An Evening with NPR's Juana Summers

foreign [Music] [Music] hello and welcome to the Dole Institute of politics my name is Abby Clements and I am a member of the Dole Institute student Advisory Board the official student group of The Institute the student Advisory Board is a bipartisan group whose members can access many great opportunities through their involvement with the Institute including volunteering at programs and networking with our special guests if you are a student and would like to join please contact us by emailing Dole Sab ku.edu or speaking with the student worker after the program a video of today's program will be available on our YouTube channel soon you can also access videos of past programs by visiting our YouTube channel at any time a loop hearing system is available to use if you have a t-coil hearing aid we will also have a limited number of hearing of listening devices if you have questions about the loop system or if at any time during the program you have difficulty hearing please alert one of our staff members or student volunteers after the program we will have time for the audience to ask questions if you have a question please raise your hand and a student worker with a microphone will come to you please stand if you are able and ask just one brief question the adult institute's mission is to Foster civil and respectful discussion around the important around important and often difficult topics please phrase your questions with this in mind and before we begin I'd like to remind you all to turn on please turn off your cell phones and now please join me in welcoming senior associate director Barbara Ballard thank you [Applause] thank you very much Abby I appreciate the wreck the introduction I'll say good evening and welcome to the Dole Institute of politics for an evening with Wanda Summers thank you so very much for coming this evening this is an absolutely fabulous group tonight I want to also want to thank Kansas Public Radio for co-sponsoring this program and for the continued support over the years we are celebrating both kpr's 70th anniversary and the Dole institute's 20th anniversary tonight's interview will be moderated by Dole Institute director Audrey Coleman but before I introduce our guests I have two announcements first of all please join us on Wednesday tomorrow the 22nd at 4 pm for our discussion group with atifeta yayaga former president of Kosovo she was the first woman president of Kosovo and the first woman Head of State in modern Balkan history in honor of Black History Month you are also invited to join us on Monday February 27th at 7 pm for a conversation on race this will be our seventh in the series our guests at a conversational race will be Mary Emma Graham who's a KU distinguished professor of English and she's also the founding director of the history of black writing and Sean Alexander who is Ku professor and chair of African and African-American studies and the director of the Langston Hughes Center now for our guests this evening and it is a pleasure to introduce her she has been at the Dole Institute before tonight's guest is Juana Summers co-host of NPR's All Things Considered one is a native of Kansas City Missouri and she started in public radio at kbia in Colombia on the campus of the University of Missouri I had to do that to you she is a graduate of the Missouri school of Journalism and a distinguished graduate I might add in 2016 Summers was a fellow at the Georgetown University Institute of politics and public service she spent more than a decade covering politics that NPR's political course as NPR's political correspondent covering race Justice and politics she reported on the 2012 the 2016 and the 2020 presidential elections and Congress for NPR it is with great pleasure that I ask you to please join us this evening to hear Wanda Summers and give her a very warm welcome [Applause] Wanda it's so nice to meet you so nice to see you here at the Dolan Studio again thanks for being with us thanks for having me I'm thrilled to be back okay uh Barbara mentioned that you're from Kansas City and we have the opportunity to celebrate together assuming that you're a football fan oh of course so where were you when the Chiefs won the Super Bowl oh my gosh um I mean I had to work the next day I had to host our show so I couldn't go out and do a whole shebang so we watched it at home and it was super fun I actually ordered and this is something I never do but I ordered um Kansas City Barbecue off of gold belly and had it at the house and if you're curious we ordered Arthur Bryants oh there she goes that was a real treat to get to watch this now we know where she stands exactly oh it's so much fun so wanna tell us a little bit about growing up in Kansas City and how you got interested in journalism and politics so it's actually funny because I have someone who's on this campus now to thank for my interest in journalism and politics um I'm from Kansas City my entire family still lives there I like to joke that I'm the only person in my family that ever left and I went to Saint Teresa's Academy and Eric Thomas who teaches photojournalism here was my high school journalism teacher when I was a freshman so he has known me since I was 13 years old um and that's when I really got the journalism bug and I remember being in his classroom and it was a tiny class probably like 20 students or something like that and getting to actually work on interview my fellow students and to write stories and it felt surreal at the time the idea that I could have a career where I could ask people about things they cared about and to write about them and to turn those into stories that could then be published and it's kind of the only thing I've ever wanted to do I ended up having the opportunity to work on the student newspaper the dart and to write for Kansas City Stars now defunct team page that was a program called teen star at the time this was back in oh gosh um 2003 2004 had the opportunity to come to this campus and attend the Kansas journalism Institute as well as a similar program on mizzou's campus and so just really have the bug and attempted to get my parents to take me to any kind of opportunity I could get to get my feet wet so to speak and to get to start producing journalism as young as I could and it's the only career I've ever wanted to have and I just feel so blessed and fortunate to have been able to work in this industry for as long as I have and that people trust me to tell their stories and that our audiences trust me and my colleagues to help you navigate the world around you I hope that in in the service of that that we are able to help make sense of some of the things that go on in our country and our world but also to inform and Enlighten and Inspire and even sometimes entertain so I just I feel incredibly fortunate there's not many people who can say they've known what they've wanted to do since they were really young and they've gotten to do it for oh gosh almost 15 years now wow that's wonderful and you're giving us again another opportunity to practice bipartisanship and action being from Mizzou and I know obviously this is Ku really so wasn't going to let me sneak that one through was she friendly crowd so talk about um you know some of your opportunities that you had while a student of Journalism I mean you did you did several internships and had a lot of really you know foundational experiences yeah I mean I have to say that between the schools here in Kansas and Mizzou we have an embarrassment of riches in this region of really incredible journalism schools that are churning out world-class journalists and communicators left and right um the way that the program that I attended at the Missouri school of Journalism was worked at the time it really stresses practical experience so that when your grad graduating after four years on campus you're leaving with actual published work so during the course of the curriculum I had the opportunity to work at kbia which is the NPR member station in Colombia but also to do on-air work at an end an NBC affiliate television Vision station and to write stories for the Columbia Missouri in which at the time was the daily newspaper that served the city of Columbia Columbia actually had two daily newspapers at the time so that was pretty cool but also got the opportunity to do some really incredible internships just based on the professional experience I got at the school of Journalism and alumni networking um I entered my first internship in college was at Kansas City Hispanic news I was copy editing stories in Spanish and English for their paper