Dynamic radio duo Braude and Eagan to close Annual Meeting

Margery Eagan and Jim Braude

Jim Braude and Margery Eagan of WGBH’s “Boston Public Radio,” widely considered one of the most important public affairs programs in Massachusetts, will host a lively and interactive closing session during the MMA’s Annual Meeting & Trade Show in Boston on Saturday afternoon, Jan. 19.

Braude and Eagan will host a “radio show” (with call-ins) with two special guests: former Acting Gov. Jane Swift and former Public Safety Secretary Andrea Cabral.

On their midday radio show, leaders and thinkers from across the state face fair and firm questions from award-winning journalist Eagan and former political advocate Braude.

Deploying banter between themselves and with guests, who include state officials, members of Congress, city councillors, and local and national media figures, Braude and Eagan’s show has become a required appearance for Bay State leaders.

Braude and Eagan teamed up for more than a decade on WTKK before the station switched to a music format in 2013 and the duo moved to WGBH. The pair’s on-air chemistry first became apparent on the NECN weekend show “Talk of New England,” which led to the show on WTKK.

Eagan, 64, had established her journalistic bonafides by that point. A Fall River native born to a traveling tire salesman and a pianist mother, Eagan graduated from Stanford University in 1976, wrote for her hometown paper, The Fall River Herald News, and joined the Boston Herald in 1981 on a general assignment beat.

She became a columnist shortly after and earned recognition for her incisive opinions on local and national stories and for her investigative chops, which revealed misconduct by caseworkers for the state Department of Children and Families.

After 27 years as a Herald columnist, Eagan moved to the Boston Globe. As the Catholic spirituality columnist for the paper’s CruxNow website, she won first place for religion commentary in 2015 from the Religion Newswriters Association.

Braude, 69, got his start not as a journalist but as an advocate, lawyer and labor organizer. Born in Philadelphia, he worked as a legal services lawyer for housing and prisoner’s rights in the South Bronx after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania and earning a law degree from New York University.

He founded and became the first president of the National Organization of Legal Services Workers, a union representing staff in civil legal offices for the poor in 35 states. The organization helped lead the fight to preserve the national program when President Ronald Reagan proposed its abolition.

After meeting his wife, Kristine Rondeau, a Cambridge labor organizer, and moving to Massachusetts, Braude burst onto the political scene here in 1987 as the foil to Barbara Anderson, head of Citizens for Limited Taxation and the force behind Proposition 2½.

Braude became director of the new Tax Equity Alliance of Massachusetts (TEAM), and he and Anderson would hold public debates, most notably in 1990 over the Citizens for Limited Taxation’s ballot question to roll back income tax increases. Braude and Anderson would ride in the car together to debates, where they put on informative and energetic arguments for attendees.

Braude continued his advocacy and served one term on the Cambridge City Council, from 2000 to 2001. He eventually joined the just-launched New England Cable News channel, where he hosted a nightly news analysis show until 2015, when he took over hosting duties on WGBH’s “Greater Boston” from Emily Rooney.