1959-
Journalist

Revolutionary Journalism.

At the end of the 1990s Ira Glass was changing the face of American journalism with his weekly radio program, This American Life. Run out of Chicago public radio station WBEZ, This American Life was a show of stories held together by a theme. After only three and a half years on the air the program aired on 350 public radio stations to an audience of more than 830,000. The show began when WBEZ received a MacArthur Foundation grant to create a weekly arts/news show and asked Glass to produce it. Instead, Glass pitched the station his idea for a human interest show he wanted to host featuring stories about everyday Americans. WBEZ bought the idea, and the show began broadcasting in November 1995 with an annual budget of $224,000. In its first year it won a Peabody Award and in its second year was...