I also interned at the Austin American statesman as well as washingtonpost.com so those were all really formative experiences that showed me different types of Journalism that really informed how I thought about what direction I wanted my career to go and at the heart of that for me was always wanting to cover politics and well Barbara mentioned that you covered the 2012 election but I think I read in my research maybe that as a student you got to cover some aspect of the 2008 European interview digging deep yeah that is true um I had the opportunity as a student working at kbia in Columbia to travel to the vice presidential announcements for both presidential candidates um in so covering when um former president Obama announced Joe Biden as his running mate and then covering when John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his running mate I went to both announcements and was able to report stories that actually aired on kbia and appeared on kbia's website and those were kind of the first big National political rallies I ever went to and I remember at the time thinking it was so cool that I had a press pass just like all of these other reporters that I looked up to and admired for my entire life and I have the same amount of access that they did to be able to go and Report those stories and it looks nothing like my job looks like now I was by myself with my big bulky Marans with the big strap that goes across you and my little microphone and I just I took it really seriously and those are just those are really lasting core memories for me and I then um in the closing days of the election back when Missouri was a bit more of a swing state than it is now um Obama actually came to campus and spoke on campus and I was able to cover that too so that really just kind of bit the gave me the political bug so in that situation or you mentioned you were a State House reporter after you graduated you know what were some of the tell us about that experience number one and then tell us what maybe some of the challenges that you faced as a young reporter so I loved covering the state house and I still when I I one of my favorite things to do is to talk to students and if I meet students who are interested in politics I think either working at a state house in some capacity or covering a state house as the journalist is one of the coolest most invigorating experiences you can have because you get to see the legislative process close up in a way that's transferable to so many other parts of life some of the skills I learned at the State House from just following and tracking legislations and digging into budgets are directly applicable to work I did as a congressional reporter for NPR on Capitol Hill so those were really cool experiences and I love the amount of access you get that you can just walk around and walk up to lawmakers and ask them questions on behalf of the people who elected them so that was a really great experience I covered Missouri state house for a time as a student and then after graduation as an intern for the St Louis Post-Dispatch but some of the challenge you asked about challenges I think one of the biggest challenges early on was you know you're just coming out of school when you're you're pretty young being able to figure out how to be taken seriously and when people ask me you know how do you navigate that challenge my answer is always to take yourself seriously and to let the work reflect it so I came to I built a body of work that even though I was a student that was either breaking news or great explanatory journalism and that people respected so that when I was calling them even though I started doing this work as a student when I was 19 or 20 years old people knew that I was going to be a serious interview I was always early to everything I always dressed I had my little business suits and always dressed very professionally and just wanted people to know that they should take me as seriously as the AP reporter down the hall so I think carrying yourself with professionalism um trusting in your body of work and just being really Relentless in pursuit of the thing you want to do or the things that really helped me overcome those kinds of challenges early on did you identify any anyone that may have served as a mentor to you or an inspiration anybody who was in your in your circle that you kind of held up as an example of where you wanted to go oh my gosh I was just talking to someone about this early on one of my biggest influences unfortunately she's passed on at this point was Gwen Eiffel I just think that she was the biggest example of an empathetic interviewer and a good listener but also really tough and fearless and could ask these incredibly probing questions that would stop and make her interviewees think and before she died I had the opportunity to be on Washington Week with her as a host and one of the things I loved that she did that I've tried to emulate now that I'm hosting a program is she would always find time whether it was in the green room or during hair and makeup to come up to you if she was interviewing and just be like what's one thing you absolutely want to make sure you talk about today she always wanted to make the people around her especially in a panel show like that where it's other analysts and reporters sound the best they could be and be the best version of themselves and uplift other people and I think that kind of spirit Spirit of generosity and empathy and level-headedness is something that I've always really admired and it's just also cool I mean you never get to meet your Heroes and being able to have sat and been interviewed on her program is one of the still one of the coolest things I have ever done let's go back to presidential campaigns can you tell us uh some stories so 2012 2016 2020. each very different and historical different ways can you tell us some stories uh you know if we can go chronologically or uh you know what kind of interactions maybe that you had that really stuck with you when you're covering the campaign when you're on the campaign Trail yeah sure um I'll start I'll do this chronologically I think okay so let's start with 2012 it was the first full presidential election I'd ever covered um I was working at the website Politico and I'd been hired originally as a political reporting fellow it was my first job in Washington DC and after some time I got promoted to being a full-time National political reporter and I started there in 2010 when you know and that's like a year and a half or so before voting really starts in Earnest so that's the point where all of these would-be candidates are kind of testing the waters trying to decide if they're going to run in because I was the new person and I was young and pretty Junior I got some really top tier candidates track like a former Ambassador John Colton and a man you might remember the who familiar for 999 Herman Cain and a lot of other smaller tier candidates but I again I took my job and my responsibility really seriously of talking to these would-be candidates of getting to know their staffs and their inner circles and for a time if you remember back during the 2012 campaign Herman Cain was at the top of the polls for a while and so I was on the front lines of covering that campaign and if you are a Savvy student of media and you remember back some of the stories that were animating that year there was a big story that my colleagues giant Politico actually broke about sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain when he was working at National Restaurant Association and I was brought into that story because while I was the most Junior person bylined on that piece I had been covering this campaign for a long time and I knew everybody that worked for him and had been working really hard to try to get my ingratiate myself with that campaign so I ended up working on the story that ended up being changing the course of that campaign I ended up flying across the country at a moment's notice to go to the big press conference where he addressed the allegations for the first time and that was just all based on diligent beat reporting of an assignment that I I could see as some other people wanting to blow off and saying this guy's not serious he's never going to get anywhere but that was kind of my first formative campaign experience and then I went on later in that presidential cycle after there was a nominee I ended up covering Paul Ryan um former house Speaker Paul Ryan when he was Mitt Romney's running mate and covered the vice presidential beat after that so that was kind of my experience on the 2012 