As a newscaster and reporter for NPR, Paul Brown handles an ever-changing combination of on-air, reporting, editing and producing tasks with skills he developed over 30 years working in radio and print journalism.
A general assignment newscast journalist with a world beat, Brown reports on breaking news, ongoing stories, and the broad range of issues that make up each newscast. His tools include phone interviews, on-scene reporting, and research. He files produced reports (called “spots”) and engages in live on-air discussions with newscasters.
Brown’s role in the Newscast unit has evolved from news anchor with some reporting responsibilities to a reporter filling in for newscasters on leave. Brown was NPR’s executive producer for weekend programming from 2001 to 2003. He served temporary stints as executive producer and senior producer of NPR’s Talk of the Nation, and as senior producer at NPR’s Morning Edition.
Before joining NPR fulltime in 2001, Brown worked as a freelance reporter and music producer. Prior to that, he spent nearly 13 years at NPR member station WFDD in Winston-Salem, NC as production manager, news director, and program director. He filed reports regularly for NPR on topics ranging from business to politics to cultural affairs. He produced and hosted a popular Southern culture and music program.
Brown won a National Federation of Community Broadcasters Silver Reel Award for his NPR music documentary “Breaking Up Christmas: A Blue Ridge Mountain Holiday.” He won an AP Enterprise Reporting award for his coverage of the changing lives of tobacco factory workers at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. In 2000, he was the sound recording engineer for the Preserving Living Traditions project in Tibet, which documented music and disappearing languages.
A banjo, guitar and fiddle player, Brown has documented traditional music in southwestern Virginia and northwest North Carolina. He continues to record and document music, produce albums, and present and teach traditional music in programs featuring its historical and cultural contexts. He was executive editor and presenter of the 2003 series “Honky Tonks, Hymns & the Blues” on NPR’s Morning Edition.
