Behind The Mic: Here's Why The 11 A.M. Newscast Was All 'Live'

We don't usually write about what happens in the NPR newsroom. That old line about not wanting to know how the sausage is made certainly applies in most cases.

But if you were tuned in at 11 a.m. ET and the newscast sounded a little different, it's because some technical gremlins got hold of the pre-recorded reports from NPR's correspondents and wouldn't let go. So, it was "live radio" time.

Which meant that this blogger got to spend a few moments on the air talking with newscaster Paul Brown about the California manhunt story. Then the real radio professionals — Dave Mattingly, Craig Windham and Korva Coleman followed. They had conversations with Paul about today's retail sales report, cyber security, and the president's climate change proposals.

It was a bit of a circus as everyone switched places at the microphone. Thankfully, there had been time to prepare notes or to grab the scripts that had been written for the reports that were stuck somewhere in our audio system.

We'll embed the audio. Hopefully, you'll think it all worked out OK in the end.

The gremlins, by the way, have disappeared. Things are back to normal now. So, this blogger's 60 seconds of radio fame have come and gone.

Update at 12:55 p.m. ET. Everbody's A Comic:

A "friend" just stopped by to say "you've got a voice for the blog."

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