24-03-2025
Local Limelight with WUNC's Jeff Tiberi
For NPR fans in the Triangle, journalist Jeff Tiberi's voice may sound familiar. A longtime North Carolina journalist turned host of WUNC's "Due South," Tiberi is a fixture of our region's media landscape. He's also a college basketball fanatic.
Driving the news: Just in time for March Madness, Tiberi and fellow journalist Mark Meher are out with a new book, "The Magnificent Seven: College Basketball's Blue Bloods," on how the teams have established themselves as "American basketball royalty."
Order it here for a signed copy ($26.95), and get the details on an event featuring the authors coming up on April 6.
We talked with Tiberi for our latest Local Limelight conversation. The Q&A has been edited for Smart Brevity.
🍽️ Favorite place to eat in the Triangle? Sassool (Strickland Rd location).
✈️ What do you think the Triangle is missing? A direct flight to Italy.
📱 What's your first read in the morning? Usually tapping on some alert or news update that has broken/developed overnight.
📖 Last great book you read?"The Anxious Generation," by Jonathan Haidt.
🎧 Go-to podcast? "All The Smoke."
🏀 Would you consider yourself a college basketball fanatic? If that's a serious question and I suspect it is marginally so, I would respond by telling you that one of my favorite teams was the 1996 UMass Minutemen.
A team that, of course, has not been assembled for near 30 years. And I'd tell you their starting five consisted of Marcus Camby, Donta Bright, Dana Dingle, Carmelo Travieso, and Edgar Padilla. What's neat about Padilla and Travieso is that they were the starting back court, and happened to be born in Puerto Rico on the same day in the same Hospital. Why do I remember that? Well I guess that's the answer to your question.
⛰️ Favorite place to go for a long weekend? Our cabin in Blowing Rock.
❤️🩹 Do you have any pets? What kind? What are their names? Our cat, Kiki, aka, Professor Kiki Foster died on Valentine's Day. She had been with us for 13 years. We miss her.
🚙 How did you end up in the Triangle? In early 2015 I was reassigned to cover the NCGA. So, after eight-and-a-half years in Winston-Salem I headed east.
📆 If you could pass any law, what would it be? I'd create a state holiday for the opening Thursday and Friday of the NCAA Men's Tournament (Round of 64).
All government buildings and schools would close at noon. (Tobacco Road Days?)
🧳 What's something you're looking forward to, unrelated to politics/your work? We're going to Memphis later this spring. I've never been.
