The Art of Being an NPR Host

with 1A host Jenn White

“The Art of” is a series where I talk to interesting people in creative fields about what they do and how they do it. Today’s interview is with the host of 1A from WAMU and NPR, Jenn White. Jenn has worked in public radio for more than two decades. Before she was the host of 1A, she hosted WBEZ’s Reset in Chicago. She also hosted the podcasts “Making Oprah” and “Making Obama.” Her new amazing and important TED Talk on the state of our democracy is up now and you should totally go check it out! This interview was conducted in person and has been edited and condensed for clarity <3

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HB: The title “host” outside of a radio show context is someone responsible for orchestrating a gathering, of corralling a group of people in a contained space so that something special or memorable can take place. How much of this aligns with your role as a host of an NPR show?

JW: Oh, there's a lot of alignment. You're in a position where, ideally, you're convening people to have a conversation that is fluid and engaging, where people feel, in most cases, respected and as if their voice and their presence matters. And I think that's like the best dinner party too, right? Where you've invited people and when they arrive, they feel welcomed.

On the other side of it though, there are times when as a radio host, you are convening people and you know from the outset that it's going to be adversarial in nature. So I guess it isn't that different from dinner parties [laughs]. As the host, your goal is still to keep things moving, so yeah, there is a lot of crossover.

HB: Let’s step back for a moment. What is the ACTUAL job of a radio host at an outlet like NPR?

JW: My job requires me to be well-prepared, to always show up fully and completely engaged, completely present. To act as an advocate for the listener, to ask the questions that they want asked. It's my responsibility to hold powerful people to account and also to create space for people who don't often get to share their stories. To create space for them to do that in a way that is productive and enlightening. That's the on-air component.

Off air, there's a whole other list of things. You're the public face for the show. You have to represent it and field questions from the public and be aware that even when you're not on the clock, there's an expectation that you are still on the clock. And that can be a lot, but that's part of the job. And then the other part of it—I think the host of a show is one of the main drivers of the culture of the show. I'm very careful about how I speak to other team members because, regardless of whether people do it consciously or not, they will take their cues from me.

HB: How do you find yourself the host of a national show? What was your path to where you are now?

JW: Oh my gosh, it's super, super windy. I started in public radio in 1999 and I was with what was then called Michigan Public Media for about 16 years in various roles, the last one being the local host for All Things Considered. Then I met a man who I later married and he got a job in Chicago. We decided we needed to relocate there. I reached out to WBEZ and they were just starting to really expand their podcast unit and needed a second host for their daily show, so I stepped into that role. I eventually took over that show completely.

We launched a new show called Reset. It was a two-hour daily show. A few months into that, I got the call from 1A and they were looking for a new host. I applied with no expectation that I would get the job. So I was like, great. With every successive step, I was still of the mind, like, Oh wow, this is really interesting, but then they offered me the job.

HB: What does your day to day look like?

JW: My day typically starts at about 5 a. m. I ideally either go for a walk or work out before I come into work. Part of that is because, vocally, I feel better when I do that. And part of it is just a mental health and physical health thing. I'm typically in the office in time for our 8 a. m. editorial meeting. But before that, between that 5 a. m. and 8 a. m. window, I'm catching up on what's happened overnight in the news so if there's been anything breaking, I'm aware of that because it'll definitely be part of our 8 a.m. editorial conversation.

At 8:42, I do a two-way conversation with our Morning Edition host to promote what's coming up on the show. The show goes to air at 10am. We’re on the air until noon. After the show we debrief and talk about what worked well on the show, what maybe we could have done better. Then we do tracking for the podcast and 1A Plus, which is the sort of the revised version of the show that air in the evenings. Scripts for the next day’s show are due at 2:30pm. After our afternoon meeting I go in to edit those and start to look ahead to the next day, too.

HB: The show we work for is live. A lot of people don’t understand what that means, but it means you really only have one chance to say the right thing. What lessons has the nature of live radio taught you about the importance of using the right words or asking the right questions at the right moment?

JW: One of the first lessons I had to learn about live radio was taught to me by a woman named Charity Nebbe who’s at Iowa Public Radio now. She said, ‘You have to learn to forgive yourself immediately.' Even if you want to always have the right word or the right question, the fact is that it's live radio and you are a human being and that is not going to happen all of the time. The most heart-stopping moment for me is when a guest says, ‘I don't understand your question.’ I'm like, Oh, ‘tiny death inside.’ I have to go back and say, okay, what am I really trying to ask them?

Second, language matters. It's really important that when you use the wrong word or you don't ask the right question, rather than trying to buzz past it, you take the moment to correct it, right? That's what I owe the audience. It's what I owe the guest. I owe you that correction.

There are times when I'm trying to figure something out and I'll say to the guests, ‘I'm trying to form this. There's an idea in my head. I'm going to try to talk it out in real time with you.’ I'll kind of run through it and at the end of it, I'll say, does that make sense? And they'll either say yes or no. If they say yes, then great. If they say no, then it's like, okay, let me try to refine that a little bit more. Right? So really leaning into it as a conversation, and knowing that this is how people talk to one another, this is how we engage with one another.

