Interview: Andrea Tudhope - Producer and Reporter
We like to take time to highlight women we see out in the world doing their part to make the world a little nicer. In this Real Nice Lady Spotlight, we’re talking to Andrea Tudhope, Producer and Reporter, about how her work elevates truths and gives space to pain and trauma.
Job Title/Profession
Producer and Reporter. I was a reporter and talk show producer for 5 years at KCUR 89.3, until I took my current job as Senior Coordinating Producer for America Amplified. It’s a grant-funded national public media community engagement initiative housed at KCUR. I am on the central leadership team training, coordinating and supporting the efforts of 50+ stations across the country.
Favorite Drink?
Water. It’s the new whiskey for me. (Okay, I do still drink whiskey though.)
Favorite Food?
Pickles. Sour not sweet.
Karaoke Song?
Black Velvet by Alannah Myles
What song are you listening to on repeat right now?
Have Mercy by Erin Allen Kane
Female icon you would be for Halloween?
Furiosa from Mad Max
Telling as little or as much as you want, how are you feeling these days?
Lately, I feel strong and ready for whatever’s next. I feel like I’ve been coming back to myself after feeling pretty far away from myself most of 2020. To spend a year on the extreme introvert end of my spectrum has been a challenge. I miss strangers! But, I’m appreciating my space and feeling grateful for my privilege, my health and my paychecks.
What part(s) of your life during the pandemic have made you rethink your "normal" life?
I’ve been known to work overtime. Big or small, I throw all of myself into my projects. With the sudden loss of physical work-life separation, I had no choice but to confront my work-life balance, or lack thereof. So yeah — I’m on a continued journey to find balance while also embracing my creative process. I am either zero or 100; I both love and hate myself for that.
What first attracted you to your current profession?
I’ve always been an avid writer. But I was 15 when I learned I could be a journalist. Although, I did recently discover I was writing 5th grade journal entries in the form of newscasts. Ten-year-old me ended an entry about September 11, For NPR news I’m Andrea Tudhope in Kansas City. Little did I know…
Baby magazine journalism was my real start — life and culture pieces for the high school yearbook, which was no joke! Writing for and editing that yearbook was my life for three years. The year I started, I volunteered to write about a student tragically killed in a plane crash. I gathered her friends for an interview, and we sat in a circle and talked for hours until I ran out of pages in my reporter’s notebook. Pulling that story together was pretty memorable. I learned that my empathy could be a central part of my work as a journalist.
My motivations and focus have shifted over the years, but telling difficult stories has been a throughline. Elevating truths that might be hard to hear. Giving space to pain and trauma, as well as resilience and joy. I’ve learned that my pen is powerful, and whether as a reporter or talk show producer, I’ve dedicated my platform to elevating and empowering others, especially those underrepresented in media, those denied the privilege of access, those historically and systematically wronged.
What is your favorite thing about your industry? Your least favorite?
I appreciate the freedom to pursue stories of your choosing in public media. That’s not the case in every newsroom of course, but public media does seem to invite more flexibility in this area. That freedom has allowed me to set my own goals and priorities in my work — like centering BIPOC, and setting aside dedicated time to build meaningful source relationships without the immediate promise of a story. A huge part of that is listening to people and continuing to show up, not just extracting a story and moving on. There are stories that took me a year or more to publish for this reason. The flexibility I’ve described allowed me to do that, but it was also on me in a big way. There’s a lot of opportunity to pave your own way, and if you’re a self-starter, you can likely find a way to spend most of your time working on stories you choose.
But see, I think that’s a fatal flaw, too. When we leave it up to our journalists to be fair and unbiased in choosing the stories “worth” telling, and our newsrooms are homogenous — read: white and relatively affluent — we have a problem. I think this is largely true for many media outlets. It highlights the need for greater diversity in our newsrooms across the board, not just in race and ethnicity — we need trans journalists, we need more socioeconomic diversity.
What do you want for the future of your industry?
There seems to be a culture of retention in public media — once you’re in, you’re in. I’d like to see more turnover, mostly in leadership. We need a reboot. We need more diverse leadership, and we need it yesterday. To resolve the issues — that, for many, may have come to light in the last year, but have been egregious to those of us who’ve been fighting from within for a long time — we need new leaders who are prepared to take radical steps toward change. I’d like to see more transparency and accountability. More internal critiques, taking a look at not only who we’re talking to, but why and when. I want to normalize reporters going out into the field and not coming back with a story. While immediacy is crucial to breaking news coverage, I think it can be damaging and extractive. In fast-moving, high-stress environments, our implicit biases run wild. I’d like to see reporters afforded more time to get out into communities to learn, as opposed to going out with a story in mind.
Since you talked about the need for more diversity, I’m wanting to know who in the journalism/news scene you like following and seeing their perspective.
Well, I have to boost my fellow local journalists first and foremost. (Pro tip: When you come across breaking news or a story of interest in another city, do yourself a favor and skip the national coverage (NYT, NPR, CNN, NBC, Washington Post, etc.) and search Google and Twitter to find the local reporters on the story.) Local journalists are seriously putting in the work, y’all. And without much job security or fair salaries, to boot. To name just a few, Vicky Díaz-Camacho at Flatland, Mará Rose Williams, Glenn Rice and Toriano Porter at the Kansas City Star, Kevin Holmes, Dia Wall and Rae Daniel at 41 Action News, Celisa Calacal and the folks at The Beacon, and Suzanne Hogan and Lisa Rodriguez at KCUR. And, of course, my stellar colleague Kathy Lu.
