By Kim Cretors
kcretors@uga.edu
David Isay, an independent radio producer whose acclaimed audio documentaries and features are broadcast on National Public Radio, will deliver the inaugural Center for Humanities and Arts–Peabody Lecture on Jan. 31 at 7:30 p.m. in Ramsey Hall in the Performing Arts Center. The new joint lecture series will bring Peabody Award winners to campus.
Isay, founder of the non-profit Sound Portraits Productions, creates sensitive portrayals of people who are living in poverty, have all-consuming passions, or are caught up in social struggles. The winner of two Peabody Awards, he is also the recipient of two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards and the Prix Italia, and he was recently named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow.
Graduating with a B.S. in psychology and chemistry from New York University in 1987, Isay intended to go on to medical school. However, he became “sidetracked” by a story on a museum of addiction that he felt should be told and began making phone calls to public radio and television stations. WBAI-FM in New York was the only station to express interest and suggested that Isay himself report the story. The rest is, as they say, history. Isay’s piece eventually aired on National Public Radio, and his career took off.
In 1992, Isay received his first Peabody Award for “The American Folklife Radio Project.” The Peabody Board cited Isay’s “admirable range and uncanny ear . . . in [his] search of the small stories and large legends which comprise our heritage.”
The following year, Isay put tape recorders into the hands of LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman, two 13-year-old boys living in the Ida B. Wells housing project in Chicago. The boys reported on their lives and interviewed their friends and families for a week. Isay then took the boys’ 100 hours of material and edited it down to a 25-minute piece titled “Ghetto Life: 101,” which aired on National Public Radio. The documentary won many prizes, and a book was published based on the work. Isay shared—as he continues to do—all prize monies and royalties with his collaborators, in this case Jones and Newman.
In 1996, five-year-old Eric Morse was thrown from a window in the Ida B. Wells project, and Isay turned to the two young reporters to tell the story. The result was “Remorse: The Fourteen Stories of Eric Morse.” Again Isay served as editor, and the trio’s efforts produced a second Peabody Award for Isay—and a first Peabody for Jones and Newman.
In its citation of “Remorse,” the Peabody Board said, “LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman, under the tutelage of talented NPR producer David Isay, present a stirring, provocative and deeply felt document of the life, death and legacy of Eric Morse. . . . The skillful journalism of LeAlan and Lloyd, their enthusiasm, their love for family and community, are ennobling, and demonstrate that views of ghetto life in America are often stereotypical and inaccurate.”
Isay’s recent work includes “The Sunshine Hotel” (a look at New York City flophouses and their residents) and “The Jewish Giant” (a documentary on Eddie Carmel, the giant immortalized by the 1970 Diane Arbus photograph). In October 2000, National Public Radio aired Isay’s “Witness to an Execution,” a documentary on prison personnel in Texas who have the sobering task of putting people to death.
Isay says his work is “part documentary, part art, part social services. It doesn’t have a name—and I’m comfortable with that.” |
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