Shereen Marisol Meraji is the co-host and senior producer of Code Switch, a critically acclaimed podcast covering race, culture and diversity issues, from American radio networkNPR.
Early life
Meraji is a native Californian and San Francisco State graduate. Meraji's family background includes Puerto Rican and Iranian roots. As a young girl, Meraji was bullied by classmates about her Iranian heritage. Meraji's mixed-race background has informed her approach to stories and journalism, noting in an interview with Latina Magazine that "never having really belonged, being on the margins while observing everything, that's made me a natural journalist – not quite a part of something, always observing".
Career
Before starting at Code Switch, Meraji was a professional reporter and producer, working and freelancing for various radio organizations, including Southern California Public Radio, and Marketplace. At NPR she served as director of the midday show Day to Day and later served as a producer for NPR's flagship newsmagazine All Things Considered. In 2007, Meraji received an International Reporting Project Fellowship and traveled to Beirut, Lebanon, where she reported on youth culture. Meraji gained attention for her 2014 feature for Third Coast Festival titled "Audio Code Switching: Tackling Race on the Radio”, focusing on the seeming homogeneity of voices represented in public radio, a phenomenon sometimes known as "public radio voice", and the need for greater representation of diverse voices and stories. She also served as a judge for the festival in 2015. In 2014, Meraji was sent to report from Ferguson, Missouri during protests following the death of Michael Brown as a result of a police shooting. Meraji described an incident when part of her piece capturing an interview with a protester was cut from a radio program, leading to criticism from some listeners that she had failed to report on perspectives from all sides. "That made me want to do podcasts, for there to be more time to be nuanced conversations, to talk aboutthe grey areas, to show that there are more than two sides to a story.” Starting in 2016, Meraji hosted NPR's Code Switch podcast with co-host Gene Demby. Meraji has stated that she hopes the podcast, which deals with race, culture and identity, will make " more accessible to a broader audience". Meraji's work is part of an emerging development in news content and analysis that involves engaging younger, more diverse audiences, often by picking up on themes first advanced from social media platforms, blogs and pop culture. According to an interview with Meraji by WWD in July 2016, the podcast had over 1 million downloads within its first two monthson air, with the co-host aiming to create an inclusive space for discussing topical issues such as the shooting of Philando Castile, the Black Lives Matter movement and the viewpoint of supporters of President Donald Trump during the 2016 election. Meraji received journalism awards from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in 2015 and 2016, the latter for a piece she reported on about an inspirational scout leader for a troupe of at-risk boys. In 2017, a sample of topics she covered for Code Switch included refugee resettlement in Montana, the impact of school closings on children and how to celebrate a Persian New Year.
