Alicia Zuckerman

Alicia Zuckerman began making radio at around seven years old in rural New York State using two cassette recorders and appropriated material from Casey Kasem’s American Top 40. It was a couple more decades before she started getting paid to make radio, as a reporter and producer for NPR’s On the Media.

At WLRN, she oversees narrative and investigative audio journalism and was co-creator of WLRN’s award-winning public affairs program,  The Florida Roundup, as well as  Under the Sun, a series of documentary features and audio postcards .  She currently serves as president of Public Media Journalists Association (PMJA, formerly PRNDI). She routinely reminds reporters to find and create moments of joy, which is how she learned you can grow mangoes on a balcony, and about the wild popularity of Manischewitz wine in the Caribbean. 

Alicia is also a longtime arts journalist, and was a  USC Annenberg/Getty arts journalism fellow. When she's not editing, she produces features and interviews for WLRN, including  The Cassettes of Hurricane Andrew,  The Sally J. Freedman Reality Tour and The Judy Blume Radio Hour. Her reporting has aired on NPR, American Public Media, and Public Radio International, including The World, Studio 360 and This American Life. She dreams of covering an ice cream beat.

Before coming to Miami, she covered arts, culture, and breaking news for WNYC in New York City, where she reported on Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, puppet opera, graffiti, Hungarian strudel, strong cheese, two presidential elections, and nuclear power. She was also the lead classical music and dance reporter at New York magazine. She has written for the Miami Herald, Details magazine, Dance magazine, Symphony magazine, Jazziz magazine, and others. Her reporting has also appeared in the New York Times, Tablet and Electronic Music Foundation, which she helped launch.

Alicia holds a B.A. from the University at Albany (New York) where she studied English and music, and a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Her awards include a national  Edward R. Murrow award, an SPJ Sigma Delta Chi award, and two awards from the Third Coast International Audio Festival (one as editor, one as co-producer/co-host for the WLRN audio documentary,  Remembering Andrew). She recently edited the audio documentary,  Chartered: Florida's First Private Takeover of a Public School System, and previously edited and co-hosted WLRN's award-winning audio documentary,  Cell 1: Florida's Death Penalty in Limbo. Alicia lives in Miami Beach, where she worries about sea level rise, among other things.