Ben Calhoun

Last updated
Ben Calhoun
Ben Calhoun (14266500288) (cropped).jpg
Ben Calhoun at the 73rd Annual Peabody Awards
Born1979
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.
Education Oberlin College
Occupation Radio Journalist
Notable credit(s)
 Chicago Public Radio, National Public Radio, The TakeAway

Benjamin Chang Calhoun (born 1979) is an American radio journalist and a producer for the public radio program This American Life and the podcast Serial . Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he now lives in New Jersey. Calhoun left This American Life from 2014 to 2017 to serve as Vice President of Content and Programming at WBEZ, the NPR affiliate in Chicago. Prior to that, Calhoun produced and reported for This American Life. Calhoun has taught at Loyola University Chicago and lectured at other universities. Prior to his work on This American Life, he spent eight years as a reporter and deputy news director at WBEZ, where he covered politics and did documentary work. His work has also aired on Morning Edition , All Things Considered , Day to Day , Marketplace , and WNYC's The Takeaway and Radiolab .

<i>This American Life</i> Radio program

This American Life (TAL) is an American weekly hour-long radio program produced in collaboration with Chicago Public Media and hosted by Ira Glass. It is broadcast on numerous public radio stations in the United States and internationally, and is also available as a free weekly podcast. Primarily a journalistic non-fiction program, it has also featured essays, memoirs, field recordings, short fiction, and found footage. The first episode aired on November 17, 1995, under the show's original title, Your Radio Playhouse. The series was distributed by Public Radio International until June 2014, when the program became self-distributed with Public Radio Exchange delivering new episodes to public radio stations.

<i>Serial</i> (podcast) American podcast

Serial is an investigative journalism podcast hosted by Sarah Koenig, narrating a nonfiction story over multiple episodes. The series was co-created and is co-produced by Koenig and Julie Snyder and developed by This American Life. Season one investigated the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee, an 18-year-old student at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore. Season two focused on Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, an American Army soldier who was held for five years by the Taliban, and then charged with desertion. Season three, which debuted in September 2018, explores cases within the Justice Center Complex in the Cleveland area. Serial ranked number one on iTunes even before its debut and remained there for several weeks. Serial won a Peabody Award in April 2015 for its innovative telling of a long-form nonfiction story. As of September 2018, episodes of seasons one and two have been downloaded over 340 million times, establishing an ongoing podcast world record.

New Jersey U.S. state in the United States

New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is a peninsula, bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware River and Pennsylvania; and on the southwest by the Delaware Bay and Delaware. New Jersey is the fourth-smallest state by area but the 11th-most populous, with 9 million residents as of 2017, making it the most densely populated of the 50 U.S. states with its biggest city being Newark. New Jersey lies completely within the combined statistical areas of New York City and Philadelphia. New Jersey was the second-wealthiest U.S. state by median household income as of 2017.

Contents

Early life and education

Born in Milwaukee, [1] Calhoun earned a bachelor's degree in English in 2001 from Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, [1] where he was the station manager for WOBC-FM, the student-operated station on campus.

Milwaukee Largest city in Wisconsin

Milwaukee is the largest city in the state of Wisconsin and the fifth-largest city in the Midwestern United States. The seat of the eponymous county, it is on Lake Michigan's western shore. Ranked by its estimated 2014 population, Milwaukee was the 31st largest city in the United States. The city's estimated population in 2017 was 595,351. Milwaukee is the main cultural and economic center of the Milwaukee metropolitan area which had a population of 2,043,904 in the 2014 census estimate. It is the third-most densely populated metropolitan area in the Midwest, surpassed only by Chicago and Detroit, respectively. Milwaukee is considered a Gamma global city as categorized by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network with a regional GDP of over $105 billion.

Oberlin College Private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, United States

Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest coeducational liberal arts college in the United States and the second oldest continuously operating coeducational institute of higher learning in the world. The Oberlin Conservatory of Music is the oldest continuously operating conservatory in the United States. In 1835 Oberlin became one of the first colleges in the United States to admit African Americans, and in 1837 the first to admit women. Today, it its known for its progressive student activism.

Oberlin, Ohio City in Ohio, United States

Oberlin is a city in Lorain County, Ohio, United States, southwest of Cleveland. Oberlin is the home of Oberlin College, a liberal arts college and music conservatory with approximately 3,000 students.

Professional career

Calhoun began his journalism career when he joined Chicago Public Radio as an unpaid intern during the summer of 2000. He was later hired full time, and was promoted from newsroom coordinator to deputy news director in 2003. [1]

From 2004 until 2008, Calhoun helped direct election coverage for Chicago Public Radio. He appeared on episodes of the Week in Review on WTTW-TV's Chicago Tonight program, where he provided commentary on current political news.

WTTW, virtual channel 11, is the primary Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member television station licensed to Chicago, Illinois, United States. Owned by not-for-profit broadcasting entity Window to the World Communications, Inc., it is a sister station to MHz Worldview affiliate WYCC and commercial classical music radio station WFMT. The three stations share studios in the Renée Crown Public Media Center, located at 5400 North Saint Louis Avenue in the city's North Park neighborhood; WTTW and WYCC share transmitter facilities atop the Willis Tower on South Wacker Drive in the Chicago Loop. WTTW also owns and operates The Chicago Production Center, a video production and editing facility that is operated alongside the three stations.

Chicago Tonight is a television news program broadcast weeknights on WTTW in Chicago. It reports primarily on local politics, education, business, culture, science and health, with a mix of in-studio panel discussions, one-on-one interviews and short documentary-style packages. On its website, Chicago Tonight publishes additional news stories and features written by staff reporters.

In 2005, Calhoun was awarded a grant by the Illinois Humanities Council that allowed him to pursue his interests in documentary work. Additional support was provided by Chicago Public Radio, where he used the grant to direct, edit, and curate an exhibition of audio and photo documentary work entitled The Daily Meaning: Life Inside America's Service Industries that went on display at the Peace Museum on September 2, 2005. In 2006, the documentary was nominated for the Helen and Martin Schwarz Prize by the Illinois Humanities Council. Calhoun served as the executive producer for the documentary A New Generation of Veterans, which was awarded second place for "Beat Radio Documentary or Series" by the Illinois Associated Press.

In February 2006, Calhoun was named WBEZ-FM/Chicago Public Radio's political reporter. [1]

Calhoun resigned from Chicago Public Radio in February 2009 to move to New York. [2] He is currently working as a producer for the radio program This American Life . [3]

Personal

Calhoun is married to New York Times journalist Catrin Einhorn. Calhoun is half-Chinese through his mother. [4]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Feder, Robert (February 2, 2006). "Heart surgery delays war reporter's return". Chicago Sun-Times . p. 61.
  2. ↑ "Ben Calhoun's Last Day". WBEZ. 2009-02-06. Archived from the original on 2009-02-12. Retrieved 2010-11-23.
  3. ↑ "Staff". This American Life. Archived from the original on 16 November 2010. Retrieved 2010-11-23.
  4. ↑ "Doppelgängers". This American Life. 11 January 2013.
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