Noah Adams, a writer, broadcaster, and storyteller who hosted All Things Considered for 18 years, has died.Adams died Friday at his home in Yellow Springs, Ohio, according to his wife, Neenah Ellis.He was 84.He guided listeners through major events like Ronald Reagan's landslide electoral victories, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the September 11 terrorist attacks.
But to the people who worked alongside him in the newsroom, Adams' journalism shone through in the softer features he reported.Adams would ride trains across the country, or spend days in small towns talking to whoever he came across.He'd ask questions.
He'd listen.He'd write down notes and observations.
And then he'd produce long, thoughtful radio pieces that helped listeners understand and appreciate the world a little bit better."He was always observing," recalled Melissa Block, who produced pieces alongside Adams for years before hosting All Things Considered herself."He would have a little reporter's notebook and he would be taking notes in shorthand.
His writing is almost illegible – it would just be the vaguest sketches of things.But somehow, when we came back, he would capture the character of a place or a person or a town in the most vivid, rich, simple language.
It was a complete picture based on his unbelievable powers of observation."Adams, who was born in Kentucky, came to NPR in the mid-1970s, when the network was still new, and still figuring things out.He was private - intensely private - but told people he'd bopped around a series of jobs before falling into radio.
He worked construction.He sold cars, as he recounted once in an on-air essay.
In 1972, he started working at the public radio station at the University of Kentucky.Three years later, he applied for a job as a production assistant on All Things Considered.For years, the show's staff has begun each morning with a long meeting about the day's news, and what should and should not be included in the two-hour broadcast.
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