Monday morning the First Amendment Forum in ASU’s Cronkite School was full of students waiting to hear from the award-winning journalist and anchor of “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt.”
The Cronkite School shows that people understand the importance of a free and independent press, Holt said.
He is the 36th person to receive the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism. In the hour-long student session, he shared how he got his start in the business.
His brother Mike Swanigan was the first to introduce him to the field by sneaking him into the radio station he worked in as a teenager. He said he was immediately sold.
In 1986, Holt earned his first position as an anchor for a CBS affiliate station in Chicago. He said before taking the job, he had sent out several resumes in search of a reporting position, including to NBC. During that process he received a lot of rejections, including one from NBC — the station where he now hosts the NBC Nightly News.
At a young age, Holt joined his family around the TV to watch Cronkite on CBS news. He said he remembered setting up a tape recorder to record Nixon’s resignation, thinking one day he may show his children a piece of history.
John Brown, a freshman at Cronkite, said he admired Holt’s idolization of Cronkite and ability to achieve an award in the name of his childhood hero.
“There are many reasons I shouldn’t be sitting here,” Holt said, as he began to explain that he had no formal journalism training, never finished college and never worked in a small market, while the crowd of students chuckled.
One student asked him about his thoughts on the future of journalism, he replied, “Frankly you guys intimidate the hell out of me.”
When asked for advice on how to excel in the field he told students to read.
”Read. Read. Read. Read and write,” he said. Regardless of if you think your career is behind a desk it is important that you know how to write well, he also said.
“It is a real challenge to take a complicated story and tell it in a way that informs the viewer, but in the most efficient manner as possible, and that only comes from good writing,” he said.
In response to a student question on maintaining mental and physical health, he said, “It is okay to be a human first and a journalist second. Some stories are going to pull at your emotions, and while you should keep it professional, your true emotion can help bring the story to life.”
Compassion is part of the journalist tool kit, he said.
He said, “While it is exciting to be the first to break the news, you have to realize that most of the time you are trying to get information out of people on the worst days of their lives.”
He also said, because you are dealing with real people and real tragedies, it is important to go through the reporting process, even if it means being last.
“I’d rather be last, than wrong,” he said.
Contact the reporter at mllong4@asu.edu
