I like Eleanor Beardsley’s voice, too. We Eleanors must stick together. I always figured she’d smoked too many Gauloises the night before her broadcasts, but she does have a twang in her voice. I think it’s more southern midwest to western than southern, but I could be totally wrong. I have no good rationale for saying that.
There is exactly nothing about any of these people’s voices that make them unable to do their jobs competently, which is to communicate through speech. There are plenty of media outlets that adhere to shallow standards and let only a narrow range of “golden” voices on the air. Go listen to those. But public radio was set up specifically as a counter to commercial programming, and having a range of presenters on whose competence is not judged by a very artificial and narrow sense of “voice suitable for radio” is an essential part of it. You want shallow and superficial standards? Turn to a shallow and superficial media source. There’s plenty of those.
You aren’t kidding about that. My office has some weird radio reception issues and I get exactly one station clearly. It is NPR Boston and Diane Rehm is on in the morning. She sounds exactly like a wealthy Northeastern heiress dictating her deep philosophy on society from her death bed at all times. I get embarrassed when people walk in unexpectedly and ask me what I am listening to and I don’t have a good explanation.
I think this question has been asked seriously before but, does NPR give their on-air people some strange type of voice coaching?
That is a fine idea but that isn’t what NPR does. It has a distinctive voice pattern that you can recognize instantly that is meant to sound nasal, intellectual, and lofty. It is at least as fake as any other. If they wanted to be unbiased, you would hear a sample of people speaking in a different styles whether they are truckers or CEO’S. Listen to a guest reporting from an impoverished neighborhood sometime. They almost always have speech as clipped, precise, and introspective as a Harvard senior and their hobbies are always about writing, poetry, grass-roots activism, and art. Such people do exist and there is nothing wrong with that. Some of it is admirable but NPR is as heavily slanted as any media organization.
I believe it’s the other way around. People who are drawn to NPR tend to be intellectual and of a certain minimum educational level so they tend to sound like educated intellectuals. You hear the range of voices in that group, including all ages, regionas, etc. You have a few traditional radio voices like Carl Cassel (I have never seen his name in print so I have no idea how it’s spelled) but you have a pretty wide variety other than that – sougerners, midwesterners, Hispanics, Afican Americans, older people, etc.
In other words they do have some kind of filter but one related to competence in reporting and interviewing. Bob Edwards got dumped a few years ago gorfailong at these criteria and being little more than a traditional radio voice.
“Sorry Bob, but your voice just isn’t unpleasant enough for public radio. Come see us again if you get throat cancer.”
One NPR person who really makes me want to tear the radio out of my car is that Planet Money reporter with the Valley Girl speech – I think it’s Chana Joffe-Walt. I detest that speech pattern anyway, and it bothers me even more because I feel like she’s doing it on purpose – “Hey, how edgy and 21st-century is it that I’m reporting on economic issues while sounding like a 16-year-old with bubblegum for brains?”
And then there’s Peter Overby.
I get him and Netta Oolaby mixed up. (I also have no idea how to spell any of their names).
He does indeed. Maybe the other poster was just cranky because he was hungry? He could try some powdered milk biscuits - the ones in the big blue box with the picture of a biscuit on them. Heavens, they’re tasty - and expeditious!
Me neither. I always thought it was Ba Bedwards.
who can forget middle-east correspondent Psoriasis Hari Nelson?
That might actually be a strategy for avoiding “filler” words like “um” and “uh.” It’s one I was taught, anyway.
Wasn’t that actually a big problem when movies switched from silent to talking? I seem to recall that a whole generation of silent actors faded into oblivion because their voices weren’t as attractive as their faces.
Bwah! It almost sounds like that. There’s a bunch who could have names spelled any number of ways. I can’t think of them now, but we did a thread on them a few years ago in Cafe Society. I think it was about NPR in general and then focused on names.
Kor Vakulmen
Right now I’m listening to Melba Lara–surely one of the most awkward names in radio. I always think of toast when she says her name and I always cringe when she gets to “Lara” because it sounds like a mispronunciation of Laura (but that’s my issue).
Could there be any more glottals in her name? Maybe Alba Lalba would be worse…
(I’m not sure if it is a glottal, not being a phonetics person, but I’m sure someone will be along shortly to correct me). 
For all that is good and holy, no!
Names, and if you click, faces. I wonder who gets mail with their names spelled in a greater variety of ways, Tom Gjelten or John Ydstie.
I haven’t heard anything out of Sandra Tsing Loh lately.
Things are looking up.
She’s written a few self-indulgent and revolting magazine pieces. A thoroughly odiouscommentator I can’t say I recall what her voice sounds like.
I’ve been listening to Eleanor Beardley since she was new, and her accent has really changed. She used to have a very thick Southern drawl (hilarious in French) but she dropped it as quick as I did, moving from Tennessee to L.A. at age 10. As she lost the drawl the cigarette edge to her voice has intensified; I think it’s meant to cover up the Southernness.
How about that Maraliaison? NPR went through a phase when everybody including her was over-pronouncing it “Maral. Eye-a-son.” Or maybe it was “Mara. Liasson.” I can’t remember, and now I’ll never know because they’re all back to slurring it. I could look it up, but I’d forget.