HB: You rely on the scripts producers like myself (hi!!!!!) write, but because we’re a live show, there’s inevitably moments that are unscripted. How do you make space for improvisation and serendipity in the conversations you host?

JW: The biggest tool anyone has in creating that space is just listening. When I'm working with people I coach as they're moving along their hosting journey, I tell them listening is their single best tool. There are times—and I know you all say it doesn't drive you crazy, I hope it's true—when there will be the conversation we prepared and then there's the conversation that happens. While I'm showing up the way I'm showing up, I have no control over how the guest is going to show up. I have to find the space they're in like, okay, we wanted to be in this blue space. You're in a yellow space. I wonder if we can find a green space to be in together. As a host, that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to create that green space. There's some of what we wanted, but I can also work with what you're giving.

It's listening and it's also—and I think this is scary in radio—it's allowing there to be stillness and silence. There are times when our guests are sharing really intimate, difficult stories with us. There's this fear of dead air in radio, but if I can see someone struggling to gather their emotions, do I just rush to the next questions and hope they pull through? Or do I create space for that emotion to actually be a part of our conversation? I lean toward the latter.

HB: NPR hosts aren’t simply there to read questions from a script. They’re also working journalists. How does your job as a journalist shape and inform your job as a host?

JW: It's always top of mind for me, getting it right. We use a lot of statistics—you all know I love data points—but we’re making sure we have reliable data that we can share with our audience. It’s not about what I feel. It's not about what you feel. It's like, no, this is what the research actually says about this thing.

Also trying to get a layer underneath whatever the headline or the talking point is because I think we're in this information environment where you can just scroll through six different things really quickly and think you understand, but you can't really understand from the one or two sentences you may have read. So how do I, as a host, create space for us to include that additional context Sometimes it’s saying, ‘okay, wait, you just used this term. What does that mean?’

You're kind of a puzzle master in a way. You're trying to pull all of these pieces together. to create one coherent picture for the audience. As a journalist, I'm always thinking through the lens of, are we connecting the dots for people? It seems like there's another two or three questions we need to ask in order to connect this dot to that dot. I'm always thinking about that.

You know this, we have a saying on our show, “Nothing about us without us.” We try really hard to include the voices of communities that we're talking about so we can help our audience better understand if we're talking about a policy or a law and what it means for a community. Let's hear from that community so they can tell us, not us assuming what that means for their life.

HB: Although 1A likes to think of itself as a space for all kinds of conversations, hosting a live national show is not the same as having a casual conversation with a friend at Starbucks. Part of it IS a performance. Hosts receive voice training, just like a singer might. What are the physical aspects of the job?

JW: The vocal training has been really helpful. I come from a theater background, many, many, many, moons ago. But the training I received in theater has done a lot to help me know how to best maintain and support my voice. I think people are less aware of the physicality of hosting. You experience emotions in your body. So if you're stressed, that affects your breath control, it affects your voice. You are embodying everything that you're doing and you're embodying the emotions that people are sharing with you and it can be challenging. Do I have a relationship with a therapist? Absolutely. Because the stuff that we are talking about every day, some of it's fun and light, but a lot of it is heavy and difficult. You need a space where you can show up and not be a host and just be human.

HB: What advice do you have for people interested in a career in radio hosting?

JW: Be curious. One of the things I think is really important for hosts to do is lean into curiosity because there will be times when you'll find you're working on a show that just doesn't interest you. But the last thing you want to do is go into a show and have that be apparent to your guests because it's incredibly insulting, and it sends a message to the audience that either something they value isn't important or something they don't value, they don't have to care about it. The way to avoid that is by leaning into your curiosity. So it's not something I'm invested in, the first question I ask myself is why?

Understand your voice is another one. You need to know what it can do. You need to be in love with it because no matter who you are, there will be somebody who does not like your voice. So even though you won't sound the same to yourself as you do over the radio, you need to get used to listening to yourself so that you trust your voice. Read poetry out loud. Get used to sound, get used to being secure in what your voice sounds like when it's supported and when your breathing is easy and okay, ‘this is what happens when I project and this is how I know how to draw back. Do that. Take an improv class if you can or some sort of theater class. It teaches you to be present in a way that's very useful in radio.

HB: My last question is about asking questions since it's core to what you do. What, to you, are the elements the make a good question?

JW: Ooh. Okay, elements of a good question. Clarity, conciseness, and context. Clarity: the person who's listening to the question understands what you're asking. Conciseness: when you invite people onto your program, it's because you want to hear what they have to say. You don't have to be the biggest personality, the smartest person in the room. If they're an expert, let them be an expert. And then context. If you're asking a question that requires the audience to understand something, give them space so that they can understand why you're asking or what you're asking. Make sure that context is part of the question. Sometimes it's about anticipating. Like you know if you ask about this, they're going to refer to this six letter agency. You can build that context right into the question.

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