Walter Ray Watson
Walter Ray Watson is a senior producer for NPR News.
Watson joined NPR in 1987 as a production assistant on Weekend Edition Sunday, working when the program was hosted by Susan Stamberg and later by Liane Hansen.
He is working on the music series "American Anthem." In 2018, Watson produced stories for the special series "1968: How We Got Here." Previously, he helped launch the Code Switch podcast covering race and identity.
During his tenure at Weekend Edition Sunday, he produced stories on organ donor transplants in Pittsburgh, the threatened closing of Harlem's Apollo Theatre, and countless music features — a signature of the Sunday morning program — including performance-chats with Joni Mitchell, Charles Lloyd, and Awadagin Pratt. He traveled to Topeka, Kansas, with education correspondent Claudio Sanchez to mark the 40th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education. As a reporter, he has profiled jazz musician Jason Moran, writer Junot Diaz, dancer-choreographer Bebe Miller, and Brazilian singer Milton Nascimento.
Watson was supervising senior producer of the weekend broadcasts of All Things Considered for more than eight years. He oversaw coverage of the impeachment vote of President Clinton, the contested 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, and Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
He's proud of his work in South Africa with NPR correspondent Renee Montagne when NPR examined that country two years after the election of Nelson Mandela. He's also worked on stories of recovery after Hurricane Katrina and the immediate impact of Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Watson won a George Foster Peabody Award in 2013 with host-correspondent Michele Norris for Norris' original storytelling project on race and identity, "The Race Card Project." He won an award the next year for best radio feature from the National Association of Black Journalists on the discovery and restoration of a rare 1913 silent feature film starring Bert Williams and a large African American cast.
Born in Louisiana, he grew up in Chicago. Before coming to NPR, he was a staff writer for The New Pittsburgh Courier, a bi-weekly African American newspaper. Watson earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Pittsburgh.
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The beloved singer and interpreter of pop standards won 20 Grammy awards over a career that touched eight decades. -
A founder of the Newport Folk Festival, the Newport Jazz Festival and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival — and perhaps the most important jazz impresario of all time — died Monday. -
The nation's largest suburban shopping mall was filled with consumers, while National Guard troops stood guard in downtown Minneapolis. Making sense of the contrasting images is hard. -
The testimony of people who were minors when they saw George Floyd's killing includes a person who took a video of the incident. -
The state of Mississippi is the subject of lawsuits and a federal investigation following the deaths of more than 30 inmates in its prison system since late last year. -
Singer Alicia Hall Moran and pianist Jason Moran mix original music works with 20th century spoken word to reflect on The Great Migration, when African Americans moved from the South to the North. -
The up-and-coming pianist has crossing boundaries, taking his jazz chops to hip-hop and pop sessions. Now, he's released his debut album. -
With "To Be Young, Gifted and Black," Simone aimed to capture joy in black identity amid bloody civil rights struggle. The song was addressed to children, but adults caught on, too. -
Fifty years ago, Shirley Chisholm became the first African-American woman elected to Congress. As part of our series on significant events from 1968, we examine Chisholm's life and work. -
The photographer and folklorist documented a caravan of mule-driven wagons that left Mississippi to march on Washington 50 years ago to draw attention to poverty.
