O'Leary praises NPR for its commitment to getting younger voices on the air. PRI's Marketplace has been willing to use the Youth Radio corps as reporters, not just commentators, which has been another important breakthrough. The story we did on Levi's, it was being reported elsewhere that they had to close plants entirely because of competition from foreign manufacturers. Armed with statistics as well as anecdotes, reporter Belia Mayeno-Choy called them jeans for old folks. Dvorkin, for one, does not worry that more youthful-sounding programming is alienating the older audience that is public radio's core.
Kids see the world in very different terms.
It's a vision not fraught with the compromises of age that the rest of us bring to it.