Sara Fishko is an Executive Producer and Host at WNYC, specializing in culture.
Her long-running series Fishko Files has become a staple of WNYC’s cultural programming, tackling a broad range of subjects, from a portrait of media guru Marshall McLuhan, to a meditation on the Symbolist painting “Isle of the Dead,” to a consideration of the future of film criticism. The pieces run on Morning Edition and All Things Considered, as well as Studio 360 and On The Media.
Fishko produced and hosted the ten-part Jazz Loft Project Radio Series, derived from a treasure trove of archival tapes recorded by photographer W. Eugene Smith in his dilapidated Manhattan home in a loft building in the 1950s and 60s. The series, which ran on WNYC and NPR, later became four special programs known as The Jazz Loft Anthology.
She has also made compelling hour-long programs featuring interviews with and performances by Keith Jarrett, Dave Brubeck, Ned Rorem and others. Her special program Culture Shock 1913 is a spirited telling of the history and development of Modernist art and culture in the early years of the 20th century.
Sara Fishko has won multiple awards from RTNDA (Edward R. Murrow Award), The Deadline Club, The Newswomen’s Club of New York (Front Page Award), The Associated Press and The New York Press Club. She received a Deems Taylor Award from ASCAP for the Jazz Loft series, and was selected as a USC/Annenberg Arts Journalism Fellow in 2003 and 2011.
Her blog Fishko Now and Then is about culture now and culture then, and it appears…now and then.
Shows and Blogs:
Sara Fishko appears in the following:
Friday, January 15, 2021
A new documentary offers a dark and revealing update to civil rights history.
Friday, January 08, 2021
From the archives: 125 years after the birth of Dziga Vertov, the Russian filmmaker's "Man with a Movie Camera" remains a classic of the silent film era.
Friday, January 01, 2021
From the archives: In this last gasp of 2020, we face a New Year's without parties - unless you count the ones in this Fishko Files episode.
Friday, December 25, 2020
From the archives: One of the most prolific directors of the 1950s was also an actor, a writer, a producer...and a woman.
Friday, December 18, 2020
To some, Fantasia is the best and worst of Disney.
Friday, December 11, 2020
From the archives: Over 50 years ago, a wave of crime dramas burst onto American screens and gave viewers - and filmmakers - a whole new vocabulary of dark shadows and saucy dialogue.
Saturday, December 05, 2020
"An Hour with Dave Brubeck" is another in Sara Fishko's series of conversations with musical figures. The interview for the program was taped in Brubeck's studio in Connecticut, in 20...
Friday, December 04, 2020
From the archives: On the 100th anniversary of his birth, Dave Brubeck still looms large in jazz history.
Friday, November 27, 2020
From the archives: Nobody could swing harder than Stuff Smith.
Friday, November 20, 2020
From the archives: The assassination of President John F. Kennedy was a trial by fire for a young medium.
Friday, November 13, 2020
Andre Gregory, of "My Dinner with Andre" fame, has told stories on stage and screen for decades.
Friday, November 06, 2020
From the archives: In movies, psychoanalysts often have ultimate power - for better or worse.
Thursday, October 29, 2020
In our unsettled moment, people will find ways to mark an unusual Halloween this weekend.
Friday, October 23, 2020
From the archives: According to Rorem, "there’s only two aesthetics in the whole universe. Everything is either French or German.”
Friday, October 16, 2020
Two dramas, now streaming, use very different American stories to find common ground.
Friday, October 09, 2020
From the archives: For artists, innovation can often be mistaken for eccentricity.
Friday, October 02, 2020
From the archives: James Dean was said to be film’s "first American teenager."
Friday, September 25, 2020
In this time of empty concert halls and virtual performances, we turn our attention to music with an audience.
Friday, September 18, 2020
From the archives: Sometimes artists, seeking inspiration, find it in the very thing that challenges and haunts them most.
Friday, September 11, 2020
From the archives: Why does thoughtful criticism still matter?