Louis “Studs” Terkel (May 16,
1912—October 31, 2008) was an American author, historian, and radio
broadcaster. In 1985, he received a
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for “The
Good War”: An Oral History of World War II; his book Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About
What They Do was turned into a Broadway show in 1978 and in 1982 was
broadcast on public television. One of
his main goals throughout his career was the preservation of American oral
history through his writings and other works, and documenting the stories of a
wide range of Americans and the variety of issues they faced in their lives; in
particular, he championed marginalized and disenfranchised groups whose stories
and recollections were in danger of being lost or neglected. He spent all but the first eight years of his
life in Chicago, and became a well-known and much-loved member of the community
and living symbol of the city during the course of his 96 years.
As a young man during the
Depression, Terkel began working in radio after joining the Works Progress
Administration’s (WPA) Federal Writers’ Project; after spending some time in
the Army during World War II, in 1945 he began working as a DJ and writing
scripts for radio programs at several Chicago stations. In 1952, he joined WFMT-FM and became the
host of The Studs Terkel Program, an
hour-long weekday broadcast on which he conducted interviews of both the
world-famous and the unknown, as well as discussing current affairs, and in
1970, after eighteen years as a Chicago-area institution, his program was
syndicated through the WFMT Radio Network (a spin-off of the station intended
to distribute arts programming to radio stations worldwide), giving him a
nationwide, if not international, audience as well. After
Terkel retired from WFMT in 1997 after 45 years on the air, he and the station
donated thousands of hours of his broadcast recordings in 1998 to the Chicago
Historical Museum for preservation and to form the basis of a collection.
In May of 2010, almost two years
after Terkel’s death in 2008 at the age of 96, the Library of Congress
announced that it would collaborate with the Chicago History Museum on a major
project involving 7,000 WFMT recordings in the Museum’s Studs Terkel Collection,
with the goal of cataloging and digitally preserving all of the recordings so
as to make them accessible to an even wider range of listeners than they
originally enjoyed. (The recordings were
originally stored on reel-to-reel tapes, which not only makes them inaccessible
to the public, but are also extremely vulnerable to damage and deterioration;
transferring the recordings to digital media is, at present, the best way to
preserve them for both current and future listeners.) The digital preservation work was to be
carried out at the Library’s Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation, a
state-of-the-art facility in Culpeper, Virginia, with engineers transferring
the audio to preservation files; these would in turn be stored on the
facility’s digital archive system. The
goal of the project—which was anticipated to take several years—was not only to
create and preserve copies of Terkel’s recordings, but to provide both the
Library and the Museum with complete digital sets that would be cataloged and
accessible to the listening public at both institutions.[1]
Gary Johnson, President of the
Chicago History Museum, stated that “[f]or Studs, there was not a voice that
should not be heard, a story that could not be told. He believed that everyone had the right to be
heard and had something important to say.
He was there to listen, to chronicle, and to make sure their stories are
remembered. This partnership with the
Library of Congress will do just that.”[2]
Eugene DeAnna, head of the Library’s
Recorded Sound Section, added, “The Studs Terkel Collection exemplifies both
the challenges and the rewards of recorded-sound preservation. At the Library’s Packard Campus for Audio
Visual Conservation, we are excited to partner with the Chicago History Museum
to provide the resources necessary for preserving this great collection and
making it accessible to a broad and diverse audience of listeners.”[3]
Processing the materials was, as
anticipated, slow going, but in the summer of 2014 two entries in the Library’s
National Audio-Visual Conservation Center Blog Now See Hear! posted several of Terkel’s interviews of musicians,
including Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and Oscar Peterson, and his 1974 Labor Day
broadcast, complete with track listing.
The musicians’ interviews blog entry also states that approximately
one-third of the collection had been digitized and was available for listening
through the Library’s Recorded Sound Research Center, and that The Studs Terkel/WFMT Oral History Archives were online at both the
Chicago History Museum’s web site and the Studs Terkel Archive, and were
additional resources for the collection.[4]
At some point during the processing of the collection,
The Museum, the Library, and the WFMT Radio Network combined forces with the
goal of establishing a dedicated web site devoted to publishing the entire
archive online, with the Museum providing funding for a placeholder site, until
StudsTerkel.org was ready to go online.