campaign and it was just kind of a throw yourself into the deep end experience of covering a campaign it was exhilarating I traveled to 33 states that year and was gone more often than I was home and it was just a I have to say my favorite part about that all of the stories and breaking news was really cool but just getting to meet voters all across the country and the kind of people you get to meet and to hear the issues that animate them and why was just so cool and an awesome experience so there's my 2012 story all right let me see if I can walk through this 2016 was a completely different year hey a lot of change um I had moved on and for the 2016 campaign um I ended up being in a completely different role um as a reporter for CNN um I also was responsible um during the 2016 campaign CNN launched this political data iPhone app and I was doing stories in the field as a reporter but also managing our political data iPhone app and so that was just a new method of Storytelling and for me the reason I like to talk about that is one of the things I find most important for when I'm encouraging people to go into this field is that you've got to be versatile and you've got to be able to take opportunities no matter how they come and to not be afraid to try different new mediums and at first when they approached me about this role I wasn't quite sure if I was going to take it it was something different than I had ever done before and my background isn't in data analysis but I've been working in digital media at that point for quite some time and so I decided to take the leap and do this and it was really cool getting to tell campaign stories in a completely different format that's handheld and I think really speaks to how some consumer Behavior has changed with news people's time is precious they don't have a lot of time always to read a beautiful thousand word profiler to listen to a 12-minute radio piece on a specific topic so we were giving them political stories in the palm of their hands that they could be able to digest and so not a traditional campaign story but I thought that was really cool um the 2020 campaign was unlike anything I've ever covered before largely because um well it kind of stopped for a while there um I came to NPR in October of 2019 and I was hired as a reporter on our Washington desk covering demographics and culture and so the cool thing about that job meant was that I could cover candidates on either side of the aisle and could do any story that fell in with demographics so I got to do a lot of really interesting work one of my favorite stories I did was I sat down with Andrew Yang and talked with him about his son and the way that he talked about autism in his campaign which was a story that I don't think I could have done anywhere else and it was really interesting we got some really incredible audience feedback about that story so I thought that was super fun but um I remember this very clearly because I was in this region it was right before St Patrick's Day and we were out on the road and I remember just noticing that I was flying I think between Missouri for the Missouri primary and Illinois and I remember my seat mate and my seat I remember this very distinctly was offering me Lysol wipes to clean off and yeah I'm sure we all have a memory like this to clean off the tray table and offer me don't you want to wipe that down it's like sure I'm looking around it's like I feel like something is not going well here something is amiss so I covered the Missouri primary I fly to Illinois to do some political reporting there and I fly home and literally the next day all of our travel was grounded because of the pandemic and we had to learn very quickly how to figure out how do you cover a presidential campaign when you can't go out and talk to voters when candidates are not having rallies when there's a lack of information and a lot of mystery still frankly about what was going on and it's one of the most challenging things I've ever done our hosts I I was not hosting at the time our hosts had to learn how to host our shows from our homes because we couldn't go into the office it changed everything I knew about how to cover a campaign without being able to be there so get it I mean I did some stories that I'm really proud of about how campaigning changed I remember talking to a candidate who ultimately ended up losing our race in Massachusetts for I believe a state house seed and she was telling me that she pulled all her volunteers out of the field from knocking on doors because she didn't want on her conscience if something happened to one of them and she's like I think the fact that I stopped Outreach is why I lost my primary but I had to make a moral decision about what what I was going to do so we had to learn all new methods communication I spent much like all of you more time on Zoom than I would ever care to just trying to figure out how to talk to people about what the issues that were motivating them in this race and also to figure out how to responsibly cover a public health emergency that was upending the way the campaign worked but also changing the issues that were in play in this campaign and for and spending an election night where we couldn't be in the studio together I I was on our live special coverage of election night 2020 and I did it from literally sitting on the floor of my my bedroom closet because that was the best sound Rich environment I could use to make sure that I sounded good on air so it's a campaign that taught me a lot it taught me to be agile it taught me that good storytelling and clear communication can work no matter what kind of challenge you're forced into but it's definitely unlike anything I've ever I've ever done before so talk a little bit about uh you know building relationships with people building trust I'm thinking particularly of campaigns but maybe in general if you're approach uh in person you know how do you how do you approach people and build those relationships yeah it's a great question and I think that a lot of the Dynamics that go into building trust with a campaign are the same as building trust with anyone you're being a familiar face so someone who doesn't just call when they need something I'm when I am building relationships with sources I'm setting myself reminders on my phone or on a Post-It note to call back again and again so that I'm familiar to that person so that we build up that rapport it's always being clear about what your goals are I I have the privilege of speaking to a class here earlier today and we were talking about some reporting that my team and I had done in Uvalde Texas we went back to that town um about three months after the school shooting there as students were preparing to go back to school for the first time and one of the students asked me this great question of how do you get someone to trust you to open up about something like that and I think for me I always think about the fact that unless you're in a college town with like a big journalism school like a Mizzou or a KU chances are most people have never talked to a journalist before and I walk into every conversation I have as a reporter thinking about the fact that I may be the only journalist they ever speak to so I'm very clear about what my goals are this is the story that I'm telling this is where it's going to air this is how your quotes or the audio is going to be used if someone asks me the other types of people I'm speaking to I try to to the degree that I can be candid so that people I think that no one should ever be surprised by how they are represented in a story or in my coverage so making sure that they have the ability ability to ask me questions because you want the person to feel comfortable now obviously that's different than if you're interviewing an elected official but generally speaking I think that everybody should have walk into a conversation with a clear understanding of what everyone else's goals are and so that they understand and are consenting with some knowledge so those are the kind of big things I do to create Trust let's talk about the presidential campaigns in regards to the historic representation so to first black president first black candidate first woman who represented a major party and then the first vice president uh woman of color candidate now what does that kind of what did you hear from voters how did that kind of representation affect your conversation or or the the political uh situation of the time yeah so I think I'll you I'll talk largely about 2020 just because that's I I was covering a beat that had a lot more to do with representation