Richard Cunningham

Associate Producer

SHORT BIO

Richard Cunningham is a former associate producer for Marketplace in Los Angeles. He is originally from Hyattsville, Maryland, and is a graduate of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the University of Missouri. Before joining Marketplace, he worked as an associate producer at public radio station WAMU, producing a local talk show.

When not researching stories and cutting tape, Richard can be found on the basketball court practicing jump shots or spending his hard-earned money in music stores updating his CD collection.

Latest Stories (99)

Cash-strapped cities consider turning crumbling utilities over to the private sector

Oct 20, 2022
Infrastructure repairs are usually left up to local governments, but smaller cities can’t always afford these repairs.
Above, a water treatment plant on Aug. 31, in Jackson, Mississippi. In places like Jackson and Duquesne, Pennsylvania, crumbling infrastructure has led to unclean drinking water.
Brad Vest/Getty Images

An older worker tries to rediscover his place in a changing media industry

Oct 13, 2022
After taking personal time, Dan Lamont talks about finding work in editorial photography while dealing with ageism and a changing labor market.
"Creators are making peanuts compared to what they used to," said photojournalist Dan Lamont.
CatEyePerspective/Getty Images

This Tennessee library can offer more services — when it pays as much as McDonald's

“We don't have enough people to add new things," like social services, says the director of the Marshall County Memorial system.
"We have people who come to the library who need help with housing or help with food," says Jennifer Pearson, director of the Marshall County Memorial Library System.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images

This musical instrument repairman is scrambling to keep up with demand

Sep 19, 2022
After downsizing in 2019, Avery McDaniel of Beloit, Wisconsin, is having the "busiest rental season ever." What's up with the clarinets?
Avery McDaniel's shop in Beloit, Wisconsin, is running out of instruments to rent to schools.
Michael Hickey/Getty Images

Fed’s hawkish stance on inflation brings pain to marginalized communities, economist says

Michelle Holder expects Black and Latinx workers to lose jobs in higher proportion as interest rates rise and the economy cools.
Federal Reserve policies that increase interest rates and chill economic growth are aimed at bringing down inflation, but they can also put stress on households and businesses. Above, the headquarters of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images

This Arizona esthetician is glad she joined the "great resignation"

Sep 7, 2022
We check in with Shauna Kruse, who moved her family across country and went back to school to become an esthetician.
“It just seemed very natural, actually, to go into something where I was, you know, literally face to face with helping people feel their very best,” says Shauna Kruse, who went back to school to become an esthetician.
Getty Images

Musicians union challenges Spotify to raise royalties

Streaming accounts for the vast majority of recorded music income, but musicians and producers make fractions of a cent per stream.
The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers wants Spotify to increase the per-stream royalty for musicians and make its revenue data transparent. 
Sergi Alexander/Getty Images for Spotify

How long can the job market stay this hot?

Some laid-off workers are surprised at how fast they were able to find new positions, says Sarah Chaney Cambon of The Wall Street Journal.
"The job market is still this bright spot really and it's overall outperforming kind of the rest of the economy," said Sarah Chaney Cambon, an economics reporter for The Wall Street Journal.
Mario Tama/Getty Images

This Connecticut contractor says rising demand has left him “overwhelmed”

Aug 25, 2022
Bruce Ridenour has been a contractor for 40 years and said local contractors in Danbury, Connecticut don't have bandwidth to handle all the new demand.
“As the work comes more and more, faster and faster, it just comes more and more to those of us who are left,” Bruce Ridenour said.
ljubaphoto/Getty Images

Eviction filings hit pre-pandemic levels a year after the end of the moratorium

Jul 29, 2022
"The long-term goal has to just be structurally changing this untenable housing system that we have," said Carl Gershenson, the project director at Princeton University’s Eviction Lab.
Because many young people, racial minorities and those with lower incomes rent their housing, they're disproportionately affected evictions. 
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images