![]() ![]() And I'd hear him in my head, years later. He was to me," says Eric, who grew to value Ken's forthright style. "He was a great mentor to scores of young and up-and-coming reporters. In the early 1990s, one of those young journalists was Eric Westervelt, now a veteran NPR correspondent. Jason DeRose Ken holds his rescue rabbit, Owen, in his backyard. And it's no wonder he loved his job, working with young journalists and bringing them along." ![]() "Just below that prickly exterior, he really was a total mushball," she says. "That stung."īut it didn't take Tovia long to discover Ken's big-hearted side. This is like elevator music!'" She pauses. And then he blurts out at me, 'I was asking for a symphony. "And when I gave him what I wrote, he just went silent for a second. "He said he wanted my story to sing," she recalls. She still clearly remembers one of her first edits with him, decades ago. "Tough and gruff!" is how NPR correspondent Tovia Smith describes her first impression of Ken as an editor. So many of the voices you hear on NPR will tell you that Ken shaped them into the reporters they are today - by mentoring, cajoling and sometimes critiquing with blunt, painful truths when a story was weak or a description cliché. The Barcus family Ken enjoys a front-porch snuggle with Petey, his daughter Kate's dog, on Father's Day 2022.
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