and the things that I heard from voters is that they were excited I mean in 2020 I was cut lart I I did stories on both sizell but largely covered the Democratic field well what I heard from people is they were excited to have options and they were excited to have options that in some cases looked like feminine that broke the mold of what we thought of as a president I mean with the exception of former president Obama all of our presidents have been white and male so the idea that there was a possibility that a woman could be president that a woman of color could be president that an Asian man could be president was really exciting for a lot of people um I spent some time on the road with um Kirsten gillibrand the senator from New York and I thought her campaign was so interesting because as you think about comparing her to a Hillary Clinton for example she really embraced the idea of being a woman and being a mom to the point that at one point I when I was working for the AP I actually went to her home and she made dinner for me and another for my photographer Carolyn caster and had a sit down and interview her family like her entire brand early in her campaign was I'm a feminist I'm gonna wear pink and heels and come out to lizzo's like a girl at my campaign rallies and I'm going to embrace Womanhood as the mantle of why I'm running I can still remember the line echoing in my head I will fight for your kids just like I would my own which is something she said in almost every single one of her speeches and so it was really interesting after having watched kind of the double bind of how Hillary Clinton I think sometimes struggled to figure out how to navigate running as a woman to see another woman with similar Roots really choosing to embrace femininity and really make it a part of her calling card so I thought that was super fascinating um I spent lot of time covering vice president Harris's campaign and something I thought was really interesting was we spent a lot of time together in South Carolina seeing the ways in which older black women would talk to her some of and would talk to me when I was going around and interviewing them some were really excited to see her run many did not believe that this is a country that would elect a black woman or a woman who's a daughter of immigrants to be able to serve as president they were like we think she could do it but we don't think these other people will vote for her and so it's always interesting to hear voters kind of game that out of say of talking about well who is the most electable and who is the person who can actually win whether it's not even if it's not the person in my heart that I necessarily want to support so I think that there was a lot of kind of bargaining going on with voters when they were trying to figure out how to do that but it was just really cool to have a contrast particularly among the women in the field of women who were running in so many different ways and talking about being a woman in so many different ways you had women who were parents women who are not parents um I did a story that I loved about the fact that after the presidential election of 2020 about the fact that both the Harris both um vice president Harris and the second gentleman Doug mhoff and the bidens both put Blended families in the spotlight and are showing a new model for what a family looks like that we haven't really seen as much in the White House and and in the vice presidency before so there are all different types of representation Dynamics playing out in that campaign and it was really cool getting to cover them you spend some time covering Congress sometime in there what did you learn uh how did how did tell us about your experiences covering Congress and what did you did that change the way you covered presidential campaigns after Congress was there any kind of influence there based on what you learned there's a lot of influence and a lot of it is that relationship building that we were talking about because a lot of the staff that was coming off the presidential campaigns were finding themselves on Capitol Hill and there's a big pipeline between the campaign and Congress so it's a lot of keeping up those relationships but one of the reasons I wanted to cover Congress was actually realizing what I didn't know as a political reporter my first job in National politics was covering campaigns I had never covered Congress before and during the 2012 campaign when I started there was a big debate over defense budgets and sequestration and I remember feeling completely like a fish out of water because I'd never covered Congressional budgets I had never covered the legislative process on a national scale and there were some things about it in the way candidates were positioning themselves that frankly I didn't understand at the time and I volunteered to go cover Congress I covered defense policy on Capitol Hill for Politico and then later ended up being a congressional reporter for NPR for some time and that's why I wanted to go there was to better understand that process because while campaigns are often run in Buzzy punch lines and attack ads and whatnot it's really important to have an understanding of the policy that underlies all of this so that when you're interviewing a politician or a candidate you're able to ask smart questions and you're able to really probe how the policy that they're rolling out is going to impact everyday Americans lives so that's really why I wanted to cover Congress well so even then you know almost 10 years ago Congress had a reputation for being polarized did you see evidence of bipartisan negotiation did you see any kind of counter narrative we hear so much about polarization and and fighting uh and rather than than compromise across the aisle you know can you talk about that yeah I mean of course I mean when you have a two-party system there's going to be polarization but I think even to this day one of the best examples of bipartisan cooperation is something that I covered very closely it's the annual defense Bill National Defense authorization Act is something that historically has already always had bipartisan support and I got to watch Republicans and Democrats get it done for a number of years it's a really important bill because it sets the priorities for the military for the new year and I sat in late markups with lawmakers until three or four a.m and I think the Senators who would have been in charge of it at the time on the Senate side would have been John McCain and Senator Levin and just hearing the way that they talked about working together because this is a must pass piece of legislation like there are some small Ball bills and priorities that aren't life or death if they don't get past but setting the priorities for our nation's military and then the companion build a spending Bill making sure that our military is funded that's not an option like they have to find ways to work together so I think that was really something for me that was a model of success it's like this is when the process is at its best of seeing people who can put aside personal grievance whose staffs work very well together and I think that part of the reason it it's worked so well historically but particularly when I was covering it is because you had two men who were dead set on making sure that it happened and knew that they had to work together and knew that they had to find ways to compromise with one another to ensure that the spell got passed so do you think that bipartisanship and this this kind of activity is underreported in journalism or are we just not paying attention I mean I will say that I think that there are fewer examples of it these days to go around and I think that's really sad um I think anyone who's been a careful student watching the hole for the last few years would note that there's less bipartisanship there's less opportunity for lawmakers to talk but there are some things that give me hope on all things considered we do a series from time to time where we take two freshman lawmakers from two different parties and we follow them for a year of their career and this year we picked Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida he's a Democrat who was an organizer in Parkland Florida with the group March for our lives and the other lawmaker we picked is Mike Lawler of New York who is one of those Republicans that flipped a district in New York that they never thought a republican was going to win and we brought them together in conversation for our first interview they didn't they hadn't met each other but hearing them talk about the fact