A familiar voice for decades on these airwaves is signing off. Renee Montagne, who joined the network in 1981 and hosted both All Things Considered and Morning Edition, is stepping down after thousands of interviews, overseas reporting trips, and more than a few journalism awards. But before she goes, she’s here to look back and ahead.
So can we talk you out of this?
Well, that is the sweetest thing to say. It's kind of fixed. I can't turn around now. I'm out the door pretty much, but thank you for putting it that way. You know, NPR once, NPR always. 90% of my friends are NPR people. So I'll still be, in a sense, around, but not on this air.
You know, you've been doing it for so long and since the news has been announced, I know you've been taking a trip down memory lane to an extent. Were there parts of your career that you had forgotten about, or highlights that came back during the last few days?
Yes, actually. Well, let's put it this way, I didn't ever spend very much of my time looking back, I didn't have time for starts, but also just wasn't my, you know, it wasn't my personality. So when I did look back, I was a little overwhelmed, actually, with how much was done. I mean, I’ve been listening to tapes and whatnot, just like you just played. I was so delighted to hear the Joni Mitchell, which I hadn't forgotten, but oh, right. She came in at midnight they couldn't get for 11. And they finally said, well, Renee can't be here at 11 because she's overnight. And they said, Well, why don't you just bring her at midnight? The only feature I ever did at midnight like that. She came in the building.
No pressure!
Yeah, no. It was wonderful. She was so charming. It was her moment. And actually, so was I. I'm wide awake at midnight. So we had a good old time, you know. And actually, we turned out so well that we rolled it two days in a row, which is very unusual. But yeah, I guess my peak things, that turns out to be about six things. You know, from my father was a young sailor at Pearl Harbor, and I did a 60-year interview with him, but I recreated the situation, right? And then another 120 years later, and by then he'd passed. And those are really right next to my heart, right? But so were all the others. I did remember one thing with Joni Mitchell, which is Paul McCartney once serenaded me just before the interview. ‘Don't walk away, Renee.’
That's pretty cool.
Literally, came walked in, over a long walk to the couch, singing that song. It was so sweet. I was startled. I forgot that until I heard that tape again.
So you were there, obviously, for so long. What kept you at NPR all these years?
Several things. One, the work was amazing. I mean, I couldn't ask for more. I hadn't, as a child or a young person thought I'm going to be a journalist, or certainly not a radio journalist, butt when I started doing it, which was almost by accident and end of college and a little funky radio station in San Francisco, I sort of soon fell in love with audio and how perfect it is, how human voices ourselves have such range and in all circumstances, that was that.
I came into NPR at a time when it was just growing, and I would have been counted as one of the people who helped build it. And at every turn, there was something more wonderful that was happening to NPR, you know, all the way through new shows, the NPR West building, a whole other newsroom out in Los Angeles, where I was based. But I would say, if I had to say one main thing, the people here. The people here are so amazing. People have really solid values about the facts, about getting it right, but also about finding stories that needed to be told, that maybe weren't being told elsewhere, longform, and longform in this world is 5 minutes plus, in fact, at certain points you could say 3 minutes plus. And really, the people, decade after decade — it's hard to say that, it doesn't feel like it, it feels like about five years — that I've been here, but actually it's been the people I know here have become, at all levels, you know, of interaction, either I super honor them and I'm just thrilled to be working next to them, or in so many cases, my friends, sometimes lost friends. I heard from one just lately because she heard that I was, you know, leaving. It's kind of weird to say, but probably 90% of all the people I know as friends are from NPR at some point in my life. I mean, and the stations. Hey, listen, I've spent a lot of time visiting stations, right? And I contribute to three myself as a listener, two in Los Angeles, and one in Honolulu in Hawaii. And that's a whole other circle of people that I know. So it was a world for me very early on, and it is now, as I'm leaving.
That actually brings up something else I wanted to ask you, which is, this has often been the case over the time of your career, but public radio is in kind of a jam right now. I wonder what you think about the situation it's in as you're leaving, and whether you think we as a system should be doing anything differently?
I would say this. It's always a little complicated about when, because I've lived through several of these. It might be in most people's memory, they wouldn't be much thinking of it. But I mean, back in 1983 when I was a freelancer, the only reason I didn't lose my job was because I didn't have one. But they had a huge layoff because Ronald Reagan had followed through on his threat to stop the government, the CPB, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, from paying NPR. And at that point it was, I can't remember the exact number, but it was a high level of, the money that NPR took in, and in fact, zeroed out pretty much. It was on its way to zeroing out. And it led to an almost bankruptcy. And you know, we survived that. Because even then, people gathered around some very big names like Walter Cronkite, at the time, Ian, very big names, put an op-ed. I don't know if he personally did an op-ed, but, you know, op-eds in the New York Times, Washington Post. So, I mean, like I said, I marched on because I was still there.
But then, you know, it happened again at least twice more. It used to be a regular thing, actually, every 10 years, about every eight years. Sorry, Republicans. But then it turns out a lot of Republicans in a lot of small towns and a lot of cities all around the country loved NPR themselves and loved being on the air, and didn't want their constituents to be deprived of it. So this one is a lot more complicated, because there's all other layers about how media is changing and listenership and I hate to say this, I shouldn't predict anything, and I'm leaving. So don't hold me to this., I don't think much will come of any kind of congressional targeting. Because again, by the way, if people don't know this, NPR gets, like, half a percent of federal dollars. The rest goes to stations. There's still money going into this, into the system, but it's going straight to all the stations. So the stations really, you know, it matters for them. So what you're really thinking about here is it matters for stations, and they, there's a lot of supporters out there, so I'd say, I think it'll come right. But I can't deal with the larger historical changes, like people not being in their cars, things like that, right? You know, that's a that's a big deal, and that's out of my out of my sphere.
Where is the strangest place you've been recognized by your voice?
Mostly at a cash register. If I talk long enough, people recognize my voice. I have never had the Susan Stamberg experience, or even Robert Siegel, as people remember him, of like, Whoa, that voice is behind me on the bus. With me, if they're looking at me and talking to me, I've been to dinner parties where at certain points, somebody leans over after a while and says, are you Renee Montagne? Like, you know the first name of the people, but you don't know what they do? So there, I don't know if it's dinner parties, cash registers, it all involves me talking for a while.
Renee, congratulations, and I'm glad to hear that you'll be around, as you say, and I wish you nothing but many mornings of sleeping in going forward.
Thank you, Ian, I appreciate it, and thank you for having me, and thank all your listeners. Know that we love you here at NPR.
