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Rating: 9/10 (31 January 2015)

Friday is the last day for The Story on WUNC. The program's host, Dick Gordon, is leaving the station after eight years with the nationally distributed show. He spoke with WUNC/North Carolina Public Radio's Eric Hodge Friday morning.
ERIC HODGE: Good morning Dick.
DICK GORDON: Hi, Eric.
HODGE: So, why the move, Mr. Gordon?
GORDON: Well, it's never one thing. It's always a bunch of different things, but what led the way for me is the fact that my mother is getting on in years, we are feeling a long way away from our daughters, who both make their home in Canada, and it just seemed like a good time to make a decision to make that kind of switch. I mean, you never want to walk away from something that is as much fun as The Story just for a frivolous reason, but change is not a bad thing for me and we'll see where it leads us.
HODGE: What do you think you've achieved over these eight years?
GORDON: Wow, that's hard to judge at this point, because I'm still kind of right in the middle of one foot out the door and one foot in the door, but when I look over my shoulder, I'm actually really proud of the body of work that my producers and this station put together by finding a way of giving dignity, intelligence, and some kind of emphasis to the stories of ordinary people instead of, I think, doing what we do too often in radio, and that is simply turning our microphones toward the important people - because we think they're important - or the people who have a quick opinion to offer. We kind of shut out the stories that matter most about what's going on on our street or in our town, in our state, in our country, and that was just a tremendous opportunity that we had to work at doing that. Sometimes we got it dead on. Sometimes we missed the mark, but because