The site was subsequently renamed The Studs Terkel Radio Archive (http://studsterkel.wfmt.com), and as of May 2014 had posted more than 5,400 hours of
content. At that time, WFMT was
simultaneously planning to digitize another 3,000 hours of Terkel’s material that
was recorded elsewhere, and to produce new programs for eventual broadcast on
public radio using some of the original recordings, filing a grant proposal for
$460,000 with the National Endowment for the Humanities.[5]
In July of 2014, the Archive received
an NEH grant in the amount of $60,000, which was used to hire part-time staff;
students from the Dominican University’s Graduate School of Library and
Information Science were already involved in tagging, transcribing, and
cataloging the material.[6] In January of 2016, a Kickstarter campaign
was established, with a goal of $75,000 by February 25, 2016; the money would
fund archiving, transcription, and uploading 1,000 of Terkel’s best-known
interviews.[7]
The Archive currently has
partnerships with the Chicago Public Library’s YOUMedia teen program and the
Chicago Public Schools, with the students at ChiArts and Convergence Academy
Career Community Academy creating New Voices on the Studs Terkel Radio Archive,
an original work inspired by the Archive.
Programs such as “This American Life,” “Radio Diaries,” and “All Things
Considered” on NPR, as well as the Third Coast International Audio Festival,
Radio France, and the Poetry Foundation, have also used material for their own
broadcasts, films, podcasts, and audio competitions.[8]
At this point, it appears that the
project is quite successful; Terkel’s archives are being digitized and saved
for future generations, and a decent percentage of them are already available
right now for the use of everyone from public school students to professional
broadcasters; the eventual goal is to have the entire archive online and easily
accessible, which seems perfectly feasible—the only question now is how long it
will take to digitize this large an audio archive! Terkel’s reputation as a journalist, writer,
and champion of ordinary people is such that the reputations of the
collaborating institutions, particularly the Library, Museum, and WFMT, can
only be burnished by their participation in establishing and maintaining the
archive. The only obvious issue at the
moment is financial in nature; accomplishing the goals that have been set won’t
be cheap, and as of today (February 21, 2016), the Kickstarter fundraiser
stands at $62,155, nearly $13,000 shy of the necessary $75,000 to be
funded. Otherwise, the project seems to
be running as smoothly as is possible for an undertaking of this size (the
Archive site refers to more than 9,000 hours of material!), and if it can mange
to acquire the necessary funding, I see no reason that it shouldn’t be
extremely successful on all counts.
It’s been fascinating reading about
Terkel and his place in journalism, and his role as a well-loved fixture in
Chicago both during his lifetime and after his death; if he hadn’t been who and
what he was as a person, I can’t imagine so many different groups and
institutions coming together to establish the Archive. Thinking locally, it makes me wonder if such
a thing would be possible in Boston or even New England in general—is there
anyone, living or dead, as iconic in this area as Terkel is in Chicago, and
would enough people and institutions be willing and able to come together to
establish something similar to protect their legacy for future generations?
[1]
“Library collaborates with Chicago History Museum to preserve radio icon Studs
Terkel’s historic recordings.” Library of Congress News Releases. http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2010/
10-115.html
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Fishman,
Karen. “Studs Terkel’s music
interviews.” Now See Hear! The National Audio-Visual Conservation Center Blog,
Library of Congress. http://blogs.loc.gov/now-see-hear/20124/07/studs-terkels-music-interviews/
[5] Lapin,
Andrew. “With help from WFMT, complete
archives of Studs Terkel find new life online.”
Current.org, May 20, 2014. http://current.org/2014/05/with-help-from-wfmt-complete-archives-of-studs-terkel-find-new-life-online/
[6] Engelman,
Joe. “Studs Terkel gets digitized.” Chicago,
October 13, 2014. http://www.chicagomag.com/arts-culture/October-2014/Studs-Terkel-Gets-Digitized/
[7] Hustad,
Karis. “This Kickstarter aims to bring
Studs Terkel’s Iconic Interviews to the Podcast Age.” ChicagoInno, January 21, 2016. http://chicagoinno.streetwise.co/2016/01/21/studs-terkel-interviews-go-digital-with-this-kickstarter/
[8] Kogan,
Rick. “Studs Terkel Radio Archive is a
wealth of American history in the making.”
Chicago Tribune, January 22,
2016. http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/ct-studs-terkel-radio-archive-ae-0124-20160121-column.html
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