| Alum - Ben Bergman |
|
An NPR producer whose first broadcast was at JDS
Long before broadcasting to NPR’s millions of listeners, I got my start in morning radio at JDS. The school had a loudspeaker system that meant whoever wanted to could broadcast to every classroom on campus. The system was usually used for all-school announcements but during my eighth grade year the principal, Dr. Raben, said he wanted something more substantial. He wanted students to broadcast the news every morning. At that point I was already very interested in broadcasting so I leapt at the opportunity, becoming a sort of executive producer and anchor of what I treated as our version of Morning Edition. I wrote my copy every morning on the long ride to school on the 984 bus, using The Seattle P-I and what seemed like a huge technological advancement at the time – The KIRO Newsfax. Dr. Rabin began the show with school announcements after the first bell and then tossed to our show. I played a theme song off a tape recorder and then read the top headlines before handing off to Jenny Bockow for the weather and Zev Raben for the latest news from Israel. I have no idea whether anyone else enjoyed the newscasts as much as I did. But I do know everyone was listening. They had to. No turning off the radio or flipping to a different channel. I still remember the embarrassment of making a flub – stumbling on a difficult pronunciation in front of the whole school. But that was my first experience at broadcasting live, even if it was to only a couple hundred captive students and teachers. -Ben Bergman, Class of '96 
|
I graduated from JDS in 1996, went on to attend Seattle Academy for high school, and then graduated cum laude with a degree in politics from Occidental College in Los Angeles. During my senior year, I interned at The New York Times and after graduation, was hired as a production assistant at NPR’s most popular program, Morning Edition in Washington, D.C. then became a 