that they know as freshmen that they were sent there to get things done and they know that being loggerheads with people on the other side of the aisle isn't going to serve anybody I remember Congressman Lawler saying at one point during either that conversation or a subsequent one one of the things that they found very frustrating about how long it took for the speaker election this year was the fact that they had all these freshman orientation things planned including spending time with members on the other side of the island those things didn't happen so hearing people who are new to the process coming in and saying hey this isn't how it's supposed to work gives me hope it will be able to share more of those bipartisan stories and more examples of governance that is to the benefit of the American people your example that you decided is it speaks directly to the question that I had next was does the does the Press does do journalists have a role to play in encouraging political compromise or tone moderation in politics could you speak a little bit more of it yeah I don't know if I would think say that we have a role in tone moderation but I do think that sometimes it would be helpful if we could spend more time getting these members in conversation with one another with one another one of the things that I love to do on our show and that I love to do as a political reporter is when there was a big bipartisan achievement I'm thinking about uh The semiconductorship Spill that just passed not too long ago we were able to get Senator Todd young of Indiana on the air but also a Democrat who could talk from the other side about what it was like to get that bill through and so showing people when there are examples of success how lawmakers work well together and hearing about it from both of their perspectives rather than just hearing this is the Democrats version of how this got done this is the Republicans version of how this got done so I do think that like when we have the opportunity particularly in our medium to bring people together in conversation it's a good thing do you think that there's uh or are there any particular types of political activity or Civic engagement that is under underrepresented or or not covered in you know the mainstream media today that's a good question I'm not I'm not sure I know or just underreported stories in in politics you know folks well you'd like to see more of different types of yeah engagements yeah no that makes sense um I think one thing that we don't do well enough I think that we have kind of flattened out the narrative among the youngest segment of the electorate um one thing that I if my bosses were here they would laugh because I talk about this at work all the time but I think that we've gotten into this trap with this industry where when we talk about young voters we use that to be synonymous with college students and while all college students including you here are wonderful that's not the entire universe of young voters and there's a lot of really interesting mobilization happening outside of college campuses young people our parents young people are workers young people are activists and so figuring out how to tell those stories in a compelling way rather than when you have I feel like the Trap is oh cover gen Z yeah go to a college campus where they're tabling in a student union and I think that's just an unfair narrative around the generation how has your life changed since becoming a co-host of All Things Considered um and a lot it's changed in a lot of really wonderful ways and also in a lot of ways I didn't expect I I am for people who know me I am an avid Fitness buff I start most mornings in the gym at 5am and I'm not somebody I love my job but like when I go home and I'm spending time with my family or my friends I don't really talk about work a lot and I remember when it was announced I got this job somebody at the gym walked over to me it's like I vaguely knew that you were a journalist but I didn't realize you were that one of Summers it was just like oh boy all of my think spaces are gone and so I think it's funny that even though it's I've worked in cable news before even though my face is non-tv the fact that people now know my name and know my voice is very different and that's it's a little bit of a loss of anonymity which has its pros and cons certainly but I also one of the things I loved and one of the reasons why I wanted this job is because it just expands the universe of topics and ideas that I get to explore I still obviously keep my feet firmly planted in politics but the fact that I get to have great cultural conversations and I get to pitch awesome Sports stories and cover education in all of these different areas it just expands the way I think about what I do and that's been really wonderful I mean everything I always try to say is that I love that I get to work with an incredibly diverse engaged and wonderful team any piece of radio that you hear from All Things Considered from NPR is the is the product of work from talented editors and producers and the engineers who keep us on the air every single day under challenging conditions sometimes and I just feel like we have a really wonderful team and getting to work in a more collaborative environment has really enriched the journalism that I do what are some of your favorite stories that you've covered in the last last year since joining joining oh my gosh um well I was telling somebody asked me earlier I think it was what my favorite interviews were and I had this incredible week um back in November where on a Monday my team and I went to New York and we interviewed former First Lady Michelle Obama about her new book and then we went home and as we were getting that on the air I took an hour and I interviewed Patty Smith who released a beautiful Photography book and just getting to talk to these two Dynamic women about their new book back-to-back days was really really incredible and fun and um because we were talking about football earlier the other interview that I did recently that I really enjoyed was we got to talk to Doug Williams who was the first black quarterback to play to start in and win a Super Bowl about what it was like the moment that he realized that there were going to be two black quarterbacks playing each other for the first time in a Super Bowl it was just a really cool conversation hearing him talk through some of the history about the stereotypes about a black quarterback's ability to lead a team and to have him reflect on on what it was like to root for those two guys I remember I was asking him was this the outcome that you wanted he was just like well I was always rooting for Patrick and I was always rooting for Jalen and it was just really lovely getting to hear him reflect on that history and that was very very cool so what I I think I might know what part of the answer to this question might be and I this is I have two more questions and we'll turn it over to the audience but if you could prescribe a realistic news diet for the general public meaning you know one that doesn't take too much time to consume you know what would you what would your wish for the the public you know what kind of media what kind of coverage should they be well I hope it starts and ends with all things but no in all seriousness um I pride myself on listening to a wide variety of news sources so the thing I always tell people is to in your news diet pick at least one source it doesn't have to be every day maybe even once a week once every other week that you wouldn't necessarily gravitate to so if you're a person who keeps MSNBC on your TV all the time maybe go turn on Fox news for a few minutes if you were a person who loves box maybe spend some time reading the New York Times so take in some media that challenges you and teaches you about what other people who are not like you are listening to I think it's really important just in being a smart and informed citizen of the world I mean I personally um I listen to all of our shows obviously but I subscribe to the post the times I still subscribe to the Kansas City Star and the other part of the diet that I will mention is support your local institutions they are on the front lines of protecting our democracy and doing such important work and I always people always ask me like that's my favorite thing about when I travel like my radio is automatically on kpr if I'm here it's automatically on kcur if I'm in Kansas City and I'm picking up a local newspaper and turning on the local news at night to see what people in the community I'm traveling to really care about and what