Spartan Profiles: Don Gonyea
WHITE HOUSE BEAT
In national news organizations, the White House beat is normally a plum job that awaits only a top-quality, proven journalist. In January, National Public Radio named Don Gonyea, ’78 & ’80, its White House correspondent, taking over for Mara Liasson. His reporting on the presidency of George W. Bush can be heard regularly on NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, and Talk of the Nation.
“It’s been an amazing experience,” says Gonyea, a native of Monroe who worked 20 years in Detroit, 15 of them for public radio. “Every day I wake up, it’s a thrill to go to work. This job really gives you a window on the world.” It also entails long hours. When the U.S. airplane was downed in China, Don worked 11 straight days on the story from his “tiny office in the West Wing” of the White House. “And that story is still not finished,” he notes, adding that the media is now focusing on the plane’s crew.
Don won many awards during his career and shared in the George Foster Peabody Award—broadcasting’s highest honor—for the series Lost and Found Sound. One of the episodes focused on MSU’s Maury Crane, who gave him a tour of the Vincent Voice Library. “NPR is the only place that lets me do the kind of journalism I like to do,” Don explains. “In-depth storytelling that uses radio to bring stories to life in ways that we couldn’t elsewhere.”
Don credits his MSU education with helping his career success. “I really enjoyed my academic experience at MSU,” says Don, five of whose nine siblings attended MSU. “In particular, Gary Reid was my first-ever radio production professor and taught me how to cut audio tape. Today we do things digitally, but that skill came in handy for many, many years.”
