National Public Radio (NPR) host Scott Detrow, FCRH ’07, spoke to Fordham University students last Wednesday in an event hosted by the Master of Arts in Public Media program. In an interview-style talk, Detrow talked about his near-decade of reporting with NPR, election coverage and the trajectory from WFUV to national news.
Detrow is a weekend host for “All Things Considered,” NPR’s signature radio program that has been on-air since 1971. He also hosts the podcasts “Consider This” and “Trump’s Trials.”
This election cycle is the third Detrow will be covering since arriving at NPR in 2015. It’s one that he described as rife with “unprecedented political news” on “All Things Considered.”
Around 6 p.m. on July 13, Detrow and his colleagues were leaving work when the news of former President Donald Trump’s first assassination attempt broke.
“We went outside and we saw the images of him being rushed off the stage. We realized a major, major news story has just happened, and we need to get back on the air as quickly as possible,” recalled Detrow. “I ran back into the studio and my adrenaline was rushing in this wild, wild way.”
Reporting based on texts from Danielle Kurtzleben, the NPR reporter live on the scene, and the images being released, Detrow had to deliver factual, level-headed reporting in a tense situation without much information.
“At first, I had absolutely no script and no guests and nothing to do because Danielle wasn’t able to get on a cell phone line,” said Detrow. “I just had to calmly describe the images that we saw and what we thought happened, and the most important thing was to quantify and qualify everything we said, because we didn’t know what the facts were.”
“I feel like there was a lot of criticism of the media for being very cautious at first and people screenshotting headlines with loud popping noises instead of gunshots. But we weren’t going to say that it was gunshots until it was confirmed — and that happened relatively quickly,” Detrow continued.
In 2016 and 2020, Detrow was on the ground covering Trump’s and President Joe Biden’s campaign trails. From watching attendees rush the press pen at Trump rallies to accompanying Biden’s campaign during the height of COVID-19, Detrow has seen it all.
Detrow also talked about his experience as a co-host for the “NPR Politics Podcast” and what the differences look like from broadcasting a radio program.
“The way we always thought about the ‘NPR Politics Podcast’ is we’re talking about the news like you talk with friends,” Detrow said. “We just took that [and] we would do like a slight outlining – we want to hit points A, B and C in this conversation – but then we would just talk like we would otherwise.”
As a Fordham student, Detrow worked at WFUV News before graduating in 2007 — right at the height of the financial crisis. Eventually, he found his way to NPR-affiliate station WIXR in Pennsylvania and started as the local “All Things Considered” host before working as a court reporter — his first introduction to political reporting.
“Our State House reporter left, and I was able to shift over to the State House. That was a political education and a reporting education. It was the most amazing experience, because you get to see so much up close,” he said. “You could just walk up to a state senator, walk up to the governor and kind of figure out what’s going on.”
After the talk, students participated in a question-and-answer session. Program attendees came from all over Fordham, including the M.A. in Public Media program, WFUV and The Fordham Ram.
To students, Detrow emphasized the importance of being neutral and level when discussing heated political topics.
“If people want to trust your news organization or trust your news reports, they have to know that you’re telling them the facts and not what you want the facts to be,” Detrow said.
Detrow advised students to be proactive in their pitches and connections when they get their foot in the door: “you shouldn’t underestimate how important it is to be a proactive and reliable person. To say, ‘this happened. Are you interested?’ and then actually turning the story, meeting deadlines — being somebody that they can rely and trust.”
