He brings a lot to the table
Written on January 25, 2010 by admin
Albany
t just a minute before 9 a.m., Joe Donahue rises from a cubicle in a corner of the WAMC newsroom, with two books and three types of caffeine cradled in his arms. It’s time to do his radio show.
He crosses a hallway, enters a broadcast studio, and within seconds he’s on the air — just as he is for three hours every weekday morning, hosting the public radio network’s popular program.
“Good morning and welcome to The Roundtable,” Donahue says.
Donahue has been hosting the show for more than two years, since the popular Susan Arbetter departed in 2007 for a television gig. (A replacement for Arbetter lasted only a short time.)
The Roundtable is Donahue’s baby, and it has established him as perhaps the region’s premier interviewer — or at least as the person most likely to interview prominent guests.
Newt Gingrich. Stephen King. James Taylor. Jimmy Carter. Steve Martin. Dick Cavett. Cesar Milan. Jane Goodall. Ken Burns. Henry Louis Gates. All have been on The Roundtable in recent months — not bad for a radio station in Albany, away from the media capitals.
On this recent morning, Donahue’s show won’t be typical. It’s a day when the staggering consequences of the Haiti earthquake have become clear, when the world is beginning to realize deaths in the small nation will be counted in the tens of thousands.
Donahue and show producer Sarah LaDuke have scrambled to address the tragedy. Most significantly, he’s called author Tracy Kidder, who lives in western Massachusetts but has written extensively about Haiti, to ask him to be on the show.
“I think I woke him up,” Donahue said.
Kidder agrees to the request. That is isn’t surprising, really. Authors like Donahue, perhaps because he seems to like them so much. He actually reads their books, or at least makes it sound as though he has.
“Everybody thinks he’s read every word of every book,” says Alan Chartock, president and chief executive of WAMC. “If he’s cheating, nobody knows it.”
Donahue comes by his love of reading naturally. He’s the son of a librarian.
Regular listerners to The Roundtable might know that biographical detail. They might also know that Donahue grew up in Philadelphia, yet went to The College of Saint Rose. He’s in his early forties. He’s tall, six foot six. He likes baseball. He lives with his wife, Kelly, in Greenwich, about an hour from Albany.
But maybe listeners don’t know that he’s wanted to be on the radio since he was five and really never deviated from that dream.
“My joke is that I’m either very focused, or incredibly narrow minded,” Donahue says. “I’ve really never wanted to do anything else.”
Donahue’s style is conversational. He doesn’t do monologues, a la Rush Limbaugh. And the conversation that listeners hear is pretty close to what happens in the studio, because he doesn’t do a lot of editing.
“I like talking to people,” Donahue said. “I like the give and take.”
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