As NHPR’s archive intern this summer, my primary responsibility has been to listen back to some of the station’s oldest audio. I take copious notes about the stories I hear – and when I find one especially interesting, it gets shared on our blog.
I’ve been listening to one particular show quite a bit this summer. That’s would be New Hampshire Daily, a 30-minute afternoon news show that ran on NHPR Mondays through Fridays during the 1980s and '90s. It was a magazine-style show that covered a wide variety of topics (sort of a local version of NPR’s All Things Considered).
All the stories that you’ve seen on our blog this summer have been courtesy of New Hampshire Daily, from profiles of authorsand artiststo in-depth coverage of environmentaland educationalissues.
One of the main players was then-NHPR news director – and host of the show – Martin Murray.
As my internship has progressed, Murray and New Hampshire Daily have been my guides through a specific period of New Hampshire history. Most of the archive episodes I’ve sorted through are from 1988 to 1990 – years when I was just a toddler living with my parents in Manchester.
It’s been fascinating to learn about the headlines from that era. And it’s been surprising to find out that some of the most common stories from those years – political partisanship and budget crises, to name two – mirror some of the stories that still dominate the news today.
For more insight, I was joined by Murray for a conversation in studio. Click the "play" button above to listen.
