Radio host to visit Wednesday

Debbie Elliott, NPR (National Public Radio) correspondent for the Southeast region of the United States, and University of Alabama graduate, will be speaking primarily to journalism students on Wednesday.

Elliot will visit campus on Wednesday, April 19, in the Trojan Center Ballrooms beginning at 10 a.m. to share of her radio journalism experience and host a workshop for journalism students.

Fred Fletcher-Fierro, host and producer of the Troy Public Radio, said he hopes students are inspired by Elliot and learn how to excel in their work.

“I hope they (students) can be inspired,” Fletcher-Fierro said. “I hope they also get kind of an understanding better of what they’re covering and how to do it professionally.”

Elliott attended graduate school at the University of Alabama, where she worked for WUAL-FM (Alabama Public Radio). After working for WUAL-FM, Elliott began her career with NPR as a host of Weekend All Things Considered in Washington D.C.

According to the NPR website, the show “consists of the biggest stories of the day, thoughtful commentaries, insightful features on the quirky and the mainstream in arts and life, music and entertainment, all brought alive through sound.”

“She frames the story in a 4 minute story,” Fletcher-Fierro said. “She hits the high points, brings in a couple of professionals, gives the listeners what they need to hear.

“That may sound easy, but it’s a difficult thing to bring somebody up to speed on, say, somebody who lives in Washington that has no idea about politics in Alabama.”

Fletcher-Fierro said that Elliott is the NPR point person for big stories and she has covered stories such as the gulf oil spill that happened on April 20, 2010, and the Charleston, South Carolina shooting that occurred June 17, 2015.

“She’s a wealth of knowledge really,” Fletcher-Fierro said. “To have somebody who’s from this part of the world who’s covered Alabama politics stories.”

After the lecture on Wednesday, Elliott will be hosting a workshop for journalism students to help with their work on feature stories that they have previously prepared.

“She’s going to have a workshop with some different journalism students, (and) some of our Troy Public Radio interns,” Fletcher-Fierro said. “She’s going to be listening to features they put together, that’s essentially what she does most of the time.”

Flecter-Fierro described Elliot as someone with a successful journalism career.

“One person can love covering journalism and topics and news related events so much that she (Elliot) can go from graduating from the University of Alabama and enjoying a long career in journalism.”