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NPR's Tracy Wahl

Being Digital at NPR
Tracy Wahl (Comm'90)Ěý
For Tracy Wahl (Commâ90), keeping up with changes in digital media is more than a pastime. Itâs part of her job.
A former executive producer of âMorning Edition,â NPRâs flagship morning news program, Wahl is now the public broadcasterâs executive producer of new editorial franchises. Sheâs responsible for developing a broad variety of cross-media projects and for using social media platforms toĚýreach new audiences and tell stories in new ways.
Wahl started at NPR as a production assistant in 1997, after six years in a political science doctoral program and a stint with WORT 89.9 radio in Madison, Wis. From 2008 to 2010, she worked the midnight shift and set up âMorning Editionâsâ first Twitter account.
âI donât think any of us could have imagined just how diversified the social market would become,â she says during an interview at NPRâs Washington, D.C., headquarters. âEvery news conversation that happens around here now asks the question, âWhat are we doing on social?ââ
NPR was quicker than many news organizations to push its journalists to develop a presence on social media, she says, and now makes regular use of Snapchat, Instagram and Tumblr in addition to Facebook and Twitter.
âEngagement was something we were going to need to do in order to compete,â says Wahl, who was part of a NPR team that won a 2014 Peabody Award. âPeople need to feel like theyâre not just a passive recipient of information.â
A major way she and colleagues find material is through crowdsourcing â using social media platforms to identify interesting people and stories they might not otherwise know about.
âCrowdsourcing is a great way to acquire peopleâs individual stories and individual experiences,â says Wahl, who grew up in Cheyenne, Wyo., and lives in Washington, where she commutes between home and work by bicycle.
One of the challenges of intense digital engagement, though, is finding a way to leave work at work, she says. Missing an email, even by a few hours, might mean missing a big story.
âIt can become a super obsessive activity,â she says. âWhen we first started with social media I could spend all of my off hours just checking Facebook and Twitter.â
Succeeding at NPR has required more than social media savvy: It requires a flexible, adaptable, open mind.
âCU helped me to think about obvious things in a non-obvious way,â says Wahl, who was a Boettcher Scholar, served as a tri executive in student government and graduated Phi Beta Kappa.
âThe fact that I went to a public university is something I always brag about,â she says. âI think their commitment to public engagement and public conversation and just the public generally is something thatâs really important to me and how I found a natural home at NPR.â
Photo by Jarrod Jackson/NPR