kind of stories are breaking through I just think it's so incredibly valuable to have both national and local news in your mix all right my last question for you for trying to get over to the audience oh boy um what is your career goal or an aspiration that you have wanna oh my gosh I just got no you just got it I just got your job you're allowed to you're allowed to say that um well I just got this job and I'm seven months in and I absolutely love it and I work with some of the best people in the business so I can't imagine doing anything else but one thing one itch I have not scratched yet is my career has been entirely in domestic news and domestic politics and I would like to spend some time reporting um overseas I've got a couple pitches in the works for some projects that I'm really excited about so I think that is what's next for me all right we'll be watching all right I know there's lots of questions out there we've got a big crowd and so a student with a microphone will come to you if you raise your hand don't be shy got one yeah one two here thank you Angela yeah hold the hold the mic do you have a favorite podcast oh oh I like this question do I have a favorite podcast um yes I do and it is normal gossip by Defector media it is super fun if you like fun stories um they what they do is they take a piece of anonymous gossip and they retell it with a guest and it is hilarious it is my favorite thing to listen to when I'm driving home I have a rule I listen to the news on my way to work when I drive to work but I make a rule after I'm finished hosting our show that I picked something to listen to that just brings me joy and I devoured all of the existing seasons of that show in like the span of two weeks I highly recommend it the Kelsey McKinney and Alex Sue John Laughlin are fantastic great question all right so there was another one kind of just in front here Angela do you see this one oh sorry back there and then we'll go up here I think there's a certain uh a fairly significant number of Americans these days who feel like there's quote less truth in journalism and that there's really it characterized journalism as propaganda either on one side of the issue or another I think there's even some research suggesting that you know given the proclivity for news to generate towards drama that there may be some kernel of Truth in that how how do you as a journalist what does the industry need to do to fight that perception and and deal with those concerns it's a great question and thank you for raising it I mean it's something I think about a lot because we I think we at NPR really seek to provide context and Analysis and cut through some of that noise but in order to do that we need an audience to be able to trust us so I try to work really hard in any engagements that I have public facing ones like this one or even individual conversations to explain to people my why why I do this work why I care about it why NPR is a mission-driven public service organization that is looking to give you a give you clear analysis and clear context around whatever the issue is rather than giving you partisan screaming matches or people who are just taught insisting on talking past one another I think it's why we have I mean we have a wonderful staff that is committed to those goals and those values and Leadership that starts at the top and that's infused all the way through our member stations so I think it's just being dedicated to the craft and understanding that the those are not our those the kind of things that you're talking about in terms of the ratings drama and things like that those are not the goals of public media and that's why I love working in public media but I really do consider every single time I'm having a conversation with somebody about how and why we do our work and opportunity that if they are not someone who considers NPR their news and cultured information home to explain to them the why they should give us a shot to give them an example of one story or one conversation that I think might draw them in and just encourage them to give us a try you don't want over everybody but I I like our odds foreign okay up here a person that I read on a fairly regular basis who is not typically in the news business has uh published a story that says that Seymour Hersh an investigative journalist who has done some incredibly good investigative journalism in the past has broken a story that says that the the Nordstrom pipeline that was blowing up a few months back was blown up by the U.S as NPR decided to take the story on have you ever heard of the story is there any truth to it I would like to hear it from a source as reliable as as all things considered you know I've got to be honest I've only heard about that story in passing so I'm not sure what the editorial conversations have been around it I'm sure that that is not as super satisfying answer but I just don't know anymore to tell you can I forward you information um sure I can't I I don't know what the conversations have been internally but yeah sure you're happy you're more than welcome to forward me some information on it all right other questions so at the back there Michael what do you think about platforms such as sub stack which see more Hersh published that story to as avenues for freelance reporting do you think that it's a good entry point and so do you think that's where journalists should publish unaffiliated or do you think that should be seen as a stepping stone to get into larger news organizations such as NPR yeah that's a great question I mean I know a lot of journalists who work at NPR and other news organizations around the country who have used platforms like sub stack and Tiny letter to publish newsletters and things like that to monetize content and to gain traction and to gain readership and I have not personally used any of those platforms but I certainly think that it is smart for an aspiring journalist or a journalist who's looking to increase Their audience to look at where readers are going and ways to build a following I mean some people do that by I mean I know Twitter's got a whole lot going on right now by using Twitter or Tick Tock and I see sub stack and those kinds of newsletter platforms as just another opportunity to build a following and to create Community around your work and I think that that's always a good thing because no matter where you're working people people will follow you I mean I'm a person who's worked in a lot of different mediums so and people want to follow your byline so I I do think those are good opportunities but I would just urge if you're an emerging journalist and you're starting to build up your work on one of those platforms make sure you hold yourself to those same standards that you would hold yourself to if you're working in a traditional Newsroom so make sure you're fact checking make sure that you're holding yourself to high quality standards of the Integrity of your facts think about the way that you treat your sources and things like that because ultimately it's the quality of the product that I think matters most and keeps people coming back other questions yeah oh back there and then up here uh you talk very fast and I know that when I listen to other news reports they talk very passive there's something about saying so many words in a minute [Laughter] strong cold brew maybe a little too much caffeine but on a serious note pacing is incredibly important it is something that I work I'm joking but it is something I work on in a daily basis because while we're delivering important information it is important that we're clear communicators and I think everybody kind of treats that a little bit differently I know I spend a lot of time practicing my scripts before I'm delivering them on air so yes it is something that we work on a lot but I don't think any of us are trying necessarily to be super fast it's a good question okay up here Martha is can could you speak to the issue of how to deal with Liars it's a great question um how to deal with Liars so I think there's a couple different ways to go about this um I was speaking to some people about this over lunch if I'm out and I'm talking to someone say I meet you at a farmer's market or a campaign Rally or what have you and I'm interviewing you and say you're an average Joe Schmo on the street and you say something that I know to be factually inaccurate a lot of the time I will just ask people oh that's interesting how did you come to know that information or something like that I'm not I'm not attacking their position I'm not attacking the thing that they are presuming to