Celebrating A Month of Gratitude: Alicia
We’re choosing to celebrate gratitude this month. Throughout November, our team will share gratitude journal submissions - whether eliciting a smile or making a significant impact, we all benefit from sharing and experiencing gratitude. We hope you’ll join us and share your own moments of gratitude in the comment section below.
Alicia: This year, as we’ve navigated a lot of national and world news and prepared for a major election, I am especially grateful for National Public Radio (NPR) and all the journalists who shed light on the world so democracies can flourish.
A mural painted on a blast wall in downtown Kabul in 2016 commemorates the 35 journalists killed in Afghanistan since 2001.
Credit: UNAMA / Fardin Waezi
Most people who have hung out in my kitchen know I always have a radio on in the background tuned to NPR local affiliate KNKX 88.5; almost every morning I start my day with David Greene, Steve Inskeep, Noel King, and Rachel Martin on Morning Edition (ME). I get up early, so out here on the West Coast where we get live programming and rebroadcasts, I sometimes listen to stories twice (the news lately sometimes takes two times hearing it to sink in). Thanks, ME team, for filling me in on what I missed while I slept.
And then of course most evenings I prepare dinner listening to the team on All Things Considered - thanks Audie Cornish, Ailsa Chang, Mary Louise Kelly, Michel Martin, and Ari Shapiro for helping me make sense of my world. Then there’s Weekend Edition, Fresh Air, Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me, Ask Me Another, Story Corps – and so many shows in my podcast app waiting for me to tune in!
Each November, the UN celebrates International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists (November 2nd). According to their data, in the past fourteen years over 1,200 journalists have been killed for reporting the news and bringing information to the public. As they say, each year one journalist gets a Pulitzer and 100 get shot. #truthneverdies
In gratitude to those who put their lives on the line for truth in journalism, uphold freedom of press, and help us make sense of the world.