a little more what we'd call evergreen, uh, but, you know, we're asking the question every day in meetings, what is it that needs to be known? What is it that's happening? And if at all possible, we can get that set up and recorded ahead of time or do it live. Um, we'll get that interview on the air so we're talking about the important thing.
Ben Singson
By the time each episode wraps up, um, what do you hope that, um, the listeners are getting out of this?
Randy Eccles
Well, I know as a, a resident of Central Illinois myself, I... It... You can't hear it all, all the time or read it all, so what I hope is that things that are important to know about, I hear maybe for the first time, maybe for the second time, but I learn a little bit more about it, get a little more context because you have the time. I- if you've listened to newscasts, it's basically a headline and a couple sentences, uh, of what's going on, maybe a soundbite. That happens in probably less than a minute. Um, but a show like this, we've got five-minute segments and 12-minute segments and things like that. So, hopefully in that period of time, we can get a better sense of context of what's happening around this story or this issue that's going on. So, my hope is when somebody is done listening to the show that day, when the show is over, there's been at least a couple things that they found helped them learn some more about what was going on in our world.
Ben Singson
Gotcha, gotcha. Randy Eccles, general manager of NPR Illinois. Thank you very much. And again, that email address is localedition@nprillinois.org.