be true but I'm trying to get information about where they've learned that information from and I think that can be a lot more telling than attacking someone for their Viewpoint I think it's a really important learning device and of course we would never put something on air that is factually inaccurate I think it's a different situation when you're talking about an elected official or an accountability interview and we do have a responsibility as interviewers and as journalists to correct the record in that moment so if someone if I'm interviewing random senator from wherever and they say something that's factually inaccurate in the course of a conversation and it's something that I know to be untrue I do believe I have a responsibility to challenge it and stop them and say elected official acts you know that's that's not true climate change is real or whatever whatever the case maybe I'm just picking an example out of a hat here so I do think it is our responsibility to make sure that we hold people accountable for their positions particularly when they are in positions of power and to be that smart stand-in for our audience members to make sure they're getting the most accurate representation of the issue at hand okay over here oh in the back Angela awesome so I know the you know politics and where the field that you're working in can be extremely you know divisive and there's a lot of different opinions that go on but my question for you is how do you overcome like your own personal bias when you're talking to people with different viewpoints as you or even as a journalist how do you make sure that you stay like a um like a neutral Source I guess as well that's a great question and it's something that comes with a lot of practice and something that I say and I mean this quite seriously is that one of the best trainings I got for being a journalist and particularly a journalist covering politics is growing up in a community as diverse as Kansas City and going to a school in the middle of the country like Mizzou in an environment not too unsimilar from here where I was interacting with people on a daily basis where we may come from very different backgrounds we may not agree on any number of issues and being used to being in community with people who are different from me I know I've talked to some friends who have grown up in different environments who when they started covering National politics had a lot of culture shock because they were presented with ideas and viewpoints that were unfamiliar to them but I really just try to check in with myself in any conversation with any interview I I do a lot of research before any interview that I do I'm prepared with the facts I'm thinking about and I'm interrogating my own biases and my own misconceptions or preconceived notions about any subject that I'm covering and the other great guard rail I think that I have in this job and in other jobs is working with a collaborative team so we can all be checks on one another and think about are we presenting this story fairly are we giving listeners the context that we need are we presenting this in an appropriate way and working together to make sure that we are breaking down any of those biases that may slip in whether it's just a turn of phrase or the way we might choose to describe something so really working to make sure that we are thinking about an issue as clearly and as fairly as possible great um you mentioned uh podcasts and news making organizations are now money making organizations and we even heard this week that some of the fox hosts were worried about their stock prices how in all this has the role of being an editor changed you know I'm not an editor so I'm not sure that I can speak directly to that but I do think that look obviously all of us are concerned about the future of our industry we've seen the headlines about shrinking journalism in some communities so I think it's something that we care a lot about NPR is invested in podcasts of All Sorts I'm a co-host of the podcast consider this which is attached to All Things Considered I I don't know if there was something more specific about editing that you were hoping to ask or with all these pressure on news organizations to produce uh either exciting news or news bias or and then when you go on the internet you really have no editor so how can we have that layer that used to be there in journalism where someone was overseeing it that seems to have kind of disappeared now okay I got you now thank you for clarifying that I appreciate it um so I can tell you how things work for us at NPR any piece of audio that you hear on my show on all things considered has at least one layer of editing there's an editor attached to every single segment whether it is myself interviewing a colleague from somewhere in the building or an interview with an external guest or a segment that we're producing from the field and there's also a line producer who is someone who on any given day listens to every single piece of content that's going on the show I really like working at NPR because I think that we are very focused on we want to be first but we want to get it right because we know that the trust that the public has in US is so important and so our editors are essential to that so does it sometimes mean that it might take us five or ten minutes longer than perhaps one of our competitors to confirm something in a minute of breaking news yes it sometimes does but we're really diligent about those fact checks we're really diligent about the use of anonymous Choice sources which we use rarely but should we choose to use them we're making sure that we trust in our sourcing and our stories and making sure that no matter if it's a story you hear on all things considered if it's a story that's on our podcast if it's a story that's on our website that no matter what form it's coming and we're still going through that really diligent vetting process foreign we have one up here that's been waiting but um you mentioned that you value local journalism but also it's a well-known Trend that is going downwards and local newspapers are closing do you think in the environment we have now it's economically possible to still continue having profitable local news and if so how should they adapt to changing environment it's a great question I mean I think it's going to require a lot of innovation I've been really heartened to watch a number of non-profit journalism Outlets grow up and um to spring up in communities I know the reflectors here in Kansas and Baltimore we have the Baltimore Banner that just launched and is funded by non-profits um I'm best known among them as the Texas Tribune which does a fantastic job and that's on a non-profit model so I do think there's opportunity but it's going to require Innovation and frankly it's going to require public support and for people to understand that if we don't support these local institutions that do things like cover your local state house or your local city counselor your board of assessment or whatever it may be if people don't support them they're going to go away um one of the things that I love I don't know if people listen to consider this our podcast but it's a it's a part we have in some cities a local partnership so in some feeds of the podcast like in DC for example you'll hear the story from All Things Considered and then you'll get local news from WAMU which is the member station in DC so we're trying out all different ways to partner with different local member stations to try to elevate some of that local journalism because I think it's just so necessary and critical so it's possible but it's going to take a lot of work and it's going to take all of us all right so in the back Angela hi so as a woman of color I was wondering how you've been able to overcome some of the external obstacles that you've received in the field like maybe not being taken seriously or you know things like that that's a great question thank you for asking it I mean it's years of work and it's very hard I think the biggest thing that has been helpful for me throughout my career as a woman of color is having a support system of other women and women of color who are at different stages of our career so you know if you're in a situation and it doesn't feel quite right or you feel like maybe you're being treated differently for reasons because of your identity to have somebody to call and kind of do that gut check there was a woman that I'm friends with who works at CNN and we haven't worked together in a number of years but if I'm in one of those situations she is still always my first