Neal Conan, Former NPR Journalist and Baseball Announcer for the Aberdeen Arsenal, Dies
Neal Conan, a radio journalist who spent nearly four decades at NPR, where, reports The Washington Post, “he shaped news coverage as a reporter and producer and became known to millions of listeners” as host of the midday call-in show “Talk of the Nation,” died at his home in Hawaii. He was 71.
The cause was glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer, said his son, Connor Conan.
For the past 50 years, ever since it first went on the air in 1971, NPR has provided daily news, analysis and aural companionship for its legions of devotees. Mr. Conan was a mainstay of NPR programming for most of that half-century, joining the outlet in 1977 as a producer and departing in 2013 after hosting “Talk of the Nation” for 11 years.
According to Wikipedia, at the age of 27 Conan joined National Public Radio. Conan’s initial assignment was as a producer of All Things Considered. Later, he covered the White House, the Pentagon and the Department of State for the network.
During the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraqi Republican Guard detained Conan for a week.
In 2000, Conan took a break to serve as the stadium play-by-play baseball announcer for the Aberdeen Arsenal. A year later, he published Play by Play: Baseball, Radio and Life in the Last Chance League, which described his experience. On September 10, 2001, Conan began his work as host of Talk of the Nation.
NPR announced that it was ending the 21-year run of Talk of the Nation on March 29, 2013, stating that Conan would “step away from the rigors of daily journalism.” On February 12, 2014, during an interview aired on KUAZ 89.1, Tucson, Arizona’s NPR affiliate, Conan explained that ending Talk of the Nation was not a decision he was involved in or agreed with, citing its status as one of NPR’s most popular shows. He went on to join Hawaii Public Radio as a news analyst on June 8, 2014. He also produced a thrice-weekly series called Pacific News Minute between November 30, 2017, and October 31, 2019.
More here.
(PHOTO: Conan at Fenway Park in Boston.)