Check out the new URL Media, which is a multi-platform network of Black and brown media organizations. Sign up for their newsletter!
If you don’t already follow Jeneé Osterheldt, get on the bandwagon! She’s with the Boston Globe now, but she used to be a columnist for the Kansas City Star and my grandma would always cut out her columns and save or mail them for me to read. Please make a point to follow her series, A Beautiful Resistance, centering Black lives and Black joy. Other must-follows: Jenn M. Jackson with Teen Vogue, Nikole Hannah-Jones of NYT Magazine (creator of the 1619 Project), Errin Haines of The 19th, Yamiche Alcindor with PBS NewsHour, Lulu Garcia-Navarro and Michel Martin of NPR, activist Brittany Packnett Cunningham of the Undistracted podcast, KalaLea with the New Yorker Radio Hour and my dude Aaron Randle of the Resistance podcast.
What are some of your favorite stories you’ve been able to share in the last few years?
I’m incredibly proud of the six-episode national talk show we launched around the election — America Amplified: Election 2020. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to lead such a substantial and significant project, and to manifest so many of my goals for public media coverage, as well as the goals of dozens of collaborators, on a national platform. From start to finish, the project was driven by the community, and pivoted away from traditional “experts” to invite community perspectives in a time when our news was crowded with politicians and the latest on the candidates.
Just before I took the job at America Amplified, I produced this story about teens in Northeast Kansas City, Kansas, who grew up thinking they had to “get out” to make it, but who are pushing back on that narrative. It was part of an awesome documentary we produced on Quindaro Boulevard. Related was my coverage on ongoing teen violence in KCK, paired with this story on youth resilience. Some background in this Twitter thread, but long story short, while spending time in the community, I heard over and over that reporters only come around when there's violence, so I made a commitment early on to also share stories about the work those teens are doing to change the narrative, and also just to live their lives as the children that they are.
Given the way journalism has been treated in the past few years (i.e. fake news movement), what keeps you motivated?
I stay motivated by focusing on the people and communities I work with for the stories I tell and their impact, and not letting the broader narrative bring me down. But it does get to me. The influx of criticism of “The Media” over the past four years is frustrating. Don’t get me wrong, I actively invite and encourage criticism internally and externally. We need a culture of critique and accountability to the public in newsrooms. But there is no conglomerate “The Media.” We don’t operate as one. Not even within a single newsroom do we operate as one. So I hope we all can work to be more specific with our much-needed criticism.
What advice would you give other women trying to succeed in your industry?
Don’t be afraid to challenge the status quo. And don’t accommodate. Use your voice and share your ideas and don’t immediately fold when someone in a position of power tells you you’re wrong or rejects your idea. At the same time, be open to learning from your mistakes. Another piece of advice: shake the notion that you are an expert on the topics or communities you cover. Center lived experience as expertise and treat your work and your sources accordingly.
What was a formative moment in your life that made you who you are?
When I was a junior in college, I applied for a fellowship to travel Dublin, Ireland, via a map I made of the places James Joyce cited in “Dubliners.” If you haven’t read it — i.e. if you weren’t forced to read it in English class, ha — it’s a collection of linked stories that dives mercilessly into the ordinary but extraordinary lives of people in Dublin. It’s fiction, but grounded in real places in the small city. My idea was to interview people I met along the way and write a series of articles, a nonfictional modern-day “Dubliners.” The day I received my stock rejection letter was the day I booked my flight. That was a big deal for a number of reasons. First, I had never left the U.S. Second, that was the second most expensive purchase I had ever made. (The first being the used Saturn I bought at 15 for the low low price of $900 … it was stuck in 3rd gear.) Money did not exactly come easy for my family, so this was no small thing.
I spent three months in Dublin that summer, finding places to crash for free, walking for miles each day, spending all my time with strangers. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t hard. I was surrounded by people but very alone, running out of money, out of my element. I had never done anything like it. But even in the lowest moments, it felt right. That experience helped me establish as a priority in my journalism and personal life the need to get out of my comfort zone and bubble as much as possible.
When do you feel the strongest in your life? When do you feel the most vulnerable in your life?
If the last answer is any indication, I gravitate toward situations and circumstances that scare me, and I feel strongest when I’m uncomfortable. Heart racing, palms sweating, that’s where it’s at for me. I’d say I feel most vulnerable when I’m in a bad place mentally and share that with someone, in no small part because I feel guilty knowing others have it worse. But, I’m working on it.
Given the state of the world, what have you been doing to maintain your mental health lately
Minimizing screen time and moving my body and breathing fresh air.
Who are five women that inspire you?
Five! Let’s just agree now that this is barely skimming the surface. Michelle Tyrene Johnson, a writer, playwright and now talk show producer in Louisville. She’s multi-talented, brilliant, hilarious, always up for new challenges, and I am lucky to call her my friend. Roach Ellington — she goes by Ms. E — a tireless advocate for her community and domestic violence survivors in KC, who’s faced plenty of hardships but never lets up. My mom, Dana, the life of the party, who instilled in me at a young age a great love of strangers, and who I learn from every day about overcoming battles, internal and external. My grandmas — Dixie, who has a heart of gold. And Sally, who raised five children after her husband died, while managing her careers. She’s an independent woman who’s never really alone and I love that about her.