text message or my first call if I'm in a situation that I I don't quite know how to navigate or if I think that I'm being paid less than someone else or that I'm not being treated fairly like I'm grateful to work at NPR where we don't run into those kind of issues too terribly often but I think having those sounding boards is important and I also think and this frankly it comes with age and it comes with time but like knowing your worth and knowing what you're good at knowing your value and being willing to put your yourself out there and ask to be treated like the person and the professional that you're worth I remember early in my career when I was getting one of my first reporting jobs when I was working elsewhere I got offered a job and what I was really young and I was really excited about the salary offer and a white male co-worker pulled me aside and said I have to be honest with you you're doing the same work that I'm doing and I make twice that and so having people that you trust to have candid conversations with in your life so if you are being treated in a way that is not appropriate or in a way that isn't Equitable having people who don't look like you who you can have those conversations with is also so incredibly important so that you can figure out how to get what you deserve I hope you got that fixed it was addressed this kind of piggybacks off that last question so as someone in our news diet especially over let's say the last five years a lot of us have maybe taken breaks from the news because of the you know levels of challenge that are part of that but you have to do this for your job so how do you address sort of your mental health stability in sustaining a long career oh yeah doing this but then on a second note also you've talked about being sort of a known person now so that can lead to you know inadequate Twitter involvement and you know vitriol that you face as as a person doing this kind of work so how do you address maintaining your mental health in those contexts great question um I will just say I also take news breaks it is not just you um look I think it can be incredibly challenging to be on all the time um that's why I do the thing where I listen to Morning Edition when I drive to work I have a longer commute so I can hear most of the show in the morning but then I don't listen I choose to not listen to news on my drive home to give myself a break after hosting our two hour show I listen to something funny or silly or I call my husband or I call my mom and just do something that allows me to turn my brain off um I also highly recommend having hobbies in people and your life like for me as a journalist that don't do the work that I do is really important I live in Baltimore but I live in DC for a long time and when I was first living in DC all of my friends were either journalists or people who worked in politics and that was not particularly healthy and while I still love those people very much and they're very dear to me having a really diverse Social Circle helps tremendously so that if I'm going out to dinner or for a run or whatnot we're talking about other things in our life that either motivate us or make us happy or fill us with joy so being able to create I think it for any job really I think it's important to have some separation from your work um to your point about becoming more of a public figure and some of the visual that comes with that I will say that I definitely have and this was even before getting this job but I definitely have a different relationship with how open I am on social media than I used to I very much self-select what Windows of myself I allow to go onto those platforms and a lot of times I'll be honest I don't read the replies they're often not helpful and sometimes it's okay to not let people take up that space in your brain so I'll just kind of shut it off and sometimes I'll get really thoughtful comments I got a really thoughtful email from a listener who just had some questions about the way that we presented something on the show and I love getting messages like that and I try to respond to them to the degree that I can but if somebody's just out to be nasty I think sometimes it's okay to just go ahead and hit mute and not sometimes it's always okay to just hit you and move on from that other questions okay Angela hi how would you consider interested members of the press maybe with help from We the People Phil what looks to be a dangerous vacuum in terms of the coverage of deep politics which the term the Deep state had been uh Mis interpreted and weaponized during mainly during the Trump years but it actually references the intersection of covert intelligence Espionage operations and organized crime I'm thinking of two examples ask your question please yeah I did and the the facts I'm thinking of is the McGonagall Affair recently uh journalist Jane Mayer said at the time 2016 when McGonagall was in place in terms of FBI counterintelligence there was too much kremlinology for a journalist to understand and tell the story and one of these oligarchs that McGonagall was apparently paid off by intersected even with Senator Dole uh and then finally the question of the Epstein Maxwell intelligence compromise operation that both presidential candidates in 2016 were tightly connected to was totally under uh reported in the Press what what can interested members of the press with help from we the people do to fill this dangerous uh vacuum of misunderstanding Thank you you know I'm not sure I actually know enough about either of those to feel comfortable commenting on them but if you wanted to reach out to your NPR's public editor or something I think that'd be the best place for that question thanks all right we have time for two more questions so there's Michael why don't you go ahead yes I do have to stand up um I had a couple questions one was that you are on NPR now have you ever thought about going to PBS is that a a thought it's still public I think PBS is wonderful but I do love the job that I have and we love listening to you and listening to NPR all Saturday so thank you very much thank you thank you take one more and we'll close for the evening or we can end on that note okay I knew there would be someone you guys I knew you'd have great questions okay so have you seen a tiny desk series live and if so I need to know your favorite one maybe lizzo I don't know it breaks my heart but I was not at the lizzo tiny desk um I have seen a number of tiny desks live um if you're not familiar with the tiny desk concerts happen at NPR on our fourth floor at the tiny desk um I used to work on that floor so just around the corner um I think that the biggest disappointment of my career is that my one sick day in the last few years was the day that ushered into the tiny desk concert so I missed it it was terrible um I think we were just talking about this at work the other day um I think my favorite one that I've seen in person was probably T-Pain back a number of years ago hearing him without the auto-tune that he's so well known for was super cool I also saw Cat Stevens at the tiny desk which was incredible and completely different and I just recently I think the most recent one I've been to was soccer Mommy so one of my favorite things to do is to go to I to go to Tiny desks of like the Taylor Swift and the lizos and the Jonas Brothers of the world are really cool but I love going to see smaller artists and particularly bands that I'm not as familiar with um that's how I discovered um Sylvan Esso for example they played the tiny desk in 2013 and I'd never heard of them before and just went because I happened to be at my desk and it was so cool and it's a great way to discover new music we just opened up the tiny desk concert or contest for entries too so I'm really excited to see some of the emerging artists that come through that platform wonderful all right before we close I want to invite you all to come back to the Dole Institute tomorrow at four o'clock for our conversation with President atifeta yayaga of the Republic of Kosovo come back next Monday for Barbara's conversation on Race part seven you won't want to miss that so all of you we've been such a it's been such a joy to have you tonight thank you so much for being with us Juana Summers thank you so much it's been so great to meet you have a wonderful rest of your evening foreign [Music]

Channel: The Dole Institute of Politics

Views: 467

Keywords: Dole Institute, Dole Institute of Politics, Politics, University of Kansas

Id: -jzN0M8MY5Y

Length: 66min 50sec (4010 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 22 2023