Kansas City native Tom Parkinson joins KPR as the new local host of NPR's Morning Edition. He'll be replacing KPR News Director J. Schafer, who's been "filling in" as host the past two years. Tom has worked in news at radio stations in Florida, California and Ohio. He's also served as Morning Edition host or producer at other stations for the past 20 years.
KPR News Director J. Schafer has hosted the local segments of Morning Edition, on and off, for the past 20 years. There have been other hosts since Schafer came onboard in 1995, but none lasted more than a couple years. Soon, KPR will have a new morning news host. Schafer will step back into his primary role as News Director and Senior Editor. And while he begins working behind the scenes, a new newsman named Tom Parkinson will become KPR's morning voice. Instead of just springing him on listeners some morning without warning, we decided to talk to Tom first and get to know him a little. He just moved here from Los Angeles a month ago, but as it turns out, he's not new to our area.
That's Tom Parkinson, who will soon be taking over as the local host for KPR's Morning Edition. On Wednesday, we'll let Tom test drive the show by delivering the local newscasts, which he'll continue to do the rest of this week. By Monday, it should be all Tom and the time... at least from 5 to 9 a.m. Please make him feel welcome.
Meanwhile, J. Schafer will be back on the air from time to time with news stories, features and interviews and, of course, to fill in for Tom.
And here', below, is the version of the Q & A with Tom Parkinson that we recorded off the air at 8:33am Tuesday.