Madge Kaplan
WGBH Radio's Boston Bureau Chief and Marketplace Senior Health Desk Editor
Soon after Marketplace's 1989 public radio debut, Madge Kaplan signed on as Boston bureau chief, working out of WGBH Radio. The Los Angeles-based program "for people who aren't necessarily business junkies" has thrived across the country‹and Kaplan's reputation for fair and even-handed reporting along with it.
Though she wears many hats as producer, reporter, editor and administrator, Kaplan's broadcast signature has perhaps become putting a human face on economic trends, and explaining the complexity of relationships and dynamics in the business world. Kaplan also participates in WGBH's monthly online chats regarding changes in the healthcare industry.
In April of 1995, Kaplan launched her brainchild, the Marketplace Health Desk, bringing a new focus for the Boston Bureau at WGBH Radio and for Kaplan as its senior editor. It is her charge, along with correspondent Helen Palmer, to insure that Marketplace¹s regular healthcare coverage is innovative, accessible and, most of all, informative about the economic and social forces shaping America's health care industry. The Healthdesk coverage on Marketplace is made possible in part by a generous grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, making grants to improve the health & health care of all Americans.
In 1998, Kaplan was selected as a Kaiser Media Fellow, spending a year investigating changes in the health care workforce and their impact on health care delivery and patient care. Since the completion of her fellowship, Kaplan has been in high demand as a speaker at healthcare conferences nationwide. Most recently distinguished by the Association for Women Journalists, Kaplan has also been honored with the Pew Charitable Trusts' Primary Care Journalism Award, Boston A.I.R. Awards, Women in Communications' Clarion Award, and Unity Awards in Media. She has been recognized by the Massachusetts Broadcasters Association, American Women in Radio and Television, and the Public Radio Program Director's Association, which named her Best Announcer. Marketplace was honored with the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award in 1998.
Born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, Kaplan went east to attend college. The 1975 Brown University graduate with a Bachelors of Arts degree in Asian Studies has also done further graduate study in feature writing at Emerson College in Boston.
In addition to her radio work, Kaplan does voice-over narrations for educational videos and documentaries as well as for WGBH's Descriptive Video Services (DVS), which reaches blind and visually impaired audiences of public television stations nationwide. She has served as a Fellowship Editor and Mentor, training public radio and television professionals in a program sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.