"In my case, the listener is often in an automobile driving to work. You can concentrate on the road while still getting an audio message that can be riveting"
About this Quote
Radio is built for the half-attentive life, and Bob Edwards is quietly defending that as a virtue, not a limitation. The image is plain on purpose: someone sealed in an automobile, commuting, eyes forward, mind split between traffic and time. Edwards isn’t romanticizing distraction; he’s naming the reality of how most people actually receive journalism. The line carries a subtle rebuke to media purists who treat “real” attention as the only legitimate attention. Audio, he argues, doesn’t need a captive audience to land. It can ride alongside routine and still hit with force.
The intent is professional and strategic. As a journalist shaped by public radio, Edwards is making a case for sound as a medium with its own ethics and craft: narrative pacing that accommodates intermittent focus, writing that’s clean enough to follow when your attention dips, voices that can convey urgency without visuals. “Riveting” is doing a lot of work here. It signals ambition - not just to inform, but to hold emotional and cognitive space in an environment designed to fragment it.
The subtext is also about intimacy and trust. A commuter alone in a car is a private listener, receptive in a way a scrolling reader often isn’t. Edwards is pointing to radio’s peculiar power: it turns public affairs into something that feels personally addressed, threading civic information into the most ordinary part of the day. Contextually, it’s a snapshot of late-20th-century public radio’s wager: meet the audience where their life already is, then earn their attention one sentence at a time.
The intent is professional and strategic. As a journalist shaped by public radio, Edwards is making a case for sound as a medium with its own ethics and craft: narrative pacing that accommodates intermittent focus, writing that’s clean enough to follow when your attention dips, voices that can convey urgency without visuals. “Riveting” is doing a lot of work here. It signals ambition - not just to inform, but to hold emotional and cognitive space in an environment designed to fragment it.
The subtext is also about intimacy and trust. A commuter alone in a car is a private listener, receptive in a way a scrolling reader often isn’t. Edwards is pointing to radio’s peculiar power: it turns public affairs into something that feels personally addressed, threading civic information into the most ordinary part of the day. Contextually, it’s a snapshot of late-20th-century public radio’s wager: meet the audience where their life already is, then earn their attention one sentence at a time.
Quote Details
| Topic | Road Trip |
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